9 Things To Do At The Beginning of Every Month + checklist

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Want to be more organized and productive each month? Super! Implement these 9 things to do at the beginning of every month to your routines and you’re one step closer!

Beginning of the month always feels like a fresh start! And it’s a perfect time to do all those things that you know you need to do every once in a while but many times they get buried underneath all the other tasks and to-dos.  

I’ve created a list of 9 things to do at the beginning of every month that has helped me remember to do those tasks, plan ahead, stay organized and feel good each and every month.

Psst! And this post comes with a pretty printable that you can use through out the year as a checklist. It’s a perfect addition to your planner or you can use it as is.

So what are the 9 things to do at the beginning of every month that can help you be more productive and organized. 

1. Plan ahead 

The first thing to do when you start going through the things to do at the beginning of every month is planning.

1. Go through and skim over your calendar week by week and see what has already been scheduled:
   • which appointments you have
   • which events are coming up
   • vacations
   • birthdays
   • and other important things.
2. Update your calendar with the meetings and appointments that you might have forgotten to add to your calendar.
3. Schedule date nights, family days and even a girls night out.
4. If some weeks or weekends seem too packed or too empty reschedule some of the appointments.
5. Then make some plans with your friends and family.

EXTRA: You can also plan ahead and schedule in your calendar your exercising routine, courses you might be taking and other past times.

Remember to also have some free time and most importantly some me-time, so you’ll have time to recover from the day-to-day activities and you’ll have enough energy to have a stress-free life.

Printables to help you with planning ahead: Pretty monthly calendars

2. Set goals

After planning, the second thing to do when you go through the things to do at the beginning of every month is goal setting.

1. Reflect on the past month:
   • What went well
   • What needs more of your attention
   • What would you like to accomplish
   • What you need to let go.
2. Then set goals for the month.
   • Choose 1-3 goals and remember that too many goals will scatter your focus.
3. Write down your goals and create easy achievable action steps for each goal. 

Printables to help you with goal setting: Monthly Goals Worksheet

If your goals are more complex and need more thought, you might benefit from reading this post: 10-step method to achieve your goals 

3. Create a budget

Third thing of the important things to do at the beginning of every month is budgeting and reflecting.

1. Go through and reflect on the previous month and check if you stayed in you budget.
   • Were there some unexpected purchases?
   • Were you able to put some money into savings?
   • Were you able to pay off some debt?
   • Do you need to adjust your budget for the month
2. Set the budgeting goals for the month:
   • How much can/will you put into savings?
   • Will you be investing some money?
   • Can you pay off some debt?
   • In Which things could you spend less money on?
   • Is there some upcoming events, birthdays and big purchases that might effect the budget?
3. Create your budget
   • If you’d just like to have an overall vision of the budget then keep the budget simple and stick with these categories and the 50-30-20 rule:
     • Write down your income
     • From the income
       • 50 % goes to necessities like housing, car and bills
       • 20% to financial goals like savings, paying off debt  and investments
       • 30% to everything else
   • And if you’re into more detailed budgeting then you can have more categories that you follow.
4. Write a list of things that you could let go of like subscriptions or some habits that take too much of your budget. Add to the list of the things you could try to change to save some money like providers. And brainstorm of ideas to make some extra income.
5. Then create small achievable action steps to reach your budget. Write them down and tackle all the steps one-by-one on your action list.

4. Purge photos

After the planning, goal setting and budgeting is time to move to decluttering and organizing, so that you’ll have clarity, you’re more organized and you’ll free up some energy.

One important thing to do at the beginning of every month (that I at least always forget to do) is to purge the photos on your phone.

If you like to take pictures but never go through them, there will come a time when going through the photos is just too overwhelming.

So purging photos every month is a good way to keep your photos organized and to prevent the moment of overwhelm.

Purging photos is easy, when you do it each month: 

• Go through the photos and delete the duplicates and the ones you don’t want to keep.
• If your phone allows it make the ones you’d like to use on social media or send to someone, your “favorites” (on iPhone it’s adding the heart). And do this also the ones you’d like to keep on your phone.
• Transfer the photos on your computer and to an external hard drive.
• Organize the photos into folders by date or by the subject like photos of the kids, family, pets, friends, fun events, food, work etc.

If you haven’t purged your photos for a long time (or ever!) this is going to be a huge project. So do little every month and keep on purging and organizing at least the new photos. 

5. Achieve inbox zero

Another decluttering and organizing topic of the 9 important things to do at the beginning of every month is achieving inbox zero. This is a long text, but bear with me. I promise it’s worth it.

I don’t know how many emails you get, but I get a LOT. And it’s overwhelming to keep the inbox organized.

If you don’t do the email organizing each week then the beginning of the month is the perfect time to go through your inbox and do some adjustments.

1. So first take a look at your emails and write down how many emails you have in your inbox (both read and/or unread). Measuring things is both important and satisfying so I recommend to to do this.
2. There are 4 categories that you can use when trying to achieve inbox zero:
   • urgent & important
   • urgent & not important
   • not urgent & important
   • not urgent & not important
3. Start with the NOT important ones (both urgent and not urgent). Delete the emails you know you’re never going to read like some of the ads and promotions. Delete ruthlessly the ones that are not important. It doesn’t matter if they’re urgent or not urgent, if they’re not important they have to go.
4. Note! When you delete an email, consider unsubscribing from the email list if possible. You’ll thank yourself the next time you’re decluttering your emails and trying to achieve inbox zero.
5. Then move to the ones that are some what important to you but are NOT urgent. Create a folder (f.ex. “reading list” or “read when you have time”). Move the emails to that folder. Then create a filter that drives the future emails like that automatically to the “reading list” folder.
6. After you’ve decluttered and organized most of your emails you have the urgent and important ones left.
   • Most likely you’ve already answered most of the urgent and important ones already. So before you read any unread emails delete, archive and/or organize to folders the important emails you’ve already read. 
   • And, of course, the best would be if at the time when you’re reading an email the email would be either deleted or archived immediately, but sometimes it’s not possible when you’re busy or on the road.
7. With the ones that are left in the inbox do the following:
   • If reading (and answering) takes more than 2 minutes write it down on your action list/to do list.
   • Then put those emails into a folder called “action needed”. These emails are mostly the not urgent & important ones, because most likely you’ve already answered the urgent & important ones.
   • Then schedule time in your calendar to go through the “action needed” emails in bulk.

And tadaa! Inbox zero achieved! Good job!

6. Clean & organize

The third decluttering and organizing  part of the 9 important things to do at the beginning of every month is to do some general cleaning, decluttering and organizing.

But don’t go too deep into this, because there are other things to do too. Use the 80-20 rule when doing this part each month. 

The 80-20 rule means that 20% of the effort will give you 80% of the results. For example spend only 10 minutes on each task and do only the most important things that show most results and be ok with less perfect. Because less perfect is still pretty good and you’ll have time to do other things too.

Use a timer or The Pomodoro Method so you won’t be spending too much time on each part.

So here are some of the things to clean and organize at the beginning of every month:

1. FRIDGE AND FREEZER
   • Clean the refrigerator and toss the expired items. Of course this would be good to do weekly, but check also those items have longer shelf-life like sauces.
   • Go through your freezer too, so you’ll know what’s in it and purge what is needed.
2. CAR
   • Clean the trash out of the car.
   • Declutter the things from your car that don’t belong there.
   • Remove, shake and clean the car mats.
   • Take your car to a quick car wash and get rid of the obvious stains or dirt inside the car.
3. HANDBAG & PURSE
   • Go through your purse and handbag.
   • Empty them
   • Throw away or archive the receipts
   • Throw away the trash
   • Throw away or place in the right place the un-needed items.
   • Then put back the things you want to keep in your purse and handbag.
4. WARDROBE
   • Organize your wardrobe and declutter some items if possible (like the broken ones or something you know you’re not going to wear).
   • Hang the clothes, check that your socks and underwear are in the right place, put aside the items that need to be ironed or fixed.
   • Check your shoes if they need to be polished.
   • Move your favorite clothes in the best place of your closet and move the seasonal clothes in the back of the closet or on the top or bottom shelves.
5. BEAUTY PRODUCTS
   • Then go through your beauty products
   • Throw away the expired ones
   • Clean the brushes if you’ve forgotten to do that
   • And organize what is needed.
6. THINGS TO BUY
   • While you’re going through your personal items make a list of things that you might be needing now or soon – like mascara, shampoo, new jeans, a perfume, a new purse etc. 
   • Consider upgrading your wardrobe and beauty products by buying less but better quality.
7. CHANGE THE SHEETS
   • If you don’t change your sheets every 2 to 3 weeks then the beginning of the monthis the perfect time to do that
8. WORKSPACE AND PAPERS
   • Organize your workspace and archive into folders all the papers, notes and bills you’ve collected and want to keep.
   • Throw away the ones that you don’t need to save. 
9. UPDATE YOUR PLANNER
   • If you keep a planner then go through your monthly planning things
   • Add new pages to your planner
   • And get rid of the old ones that you no longer need. 

It’s a lot of things to organize, clean and declutter, but once you have a daily and weekly routine in place these monthly tasks become so much easier!

7. Schedule some me-time and plan your me-gift purchases

After planning, goal setting, budgeting, decluttering and organizing comes the part where you need to take care of you! 

SCHEDULE SOME WELL-DESERVED “ME-TIME”

1. Go through your calendar again and schedule some me-time when you can go for a walk, read a book or watch your favorite tv-show.
2. You don’t have to decide what you’re going to do on your me-time, just block 30-45 minutes or an hour from your calendar for you and call it me-time and when the time comes you can do whatever you want to, or even do absolutely nothing if you feel like it! Yay!
3. Remember to prioritize me-time so you’ll always have enough energy for the activities you need to do and that you’re stress-free when you have we-time with your family, friends and significant other. 

PAMPER YOURSELF WITH SOME “ME-GIFTS”

When you were going through your wardrobe, beauty products and workspace you might have come up with some things and ideas you’d like to buy.

What are me-gifts and Saturday gifts?

I like to call the things I buy for myself “me-gifts”.

And because I don’t want to buy things too often, I always choose quality over quantity and I want to only buy things that I really REALLY need, want and like, I like to  buy my me-gifts on Saturdays and so I call those purchases Saturday gifts. 

And I don’t like to buy anything that I wouldn’t give as a gift to someone else, so like in gift-giving:

• I have a budget for my Saturday gifts
• I really think carefully what I might like
• There’s always a time and place for each purchase
• And I try to make it special, so I wrap my Saturday gifts in paper or I put a little ribbon on it and every time I get something for myself I feel very special and grateful. 
• And if I see something I really like or want I might buy it and put it aside and when Saturday comes I’ll gift it to myself.

Changing my shopping habits from just buying stuff randomly to me-gifting changed my whole life (and that’s were the name to this blog also comes).

How to buy me-gifts and Saturday gifts?

• Plan and schedule the purchases you’d like to buy for yourself.
• Make every purchase special, because you are special.
• Don’t buy whenever but wait for it. The right time is not always now.
• Think of each thing you buy as a gift to the most important person in your life. Yourself.
• Have a budget and stick to it.
• Choose quality over quantity (this helps for the clutter too!).
• Upgrade when possible.
• And if you feel like you shouldn’t be getting yourself anything and you need save money and be frugal, remind yourself that the road to wealth (or to debt free life) has to be fun too.

8. Schedule your self-care and beauty routines

You need to take good care of yourself so that you can be the best possible version to your loved ones. So the next one of the important things to do at the beginning of every month is to plan and schedule your self-care and beauty routines.

Write down in your calendar when you’ll do or have: 

• manicure
• pedicure
• hairdresser
• other beauty appointments

Write down in your calendar also when would you do or have:

• Face mask
• Hair mask
• Long relaxing bubble bath
• Other self-care or beauty routines

Write down and schedule time also for some courses, events, hobbies or past times you’d like to have or do.

And this is the perfect time to reflect on and update your habit tracker.

 

9. Choose a book to read and/or a course to take

The last one of the 9 things to do at the beginning of every month is to choose a book to read and/or a course to take.

Reading books, learning something new and developing yourself is important for your mind (like exercising is important for your body), so choose: 

• one fun or thrilling book you’d like to read and would excite you
• one new thing you’d like to learn in a form of a course, book or some other way

If you like to read and study a lot, you can – of course – read and study more in a month. But try to choose one book, course or subject at the time. Keep focused. 

And if you have more books you’d like to read or more things you’d like to learn, then write all of them down, prioritize and choose one at a time.

So that’s all the 9 things to do at the beginning of every month. 

I know it’s a lot, but if you just keep doing them, over time they’ll take less and less time each month and you’ll be so much more organized and productive if you take the time to do those things. 

And don’t forget to download the checklists.

Download the 9 Things To Do At The Beginning Of Every Month – CHECKLIST

You can download this checklist / planner sheet by clicking the link under the image of the PDF. 

DOWNLOAD: 9 things to do at the beginning of every month CHECKLIST

© SaturdayGift Ltd. For personal use only, not to be copied, distributed, altered or sold.

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