Family Weekend Article: Take Back Your Saturdays - by April Osborn

If the idea of a relaxing Saturday sounds foreign to you, you’re not alone. Weekends these days can be just as taxing as the rest of the week, if not more so.

Remember when the weekend meant taking a break from all of those things you had to do and spending time with your family—going for drives, playing games, and just taking it easy together? Even if you can’t, most of us can agree that weekends should be that way. But alas, the days of restful, family-centered weekends seem to be at an end. Facing attacks from school projects, sports practices and games, and an avalanche of chores that seems to build up at an ever-increasing rate during the week, the weekend has become a lot less like a stroll through the park and more like a hundred-meter dash that leaves you breathless and exhausted for Monday morning. With that in mind, here are a few ideas oh how you can take back your weekend.

Treat Time Like Money

Start thinking of time the way you think about money. In a lot of ways, the two are very similar: both are resources you can use however you see fit, and each is in limited supply. But unlike money, which you can often borrow or earn more of, time is the same for everyone: while we all make different amounts of money, we all have the same amount of time to do with as we choose.

That being said, as LDS people, our time budget is a little different than that of other people. While most families count the weekend as two full days without major responsibilities, LDS families seldom use Sundays as a “getting things done at home” day. That leaves us with even more incentive to protect our Saturdays and get as much out of them as possible, so feel free to be picky when deciding what invitations you will accept and which activities your kids will participate in on these precious weekend days.

Assess your weekly time budget and decide where you can make cuts, and where you can make better use of your time (that includes being picky about which invitations you will accept and which activities your kids will participate in on Saturdays).

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