How to Make Mornings Easier As a Working Mom
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It’s every working mom’s goal: to make mornings easier, both for YOU and for the family/kids. So how do you do it? What hacks and tips have you found? What are you considering?
Psst: you may want to check out our latest discussion on breakfast and the working mom.
In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg shares the story of a woman who put her kids to bed in their school clothes to save 15 minutes in the morning:
One of the other panelists, an executive with two children, was asked the (inevitable) question about how she balances her work and her children. She started her response by saying, “I probably shouldn’t admit this publicly . . . ,” and then she confessed that she put her children to sleep in their school clothes to save fifteen precious minutes every morning. At the time, I though to myself, Yup, she should not have admitted that publicly. Now that I’m a parent, I think this woman was a genius.
It’s too true! Some tips I’ve tried over the years to make mornings easier (particularly as someone who is not a morning person):
Sleep well. I’ve been using the Sleep Cycle app to help wake me up at the lightest point of my sleep cycle, and it’s been great. For some reason the need to charge my phone while using the app has always stopped me (it “uses sound analysis to identify sleep states by tracking movements in bed”), but upon realizing that this seemed like a pretty silly reasoning on my part, I bought a 6′ long cord just to keep by my bed.
Another trick to try if you feel like you wake up still tired: Take a spoonful or two of peanut butter before bed — it stabilizes your blood sugar throughout the night so you sleep better. You know how in cartoons people greet the day with singing bluebirds and dancing dishes? This is how I feel the mornings after I’ve had a good night’s sleep thanks to peanut butter. Check out more of our best tips on how to hack and optimize your sleep.
Cut what you can from your own morning routine. I used to be a morning shower person… many, many moons ago. Now I prefer taking my time with an evening shower, which vastly cuts down the amount of time I need to spend on myself when I wake up. I also tend to dress in a bit of a uniform (because I work from home it’s pretty casual — black t-shirt, jeans, a different colorful cardigan each day and a different necklace), and I’ve cut my new-mom beauty routine to the quick, too.
Do what you can the night before. Set your coffeemaker to go off first thing in the morning, make any lunches that need to be made, pick out outfits (yours and the kids’), set bags by the door…
Identify and eliminate the bottlenecks. If it’s like pulling teeth to get your kids dressed… then I totally agree with the woman in Sandberg’s example; put your kids to bed in their school clothes. Do what works for your family.
Hit the ground running at the office. When you finally get a minute to yourself, the urge to dillydally can be strong — Facebook! Websites! Easy reaction-based work, like answering emails! At the end of each day I like to write down three tasks I MUST accomplish the next day, and print whatever I can so there are papers to review — and I do my very best to focus on those tasks first.
Turn to technology like sunrise lamps, particularly if you’re up against dark winter mornings — check out more of our advice on how to wake up more easily when it’s dark out.
Ladies, how do you make mornings easier in your house? What have you tried — and what do you swear by?
Pictured: Stencil.
Having outfit “uniforms” and picking them out the night before makes such a big difference for me. Now that my daughter is older I didn’t think I’d need to do it any more, but I discovered that I still need to keep the morning routine streamlined or I’ll slow my own self down. Like someone mentioned above, the time magically gets filled!
I am in charge of morning routine 3 mornings a week. On a good day, our schedule looks like this:
Kiddo wakes up sometime between 6:30 am and 7 am. Alternatively, kiddo wakes up 15 minutes before my alarm.
We snuggle for 10 minutes in my bed.
We spend 10 minutes getting “breakfast” on the table. Her breakfast is literally a bowl of peanut butter and a cup of milk.
I’ve started setting a timer to give her only 20 minutes to eat breakfast. We got into a bad stretch where she would get distracted from breakfast, wander away, then melt down when I tried to remove her bowl 45 minutes later when I started panicking about being late.
I check work e-mails while she eats and respond to any that are urgent or require only a short response.
After breakfast, kiddo sits on the potty and (on a good day) gets herself dressed while I throw on sweats and a t-shirt for daycare drop off. On a bad day, she doesn’t get herself dressed and then becomes terribly offended when I forcibly shove her clothes onto her body.
I put kiddo in the Ergo for the elevator ride and walk through the garage (this is a 5 minute journey for an adult but an unpredictable 10-30 minute journey if a toddler is walking independently – the Ergo keeps it to a predictable 5-10 minutes)
Daycare drop off- round trip, this takes about 15-20 minutes
Then I do my morning routine and usually arrive at work by 10, but can make it by 9:30 if I cut out the extraneous FB/personal e-mails/household chores stuff.
On the days kiddo’s dad picks her up for daycare, I eat breakfast, go for a run, cool down while doing household chores, and then shower/prep and arrive at work.
I keep my shoes, makeup, favorite tea, and snacks at the office, along with some spare blazers and a scarf.
I rearranged my morning entirely. I used to get up, run, shower, get kids up, leave for work at 8:00 (with all the other people heading into the city for 9:00am arrivals). Now I get up at 5:45, put on running clothes, do an hour of work while drinking coffee and eating breakfast, get kids up at 7:00 and do their breakfast (while also emptying the dishwasher, packing my lunch, and often sticking dinner in the crockpot), then when my husband comes on kid-duty at 8:00, I go out for a 30 min run with the dog, then shower, then get on the road at 9:00 — it now takes me only 40 min or sometimes less to get to work instead of 60+min. because there’s so little traffic. Because I was online at 6:00am, my assistant already has any tasks in his inbox when he walks in at 9:00 and often he’s got stuff ready for me by the time I arrive at 9:45.
Our morning routine is pretty streamlined in some ways:
– I have a dress for each day of the week
– We always do the same steps in the same order
– We always have the same breakfast
– I moved hair things and socks downstairs since we do that after dressing
– We have a designated spot for shoes and bags so we’re not hunting them down
My only tip is to get the older kids independent as soon as possible. If they can dress themselves, put on their own shoes, pack their backpacks etc., you can be doing other things (like dressing the younger kid) while encouraging/nagging them to do what they need to do. Even if it takes forever, I’m still doing something else during that time. I have three kids to get out the door (3, 5, 7), so every little bit help.
Also, not a tip, but a complaint – don’t schedule impromptu calls between 7 and 9! I have sat on many a call while walking the kids to school. There is no flexibility on when school starts!
I ended up showering last night due to extracurricular activities. I thought not having to shower would cut down my morning routine. I woke up at the usual time, but still left the house at usual time! I have no idea where my extra time went.
I have made my routine mirror my child’s preferred sleep schedule. She’s early to bed and early to rise, so now I am too. It makes me a fuddy duddy, but I’m a well rested fuddy duddy, at least.
Morning routine is typically:
5:45 am- I wake up and lie in bed til around 6:00 messing around on facebook, checking my email, etc.
6:00- out of bed. Start wandering the house doing light chores (unloading the dishwasher, etc), get myself some coffee
6:15- husband leaves for work.
between 6:15 and 6:30- CPA toddler makes waking up noises. I get her up out of her crib, take her into the kitchen and I warm up some milk for her.
6:30- CPA toddler and I sit in the big fluffy chair in her room and I read her books while she drinks her milk
6:50- I change CPA toddler’s diaper and get her dressed for the day
6:55- I wash my face, wrangle my hair, put on my makeup (concealer, eye-shadow, mascara), get dressed
7:10- CPA toddler and I find and put on our shoes, gather bags, etc.
7:15- CPA toddler and I make the long journey through the yard out to the driveway.
7:20- CPA toddler and I depart
7:35- CPA toddler arrives at daycare. She eats breakfast there.
7:55- CPA lady arrives at work. She drinks the rest of her iced coffee and eats a healthful (haha) breakfast of a granola bar there.
I do daycare pick up and am home by 5 most nights, we eat dinner by 5:30, and CPA toddler is in bed by 7:00 pm. I shower at night every other night. I get in bed sometime between 8:30 and 9:00 pm pretty much every night.
My husband stays home so we have been lucky with pretty easy mornings. They kids have gone to preschool 2 days a week but this year we started kindergarten. We do the normal stuff of getting stuff ready the night before but my husband and I started having to get up earlier as well. But the biggest change we made was to have breakfast earlier around 7-7:15 and then the kids are fully ready before we turn on PBS. It has been a life changer in how quickly they move in the mornings.
I thought the peanut butter trick was interesting – when I was pregnant, I used to have a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter almost every night at like 3 am. My husband would complain about the smears of PB on the cabinets from me fumbling around. I set up coffee and my outfit every night, which is kind of a hassle, but my brain struggles with these things in the morning. Agree with showering and getting as ready as possible before kids get up. It makes the time so much more pleasant to not be trying to do two or more things at once all morning.
I feel the need to shower in the morning (you night or every-other-day showerers, do you never get sweaty at night?) but I only wash my hair every three days or so (yay dry shampoo!) and when I do, I wash it at night, then sleep on it in a twisted bun. In the morning then it’s still just damp (saving time on drying) and already on its way to being smoothed. So my shower is just a quick lather-rinse.
I make and portion all the kids’ lunches on Sunday afternoon. They eat the same thing all week (but I change it up week to week and they never eat the same thing more than once a month). So the night before I just grab their preportioned OXO blocks and load up their lunchboxes. I also make my lunch the night before.
I drink a protein shake and have my coffee in the car. If I have any “found” time I will use it to eat breakfast with the kids.
My greatest challenge lately is that no matter how early I get up, my 4-year-old wakes up about the same time. I do my best to tip toe and ease doors open and shut but somehow he knows. So he comes in my room and wants to chat and sabotages my getting-ready-before-kids effort. Initially I tried to make him stay in his room, but it’s a fight. And it feels terrible to start the day fighting with him to leave me alone after usually fighting him to stay in his room and stop talking to us at night.
I work at home, but I have three kids to get ready for preschool, including a baby. Thankfully my husband helps, and he drops them off. But what usually happens with my son barging in is I don’t get to dry my hair or properly get dressed — sometimes even eat or shower. And this just sets a bad tone for the day and creates a time crunch later on. If anyone has advice on this, I would love to hear it.
I wear a wig. It saves tremendous time getting ready, and I always look polished and put together.
Also, I am that driver putting on makeup in the car.
We have to do daycare drop off in the morning. We prep all of her food the night before. I prep as much of my food as I can. I have, like, 5 outfits that I wear to work so my getting dressed is literally a question of “have I already worn this outfit this week?” and if the answer is no, I put it on. I don’t care what my daughter wears in the morning (like if she coordinates), so long as it’s seasonally appropriate, this eliminates any sort of issue with my husband on that front. I’ve also started to go to bed at 10:30 (well before my pre-baby days of 11:30-midnight).
1. I have like 10 outfits, tops, that I wear in a particular season. I spend approximately 15 seconds picking out my clothes each day.
2. I only shower every other day, if I’m not working out. Three cheers for dry shampoo!
3. My husband and I eat breakfast in shifts with my kids because they take so darn long.
4. My kids are in a phase where they don’t care what they wear, which is nice, but when my oldest went through that phase, he had to pick out his clothes the night before, because it would take ages.
5. I do breakfast prep the night before if I don’t get home too late — e.g., cutting up berries to go in the yogurt, or something. On this note, does anyone have any great recipes/thoughts on healthy breakfast breads or breakfast cookies? It’s sometimes fun to mix things up, and prepping a batch of these on Sunday saves bunch of time in the mornings.
I always love to hear others’ tips on this topic!
I also go to work earlier and come home earlier than before-baby. I now go no-make up (with rare exceptions) and have a haircut that I can let air dry if necessary. I typically have a protein smoothie breakfast in the car or at my desk, and I save that first cup of coffee for the office.
My mornings run the best when I get up before baby. A daunting feat when he was getting up at 6:15. Now that he’s sleeping till about 6:45 I find a 6:00 am alarm seems to do the trick. I can shower, dress and do whatever I need to with my hair before he gets up. If I don’t have to wash my hair, I even have a few quiet minutes to myself. I usually leave by about 7:15. This means I’m in bed pretty early, and often asleep by 9:30, so I’m not tempted to hit the snooze button.
PhilanthropyBaby is home with DH during the day, so I don’t have to worry about packing bags or getting him dressed. But as with my own things, if I did need to get him out the door with me, they’d be packed the night before.