3 Tips for an Easy & Organized Morning Routine

These three tips will help your weekday mornings go much more smoothly to get the kids off to school without the stress! Forget the hectic mornings! Just a few easy changes and you will be on your way to happy, easy morning for the kids and parents! Grab the free printables for organizing your morning routine and the daily outfits for your kids at the bottom of this post.

One of the most unexpected (and fun) things about blogging has been how far and wide my ideas have reached. I have had people from almost every country on my blog reading recipes, projects, or ideas. With all the eyes and ears, I have had the opportunity to make some pretty amazing parnerships and do many things that are fun, exciting and sometimes downright scary. Like for instance… going on the news live.

As a part of my brand ambassadorship with El Monterey, I have been able to appear on the news once earlier this month talking about easy breakfast ideas for busy mornings, and today I will be on again, discussing how to take back your mornings by keeping organized. I often joke that with three kids I have definitely met my match, but at no time do I feel that more than on busy school mornings. To be completely transparent, there are still plenty of mornings we are a mess over here, but there are a few tips and tricks I have found to keep things running smoothly most mornings.

1. Plan your Breakfasts

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. We all have heard these words thousands of times, but it is especially true when it comes to our kids! Kids who eat a filling, protein rich breakfast not only do better in school, but also are healthier over all. I have found the key to making sure that we get that healthy breakfast in each morning without throwing the whole morning timeline off is to sit down at the beginning of the week and do a mini-meal plan for breakfast.

It doesn’t have to be long, involved, or drawn out in any way, but knowing what is on the menu when you wake up really streamlines the routine in the morning and starts the whole day off with purpose. I have a post I did here with 6 Five Minute Breakfast Ideas, but really, you can plan anything that strikes your fancy. From eggs, to cereal, or even El Monterey Breakfast burritos which can be made in only 3.5 minutes and have 9 grams of protein. These are perfect when you are on the run since they are packaged up perfectly in the tortilla.

Meal planning for breakfast can be as simple as jotting down your ideas on a notepad or note on your phone, but I like to use a chart so that it keeps, me, my husband and the kids all on the same page and working as a team, even first thing in the morning. I also find that when the kids know what to expect, there is far less complaining when it comes time to eat.

You can grab the free printable for the cute little chart I use at the bottom. Just print it off, then place it behind the glass in a frame and use a dry erase marker to jot down what you will be having each day.

2. Outfit Hanger Organizer

After breakfast, the next hurdle we usually run into is the kids getting dressed in a reasonable amount of time, independently and without losing focus. It seems like I say the words, ” Go get dressed!” And they hear, “Go play with whatever catches your eye and abandon all sense of responsibility!”

I have found for us, it helps tremendously if the kids clothing is already picked out for them before the morning. With these printable hanger tags you can pick out outfits for an entire school week on Sunday when you have more time, and then come the morning, your kids already have what they need to wear picked out and ready for them. It really curbs the distractions, dawdling, and most of all the bickering about whether or not they want to wear that today.

Grab the free printable hang tags below. Just print them off, cut them out, then slide them onto the hanger to designate the day to wear each outfit. Then when it is time to get dressed their clothes are ready and waiting for them.

3. Prep a Week of Lunches

There may be nothing I dread more about school mornings than packing a lunch. It is just one of those things that is so hard to get done the night before, but when you wait to pack it until the morning of, it seems to really throw the morning into a tailspin and then everyone is running behind.

I shared some tips here about how you can use the freezer meal concept to pack 2 weeks of lunches in only 20 minutes. Check it out and get those lunches prepped and waiting for your kids to head out for the day for school. Better yet, get them involved in helping to make them!

Now that we have all the hard stuff about mornings sorted out, grab the printables below, and go for it!