A good morning routine
Jul 15th, 2008 by learningumbrella
This seems a bit paradoxical on the surface, but I’m trying to get as much “work” done early in the morning as possible as part of my effort to relax. The reason this works is that then I have the restful feeling that I’ve done enough for the day, and I can cruise through the afternoon and evening letting whatever comes up just happen.
My old morning routine was to get up, have coffee, call my mom or watch the morning news, and not really get to anything until 9 or 10am.
My new morning routine is to get up and do 15 minutes or so of yoga, have a tall glass of water, get the kids up, and make us all breakfast. I have my coffee while I do school with Carbon. Then I dress the kids and set them free to play or watch TV, and I do the morning chores: animal care, load laundry, dishes, clean the room of the day, and check email. On some days I still have more chores to do, such as ironing or paying bills, but I can get to them pretty early in the day too this way.
There is a real sense of satisfaction in knowing that you’ve already done the main stuff before lunch, and there’s also enough time to start a project that day. Carbon is picking up on that also. Yesterday he asked to get out all the painting supplies after he’d done his schoolwork.
The other good thing about getting these morning habits established is that they will still work with my new job schedule. If I can get some self-care, schoolwork, and housework all done before I head off to work for the day, I’m going to be able to stay on top of it.
I find I have to get to the important things first off and clear them off my plate.
that way they are DONE.
This sounds wonderful. I’m a morning person and instinctively know that I need to do as much as possible in the early part of the day. Sometimes I forget. Sometimes it is nice to be reminded of the simple things. Thanks for sharing this. Good luck with keeping up the habits. It’s a great idea to hold off the coffee until you sit down with Carbon.
You’re lucky that you have to wake your kids. Mine are up by 5:30am every morning if I’m lucky.
I have a similar thing going: work from 5 or 6 until 10 or 11, breakfast and homechores, etc. Then I can do school stuff and whatnot until it is time to make dinner. Then it’s usually back to the office in the evening. Works out pretty well.
I need to function in a similar way. My problem is that I don’t function well until about 3pm in the afternoon! No kidding. I’m weird that way.
I get my best work done in the afternoon and evening. It’s frustrating because that doesn’t mesh with my life right now. In fact, G. and I are in a new routine where I have to be home from work in time to eat dinner with the kids and start bedtime at 7pm. I used to go in later in the day, and I didn’t mind missing dinner or bedtime because I spent all morning with the family. Now if I am not out of the house by 10am at the latest, I fall behind. Not to mention the fact that in the fall, I am going to be homeschooling M. every morning before I go to work, basically starting around 8am.
But this is so hard because my mind and body both move as slow as can be in the morning. Plus, I love waking up and just enjoying the kids without any alternative agendas.
How to do it? Post tips if you have them because I am really struggling myself! I did get one really helpful tip back when I experimented with Flylady.com. She said that when you get up in the morning, you should change out of your pajamas and most definitely put on your shoes. She is right. I start my day faster when I am dressed and have my shoes on. My difficulties are that (1) I have a total aversion to getting dressed without showering first, and I have trouble with showering at night instead of the morning because my hair gets really greasy really easily…but maybe I just have to suck it up and shower at night, and (2) We don’t wear shoes in our house. We don’t ask guests to take their shoes off or anything, but we are virtually shoe free because we prefer to keep the tracking in of insecticides, etc. to a minimum. But maybe if I had a pair of “active” indoor shoes rather than slippers that would help?
Anyway, good luck with your endeavor, and happy almost-no-more-doing-childcare week!
P.S. I realize this is naturally easier for you because you are seemingly more of a morning person than I am and you also don’t feel comfortable being idle. I feel guilty when idle but also enjoy it ;-).