Money Saving Mom®

Welcome to Day 2 of the 5 Days to a Better Morning Challenge! I’m so excited that so many of you committed to join me in this journey. If you missed my first post for Day 1 you can read it here.

Today, I want you to take your answers to the three questions I had you ask yourself yesterday and we’re going to use those as the basis for creating a Realistic Routine.

3 Steps to a Successful Routine

Step 1: Start Out Small

The biggest mistake people make when trying to create a routine is that they bite off more than they can chew. If you’ve never had a routine before, please don’t decide that you’re now going to have your whole family on an every-15-minutes regimented schedule. That’s setting yourself up for failure and frustration from the get-go.

Instead, start out small. Choose your start time, your out-the-door time, and your Big Rocks. Then, flesh this out into a simple routine.

Sample Routines

Example #1: Let’s say you’re a single woman who works full-time and your start time is 6:30 a.m., your out-the-door time is 7:45 a.m., and your Big Rocks are to eat a healthy breakfast and get in 15 minutes of exercise, your routine could look like this:

• 6:30 a.m. — Get up and get on workout clothes
• 6:40 a.m. — 15 minute workout
• 7:00 a.m. — Make scrambled eggs and cut up fruit for breakfast
• 7:10 a.m. — Eat breakfast
• 7:20 a.m. — Shower/dress
• 7:40 am. — Ready to go

If you’ll notice, I padded the routine with a little extra time. You probably don’t need 10 minutes to get your workout clothes on. But maybe you move slow in the morning, so this will give you a little extra time to slowly wake up and get on your workout clothes.

I also added in 5 extra minutes between when the workout ends and when you’d start making breakfast, just to give a little extra buffer. And then it probably won’t take you 20 minutes to make and eat breakfast, but this gives you a little extra time so you can check email or catch the news or listen to a podcast or read a little. I’m all about giving a little margin and breathing room!

Example #2: Let’s say you’re a working mom with two kids who are 5 and 8 and your start time is 6:00 a.m., your out-the-door time is 7:30 a.m., and your Big Rocks are to get 15 minutes of quiet time and to read to your kids at breakfast. Your routine could look something like this:

• 6:00 a.m. — Get up, wash face, make coffee
• 6:10 a.m. — 15 minutes of quiet time
• 6:30 a.m. — Get kids up & started on their morning routine, shower/dress
• 6:50 a.m. — Help the 5-year-old finish getting dressed/ready
• 7:00 a.m. — Breakfast
• 7:10 a.m. — Read to kids while they are finishing breakfast
• 7:20 a.m. — Ready to head out the door.

If the thought of having specific times for each part of your routine freaks you out or you’re in a season of life where you’re just trying to survive and when you get up is constantly changing based upon how many times your baby or toddler wakes up at night, you might consider creating a routine that isn’t time-based… but is just a list of items you plan to do in the same order when you get up every morning. As always, do what works for you and your family!

Do you see how this works? It’s really quite simple. Even if you’ve never had a routine before, you can do this!

The trick is to not bite off more than you can chew. If you only have an hour and a half or two hours and you choose 3 30-minute Big Rocks to tackle, you’re likely going to have an issue. But if you choose two Big Rocks that take 10 to 15 minutes each, you can fit them in and still have time to get ready and out the door in time!

Note: Not a morning person? Here’s a post on How a Non-Morning Person Can Have an Effective Routine.

Step 2: Set Up Accountability

If you want to be successful at anything, you can’t go it alone. You need other people on the journey with you! That’s one reason why I love blogging about things I’m working through/challenging myself with — because I get the benefit of having the public accountability that you all provide for me! 🙂

{Yes, did you know you are my accountability partner? Yup. You may not have known it, but you totally are! 🙂 Thank you!}

Yesterday, I encouraged you to not only leave a comment on the post to say you were participating in this challenge, but I also asked you to tell someone offline.

Why did I ask you to do this? Because I knew that the very act of saying, “I’m doing this” and then telling someone else that you are would encourage you to not just think this is a good idea, but to actually be motivated to follow through with it.

What kind of accountability would motivate you to actually follow through with your morning routine? I recommend that you choose at least two forms of accountability and that one is a person and one is a product.

Accountability Partners — It’s great to have online accountability, but real-life people are the best forms of accountability. They can even show up at your front door if you don’t answer the texts, emails, or phone calls. 😉

Not sure where to find an accountability partner? Check out this post for some ideas. The Hello Mornings site is a great way to plug into morning accountability groups if you can’t find anyone in your area.

Accountability Products — I also am a big fan of accountability products such as apps, printables, or other kinds of trackers. These are great for everyone, but are especially valuable for those of us who love to check things off a list!

At the bottom of today’s post and yesterday’s post, I’ve put together a list of resources that might be great starting points. You can also check out this post for some great ideas on other accountability sources.

Step 3: Stick With It

You’ve got your routine set up. You have your accountability in place. Now you just need to follow through and do it!

A plan only works if you actually follow it. So jump in with both feet and stick with this. You can do this! I’m cheering for you!

Need some accountability and step-by-step help for transforming your mornings? I’d love to help you!

Day 2 Project

1. Create your routine based upon your start time, out-the-door time, and Big Rocks. Leave a comment letting us know what your routine is. We’d love to hear and be inspired!

2. Put at least two forms of accountability in place. I’d recommend that one is a person and one is a product (a printable, an app, etc.). You decide what would work best for you. Leave a comment and let us know that you put the accountability in place, as well.

Looking for some more practical help?

• Read my post on What To Do When You Get Thrown Off Your Routine.
• Need more step-by-step help? Follow the steps in this post on How to Create Your Perfect Morning Routine. 
• Download Day 1 of Make Over Your Mornings (it’s FREE!) — my 14-day course to help you jumpstart a successful day.
• Grab a copy of Eat That Frog! for inspiration to start your day well.
• Have young kids? Check out this long list of Visual Routines for Kids — a great round-up of cards/checklists for young kids that you can print for free.

This week, we’re going to be talking about mornings. Maybe you’re in the middle of summer and the last thing you want to think about is a routine. If so, you go right ahead and skip this series, okay?

But if you’re anything like me, you’re already thinking ahead to the upcoming school year or you’re wanting to get into a better routine this summer in preparation for the upcoming school year. Our kids are going to a 4-Day Classical School this coming year, so it will be our first year of having to get lunches packed, backpacks ready, everyone dressed and out the door early in the morning four days per week.

Our kids aren’t so little any more, so they are able to be a lot more helpful and independent, but I still need to be the one to create the overall routine and make sure things run smoothly. To help our kids gear up for this (and to help our summer run more smoothly because our girls are spending a lot of time at skating and swimming practices), we decided to have a pretty strict Morning Routine as a family.

Here’s what our current Morning Routine looks like:

5:45 am — Jesse and I up and ready to workout.
6:00 am — Workout in the garage with our friend, Brian. (Read more about my workout plan here.)
6:30 am — Run in and wake the kids up (if they aren’t already up) and get them started on their morning chores and then head back to finish the workout.
7:15 am — Finish our workout. Kids are expected to be at the kitchen table completely dressed/hair fixed, with their morning chores all done. I read a chapter from our current read aloud while Jesse makes breakfast.
7:30 am — We eat breakfast while Jesse leads our family Bible Time. (Read more about our family Bible Time here.)
7:45 am — Jesse eats and oversees the kids’ Summer School workbooks/helps Silas with reading while I clean up the kitchen and take a quick shower and get ready for the day.
8:15 am — Girls make their lunches/dinners if they’ll be at swimming/skating. Bags packed for heading out the door. I make sure everything is in order for the day, do my She Reads Truth study, and be ready to start my online work at 8:45 am.

And that’s that! Here’s the thing I love about this Morning Routine: if we don’t get much else done after 9 am, we still accomplished some of the most important things — like working out and family time around the table!

{My goal is to work back to getting up at 5 am so I can read my Bible and have some quiet before the workout, but I’m not there yet. Baby steps, right? :)}

Our hope is to just tweak this a little so we can have almost the same time blocks and then just head out the door at 7:45 a.m. for school (gratefully, they don’t have to be at school until 8 a.m. and it’s close to our house!)

There’s No One-Size-Fits-All Plan!

If you read our routine and felt overwhelmed, please remember this: My husband and I are both home full-time and both share in the household/kid responsibilities. I know that this makes things so much easier for me and allows me to have a lot more flexibility in my schedule than many of you have.

In addition, as I mentioned above, our kids are at a stage where they are much more independent than they used to be. Plus, our business is at the place where I have a great team in place and I don’t have to get on and check social media or emails until later in the morning.

And finally, we’ve been fine-tuning routines for a long time. This is not something new to us. Practice doesn’t make it perfect (trust me on that!), but it does make it easier. 

Here are some examples of previous routines — to give you an idea of how things have changed for us over the years:

• My 2012 School Year Routine
• Our 2013 Summer Routine
• My 2014 Morning Routine (look in the comments for lots of readers’ morning routines, too!)
• Our 2015 Summer Routine

3 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Creating a Routine

If you don’t already have a great morning routine and you’d like to develop one, I want to challenge you to ask yourself three questions:

A. What is a realistic start time? What time can you realistically commit to getting out of bed in the morning? Please remember this is not the time you would ideally love to get up in the morning. Or the time you think sounds impressive. Or the time your Type A, super organized friend gets up in the morning. 🙂

I want you to think through what is actually feasible for you right now in this season of your life. Make sure it will allow you to get enough sleep. Trying to operate well while exhausted is like trying to run your car on fumes. You just aren’t going to get very far without being stalled on the side of the road.

Note: Maybe you don’t even want to choose a realistic start time and instead choose to start your routine when you wake up — whenever that is. I think this is an especially good option if you have a baby and/or a toddler who is waking up in the night and you’re in a season of life where you don’t have to be out the door at a certain time each morning.

B. When do you need to be out the door? What time does everyone need to be dressed, ready for the day, bags, packed, lunches packed, and in the car? This will help you determine what a realistic start time is and what you can realistically accomplish during the hour or hours you have from the time you get up to the time you need to be out the door.

If you don’t have to be out the door by a certain time, then ask yourself what time would you like to have accomplished your morning routine? Would you love to be ready to walk out the door if a friend called you for a play date or to easily be able to run an errand mid-morning because you are dressed, look presentable, and your ducks are in a pretty good row? That time could be 9 a.m. (like us) or noon or whatever time you decide! This challenge is not about following a formula, but about figuring out what works best for you and your family in your current season of life.

C. What are your Big Rocks? What would you really, really love to have done first thing in the morning? What few things would set your day up for success? What are those tasks or to-do’s or projects that you always hope to get to but that often get pushed to the back burner because you spend so much of your day putting out fires?

For my husband and me, working out and family time around the table are two big priorities. By making them something that happens very early in the day, we not only start our day off on a great foot, but we also ensure that they actually happen! It feels SO good to have accomplished these very important things right off the bat in our day!

Day 1 Project

1. Decide that you’re going to participate in this challenge. Committing to something is the first step to success! Leave a comment letting us know that you’re committed to joining me on this 5-day journey to a better morning this week.

2. Determine your answers to the three questions above. Write these out or type them out or leave a comment on this post answering them. We’ll use these as a guide for setting up a Realistic Routine tomorrow.

3. Tell someone offline that you’re participating in this challenge. In addition to leaving a comment on this post, I encourage you to text, call, or personally tell a friend, family member, neighbor, or co-worker about this challenge and that you are committing to it this week. The more accountability you set up from the get-go, the more apt you are to actually follow through on what you’re committing to!

Looking for some more practical help?

• Check out this page on Pinterest with lots of Morning Routine posts, ideas, and printables.
• Follow my Make Over Your Mornings Pinterest board.
• Download Day 1 of Make Over Your Mornings (it’s FREE!) — my 14-day course to help you jumpstart a successful day.
• Pick up a copy of The 5 A.M. Miracle for inspiration to get up earlier.
• Download the What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast ebook.
• See if your library has any of my 10 Top Favorite Books on Productivity & Time Management.