Cora's Cottage

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I have never been a morning person, but creating a morning that I look forward to and want to get up for helps me to get out of bed with more enthusiasm each morning. In fact, I have gotten to a place where I am starting to enjoy mornings! To get to this point, I have pruned away a lot of unnecessary to-do items from my mornings and worked hard to set myself up for a successful morning starting the night before.

Every evening I “start” my morning routine by making decisions and preparing for the parts of the day that seem to be bottlenecks and cause the most problems, for me these are breakfast and selecting an outfit for the day. To alleviate these problems I tend to have in the mornings, I set out all my breakfast dishes and nonperishable food items the night before as part of my evening routine. After some trial and error and learning, I have started to set out my clothes for the next day as well. This helps me to not only check the weather for the next day each night, but it also keeps me from having to rummage through my closest in the morning which for me means I am less prone to changing my mind about my outfit, not to mention it means less of a mess. When it comes to my clothing options in the morning, out of sight out of mind!

In the mornings, my first order of business is always to get dressed and start my breakfast which is quick and easy because I have already done the prep work for both of these tasks. Once I have gotten dressed and made breakfast, I make it a point to actually sit down to eat breakfast. This has gotten easier, as my husband now joins me to drink his coffee during this time in the morning, so it gives me the bonus of getting to spend some extra time with him before both of our days start. After my husband has left for work, I set about the rest of my morning routine which includes cleaning up the kitchen from breakfast, emptying and reloading the dishwasher as needed, and preparing any items I can for dinner. During this time I also set up my next morning for success by refilling and resetting the coffee pot.

Once the kitchen is tidied up and ready for the evening, I check laundry and start new loads as needed and fold any laundry from the previous night. When the house is set up for success in the evening, I go through my morning hygiene routine of washing my face and brushing my teeth. Washing my face has become a new favorite part of my morning routine recently, as I found a clean beauty brand that has a wonderful skincare lineup I have been loving called You Deserve It All!

After all the physical tasks have been completed and I am ready for my day, I sit down for my morning quiet time in the Word. I chose to wait until I am ready to start my day because I have found that I struggle to maintain focus if I have not eaten breakfast and prepared for the day. Instead of my focus being on the Word of God, I am thinking about all the things I need to do yet before I am ready to leave the house for the day. I have tried doing my morning quiet time with God first thing in the morning when I wake up, but this just isn’t what works best for me in this season of life as I feel more rushed than if I wait until the end of my morning routine.

After much trial and error, I have landed on this morning routine; however, I am trying hard to keep an open mind to changing up my morning routine as needed. Life changes and I need to be flexible to change my routines along with those changes to make sure they are serving me and my family in our current season. Routines are meant to keep our lives more streamlined and easier, not to make our lives more difficult. When a routine begins to feel like a large burden each day, it is time to re-evaluate the routine and make changes to better fit our current season.

The key to having a morning routine, or any routine, that works for you is not comparing your own routine to that of others. While it can be helpful to look at the routines of others, it is best not to try to “copy and paste” a routine into your own life. Look at parts of a morning routine, or any routine, to see which parts might work well in your own life and what parts might work with some modifications. Take the ideas that you think might work for you and try implementing them, making adjustments as needed until you have a routine that works well for you and your family. Each individual is different and will therefore flourish under different routines. This is even true at different times in our lives!