5 Simple Habits That Make My Mornings Peaceful After 40
Do you feel like your mornings are so chaotic, you’re always rushing to get out the door then have to keep running back in the house because you keep forgetting things? Yeah, that sums up how my mornings were until I started implementing these small habits and they have been life changing!
Having a day or time set to do your household planning
This is where you create a time and space to brain dump all the things floating around in your head that you need to get done. This usually happens at my kitchen table on Sunday. I use both my calendar on my phone, which is shared with my husband and my paper planner to plan out the week. I like to circle my must have todo’s and jot them down in the planner. I also plan my meals at this time and have a list of meals that my family will eat, here is my list, 20-30 dinners is plenty to get started. that my family will eat,. I create my grocery list/order at this time as well, and I involve my husband in the meal plan since he’s the main cook. Ask your kids what they want to eat and if they are older you can encourage them to cook one of the nights.
Create a uniform
I have to go into the office four days a week, so I have 8-10 outfits that I rotate on a regular basis. I like to keep those together in a section in my closet, so I can easily grab something to wear each morning without much thought. All my outfits can interchange, so the tops can go with a multiple pants and my cardigans and blazers can mix and match with multiple tops. There are a lot of tips on Pinterest how to create a capsule wardrobe if you want to dig deeper. Check out my quick decluttering tips HERE
The Nightly Tidy
Take 5-10 minutes at night to tidy up the main living spaces and entry way, set a timer. Get things off the floor and back to their home. Clear the kitchen counters and get the dishes in the dishwasher…may take an extra 5 minutes but you will be so glad in the morning when this is done. It really helps to wake up to a clean kitchen space in the mornings. Read more about my Nightly Tidy HERE
Coffee maker ready
When I’m really on top of it, I like to have my coffee maker ready to go the night before so I can just push the brew button when I wake up. If you are not a coffee drinker, having the tea kettle filled and bag in a cup, or your shaker bottle ready. If you are a smoothie person, make serving size freezer bags so you can dump and blend quickly. Whatever it may be, think about how you can make tomorrow easier for yourself, tonight.
Get up before the kids
This is pretty much the only uninterrupted time I get to myself each day. Somedays I like to sit and read for a bit before I get moving. Other days I am energized and ready to do a quick 25 minute workout, or 15 minutes or 5 minutes of stretching. That is one mindset shift I have made is not being hard on myself if I don’t workout for a specific amount of time. It took me a long time to get there, and lots of mental coaching basically telling myself getting some kind of movement everyday is better than nothing.
Bonus: set timers!
My oldest likes to watch T.V. in the morning before school and I would get very frusterated and annoyed every morning when I had to tell him multiple times “turn the T.V. off, it’s time to go!” He followed the rule that he has to be dressed before the T.V. goes on, but it finally came to me to try out setting a T.V. timer on our Alexa…that’s pretty much the main thing I use it for is timers. So the first day it goes off and I say “that was the T.V. timer telling us to turn it off,” and he huffed and gave me a look. The next day it went off and I said “oh there’s that timer” and he puffed and said “fine, can you give me a mohawk” lol. Then Monday happened, I almost forgot I had the timer set to go off every weekday at the same time. When it went off this time I was in the other room and he turned off the T.V. all on his own, no huffs or puffs! I was so pleased, I didn’t feel annoyed and getting out of the house is so smooth now. Set those timers for yourself and your family.