Our Morning Routine: Step One

For the past few months this has been my morning routine...

Wake up with the hubby and make his lunch for the day. Quickly crawl back into bed to get a little more sleep before my alarm goes off.  Hit snooze way too many times and then run to get myself ready before I have to wake up the girls.  Get the girls up with just enough time to get dressed, get their teeth brushed and brush their hair (well sometimes brush their hair) and get out the door by 7:00 am.  All the while hoping that I haven't forgotten something important!

With school starting again, I've decided the morning routine needs to improve, a lot!  But I also know that if I try to change it drastically all at once, it will only last a couple days and I'll be right back where I started, running around frantic trying not to be late. So we will take baby steps.

Step One: The Clothing Battle

One thing that has been a battle in the morning is picking out clothes.  The girls will pick out something that just doesn't work with the weather or doesn't fit and I will have to veto it.  Chaos errupts!  Crying, pouting, stomping and a battle to put on different clothes begins.  And when you are already rushed it makes it hard for me not to have a mommy moment and lose my patience with the girls. That is never the way I want to start out the day with my girls.

So this month we have started to pick out our clothes for the entire week on Sunday evening.  This way the girls and I can both feel good about the clothing choices and we eliminate one battle in the morning.  I searched online for some Day of the Week Tags that I liked, printed them out and laminated them. Then once the clothes are picked out we hang the tag with the clothes. These handy tags also double as a little reading exercise for my daughter in the morning.  I'll tell her what day it is and she has to go find her clothes.  2 birds, 1 stone.

Now for the part that I will struggle with...continuing to do this every week.  Whenever I try something new, even if it works great, I struggle with keeping it up.  If I'm truly honest with myself, it comes from laziness. Oh, I'll do it later or I'll get to it tomorrow and it gets forgotten.  So, if you happen to see me on a Sunday afternoon or evening feel free to ask me if I have the girls clothes picked out.  And hopefully the answer will be "yes".