How to Complete The Ultimate Monthly Reset

A monthly reset is a chance to reset your life and your main focus once again. It can help you start the month organized, prepared, focused and help you have a productive and effective month.

The start of a new month is one of my favorite things. A new month is clean slate, another fresh start aside from the new year and can fill you with anticipation on what the month will bring. In my mind, that’s 12 chances to start fresh, improve ourselves, and achieve our goals. Here are 12 things I do to reset my month and organize my life. 

Reflection

It is important to reflect on what has happened and all that you were able to achieve. You should acknowledge the wins – big or small and figure out what you can do better. Like a new year, a new month gives us a chance to reflect and reassess. Reflection is a wonderful practice because it allows you to appreciate what you have and what you’ve accomplished and determine what isn’t working for you. 

Some things to consider when doing your reflection:

• Evaluate your goals from the month

• Make a list of goals and tasks that you didn’t accomplish

• Check in on yourself – how was your mental health and well being and how did you feel during the last month?

Do A Brain Dump

I love having a good brain dump at the end of each month. I grab my notebook and list out everything on my mind for the month. This includes any goals, business ideas, work to-dos, general house/life to-dos, and write down any special upcoming events or occasions. This also helps me when I am planning out my month. I have everything that is going on in my notebook and then I transfer it to my planner where it will be more organized and makes sense.

Write Your Monthly Goals

Choose a manageable number of goals from your brain dump and write them somewhere handy. I keep mine in my planner. I make a list of goals at the beginning of the year and then I pull from those goals and assign them to each month.

Fill In Your Calendar/Planner

Transfer over the appointments, events, birthdays and anything else for the upcoming month. You can check out my blog post for how I set up my monthly spread here. My monthly calendar in my Erin Condren Planner is a big picture look at what I have going on. I flip back to it each week when filling out my planner for the following week. 

Deep Clean & Organize Your Space

Having a regular cleaning routine is something that has helped me keep my house in top shape. I like to do a deep clean of my home on a monthly basis. This includes closets, pantry, drawers, the freezer – and all of the nooks and crannies that might get missed during my regular cleaning. 

Deep Clean Your Car

If you’re like me, sometimes your car can morph into something other than a car. Between practices, clubs, having pets, work and traveling – my car can be a disaster. During your monthly reset, make it a priority to deep clean your car as well. Now don’t get me wrong, every week I do a quick clean out of my car. However, during my monthly reset I really clean it out. My husband takes the cars to a car wash to have them washed, shined and vacuumed. It’s so nice when it comes back and I get in and it smells good and is so clean and sparkly.

Clear Out Your Inbox

I get a ton of junk email every. single. day. I try my best to keep on top of it on a daily and even weekly basis but it can get out of hand. During my monthly reset I evaluate email subscriptions and unsubscribe to companies that I don’t use or buy things from. I delete all of my junk emails and empty the trash folder. I also use this time to file away any important emails into their respective folder. Tax documents, work emails, – they all go in their own folder. This makes a huge difference in the amount of emails I get throughout the year and everything is nicely organized at the end of the month.

Review Your Finances/Budget

Checking in with your finances is something you should do at least every month to keep on top of your money. These check ins help you stay aware of what you are spending, what your income was and help you better manage your money. When I go through my finances each month I like to see where I spent unnecessary money (Feb was definitely on take out) and try and limit those purchases the following month. 

I also check to see if I have any special things to account for in my finances during the month like birthday gifts, sports gear, car maintenance, medical bills etc. This way I can utilize and adjust my sinking funds that I have set up for those occasions. 

For budgeting this year I am using the printable budget by paycheck workbook from The Budget Mom. I love it – it’s been really helpful breaking everything down and seeing where my money is going.

Meal Plan

I used to meal plan for the whole month. Now – with grocery prices on the rise I try to keep it to a weekly situation. It also helps me try to stick to a grocery budget. I say try because – well, inflation. So even though this is technically a part of my weekly reset (I’ll share more on that in another post) – each month I go through my pantry & freezer and update my inventory. I throw out expired food and utilize what we have each month instead of wasting money buying double. I like to look through my Pinterest and find new recipes to try and print them out so I have it on hand when I am grocery shopping.

Make Plans With Friends and Family

Get-togethers aren’t usually spontaneous and random – especially with kids and how busy everyone can be. If you’re hoping to grab drinks, get lunch or dinner with a co-worker, friend or family member, the beginning of the month is a great time to make those plans. You can call/text/email your friends or family so that you can nail down a date and time to get together. This will help avoid the last minute shuffle and will give you something to look forward to all month. Besides, how many times do we say let’s get together to someone and then it never happens? At least for me – I have the best intentions but unless I nail down a date, nothing happens. Since incorporating this into my monthly reset, I’ve seen more of my friends and family and it’s been amazing. 

Paper Declutter

In a month’s time you can end up collecting so much junk mail, pieces of paper, scraps, old school papers etc that it just takes over. At the end of the month recycle or throw away any papers that are no longer relevant or file away any important mail or paperwork that you need to. This allows you to tidy and organize your workspace and home, and it will be a lot easier to find things when you need them. 

Self-Care

Part of my monthly reset includes resetting myself. This helps me acknowledge what I’m doing well and reward myself for it. It makes me happy and motivates me to keep going. The reward could be anything – a pedicure, a candle, ice cream or sweet treat, or an at-home facial. Whatever your budget, reward yourself for a job well done.

So that’s it! 12 things to do to reset your life for a more productive, organized month. Let me know in the comments what you do to reset your month.