My Current Morning Routine

The thing about routines is that they’re ALWAYS changing.

What my morning routine looks like right now with no babies and toddlers is really different from what it looked like when I was nursing, getting up in the night, and Bart was traveling a lot for work.

So my goal with my morning routine (and any other routine) is always to stay alert for what works for me NOW and adjust as needed.

This routine will look different in the summer when my girls are doing swim team in the morning and they don’t have school and I’m always aware that changes in our daily life are going to require a change in routine.

All that said, here’s what my current morning routine looks like:

My Current Morning Routine

• I wake up at either 5:40 or 6:30, depending on if it’s a day that I go to the gym for a strength-training class or if it’s a morning when I go for a run. I use a real alarm clock (this is the one I have used for the past 2 or 3 years, since I don’t want to sleep with my phone by my bed). I also never use the snooze button because the only thing worse than waking up from a sound sleep is waking up from a sound sleep MULTIPLE times in a row. I immediately put on my workout clothes, which I always lay out the night before on the top of my dresser, brush my teeth and my hair, and head out to exercise.
• I don’t look at my phone in the morning until my girls leave for school. This is one of those things that is hard for me EVERY day but makes the most ridiculous difference in how smoothly my mornings go, so I’m very committed to it (I wrote a whole post about it here). I definitely will use my phone to turn on my audiobook to listen to while I run or drive to the gym or my run tracking app or to check the weather before I run outside or to listen to my favorite scripture podcast while I do my hair and makeup, but I do not look at Instagram comments or messages or open my email inbox, because those suck me in so much and then my mind is racing with work things before I’m in a good position to deal with them and it makes me distracted and impatient with my children (which is NOT the interaction I want to have with them before they head off to school). When I get home from the gym or my run, I’ll post my morning IG reel or post, but it’s all ready to go and I just have to press “share.”
• I take a shower and get dressed. I’ve showered and gotten dressed pretty much every day of my adult life. My mom ALWAYS got ready my entire life, so it never even occurred to me to do otherwise. I only wash my hair about once a week, which speeds things up considerably. I put on my makeup (you can see my daily makeup routine here) and curl my hair, put in some earrings, and put my slippers on. My goal is to be fully ready for the day between 7:30 and 7:45 a.m.
• I make my bed. Sometimes I do this first if Bart is in the shower when I get home from exercising, but more often I do it when I’m fully ready for the day before I head out to the kitchen and the kids. Usually I take my Seed probiotics at this point.
• The girls get up on their own and get dressed. My girls going to school use an alarm to wake up (my two middle girls use the Echo Dot in their room and Ella uses a Hatch) and they’re very good about getting up, getting dressed, and bringing their backpacks to the front door. They get their own breakfast (usually toast, cold cereal, oatmeal, or eggs) and pack a lunch if they’re not eating school lunch. We have a monthly calendar of the school lunch menu printed out and taped inside a kitchen cabinet door so they can check every morning if they’d like to eat school lunch or take their own.
• I do their hair. Ani and Ella do their own hair 95% of the time, but I do Star and Tally’s hair every morning. They usually watch a few minutes of a movie on my laptop at the kitchen table while I do their hair and they know when I’m done, it’s time to turn it off. I have a list here of my go-to hairstyles for them.
• We unload the dishwasher and get things spiffed up. The dishwasher is usually full and clean in the morning, so the girls will unload it while I wash their breakfast dishes and we get the kitchen back to baseline. Depending on how fast things go, I might read a few picture books to them or play a quick card game with them or they’ll curl up to read a book on their own before they need to leave. Ani carpools every other day with another family in the neighborhood, so some days Bart drives carpool, dropping off Star on the way, and sometimes he just takes Star to school.
• I make my breakfast and play with Tally. Once the big girls are gone around 8:30 a.m., I get my breakfast going (this is what I eat for breakfast every day) and while it cooks, I’ll get some little household tasks going (like the laundry, if it’s Monday, or some dinner prep) or do my scripture study and then when it’s time to eat, I’ll sit down at the kitchen table and eat while I play a game or two with Tally. Currently, the favorites are Splendor, Qwirkle and Gnomin’ A Round. Sometimes I’ll read aloud a shorter chapter book to her too, depending on how much time we have.
• Tally does her Savvy Reading class and quiet time. Tally has Savvy Reading at 10:30, so when the Alexa alarm goes off at 10:25 to remind me, I get her set up with the laptop and then I sit down at my desk to work. When she’s done, she does about an hour of quiet time while I keep working – she usually does her Baggie Books (little readers the school sends home for her to practice reading each day) and listens to audiobooks – right now, she’s on a Boxcar Children kick.
• I make Tally lunch and take her to school. A little before noon, quiet time is done and I make her a quick lunch while she gets her shoes on and gets her backpack. When she’s done, I drop her off at school and then come home and it’s time to work for a few hours while everyone is at school. One of my goals this year is to eat a real lunch every day, so I usually break around 1:00 p.m. to fix something for myself and then I eat it at my desk while I work.

Any questions about my morning routine? I’m happy to answer! And I’d love to hear if you have a good morning routine going!

If you liked this post about my morning routine, you might also like these other posts:

• My Hair Care Routine
• 4 Weekly Routines That Make Life Fun
• How to Go to Sleep: 11 Tips for Getting Enough Sleep