A priest friend recently shared how he had heard the idea of “Menial Task Thursdays” from a brother priest. Before he corralled his menial tasks, they had hung over him like a fog all week. Now, as various bills or requests land on his desk, he says to himself, “That’s for the Thursday pile.” The shift to setting aside set hours to tackle them was freeing.

This seemed like an apt topic for the third week of the month, as we turn our focus to Household Economy, Level 3 of your Trinity House. It’s on this level that we spend most of our time as families, caring for one another in the ordinary yet profound ways of daily life.
 
Just like our priest friend, we parents can lose a lot of time and energy during the week by shifting our attention back and forth between menial—a word which appropriately enough means “of the household”—and higher level pursuits: praying with our children, teaching them the faith, helping with their homework, preparing a meal. We often forget that our Saturday Chore Day (or chore hour, or morning…) can be the ideal time for our long lists of menial jobs.
 
But wait. We don’t mean to say that you can leave the dirty dishes or overflowing trash until Chore Day! We just mean to say that a lot of peace can be gained by organizing your days and saving many of the menial tasks for a shared-work time on Saturday.
 
The early fall is a perfect time to build new habits as a family and strengthen the good habits we already have. We can’t tell you how many hours we have lost over the years, simply because we’re working “harder” but not “smarter.” Don’t make the same mistake!. Discover the power of a focused few hours—or even the better part of the day—on Saturdays. Here are three benefits we think you’ll find:  
 
1. Your work as a family on Saturday will naturally deepen the rest, peace, and worship you are made to experience each Sunday. Working “smarter, not harder” on Saturdays will allow you to step more fully into God’s plan for your family on Sunday. Use the power of the deadline (Saturday evening) to strengthen your entire family spiritually!  
 
2. Working together as a family on Saturdays allows you to instill long-term habits of teamwork, patience, and healthy communication in your children. Frankly, when the members of the family do the menial tasks in silos, on their own, the family’s communion is not strengthened.
 
3. You will save hours each week and have more time for what truly matters. Here’s why: According to researchers, whenever we switch tasks (“multitask”) throughout the day, it takes our brains about 23 minutes to refocus and pick up where we left off. So, if you can find 5 menial tasks that tend to interrupt you during the coming week, and save them for Chore Day, you will find 115 minutes of greater focus.
 
As we look to the Holy Family, in which Jesus learned the dignity of work during his “hidden years,” we can see that every family is called to the teamwork that tends our God-given communion and to cultivating the virtues of a well-ordered household. All the better if a solid Chore Day together leads to more quality time for higher pursuits as well!