Waking up on Monday morning was next to impossible, and coming back to work after the weekend, I definitely didn't feel refresh or rejuvenated...quite the opposite, in fact. I couldn't stop yawning and if I closed my eyes for 30 seconds, I know I'd be passed out for hours. What should have been a relaxing weekend, with plenty of time to recharge and unwind from the work week, ended up being just as rushed and busy as Monday-Friday, if not more so.

For me, this is pretty much the norm. I find it so hard to slow down on the weekends and I end up cramming Saturday and Sunday way too full of all the things I didn't have time, or didn't bother, to do during the week. Instead of being two days of rest and fun, they end up being two days of work, running around, to-do listing - basically everything I do during the week - plus fun forced in wherever I can. Oh, hi fun! There you are, squished between the car wash and the grocery store! By bedtime on Sunday I'm ready for a weekend from my weekend but it's time to set the alarm for 6 AM and get back to the grind.

So on Sunday, when I had a whopping 45 minutes in between making a run to the hardware store and going to softball to sit in the yard with a magazine, I came across this article in Women's Health about taking back weekends - actually taking Saturday and Sunday to chill out, unwind, recharge the ol' batteries and get rested. The article has a lot of great advice that I will be taking.

The first thing I'm going to try is following the "rule of threes". The idea is that you plan out only three activities each weekend and keep the rest of the weekend free and unstructured. This is probably going to be the hardest thing for me, because I make lists of the lists I have to make. Does that even make sense?

Other tips it suggests are planning your next weekend by the end of the weekend before and doing one extra chore on Friday evening, when you're still in work mode.

I think it all sounds good in theory. In practice, I don't know if I'm going to be able to let go. According to Women's Health, women are working an average of nine extra hours each week, which is nine fewer hours for getting stuff done around the house, running errands, working out, relaxing... But it's something I think is definitely worth trying.

So next weekend, my three plans are to go to the exhibition Friday night, a bachelorette party on Saturday night, and playing softball at 4:00 on Sunday. I have a gazillion other things I want to do (and will probably end up doing) this weekend...working on the house, puttering in the yard, doing a couple runs, and hopefully camping Friday night. But I'm going to try to just go with the flow and not schedule any of that other stuff, and I'll focus on getting as many chores and errands knocked off during the week as I can, instead of pushing everything off to Saturday and Sunday.

Do you relax on your weekends, or are they just extensions of the work week?