Waking up early on Monday morning can take some major Mom motivation, so set yourself up for success by doing some quick prep with five simple tasks the night beforehand. Then you can wake up with peace of mind, knowing you are starting the day organised and prepared for success!
Today I’m going to share my daily evening routine that makes mornings a breeze! Monday morning, Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning.. yep let’s just say I’ve got you covered for every morning of the week.
First, let me share – I’m not a morning person. At all. Unless staying up after midnight counts.
This can and has caused issues when one becomes a parent of not one, but multiple (three to be exact) young children who tend to jump out of bed as soon as the first ray of sunshine hits their window (we have a rule they need to stay in bed they can see light out their window!)
I had to get organised. Plain and simple, disorganised was not cutting it. I had to get up and set an example for the rest of my family.
I tried getting up earlier.
It seemed doable, so I carefully snuck out of bed at the sound of my alarm as not to wake my nearby sleeping baby. I headed to the kitchen to make some coffee and tried not to walk on egg shells even though there were multiple closed doors between myself and said sleeping children.
My working husband was surprised to see me awake – yes it’s a rare sight to see me up before sunrise! I whipped up and served hot breakfast for the kids in Super Mum style. It was ready at the table when they popped their heads through the kitchen door with sleepy eyes and big smiles.
This lasted possibly three days. At this point, motivation waned as the sleep deprivation of waking 5-6 times a night with a teething baby, toddler who needed help getting to the toilet and eldest who just wanted to tucked back in again wore down any inkling of wanting to crawl out of bed early.
So I started thinking about how I could make mornings run smoothly, but still wake up with my kids.
First I realised my prime real estate for planning mornings was in the evening. This put me in preparation mode for the following day.
I looked at what was not working in the morning, what I could move to the evening before and what I could eliminate completely.
What was not working in my situation – waking up to a untidy, cluttered kitchen, children not ready for kindy in time, spending too much time on yesterday’s mess, clothing not washed and ready for kids (« Mum I don’t have any clean underwear!) , and meals were hit and miss the following day.
Have you heard the saying that successful people do the same things, every day. Or something like that. As in, they simplify to reduce the amount of energy exerted into every day routine activities and utilise the majority of their energy towards purposeful projects and pursuits.
I found these five daily evening tasks evolved organically from this process of simplifying mornings!
The first task I complete is to tidy up and reset the house.
Luckily at this stage it doesn’t take me hours of cleaning and picking up toys like it did in the early days. The kid’s rooms are their responsibility in the evening. This means they put their dirty clothes into the washing basket, hang up any dress clothes or jackets on their beds and put away stray toys and books that have been pulled out during the day.
The lounge would have had a recent tidy up before dinner so a few stray couch cushions and wayward trains only takes less than 5 minutes on the way back from good night kisses.
A quick walkthrough of our single bathroom to pick up any clothes, towels and bath toys. This only takes a few minutes to complete.
Our kitchen takes the majority of this clean up time, especially if we have had a late dinner. I have moved my kids toys out of the kitchen, so it’s mostly putting dirty dishes into the dishwasher and removing any clutter from the day aka papers, abandoned toys and small items from dropped off from various places in the house.
Let me tell you.. When I’m doing this reset, some days I’m just tired and I think, well I could just leave this until tomorrow. But, I stop myself and remember that this reset is just as much for my children as my own self discipline. It’s a blessing for my children to be able to wake up and the mess of yesterday has been erased. It’s creating a clean slate for a new day!
The second task is to set up my dishwasher to run overnight.
This super simple task sets you up with a kitchen full of clean dishes, glassware, utensils etc.. this makes meal prep for breakfast and lunches easy as when everything is ready to use!
Our dishwasher has a timer so I set it to run after 9pm to save on power during off peak pricing (we save close to 70% on energy usage during this time!)
Often I run my dishwasher a couple times a day and this second run may not have a full load. I use the quick rinse mode which only takes 30 minutes but still sanitises the dishes and glassware. This way I keep my regular routine of filling and emptying the dishwasher still economical.
The third task I do before bed is empty the rubbish, recycling and compost bins.
Where we live we have rubbish, recycling and green waste bins that are collected either weekly or fortnightly. The largest bin is the recycling, medium size is rubbish and the smallest bin is for green waste. Or as my daughter pointed out and said to me recently, that’s the Daddy bin, Mama bin and baby bin! I guess kinda reminiscent of the story of Goldilocks and the three bears..
To match these sizes we also have corresponding bins inside the house. The largest bin being recycling and smallest is compost/food waste the size of a used ice cream container.
This ensures we don’t tip the scales in terms of what we are going through in the house and what needs to be removed is able to done quickly and efficiently.
I hate an overflowing rubbish bin. Taking out our bins every night ensures this happens far and few between now. Since we have a toddler still in nappies, the bathroom bin is also emptied to reduce any unpleasant odours setting in overnight! Not exactly what you want to wake up to during the night or in the morning. A fresh smelling bathroom is a pleasant and realistic expectation when waste is removed promptly.
Taking out the kitchen compost guarantees my toddler doesn’t do a good dig through it in the morning looking for leftover fruit and pretzels picked off the floor! We keep our green waste container under the kitchen sink for easy access for adults and kids.
The fourth task is to do a large load of laundry
Sunday night is my large load of washing night. I typically toss in all the used towels from the weekend. This includes face cloths, hand towels, tea towels, bath towels, dish rags and any clean cloths hanging around. This tidies up the bathroom and also makes certain towels are changed and rotated in a timely manner.
Other nights when I am all caught up on washing like tonight (it’s Monday night as I write this post) it may just be a small load of soiled outfits from garden play in the afternoon or cleaning cloths from a day of cleaning.
When I get up in the morning, I can unload the washing and pop it up on the clothes line in 10 minutes or less. Since we don’t use a dryer which is common here in New Zealand, this makes certain the washing will have plenty of daylight hours to dry.
The last evening task is to take meat out of the freezer.
This is my meal prep for dinner the following evening and it has helped immensely as I often have forgotten to do it in the morning amongst other jobs.
If it’s a large piece of meat like a whole chicken or leg of lamb I will let it defrost in the sink overnight and put in the refrigerator as soon I wake up. If it’s a smaller tray of meat like steaks or chicken tenderloins I put it directly into the meat drawer of our refrigerator.
This simple step will help with sorting dinner the following day with meat that is defrosted and not past it’s use date. This means I don’t even need to think about dinner at breakfast time!
I hope these five simple steps will help you reduce morning anxiety and stress that can come with the responsibility of a family.
Please leave a comment and let me know what has helped you prepare for the next day and a morning flow that suits your family and makes life as a Mum easier!
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The Kiwi Nest 