Makeover Your Morning & Evening Routines
Me and routines have a love hate relationship. I love to sit down with pretty pins, calendars and planners and make out a routine for my life. It’s fun! I feel empowered! I’m ready! But then after about 1 week I just don’t follow through. It’s like making myself a detailed road map and then deciding I’d rather go off-roading and follow my free spirit. And what happens? Nothing gets done.
I know I’m not the only one who struggles with routine. Right now, with having a new set of twin baby girls, my normal routine is EXTREMELY thrown off. Now I’ve got to develop a whole new routine and adjust my life to needs of these two little ones in addition to my 4 year old. I’m sort of learning and adjusting all over again.
With the new school year starting up I wanted to give you 5 tips to help you makeover your morning and evening routine to help you thrive!
1. Plan Your Routine Around YOUR Family
I think one of the hardest things for some of us to do is not try to make our routines look like the routines of the people around us.
- If you aren’t an OCD clean freak, don’t try to adopt your OCD friend’s cleaning routine. You will break down on day one.
- If you aren’t the homeschool mom type, don’t try to homeschool your kids just because your best friend seemingly does easily with 5 kids.
Your routine should be built around your personality, attention span and how your family functions best. Think about that as you make a routine. What kind of schedule do you, your spouse and our kids operate on best even if it’s weird and doesn’t look like anyone else’s routine that you know!
2. Get Organized In the Morning or Evening
Some of us are night owls and some of us are early birds. I myself am a night owl. I just don’t fight it anymore. I’ve read countless books trying to convince myself that being and early bird was something I needed to adopt in my life to be the most efficient person possible. But ya’ll, I just. can’t. do. it. I can get up just fine, but I can’t function at maximum brain capacity until my kids are in bed at night. Then it’s on like Donkey Kong and I’m ready to listen to podcasts and get stuff done!
I was super thrilled to find out that Crystal Paine from Money Saving Mom had developed an online, 14-day course called Make Over Your Evenings. She teaches you how to have a successful day by making your plans the night before. That is right up my alley! 
She originally created the 14-day online course called Makeover Your Mornings which I bought but never got excited about because my mornings are basically me sitting at the kitchen table staring into space drinking coffee. But if you are a morning person, I highly recommend that you consider taking that course!
If you’ve never tried taking an online course, I highly recommend it. It’s better than reading a self-help book, it’s entertaining and you’re learning something. I take online courses all the time and find they challenge, inspire and keep me learning as a mom of 3 in her 30’s! You can also sit around in your jammies when you have time and take the courses!
3. Keep it Simple
One thing that I have learned is the simpler I keep things, the better off I am. In the past year I’ve dived deep into the philosophy of batching. That is, I focus on one or at the most two tasks per day and I don’t do anything else. This keeps me focused with my eye on the prize for whatever I’m doing. So on Saturdays I batch wash laundry. I focus all day on doing laundry from start to finish. Another example of this is when I edit podcasts. I will dedicate a whole day just to editing audio. Or a whole day just to writing posts. Or a whole day just to editing pictures. That’s all I focus on and I’m much more efficient because I don’t bounce from project to another.
Batching for you might be cleaning floors one day. Cleaning bathrooms another day. Or any number of tasks that you find get left half done when you try and multitask!
4. Find a Way to Follow Through
When I made over my family’s routine in the Spring of 2016 ( you know…before the twins arrived) we went with a whole new approach to our day that helped me keep my sanity, helped my husband have more time for what he enjoys plus exercise and made our lives more efficient.
The key to a routine working for my family, was that my husband and I built it together and kept each other accountable knowing it made a difference.
Our plan looked like this: I knew that I needed to have dinner on the table as soon as my husband got home so he could eat. then play with our son and then go work on his hobbies while he still had some energy. My son and I could go to the gym. Cressel (my husband) knew that when we got back from the gym he needed to stop working on his hobby and help me with my son’s bedtime routine. Once the kid was in bed, it was Cressel’s turn to go to the gym. I cleaned up the house and did my night owl routine and then when he got back from the gym we would hang out for an hour and be in bed by 10:30. That’s what worked for our family and the accountability of my spouse helped me stay on track.
If accountability isn’t an option for you as a single person or parent consider setting yourself tangible rewards. Like if you do this, you’ll get this.
Example: If I keep my routine for 1 week:
- I’ll add $20 to my allowance
- Have dinner out.
- Get a manicure.
- Treat myself to a coffee.
I hope these ideas have inspired you to makeover your own morning or evening routine in a quest to build a life that brings you more satisfaction and less stress. Don’t fit your routine in the mold of everyone around you. Make it your own and you’ll be much happier!
Kim Anderson is the organized chaos loving author behind the Thrifty Little Mom Blog. She helps other people who thrive in organized chaos to stress less, remember more and feel in control of their time, money, and home. Kim is the author of: Live, Save, Spend, Repeat: The Life You Want with the Money You Have. She’s been featured on Time.com, Money.com, Good Housekeeping, Women’s Day, and more!