We Attack at Dawn: Handling Mornings as Mom

Let me whip out my Captain Obvious hat for a moment and say that having a child is challenging in a LOT of ways.  There are the obvious challenges:  discipline, diapers.  The terrible twos.  Teenage rebellion.  But there are a million little things – the death by a thousand cuts – that make children such a challenge.  What was once simple – an impromptu trip to the movies – now requires coordination, scheduling, and planetary alignment to achieve.  And there are some puzzles that I still haven’t been able to solve:  if you are out alone with your toddler who is snoozing in his stroller, how do you use a porta-potty?  Don’t bother contemplating it – there’s no right answer to that one.

One of my most daunting works-in-progress is and has been my morning.  I have so much to do and so little time.  I have a toddler who thinks that the tiniest glint of sunlight means rise-and-shine, and I have a commute that demands that I get on the road by 6:45 a.m.  Now that I’ve been wrangling my mornings for a good two and a half years, I feel like I’m really getting a handle on them, but I’m still tweaking my routine.  During my maternity leave I remember having the feeling of dread that came with my impending return to work, and it was in no small part to my fear of being unable to do it all in the morning.  These are the steps that I wish I had taken back then to set up a plan for my mornings.

Step One:  Set your Parameters

What time do you need to finish your morning routine?  For me, I had to be in the car by 6:45 a.m., which made 6:40 my target time to be finished with my morning tasks.   Having an end time to focus on really helped me organize and prioritize what I needed to do.  Most importantly, it helped me realize just how early I had to set the alarm clock if I wanted to get it all done.

Step Two:  Make a List

What do you absolutely need to do in the morning?  What would you like to do if you had the time?  Put it all down on paper, in no particular order.  Really, write them down – you are less likely to miss something if you put pen to paper.  My list looks like this:

Shower

Brush hair, wash face, apply makeup

Get dressed

Change and dress Jack

Feed Jack

Make breakfast

Pack my lunch

Make coffee

Run a load of laundry

Feed chickens

Water garden

Whew.  That’s a lot of stuff to get done in the morning.  That’s why we have the next step:

Step Three: Prioritize.

Chances are, there are some things on your list that you’d like to do in the mornings, but that can actually be done at a different, less rushed time.  Take the time to pare down your list to the essentials.  It may mean doing things differently – I never thought I’d be a before-bed showerer, but that’s me these days, and that freed up a lot of morning time.  I also moved laundry and garden watering to nighttime.  It would be great to do all of that in the morning, but unfortunately I live in the real world.  Lousy real world.

Now that you have your list of essentials, write it down, and arrange each task in an order that makes sense to you.  Again, this is important.  Visualizing what you will be doing, and in what order, is a huge help.

Step Four:  Prepare

Before you can even give your list a test run, you need to prepare.  Preparation the night before will make your morning routine so much smoother.   Remember, getting dressed is more than just throwing on your clothes:  you have to choose what to wear, make sure it is clean, pressed, etc.  If you are me, you have to locate your shoes because for some reason they never, ever stay where I thought I last left them.  And if I had to pick out what I was going to wear to work in the morning, I’d waste thirty minutes every day standing and staring at my closet.  As a part of my before bed routine every night I lay out all of my work clothes and organize my lunch.  That little bit of preparation means that getting dressed is a five minute task in the morning, and packing my lunch into my lunch tote takes mere moments.

Bonus: Triage.

There are going to be some mornings where only the basics can get done.  Alarms don’t go off, somebody breaks into your house and hits the snooze button repeatedly, (that happens!) etc., and your already limited time is going to be pressed even harder.  Once you have your prioritized list, make a secondary list – the bare essentials – that you can’t leave home without doing.  For me, my triage list is:

Change and feed Jack

Wash face

Get dressed

Grab my brush and makeup – plenty of stop signs between home and work to get my hair into a ponytail and slap on a little eyeshadow and liner.

The other stuff can wait, if need be.

Step Five: Take a Test Drive

The only way to know if your new morning plan works is to try it out.  My best piece of advice at this step is: don’t be married to your list.  You are bound to find out that some things just aren’t going to work out as planned.  Sometimes, that means you have to rethink your whole morning routine and go back to the drawing board.  For others, it just means practice makes perfect.  Eventually, it becomes routine and manageable.

Mornings are a work in progress.  You know, just like we all are.  As your child(ren) grows, their needs change and your routine will have to adapt in order to meet those needs.  Eventually, it all comes together.  You may even being to enjoy your mornings again.

Moms:  what are your tips for surviving mornings?