Streamlining My Mornings

I am a morning person and always have been. I wake up ready to start the day (almost everyday). In the morning, it is important to me to be able to fit in my exercise as well as spend a little bit of time with my daughter before work. Therefore, I need to do a few things ahead of time to streamline my morning to make it run smoothly. I am going to share some of my tips and tricks with you for what I do everyday or week to make our lives run smoothly in the morning.

1. Make lunches ahead of time

While I am making dinner the night before (or right after dinner), I make Troy and I's lunches. We typically have leftovers from another meal which I often purposely make too much of so that we can have leftovers for lunch. Soups, casseroles, crockpot meals and more make great lunches.

2. Prep breakfasts ahead of time

During the week, I mostly eat oatmeal daily and I mix up a big container of my favorite mix ahead of time to make it easier. Here is what goes in the mix: oats, chia seeds, ground flax and peanut powder or protein powder. A couple of times a week, I put a scoop of this oatmeal mixture in jars, add water, and let it soak in the fridge. When I am ready to eat it, I just microwave it for a minute and a half and add a big scoop of peanut butter. It makes the morning really easy when my favorite oatmeal is ready to go.

3. Set out my clothes for the week

Over the weekend, I set out outfits for myself at work for the week ahead. This makes getting ready in the morning a lot easier for me because I do not have to think about what I am going to wear the following day. Each morning, I just pick from the dresser of folded clothes which outfit to wear. I get to wear jeans on Friday to work so that makes it easy for that day.

A clean house makes me happy! Jaxen doesn't seem to care either way.

4. Straighten the house after dinner

I have a hard time leaving the house if it is messy. I just want to take 20 minutes and clean it up. What I find that helps me out mentally with this is cleaning up when I get home from work or after dinner. Adalyn is at a stage of destroying the house with toys, kitchen utensils, potholders, books, etc. etc. so we are constantly straightening. It makes it so much easier to clean the night before then during a busy morning.

5. Get Adalyn's things ready the night before

Four days per week, Adalyn is taken care of by my mom and by Troy's mom. As she gets older, she needs a lot less stuff which is so nice. No more bottles especially makes it nice. We keep diapers and wipes at each of our caregiver's houses so that we do not have to bring them each day. All that we typically bring is an outfit to wear which I set out the night before.

6. Get our coffee ready the night before

We use a Keurig which we love so much. Sometimes, we use k-cups but often, we use a reusable cup that we have. Each night, we fill the Keurig with water, get out our coffee cup and fill up the k-cup with the kind of coffee that we want the next day.
We have been loving the Dixie® To Go cups which are great for travel. We especially love to bring these on a trip or to go out somewhere where we do not want to bring our reusable cups. Troy and I need our coffee in the mornings and this makes it really easy. No washing or cleanup is required and it is one less thing to have to worry about in the morning helping us streamline our mornings. The lid is leak-resistant and has an insulated layer to keep your beverage hot which is perfect for this cool mornings.
When I am able to get these things done, I have more time for what is important to me like walking with my dog or cuddling my little girl before she goes off to her caregiver's houses and she gives me the 20th hug or kiss for the day!

I was selected for this paid opportunity as a member of CLEVER and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.