One of the handiest things you can do to get the most out of your summer is to develop a summer routine. Your summer routine will allow you to complete essential tasks (grocery shopping, laundry, keeping the dust bunnies from staging a revolution) while still being able to enjoy the good weather and the more relaxed pace.

Step 1 in developing your summer routine is making a list of everything that needs to be done and how often it needs to be done. For example, making beds and doing dishes are daily tasks. Things like grocery shopping and mopping might be weekly. The frequency of some tasks may depend on your household. I live alone, so a weekly laundry day and bathroom cleaning work. In a large household, laundry might be twice a week and bathroom cleaning daily.

Step 2 is deciding who does what. This is easy in my house since Hershey isn’t good with chores. In most households, everyone over 5 should at least be responsible for their own bed, bedroom, and clothes as well as sharing in overall household chores in a way that is age-appropriate. Your 8 year-old probably shouldn’t be doing the grocery shopping or mowing the lawn, but there is dusting and table setting and helping with meal prep (tearing lettuce for salad, husking corn, etc. do not require a high school diploma). People can keep the same chores all summer or rotate every week or so.

Step 3 is assigning tasks to a specific day and time of day. I like to do as much as possible early in the morning. It’s cooler and I can spend the long evening hours walking or lying in the hammock with a good book and a tasty beverage. I have discovered that grocery shopping at 6:30 a.m. is a joy. The store is fully stocked and almost no one is there. I can be home in plenty of time to put things away and still get to work on time.

Step 4 is documenting your decisions. Until a routine becomes second nature, it helps to be able to see it. Also, writing things down (on a white board, on newsprint, on sheets taped to the fridge) lets you revisit the task list after a few weeks, tweaking as necessary. It may turn out that you don’t need to do laundry as often — or that you need to do it more often because of dirty play clothes. You may have forgotten an essential or two. Don’t be afraid to tweak as you go along, but keep the basics as intact as possible. That’s the skeleton for your routine.