106. Organizing for Rainy Holiday Weekends

So you made plans for the long holiday weekend, and... it's decided to rain. Whether you were "all in" to be productive or "all out" to have fun, this episode will help you find a balance, as well as alternatives to utilize your now open schedule. This is also a great time to subscribe to our Moving Series - we're currently in episode 2 of 5. The minimum contribution is only $3/month. Our "fake" moving date is in just 5 weeks, so you still have time to jump in and keep your sanity!

Transcript

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So it's the holiday weekend, and many of you had plans, I'm sure, but now it's gonna rain. How many times does that happen to you where there's a weekend that you want to do something, or there's a holiday, and the kids are out of school, or you're off work and you're like, okay, we're gonna go somewhere, we're gonna do something, we're gonna get outside, we're gonna have fun. And then all of a sudden you look at the forecast and it's raining all weekend. Now, if you live in Tennessee, you know what I'm talking about, because our weekend is supposed to be filled with a lot of weather. And honestly, it's gonna be this way for like the next week. So, for a lot of people who thought, well, you know, we're gonna go have fun over the weekend, and then maybe we'll just kind of linger, like we'll hang out a couple extra days, you know, the kids are out of school, or my child has graduated, we're gonna go on a trip. Some of you may keep those plans because maybe you're going somewhere where the weather is still gonna be nice. I'm from Indianapolis, and so with the 500 this weekend, I look to see how things are shaping up up there. And it looks like the weather will be pretty decent. I don't think they're gonna get rain. I think it may be cloudy. But for those of us who live in Nashville, the Nashville area, we're down in Franklin, which is south of Nashville. We're supposed to have rain, and it's gonna suck. Actually, our building was supposed to have kind of like a fun pool movie night tonight. It's kind of one of those like movie experiences where it was supposed to be like a Jaws type movie. It wasn't that, it was something else. But it was gonna be at the pool, and there was gonna be like, you know, these different effects to make you feel like you were actually part of the movie. Not really sure that we were gonna go, but I was like, okay, that's kind of fun, and that's part of the holiday weekend. And then a lot of people will take off and go to the lake, especially where we're at in Franklin. We're close to downtown Franklin, and there's normally stuff to do like on Main Street. Usually for holidays, they'll have different food trucks and they'll close down the main street, and there's stuff for the whole family to go do. And I know that the movie night tonight has been postponed to next weekend because of the weather, and I haven't even looked ahead yet to see what's going on downtown because it's like, well, I knew it was gonna rain because I'm deathly afraid of tornadoes, and I'm a big weather person, and so normally I will know a week in advance what the weather's gonna look like. And for us here in Tennessee, I think it's gonna be like, I don't know, seven or eight days straight of just rain and thunderstorms and just that feeling of uh, like I thought we were already it's summer. Like we had, I think, an 80, like a high 80s day the other day, maybe maybe even low 90s. And so it's like, what are you doing? All of the rain should have happened by now. You know, the whole April showers bring May flowers. Like, we're not in May. We should have the flowers and the sun and we're ready to go do stuff outside and have fun. So, for those of you who had weekend plans and maybe that's not gonna happen, or maybe you stumble on this episode and it's almost 4th of July, or it's Labor Day weekend, or you're getting close to the holidays and it's just like gross and rainy, but you've got some time off. This episode is for the people who had plans, but now they kind of need a backup. They're like, well, we're probably still gonna do some fun stuff, but we're not gonna be able to go outside. And that was the purpose of the whole trip. Or now that we have this time off, we we don't really want to stick with our original plans. We want to do more stuff inside. We want to, you know, be productive since we have this time off. I know that there are people who stumbled on this podcast because they are constantly wanting to get to a point where their house doesn't feel so stressful. And so for a holiday weekend, maybe it's a blessing in disguise for some people that they don't have to try to do a ton of laundry on a Friday afternoon, that they're not trying to pack themselves and their spouse and their kids to go away for maybe two, three days max. And maybe there wasn't enough preparation this week. Maybe if you have a child who was either graduating or trying to get through final exams, maybe you're like, you know, maybe we just packed in too much, and so going away isn't something that we would have enjoyed anyway. So let's try to figure out what we're gonna do instead. So I have come up with three, I guess, scenarios to kind of give you a category you can put yourself in if you're here today because plans have changed for your holiday weekend and you are wanting to either get organized or you were wanting to completely rip your place apart because you're packing and moving. In that case, if you're moving in the next three, four, five, six weeks and you haven't already signed up for the moving series and the bonus content. I want you to go now. I want you to pause this episode and I want you to find the moving series. And if you click on episode one, you can listen to that one for free. When you click on episode two, that's when you're actually going to pay for the bonus content. It's only $3 for the month. And then next weekend is when the next episode goes up. So you still have time to listen to the first two episodes so that you can join the rest of the moving series next weekend. Now, with that put aside, you may not be moving. You may just want to get really organized and you're realizing that we're coming up on summer, and there's a lot of stuff that you want to do when it does stop raining. So you're like, I actually think I'm gonna use this time to be productive so that I can get outside once June comes around. We're already gonna go on a summer vacation. So I'm not worried about us not going somewhere. Now I need to actually figure out an alternative for this weekend so I can use my time productively, but not necessarily feel like everybody is giving up, you know, a fun, relaxing weekend. So here are the three scenarios. Scenario number one is you were gonna go away for the weekend, but you had no formal plans. So you had no hotel booked, you don't have anything that you've signed up for. It was just kind of a loose plan, like, hey, if everything works out, let's go away. Okay. Instead, you've decided, well, where we're going, it's gonna rain, we're not gonna go. So now we need to make all new plans, okay? That's category number one. Category number two is kind of like a 50-50. You were gonna have a productive slash fun weekend. So you're gonna try to split your time. You have this time to do stuff, so you're like, okay, I think we're gonna be productive and we're gonna try to squeeze in, you know, maybe a community event. Maybe we're gonna try to go to dinner, we're gonna try to go out on a boat. You know, maybe it's a little bit rainy, but maybe we'll still do that. We're not sure yet. Then category number three, it was supposed to be an all hands-on deck, but the weekend was gonna be doing a lot of productive stuff outside. Okay, so you were gonna pull everything out in your driveway, you were gonna have the yard sale, you were going to have the junk hauler swing by because they said, Yeah, I can probably come on a weekend. We'll swing by one Saturday, back the truck up, and we'll just see how much we can fit on there. Or you were gonna load up the car and take stuff to the storage unit, or you were gonna clean out the storage unit, which by the way, we've got an episode coming up soon that's gonna talk about clearing out your storage unit quickly, especially if you're also moving, okay. So just kind of put a pin in that for now. So those are the three scenarios. You were either all out for the weekend, you were gonna be gone, you were either gonna be 50-50 or you were gonna be all in, okay? But the all in part is still affected by the rain and by being outside, okay. So, with all three scenarios, you are someone who is trying to get organized, but you're also trying to have fun. I want you to keep that in mind, no matter how you structure your weekend now that plans have changed. The difference is the level, okay, to how we're going to be committed. And the reason that I'm starting with category one, which is you were supposed to be gone the whole weekend, was you've already shown me, you've already told me that you wanted to prioritize rest and relaxation. So the last thing I want you to do is go from category one to category three. Okay. I'm not saying you can't go to category two, which is 50-50, but part of what will slow you down overall, let's say in the next month you are moving, or in the next month you are going to be focusing more on doing big projects. I do want you to feel like this is still your weekend to rest a little bit. So, what I would suggest for you, since you're not going away, I want you or you as a family, whoever was going to be involved, to come up with one alternative fun activity. Now, maybe you're saying, listen, I think we're still gonna get outside. We just don't want to do the travel part, right? Because you'd be driving in the rain. A lot of the activities that were planned were planned outside and they cost money. So if you're like, listen, we still kind of want to go hiking, or we still want to go ride our bikes, or I think we're still gonna go to the community pool, even if it's cloudy because some of our friends are gonna go down there. You know, we still want to do something that makes it feel like a holiday weekend. I encourage that. And I think you should make a specific plan, whether it's Saturday, Sunday, Monday, I think that would be really good for you to have a backup plan. And then you know, okay, we've already planned the fun. It's gonna happen on Sunday. So even though I took a half day off on Friday and I'm gonna be off on Monday, we know that Sunday we're gonna get up, go to church, go down to the community pool, hang out with our friends for a few hours. And then if that ends up turning into an evening where we're all ordering dinner or someone is cooking, then kind of let the day go by naturally. Don't feel like you have to have fun in the morning and then be productive in the afternoon. I would actually give yourself a full day. And if it's rainy outside and you're by yourself or it's just a couple of you and no one really feels like doing anything, I would do like a movie day. I would pop some popcorn, you know, you can have a little like treat tray, you can climb back in bed and say, listen, today we're not gonna do anything. Like if we actually were gone for the weekend, this was gonna be the day where we were probably gonna get up and order in coffee and lounge around and maybe go down to the hotel gym or maybe get outside and do something. But have one day over your holiday weekend where you're like, okay, we are gonna do something fun and we're not gonna worry about anything else. The whole day, nothing is gonna be structured. We're gonna let it go. We're gonna let the chips fall as they may. And then if you're thinking to yourself, okay, well, I took a half day to go home and pack, and now we're not going, I would still be productive for your half day. If your half day was to go home and pack, I would get off work and I would go ahead and run by the grocery store because now you're gonna be home for the weekend. So I would say, you know what, a lot of people are heading out of town still, but we're not. So, you know, I got off at 12:30, 1 o'clock. I'm gonna go ahead and go to the grocery store because there are still people who are gonna be working until four or five or six. And in watching the weather, it's supposed to really start raining after three. So there's gonna be a part of you that feels like I didn't waste my half day. I still went ahead and I got ahead of traffic. I got ahead of the people that didn't have a half day. Because I'm telling you, if you go straight home, sometimes you get home and you're like, there's so much I could have done on a Friday when some other people were still working. And once you're home, you're like, okay, I'll just go tomorrow. Well, guess what? On a Saturday morning, for anyone who's still in town who's gonna have a cookout, I'm sure a lot of the grocery stores are gonna be crowded with those people. So think to yourself, we're not gonna go out of town. We realized this morning plans were gonna change. I got approved for a half day. I'm taking it. And if you just went to the grocery store, look at it as, you know what, I think I'm gonna run by the mall real quick. I wanna pick up a couple of soaps at Bath and Body Works, and I don't want to go in when there's a lot of people, you know, and you still may hit a lot of people, you know, there's still maybe a lot of people out doing stuff. But if there's something that you want to do and you have a half day, and it's just kind of like, okay, now I'm out and I don't have to go straight home. I don't have to do a ton of laundry this afternoon. I can actually kind of mosey around a little bit. That's what I would do. So you're half day on Friday, I would find an alternate that makes you happy and feels like I don't get a lot of half days. Maybe you'll go grab a late lunch by yourself. That sounds exciting, right? Again, maybe you go pick something up. Maybe you go to an area of town that normally is really busy when you get off work and you're like, I think I'm gonna run over to such and such area to that one little bakery that I like, and I'm gonna pick up something, or I'm gonna grab a late coffee. That's what I would do. And then what you can do is on that Saturday, you can say, okay, yesterday I was gonna do a ton of laundry and we were gonna be gone today. I'm gonna commit to doing a couple loads of laundry today. And then when we get up, it's gonna be a little bit of a slow morning. We didn't have anything planned. Maybe I'll make some pancakes. Maybe I'll go piddle around a little bit in my guest room because under the bed or in the closet is a tote that I need to go through. I'm trying to find something. And then in the afternoon, you can kind of meet back up with your family. You know, maybe your spouse went to meet up with some friends, or maybe your spouse decided to go off and catch up on some work at a coffee shop. And maybe the kids decided, yeah, my friends down the street are gonna go do something. But then on that Saturday night, you say, okay, remember everybody, tomorrow is our day. This is our event day, quote unquote. This is when we're gonna actually go do something as a family. And then on Monday, since you didn't leave town and you weren't trying to rush back on a Monday and unpack, you can get ready for the work week. Not that you have to spend your whole day Monday trying to get ready for the week, but that's when you can do a little bit of a 50-50, kind of like you did on Friday. You went to work part of the day, you enjoyed yourself part of the day. Get up on Monday, enjoy the morning. You know, maybe get up and go for a walk. Maybe do something that you wouldn't normally do. Maybe you get up and you immediately do yoga. Or maybe you just sit and have a cup of coffee and instead of rinsing out your mug and rushing upstairs to get dressed to go to work, maybe you actually sit in your pajamas for a couple of hours and watch a TV show. Maybe you watch two or three episodes of a TV show that you normally would only have time to watch maybe one episode before you go to bed. So that's kind of how I would handle a relaxing yet somewhat organized holiday weekend if your plans change. Now, again, if you're somebody that's like, yeah, we're not going out of town, but we're still doing a ton of stuff here, then this isn't for you. Okay. I don't want you to feel like, well, I didn't fit perfectly into one of those three categories. What I'm talking about is for the people that say, you know what, this isn't the best weekend for us to go away. So now we're gonna be productive instead. But if you had planned to be gone the whole weekend, the last thing you want to do is to punish yourself because of the weather that was out of your control. So you still want to feel like you got a lot done. And like I said, keeping that one day where it doesn't feel like you're doing anything else but just enjoying yourself. And you can even split it up. You know, maybe on that half day you get off work and you're super productive. And then Saturday and Sunday, you just decide to relax or you have alternate plans, or you decide to do something as a family that's an indoor thing. Maybe there's a museum that you wanted to go to, or maybe you did want a road trip a little bit, but you just didn't want to get out of the car as much. Maybe you wanted to drive around and look at neighborhoods. Maybe you're house hunting. And so you're like, well, let's just go ahead and drive around. There's a two-hour block where it's not supposed to be like super rainy. So we're still gonna drive around a little bit. We're still gonna have fun. We're still gonna try to socialize and connect. And then I have a couple of small projects I'm gonna squeeze in. Okay. If you're in category two, where you're half and half productive, half fun, I think this is gonna be the easiest transition for you to make because you are already planning on half and half. You're already planning on being somewhat productive and having a little bit of fun. So if most of your activities were gonna be outside, the only thing I would change is making those activities inside. Unless you want to keep some of them outside. Some of you don't care. But this is for the people that are like, oh, the weather. The weather has completely ruined our weekend. Say you were gonna go to a festival or there was some kind of event, or like I said, in my building, we were gonna have an event and they had to cancel it. Let's say you had something specific and it got canceled because of the weather, then you can say, I was already gonna be half productive. Don't shift into making it a completely productive weekend because again, your original goal was half and half. So don't change the productive stuff. If you already had a friend coming over on Saturday to help you go through a closet, if you were already supposed to go to a friend's house and there was gonna be a cookout, but they're moving it inside, and that was on Monday, keep that. Don't shift that. The only thing that you're gonna swap out is the part that didn't work because of the weather. So let's say the fun part was supposed to be inside, but you were gonna load up your car and take stuff to storage. And even though at home you could load stuff in the garage, when you were gonna unload it at the storage unit, there's no covered parking. And so now it's literally gonna be torrential rain pour, you know, on all of your stuff. So what you could do is you could still load up your stuff at home, get it in the car, as long as you don't need to run and pick up other stuff, as long as it's not taking up space that you need before you go there, and then just wait for an opening. You know, get the car packed while you can, while it's covered parking, and then check the radar next couple days and say, okay, we were gonna go do this on Sunday afternoon, but it looks like on Monday morning it's not supposed to rain until 11. So then you can say, let's head over there at nine, and then that way we can get everything inside before it really starts raining. So the 50-50 people, I feel like you're gonna be in the easiest bracket because you have already kind of teetered that line between productivity and having fun. And like I said, you can mix and match. You're like, okay, we may have to change a couple of plans, a couple of things that were outside, but don't completely swap to the other side where you say, Man, all of the fun stuff was going to be outside. So let's just stay in all weekend and get this project done. I feel like that tends to make people a little bit more miserable than if they stick to a similar plan. I really think that's the way to go. And then our final category, all hands on deck. I feel like as far as being flexible, I kind of feel like this is the second one. I feel like our 50-50 people are going to be the most flexible with this. I feel like our all hands on deck, it probably has to do with the fact that either one person threw their hands up and said, enough. We're not doing anything until we get this house organized, or until we get this furniture out, or until we go to the storage unit, or until XYZ, or you've got something big coming up. You're like, we're moving in two to three weeks. We have no choice. These are the people I'm most worried about because if you have saved, All of your organizing activities for one weekend and a holiday weekend because that's when you were gonna have a big chunk of time to get a lot of stuff done. If you're moving this weekend and you know, great, now we're moving on a weekend, it's gonna be raining. That's gonna be fun. Let me just say this what I don't want you to do is to completely freak out. If you need to reschedule some stuff, if you have the time, I suggest you doing that instead of trying to fight the rain. Rain really isn't that big of a deal in certain situations. I feel like when people are moving, it makes the stress level just that much worse, especially if you've got thunderstorms running through and maybe it's just sprinkling, and then all of a sudden you get a couch off of a truck, into a parking lot, getting ready to go into a storage unit, and then it just starts pouring. And maybe it's covered in plastic and maybe it isn't. But I feel like when people try to do a lot of productive stuff in the rain and they're not used to it, it immediately makes the situation more intense. Okay. I've seen it happen. And no one wants to get rained on when they're trying to focus. They they want to be in a scenario where it's like, okay, I can stand here, I can think, I'm not getting rained on, my stuff isn't getting rained on. The people who have boxes instead of totes are gonna be more at a disadvantage because you don't want your boxes getting wet, you don't want them soggy, you don't want the stuff inside to get messed up, and then you don't want damp boxes sitting in a storage unit and then they get all gross and moldy. Like no one wants that. So I would say the all hands-on-deck people keep your weekend similar to what you have planned, but plan to slow down. So, what I would do, let's say you didn't have anything fun planned over the weekend. Let's say you told yourself, I'm gonna get off on Friday, I'm going to fix dinner, I'm going to try to get kind of our food stuff done for the weekend because then Saturday and Sunday we're gonna be all in on this organizing slash moving stuff slash packing, whatever you have going on. And then on Monday, we'll maybe take a little bit of a break and run down the street and go to this event because it's Memorial Day. What I would do is I would try to stretch everything you're doing out. Okay, so keep your Friday plan. You can be productive on Saturday, be productive on Sunday. However, if it's raining both days, I would cut the day short and I would push some of it to Monday. So give yourself a little bit of a break on Saturday, give yourself a little bit of break on Sunday, and then on Monday, you can add a little bit of that work, you can carry over some of it, but then you want the majority of the day to be the same, to be a little bit more open so that you can still go do the activity. Because burnout is a real thing for sure. And if you've waited to the last minute to do something, the rain is not gonna help. Unless you're in a situation where you have no choice, you have to move this weekend, you have to be out, you have to turn in the keys, you have to get to a new city because you're taking a new job, you are moving your child across the country. And if you don't leave this weekend, you're not gonna get there on time. You know, there are certain situations where you have waited till the last minute and now you have no choice, or maybe you didn't wait till the last minute. It just happens to be a weekend that it's raining when you're doing some of the big stuff. Okay. I don't want you to feel like you just have one more thing, like, oh, this is our luck. You know, anytime we try to go do something, it rains. I don't want you to become like a Debbie Downer because you've got some sprinkles on your head. But again, you don't want to be doing a big move with your stuff if it is truly pouring down rain. You know, it's harder to see when you're driving, when you're backing up to the building to unload. Sometimes people don't see, you know, certain barriers or, you know, and then you've got rain hitting the windshield in the back window, and you're like, you know, I told you we should have waited to do this. You know, I've I've seen many couples fight over the years, and it's usually a holiday weekend, a holiday. I've seen more people fight around Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter and birthdays than just a regular average Saturday. But people fight then too. I have seen people fight pretty much every day out of the year. But I'm telling you right now, if you fit in one of these three categories and your plans have been detoured a little bit because of the weather, I want you to try to find your closest category and say, okay, instead of trying to completely change our plans, which sometimes, if you do that, you're kind of like scurrying at the last minute, trying to throw together plans. And maybe you pick a restaurant that you didn't really research and you go to have dinner and it's not that great. And then you're like, oh, I wish we had still gone on our vacation. Or maybe you go to do an activity and it says it's open, but you didn't call ahead and maybe they're closed on a Sunday. That's where if you just start going in random directions and try to completely make all new plans, I think that's when you're gonna get really flustered and really stressed out, and you're gonna lose the meaning of the actual weekend, which is there's a lot of people that fought for us so that we can have the things that we have and we can enjoy this time. And I think that everybody should enjoy a holiday weekend, at least to some extent. I know that some people have to get things done. Obviously, we can't all kick up our feet for four days in a row. I know I can't. I still have to parent, I still have to get some work done. But I think making sure that you have a balance is just gonna help you out, especially if you do have a little bit of a buffer when it comes to some of these projects. Commit to doing a section of the project, commit to pulling out a tote, getting that taken care of. If you've got the energy and you're working on a whole room, then focus on that room and try not to get sucked into other areas. I really think that if you follow that model and you try to keep a similar schedule to what you've had planned for a week, two weeks, three weeks, I think you're gonna be just fine. I hope this episode was helpful. Please make sure to subscribe to the bonus episodes. The minimum contribution is only $3 a month. Make sure to follow us on Instagram at labeled organizing, and I will see you in the next episode.