Mornings have been the bane of my existence.

I’ve never been a morning person or had any type of morning routine. Ever since I was a young child I’d stay up late and sleep in the next morning.

As I got older, certain necessities forced me to get up somewhat early in the morning (college classes, job, etc). I’d give myself just enough time to throw myself together and cross my fingers hoping to make it to my destination in the 25 minutes I allotted myself for the 30 minute commute.

I clearly remember one of my Biology professors asking me if I “was having some long evenings or if his lectures were just that boring,” after he’d caught me dozing multiple times in his 8 am class.

Fast forward a dozen years…I’m still not a morning person, but life has a funny way of making you conform to necessity.

That primary necessity being: getting my husband out the door for work in the morning before five AM!

After I had kissed him out the door my typical next activity was either head directly back to bed, or if not that tired, sit down and waste time perusing Facebook or Pinterest until my children woke up and my day was required to start.

Once in a while my disgust at the chaos and mess in my house won out and I’d spend my time digging in and going crazy cleaning and picking up what I was able to before life started.

Most of the time the blinders would go up and I’d plan on dealing with the mountains of laundry and piles of dishes at a more convenient time. Preferably when I’d enjoy doing them more. Funny thing was; the joy and overwhelming happiness of cleaning crusty Mac n’ Cheese out of last night’s pot (or let’s be real, two nights ago) and folding three huge baskets of laundry never hit me.

So the mess got worse until I couldn’t manage and I’d have to halt life to bring it back to a functioning level. I’d never quite make it to complete satisfactory conditions though.

Full disclosure, my mom often was the one who’d stop by for other reasons, and would stay and help me bring my home back from the brink. Nothing like mommy rescuing your house from disaster, to feel like a less than capable adult. 100% my fault and my mother is the most helpful, amazing, selfless person on this planet.

 

In my chronic struggle to reduce the chaos in my life I ended up joining an online bingo cleaning group. It maybe sounds hoaky, but it’s quite entertaining. The group encourages you to make lists for certain lengths of time (5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes) and they’ll call out random numbers on the appropriate times and you do the corresponding chore on your list.

This little group revolutionized my mornings and gave me my 60 Minute Morning Routine.

The five o’clock morning game happened to be six – ten minute slots. Since my husband is out the door at five, I decided to give it a try.

Within one week of doing this, my mornings, and thus my entire day had been entirely transformed. It’s amazing what you can get done in 10 minutes. It’s also shocking how fast one hour goes, when you are breaking it down into ten minute slots.

After a week or two my 60 Minute Morning Routine had a fairly consistent feel to them, although still flexible enough to accommodate the unique situations that sometimes arise.

 

My 60 Minute Morning Routine time slots are:

5:00-5:10 DISHES

I truly dislike doing dishes, and they seem to know my utter distain for them, and they chose to spite me by multiplying every minute I turn my back or leave the kitchen. When my husband and I bought our house we both had two “must haves” on our list: His were a garage and a decent sized yard, mine were at least two bathrooms and a dishwasher. Guess who didn’t get one of their “must haves”? (hint: our two car garage doesn’t have space for our vehicles and I can’t even see our truck and trailer through the trees in our backyard) Needless to say “dishes” has been a part of every To Do list I’d ever made before starting my 60 Minute Morning Routine.

In the first weeks of my new morning routine I often had Dishes listed at least twice out of my six chores and I’d still have dishes left. Amazingly after a short time it went down to one and now I can easily wash what I have, or sometimes it’s just put away the clean ones and tidy up the counters.

5:10-5:20 RANDOM CLEANING

This job varies depending on what is needed. Ten minutes is just enough time to get one chore done. I decide that morning or the night before which I’ll be doing.

My random cleaning choices rotate between:

• Sweeping my hard floors
• Vacuuming the carpets
• Wiping down the bathroom
• Picking up the living room and dining room
• Stripping and remaking our bed

5:20-5:30 WASH HAIR OR THANK YOU NOTE

I wash my hair every other day. Ten minutes is more than enough time for a shower, as long as I don’t start daydreaming. Being conscious of how long my shower is taking is a good thing, and saves on water as well.

If it’s not a hair day, I decided it was a great time to quick sit down and jot off a thank you note. I often put off writing these, coming up with whatever excuse in my head works at the time. I’m also a perfectionist and think if it’s not a novel it’s not a good enough letter. So giving myself only ten minutes to write, address, and stamp a letter is the best way to get over that ridiculous self-requirement. One of my goals is to be more verbal in my appreciation of others. Funny how I never run out of people I can write thank you notes to.

5:30-5:40 MAKE BED, GET DRESSED, BRUSH TEETH

These items can usually all get done in one ten minute slot. I try to have my clothes picked out the night before. We also often end up with one, if not two, children in my bed by morning time. If this is the case I adjust accordingly and my bed doesn’t get made and if I’m lucky I can sneak into my room and quick grab clothes without the baby noticing and deciding it must be breakfast time.

5:40-5:50 LAUNDRY

There always is some form of laundry needing to be worked on. Whether it’s separating and starting loads, pulling out what’s in the dryer and folding it, or putting away what happens to be sitting in a basket. What’s amazing about this is that I no longer have: clothes that accidently sit in the washer for days, clean clothes still in a laundry basket from the week prior still waiting to be either folded and/or put away, or overwhelming piles of dirty laundry because my laundry day had somehow been interfered with and it seemed impossible to catch up. Those situations had been my reality for years.

5:50-6:00 MAKEUP and HAIR

I leave this one for last, since I don’t want to sweat it all off right away. It also sometimes takes longer than 10 minutes. As a mom of two children (soon to be three) three years old and under, doing makeup and hair hasn’t even existed in my vocabulary for the past quarter of a decade, except hurriedly in the car on the way to church, trying to time my swipes of mascara with the bumps in the highway so I don’t look like a zebra whose face is melting. Even now my routine is not complicated – foundation, eyeliner, mascara, and some definition gel or bobby pins in the hair. I’ve found that being a little more put together makes a world of difference on your perspective for the day.

The first 60 minutes of your day can set you up for an extremely successful day.

After a 60 Minute Morning Routine you’ve already had a successful day! Even if you’ve not done one other thing around your house that day, this morning routine ensures accomplishment. No longer scrambling the last minutes to pull yourself together, you can focus on all the other issues at hand, which always seem to grow as the day goes on. Here are a few more tips to make 60 Minute Mornings a success for you.

• Choose and stick to your start time. Mine starts at 5 am, that doesn’t mean yours has to. By all means six o’clock or seven o’clock is just fine as well. I do recommend starting an hour before whatever time you typically get up. This quote puts it in perspective. “Every morning you have two choices: Continue to sleep with dreams or Wake up and chase your dreams. The choice is yours…..” A good compromise is to choose a time that you can handle, but it’s still earlier than your “normal” wakeup.

 

• You don’t have to be repetitive with your mornings. Some people might find this repetitive schedule boring and uninspiring. Make it your own! If you’d rather do something different every ten minutes every day of the week, go for it! Don’t let guidelines set you up for failure if you know it’s not you.

 

• Make longer time segments if necessary. Ten minute slots might not be the right length of time for you. They go quite fast, often I still have laundry and dishes remaining after my ten minutes working on them are up, I’m ok with that. I plan on doing more later that day, but that morning jump starts me on actually working on it. For you, this might be frustrating and lead to things being left unfinished. If that is you, then maybe you need four 15 minutes slots or two 15 minutes and three 10 minutes. Both are short enough to need focus and not be an overwhelming task, but that extra five minutes can get you through those slightly longer projects without having leftover work.

 

• Set a timer. If you don’t want to be constantly looking at the clock or noticing you’ve run over one of your ten minute slots, set a timer. It’s not the end of the world, but still annoying since you’re now running behind on the next job and often you can’t catch up without cutting corners or skipping things. I recommend a nine minute timer. Most timers will alarm for one minute before they self-shutoff. Once the timer is going off you know you have one minute to wrap up your task. When the alarm stops you press start on it again and move on to the next job.

I’m hoping my 60 Minute Morning Routine helps you improve your mornings as much as it has me.

Please drop me a note sharing what you think or how it’s working for you!

~ Caylin