How To Be Organized In The Morning
Monday morning blues can carry on throughout the week if you find it impossible to be organized.
If calm and pleasant mornings are your challenge, there are seven clear cut actions you can take to help make mornings pleasant and help in quick, stress free getaways.
ORGANIZING CHILDREN will always be chaotic if you haven’t taken the time to be organized yourself. All this can change when you start to organize for the morning the night before. Here are seven proven guidelines to organize yourself and your family so you have happy mornings without a hitch.
A CLEAN KITCHEN the night before means you can make lunches. Organize breakfast and know what is for dinner easily. Clutter and disorganization always thrive on incompletes. This means dishes in cupboards, counters clean, floors swept and everything put away. A messy kitchen can turn a well planned morning completely off track into complete chaos.
CLOTHING can be an area of disorganization in the morning. A simple solution is to have every person in the family lay out their clothing the night before. This means inner and outer wear, shoes and socks and any thing else gets laid out or hung in the hanger. Taking five minutes to do this will eliminate any last minute frantic complaints about lost or unwashed clothing. Clothing can be found, cleaned and ironed the night before.
If you find clothing is always a problem with a lack of clean clothes, not enough socks or sports clothes not washed on time, you may want to consider better organizational systems for your laundry. This may entail setting up a system of doing laundry more frequently or complete the laundry cycle of wash, dry, put away.
PACKING BACKPACKS the night before can eliminate forgotten homework and a last minute scramble. Choose a time to organize and pack what you need for the next day. A good tip for a very busy morning is to place backpacks and briefcases near the door.
FOOD. Is this your organizational trouble spot? Is it the breakfast hour, getting lunches made, never having the right food in the house or the mess you come home to at the end of the day? The source of being disorganized in the kitchen can be the lack of planning around menus and grocery shopping, not competing cleaning tasks or simply not getting prepared.
GET UP AND GET READY FIRST. By getting up 15 to 20 minutes earlier changes the whole tempo of your morning. Spending five minutes reviewing your to do list made the night before can remove stress from your day and get you proactive and focused. Supervising your family is much easier when you’ve had coffee on your own or you are already showered and dressed. Simply getting up a little earlier and organizing yourself can make you feel and act more directed and in control
MAKE A CHECKLIST. Checklists are great for very large or forgetful families and make frantic cluttered morning an oasis of calm. It’s also a good tool for self responsibility and learning to get yourself organized for anyone of any age. Checklists can be written on a whiteboard, blackboard or written on paper and put in a family organizational binder or bulletin board.
Items on the morning checklist can include all the reminders for your children such as brushing teeth, making beds or anything else you need them to do.
The evening checklist can include the backpack packing, laying out clothes and anything else that can be done before bedtime.
A good tip is to keep your checklist short and not list more than ten tasks or reminders. Try all or some of the seven proven guidelines for a calm and relaxed morning.
The only way to be organized is to get organized so you can take consistent action and see if the results work for you to make life easier.
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