A great morning routine helps us to start off our day on the right foot. However, in our zeal to start right, we often overcomplicate matters. Allow me to share 3 ways to simplify your morning routine so that you can start your day well.
Why Have a Morning Routine?
But before that, let me explain why having a morning routine is even necessary. I mean, why can’t we just jump out of bed and hit the ground running? Well, you could but why should you when there is a better and easier way?
There are many reasons why having a morning routine is helpful. A morning routine:
1. Eliminates Decision Fatigue
The last thing you want to start your day off is with decision fatigue. As you lie in bed wondering what you should do and could do, the minutes are slowing ticking away. Meanwhile, you can hear the kids getting up and starting to make a mess or come looking for you before you have even woken up fully.
With a morning routine, you already know what you need to do to get up and going. And knowing what is in store and what to do reduces the stress of the unknown
2. Puts Everything on Auto-Pilot
All routines put our brains on auto-pilot, reducing our mental load. And that is why a morning routine is critical to our day’s success. You don’t want to start your day wasting time and brain power on things that can be done automatically.
Such as brushing our teeth, showering, putting out breakfast or even pulling out food to be defrosted or marinated for lunch.
3. Helps Prepare You for the Day Ahead
As you go through the motions of your routine, you are slowly waking up and getting into the groove for the day. As you tick off the checkboxes on your routine (literally or figuratively), you start owning the day and feeling accomplished. By the time you are done, you will be more prepared to face the day and its challenges.
Don’t Overcomplicate Matters
But the key to a successful morning routine is to keep your routine simple. Because our goal is not to tick off as many checkboxes as possible but to tick off what helps us progress with our day.
So how can we simplify our morning routines? I have personally done many variations of morning routines. From the getting up at 5am to the just-roll-out-of-bed and get going routine.
3 Ways to Simplify Our Morning Routine
Here are 3 things I have discovered that will help me stay with the routine and get me up and going instead of feeling like a failure.
1. Keep It Simple
Decide what your basic necessities are and do not add to the list. It is ok to have only 3 items to check off in your morning routine. It is ok to not include exercise in your morning routine. This is especially important when you are a mom with young children. We need to be realistic and not idealistic. The shorter and simpler your routine is, later you can wake up. Now that would be an incentive for you to keep things simple!
Here is a sample simple morning routine:
Brush teeth & shower, drink a cup (or two) of warm water. Pray. Prep breakfast. Wake children. Eat breakfast.
As with all things in life, the simpler we keep things, the easier it is to keep going on. Too many steps in a routine means too many items to look out for and complete. Which often means you burn through your energy right off the bat. Not a good idea.
So, we want to streamline our routine, eliminate decision fatigue and start right
2. Start the Night Before
Whatever you can prep the night before SHOULD be prepped the night before. Especially on days that you need to be out of the house early in the morning.
Example of things you can get ready the night before:
- Check children’s schoolbags
- Pack snacks/lunch for school
- Get breakfast foods ready in pantry/fridge
- Defrost food for tomorrow’s meals;
- Lay out outfits, etc…
The more you prep the night before, the less you have to do upon waking when one is still groggy.
3. Simplify the Breakfast Menu
Intermittent fasting may be popular in certain circles. But even if we are on the IF bandwagon, our children should not be. This means they need breakfast.
To simplify your morning routine, you could tell the children (and husband) that breakfast is always either bread and spread, cereal and/or eggs. This way, they get to choose from these easy-to-prepare breakfast foods that even they can fix for themselves if you are busy.
Another way to simplify your breakfast menu is by fixing it by the day. For example:
- Mondays – cereal and milk
- Tuesday – bread and jam
- Wednesday – hard-boiled eggs and toast (eggs can be cooked the day before)
- Thursdays – French toast and banana
- Fridays – stir-fried noodles (that can be cooked the day before and heated up)
- Saturdays – bread and Nutella
- Sundays – Steel-cut overnight oats with fruit
And if they are old enough, they can fix or heat up their own (and their siblings’) breakfast from your list of food.
*In case you are wondering, in our house, we eat leftovers for breakfast since we try to avoid gluten and dairy which are in almost all breakfast foods. We also eat a lot of eggs.
No Need for Super Early Starts
Notice that I did not stipulate when you need to wake up by to have a successful morning routine? It is not what time we wake up (unless you have an early morning appointment!) that determines our day’s success.
Waking up slightly earlier than your children will help to make you feel less rushed but there is no need to wake up at 5am – unless you want to because that is the only time to get uninterrupted work done.
Simplified Morning Routines Reduce Stress
I am sure there are a lot more things we can do to simplify our morning routines but I am trying to keep everything simple, to reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed.
Just stick to these 3 things and you will reduce your stress load.
Make Over Your Morning eCourse
If you prefer a more detailed explanation and description on how to make your morning (and evening) routines to work, I suggest you take a look at Crystal Paine’s Make Over Your Morning eCourse. She goes in-depth into how to work out the nitty gritties of creating a morning routine with 14 short 5 to 7-minute videos and a workbook.
This is the absolute BEST time to buy because both the morning and evening eCourses going at 50% off for a limited time,
*This is my affiliate link to the courses. When you purchase through my affiliate links, I will be compensated at no extra cost to you. And it just helps to keep the blog going with no ads, so thank you!
My Simple Morning Routine
Do you have a morning routine? Do you need to simplify your morning routine?
Want to take a look at my easy morning routine and get a FREE printable to help you do up yours? You can access this printable and others from our Resource Library by clicking on the image below to sign up.
Remember, start small, start simple. Add more later when you have gotten into the groove of it all. Don’t start big and crash.
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