When you work a standard 40-hour, Monday-through-Friday job, weekends are precious. Two full days to relieve stress, relax, restore, and reinvigorate yourself without work pressures or time constraints.
However, many people don’t find their weekends as enjoyable or restorative as they should be because they’re often catching up on things around the house that didn’t get done during the week—cleaning, organizing, laundry, etc. But there’s a hack for that. It’s called “Thursday night.”
Sorry, but Thursday night leisure’s gotta go
This tip is going to sound simple because it is. That doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly effective and potentially life-changing if you do it.
Thursday night is the best time to tackle household chores, which is why people sing the praises of the “Thursday reset.” It does require some sacrifice. Whatever you normally do on Thursday evenings, stop. We don’t really have “Must-See TV Thursday” these days, so that helps, but most people still spend their Thursday evenings doing some kind of leisure activity. The week’s almost over. You’re crawling toward the finish line. It’s probably not the time you’re mustering the energy to do housework.
Thursday reset advocates insist that you should, though, because the benefits of sacrificing your Thursday evening are totally worth it.
Why giving up Thursday is the key to a better weekend
Imagine this scenario: It’s Friday night. You come home from work, and your house is kind of a wreck. You have laundry piled up from the week, your bathroom needs some attention, your carpet clearly needs vacuuming, and you have piles of things everywhere that you’ve put down throughout the week and haven’t dealt with.
You’ll deal with it all tomorrow, you say. It’s Friday. So you go out, or you put on a movie and try to pretend the mess doesn’t exist. But it’s hanging over your head. Then Saturday morning comes, and you begrudgingly start the day cleaning. Since it’s the weekend, you probably take longer than you need to simply because you have the time, even though that’s not how you want to spend it. Before you know it, half your weekend is gone to household chores.
But imagine this scenario: You get home from work Thursday evening and eat a quick dinner. Then, you get a load of laundry started and start chipping away at your cleaning list. For the next two hours, you get everything done—bathroom, kitchen, piles, floors, all while keeping the laundry going. You clean like you’ve got company coming. It sucks, probably. You’re tired and would rather be relaxing on Thursday evening.
But come Friday, when you get home from work, you praise and thank your Thursday night self because your house is clean. You can genuinely relax. Your home feels good, and your Saturday is wide open for all the things you really want to do.
To make the Thursday reset easier, spread weekly chores out
Doing absolutely everything on Thursday might be possible, but it’s not always super practical. It’s smart to do a couple of tasks on other days so Thursday doesn’t feel so overwhelming. Maybe you always clean out the fridge and wash your sheets on Monday, dust and clean the bathroom on Tuesday, and do everything else on Thursday. Every household has different cleaning and organization needs, so it’s hard to paint with a broad brush, but having set days for tasks really does simplify things.
The main principle here is not to save cleaning chores for the weekend, unless you genuinely find cleaning enjoyable and restorative. (Some people do. Not judging.) But if you want to be free of that stuff on the weekend, make it a point to finish all cleaning by the time you go to bed Thursday night. Giving up some weeknight leisure so you can have a full, long weekend might just change everything.
Sometimes the best life hacks are the simplest; we just need someone to share them.
