Routines
Sunday reset
A Sunday reset is a couple of hours on Sunday when you clean up your home and plan the week ahead, so that Monday starts easy. Most people do the laundry, clear the kitchen, plan the week’s meals and look at the calendar. The checklist below takes two hours.
Last updated
Reviewed by Mohammed Raqeeb
The checklist
Sunday reset checklist
The Sunday reset checklist below has 10 items and takes two hours. It starts with the house and then turns to the week ahead. The clock times are for a start at , which gets you done by .
| Time | What you do | Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Put a load of laundry on | 5 | |
| Clear the kitchen: dishes, counters, trash out | 20 | |
| Tidy the rooms you use most | 15 | |
| Change the bed sheets | 10 | |
| Plan the week’s dinners and write a shopping list | 15 | |
| Look at the week’s calendar | 10 | |
| Write the week’s to-do list, with a day on each task | 15 | |
| Check which bills are due this week | 5 | |
| Set out Monday’s clothes and pack your bag | 10 | |
| Fold the laundry and put it away | 15 | |
| Done | 120 |
The laundry goes on first and gets folded last, because the machine runs while you do everything else. The minutes are our own estimates for a small home. A bigger home needs more time, or more people helping.
Try it
Build your own Sunday reset
The builder below makes a Sunday reset from the items you pick. Set the time you want to be done, and add or take out items. It adds up the minutes and tells you when to start.
Tap an item to add it or take it out.
Start at
2h for 10 items, done by .
Put a load of laundry on
5m
Clear the kitchen: dishes, counters, trash out
20m
Tidy the rooms you use most
15m
Change the bed sheets
10m
Plan the week’s dinners and write a shopping list
15m
Look at the week’s calendar
10m
Write the week’s to-do list, with a day on each task
15m
Check which bills are due this week
5m
Set out Monday’s clothes and pack your bag
10m
Fold the laundry and put it away
15m
Your Sunday reset: 10 items, from to .
This is a plan, not a record of your Sunday. Nothing you enter leaves this page.
The time
How long does a Sunday reset take?
A Sunday reset takes about two hours when the list is short. The checklist above is 120 minutes: 65 for the house and 55 for the week ahead.
People who do housework on a weekend day already spend more than two hours on it, on average. That comes from the American Time Use Survey, a yearly US government survey of how people spend their days. On a weekend day or holiday, about 80% of people did some household jobs, such as cleaning, cooking or laundry. Those people spent about 2h 49m on them.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey 2025 results, Table 2, released . People age 15 and over, on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.
How to do it
How to keep a Sunday reset to two hours
A Sunday reset stays at two hours when you choose the end time before you start. Cleaning is never really finished, so the clock has to tell you when to stop.
Pick the time you will be done.
Choose an end time, like , and count back two hours. Then the evening stays free.
Start the machines first.
Put the laundry on, and run the dishwasher if you have one. They work while you do the other jobs.
Set a timer for each item.
When the timer rings, stop and go to the next item. A kitchen that is mostly clean after twenty minutes is clean enough for a Sunday.
Leave the big jobs out.
The oven, the windows and the closets are not part of a reset. Give each of them its own day. Shopping for food can take close to an hour, so do it on Saturday or have it delivered.
For the planning half, the weekly planner template has a line for each day. If your head is too full to plan, do a brain dump first. To look back at the week that just ended, do a weekly review.
What studies found
Does a Sunday reset help?
A Sunday reset has never been tested in a study under that name. Two studies of planning ahead come close, so take them as hints.
An unfinished task is hard to stop thinking about.
One study followed workers and the goals they set at work. Later in the day, they found it harder to stop thinking about a goal they had not finished than about one they had finished. Some of them were then asked to plan where, when and how they would finish it. That helped the workers who usually found it hardest to switch off after work (Smit, 2016). The to-do list in a Sunday reset is the same kind of plan: each task gets a day.
People who wrote a to-do list before bed fell asleep sooner.
In another study, young adults wrote for five minutes before they slept in a sleep lab. Some wrote down what they had to do in the next few days. The others wrote down what they had already done. The first group fell asleep about 9 minutes sooner (Scullin and colleagues, 2018). The study lasted one night only. The night routine page shows where a list like that fits in an evening.
Where it came from
Where did the Sunday reset come from?
The Sunday reset comes from TikTok, where people post videos of their Sunday cleaning and planning. Nobody is known to have started it. Reviewed, a website that tests home products, wrote in 2022 that it grew out of videos of people restocking their pantries on Sundays. By then, videos with the Sunday reset tag had been watched more than 620 million times.
The test
How do you know your Sunday reset is working?
The test
You finished your Sunday reset in two hours or less
on 3 Sundays out of 4.
It is hard to tell how long a Sunday reset really takes. Two hours can turn into the whole afternoon without you noticing.
A good way to check is to count the time from one line you write or say about your Sunday, like “reset from four to six”. Most journaling apps only ask how your day felt. They do not show how long the cleaning and planning took.
One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in.
You write or say your day in your own words, as it happens or all at once. The app reads what you wrote and counts the hours that went to each part of it: housework, planning, sleep, your phone, and the time you never mentioned (shown as unaccounted). Then it shows those hours over days and weeks. So you can see how long your Sunday reset really took, and how many hours of your week went to housework. Add the reset as a once-a-week habit, and when what you write about your Sunday shows you did it, the app ticks it off and your streak goes on.
1. You write your day
2. It counts the hours
- Sunday reset0m
- Sleep0m
- Unaccounted24h
3. It shows your week
Sunday reset this week: 0m
On 1 of 7 days. The gaps are the days without it.
An example day and week.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.
Sources
Where do the findings on this page come from?
The findings on this page link to the sources below. We read each one for this page, the whole text or its summary.
- Smit, B. W. (2016). Successfully leaving work at work: The self-regulatory underpinnings of psychological detachment. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(3), 493 to 514.
- Scullin, M. K., Krueger, M. L., Ballard, H. K., Pruett, N. and Bliwise, D. L. (2018). The effects of bedtime writing on difficulty falling asleep: a polysomnographic study comparing to-do lists and completed activity lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(1), 139 to 146.
- Mangino, S. (2022). What is the Sunday Reset all over TikTok? Reviewed (USA Today), October 26, 2022.
Keep reading.
- LearnAnswers about sleep, habits, study, people and work, in hours.
- Weekly reviewHalf an hour, once a week: seven steps in order, the questions to ask, and a checklist to tick.
- Night routineA routine to copy, with a clock time on every step, and a builder that makes one for your own bedtime.
- Weekly planner templateSeven days, Sunday first: the plan, what happened, and the week's hours.
- Where did my week go? calculatorEnter a typical day and see your week accounted and unaccounted.
- Time journalingThe method: write or say your day in your own words, then see it as hours.
Questions
Questions people ask.
What is a Sunday reset?
A Sunday reset is a couple of hours on Sunday when you clean up your home and plan the week ahead, so that Monday starts easy. Most people do the laundry, clear the kitchen, plan the week’s meals and look at the calendar.
What goes on a Sunday reset checklist?
A Sunday reset checklist has two halves. For the house: laundry, the kitchen, a quick tidy and clean bed sheets. For the week ahead: a meal plan, the calendar, a to-do list, and Monday’s clothes and bag.
How long does a Sunday reset take?
A Sunday reset takes about two hours with a short list. The checklist on this page has 10 items and adds up to 120 minutes. The bathroom, the food shop or cooking ahead each add more.
Is there an app to keep track of a Sunday reset?
A paper checklist on the fridge works: tick each item, and write down when you started and finished. If you want an app, look for one that shows how long the reset really took. One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in. Think in Numbers counts the hours that went to housework and planning from what you write or say about your day, and keeps your to-dos with reminders, ticking each one off when what you write shows it done.
Try it on my day.
Write today down in your own words, and see where the hours went.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.