Most weekends are a conundrum. You’ve been working hard all week, so you want to relax right? But there’s things to take care of around the house which you need to complete in order to properly relax. But doing those things aren’t relaxing. So you end up doing nothing and suddenly it’s Monday again. How can you break the cycle?
Jamie Furlan can’t wait to get back to work. At his Smith Street salon Lndn in Collingwood, Furlan is in his element and, unlike some of us, doesn’t dread the end of the weekend (a Sunday and Monday in the salon world). “You don’t really switch off when it’s your salon and you’ve got a team of about 10 people,” says Furlan. “It helps that we love what we do too, so it’s easy to always stay locked in.” But whether you love your job or find yourself dreading the end of the weekend, you’ll still want to use your time off wisely and to prepare for the week ahead. Here’s how Furlan does it.
Don’t leave all tasks to the weekend
Salon life is all about doing things as you go. Throw in a young child (daughter London, after whom the salon is named) and it can be easy to let the chores pile up.
“With a little one, you feel like you’re constantly cleaning up after them, constantly chasing your tail,” says Furlan. So while it’s great to have clear air on the weekend to get things done, you don’t want to lose your free time to unending tasks – and that goes for anyone, regardless of whether you have kids. “Just stay on top of it during the week,” says Furlan. “The more you do Monday to Friday, it just means that on Sunday you don’t have to go ham on it.”
Do a deep clean
Lndn is Furlan’s pride, and he goes to great lengths to keep the place sharp. “We like to keep the salon to a high level of cleanliness and have it feel like a nice, relaxing and inviting space,” says Furlan. “I am nuts with vacuuming and sweeping. I’ve got this method where I blow-dry all the corners of the salon out and then I sweep it all.”
It’s a philosophy that transitions into the home, too. Furlan splits the weekend cleaning with his wife and, while he’s more likely to use a Dyson Gen5detect than a hairdryer, the floors and lawn are his zone. “My wife delegates: I do floors and the like, she does bathrooms,” he says. The Dyson Gen5detect cordless vacuum has multiple attachments which make whole home cleaning a breeze and provides a truly deep clean, setting you up for the week ahead.
Despite the delegation, cleaning doesn’t always follow the plan and smart technology like the Dyson Purifier Hot & Cool Formaldehyde comes in handy. Functionality like this means you can set, forget and have peace of mind you’ll be breathing cleaner air in the home.
“With a kid, [clean air] is definitely something that’s really important,” says Furlan. “We had some water damage a little while ago, we had a little bit of mould that we had to get fixed, so that opened my eyes to purification a little bit more.”
Meal prep for the week ahead
There’s nothing worse than scrambling during the week to have dinner on the table at a reasonable hour. The solution is to prepare ahead of time.
“My background is Italian so we’re really big on bulk,” says Furlan. “London loves a spag bol so we’ll do a big cook up on Sunday and have that frozen so whenever it’s busy at work, we’re working late, we can just chuck that in and that’s an easy meal that’s ready.”
Take time to relax
If the thought of the new week brings trepidation, you’re not alone. While it’s great to use the weekend to get prepared, Furlan also knows the value of using the time to unwind. Furlan loves to exercise on the weekend – a classic stress reliever – but whatever it is, keeping some time aside for your mental health is a great way to reset and prepare for the week ahead.
“Even if you’re doing stuff on Sunday, do it at your own pace,” says Furlan. “We like to keep our weekends relatively free because everything’s so scheduled in our lives it’s nice to have the opportunity to go, ‘oh, we can do this at this time, we can do this at that time.’”
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Dyson.
