How to Create Morning and Evening Routines for Moms and Kids // How to Easily Manage Your Home Part 3
Have you ever tried to create a morning or evening routine but found it difficult to stick with?
I think we all have😅!
There are a few reasons for this: one is that we don’t have our day set up correctly (see How to Easily Manage Your Home Part 1 and Part 2), another reason is that we create routines that are too difficult to stick with, or maybe there is nothing in our routine to motivate us to complete it.
No matter what your problem has been, this article that will help you solve them!
It is easy to get so caught up with life that we forget to stop and think about how we start and end the day. Or worse still, we forget to think about how our kids start and end the day.
Starting and ending the day on the right foot will help you defeat overwhelm and make you feel like you are in control of your life.
And getting a morning and evening routine set up for your kids will do away with a lot of the nagging that goes along with getting ready for the day or getting ready for bed.
So let’s go ahead and get started!
Grab your pen and notebook, or get out your Autopilot Workbook. We will be using the Daily Routines for Mom and Daily Routines for Kids pages.
If you are making your own template, that is totally ok! I just recommend that you put 7 little checkboxes by each item that you are including in the routine.
Putting boxes or circles or whatever you want to check off makes it more motivated for you (and your kids!) to complete the checklist. And this also allows your children to gain independence and take ownership of completing their own checklists once they get the hang of it.
1) Mom’s Morning Routine
I figured that we would start with the first routine of the day and work through the day setting up our routines.
Since I have a detailed post on creating an effective morning routine even if you aren’t a morning person, this will just be an overview. You can see the full post here if you are interested.
1. Brainstorm
To get started with Mom’s Morning Routine, we are just going to write down a list of things that we would like to do if we had a little extra time in our day.
You don’t have to be too realistic at this point, this is a dream list!
2. Time Each Item
Once you have your list complete, write down the amount of time that each item on your list should take next to it.
This will help you determine how many things you can do during your routine.
3. Choose Your Wake Up Time
When you are choosing what time you want to get up, be realistic about when you think you will be able to get out of bed… and when you think your kids will get out of bed.
Ideally, you’ll want to have the bulk of your morning routine (if not all of it) done before your kids get up.
I like to have my morning routine completed before my girls wake up. It just helps me get the day started on the right foot when I get some things accomplished and have some time alone before the house gets busy.
When I sleep until my kids wake up, I feel like I am already starting my day behind.
So I want to set the wake-up time that will allow me to complete my morning routine before the earliest that the girls will wake up.
Our girls typically wake up between 7:00 am-8:00 am, which means I need to have my routine before 7:00 am.
If I set it to be finished at 8:00 am, I wouldn’t be finished if they wake up early. But if I set my routine to be finished at 7:00 am and they sleep a little longer, bonus time for me!
So I decided to set my wake-up time for 6:00 am. It is much easier to wake up when someone else is waking up! And since Ross wakes up at 6:00 am, that is a time that was realistic for me to wake up.
4. Prioritize Your List
Now we are going to go through and prioritize our list.
Don’t prioritize your list based on how you think it should be prioritized… prioritize it the way that you want to prioritize it.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
You may feel like you should put exercising on your prioritized list because it’s good for you and you’ll feel good after you do it…
BUT if you don’t already have a good exercise routine, trying to exercise in the morning while you are trying to create and stick with a morning routine is going to be difficult.
If exercising isn’t motivating for you, you are more likely to hit your snooze button many, many times instead of getting up early and getting it done.
Establish a good morning routine first, then work on the exercise routine or vice versa!
No matter what you think you should have in your morning routine, you will be most motivated to get up when you have something that you look forward to on your routine.
5. Transfer Your List onto Your Template
Then the last step for creating Mom’s Morning Routine is to transfer your finished routine onto the Daily Routines for Mom page if you are using the Autopilot Workbook.
My Current Morning Routine:
Before the Girls Wake Up:
- Brush Teeth
- Do Devotions
- Drink Water
- Work Until the girls Wake Up
After the Girls Wake Up:
Once the girls wake up, we do this part of our Morning Routines in tandem. (They make their bed while I make mine, they get themselves dressed while I get dressed.)
- Get Dressed
- Make Bed
That is the end of the official morning checklist, but I also write down:
- Work out
- Shower
Because I like to keep track of how often I am working out, but it isn’t something that I need to get done before the girls wake up.
Sometimes we go on a bike ride in the mornings, or sometimes I will work out while they are eating breakfast, it just depends on the day and what we have going on.
So you can make your Morning Routine as Simple or Complex as you would like!
Only you know what will be motivating for you to get up and do every day and if your morning routine should end when your kids get up, or if you want to include everything in your Morning Block on your checklist.
But no matter how you have your Morning Routine whether it is Simple or Complex, I just recommend that you have A Morning Routine.
I found for myself that I am just a better mom when I have a little time for myself every morning to get a couple of the things done that I want to before I start doing things for my family all day.
2) Kid’s Morning Routine
Now let’s move on to creating the Morning Routine for Your Kids.
If you are using the Autopilot Workbook, print off as many of the Daily Routines for Kids pages as you have children. (I printed off 2 since I have 2 kids. 🙂
Write Down Everything They Need to Do
The Morning Routine for the kids should be much simpler than yours, but it is still a good idea to write everything down.
Before I started doing the checklists with my kids, every morning and evening was a struggle to get through our routine.
Once we wrote it down and gave them a checklist, they were able to take ownership of getting themselves ready for the day and for bed at night (even if they still like us to tuck them in!)
As you are writing everything down, even though we want their routine to be simple, we also want it to be detailed.
If you haven’t noticed, kids aren’t the greatest at connecting the dots… so if you don’t write down fold pajamas, put them away, and get dressed, the pajamas will probably end up thrown on the floor.
You have to write down every little step because you are teaching them the process. They don’t already know the proper order of things, so you have to tell them.
My Girls’ Morning Routines:
- Go Potty
- Fold Pajamas
- Put Away Pajamas
- Get Dressed
- Make Bed
- Read Bible Story
- Work on Memory Verse
- Drink Water
3) Kid’s Evening Routine
Now that we have our morning routines taken care of, let’s shift to creating our evening checklists.
In my house, our evening routine starts when we finish family worship and it ends when the girls are in bed going to sleep.
I recommend using your evening checklist for your kids in a similar way, essentially it is just a checklist of everything that they need to do to get ready for bed.
That way when you tell your kids to do their evening checklist, they are ready for the bed when they are finished.
So go ahead and write down everything that you want to put on your children’s checklist on the Daily Routine’s for Kids Template, or on your own template if you are making your own.
Just be sure that your own template has at least 7 checkboxes for each of the items on the kids’ checklist.
This will help them start to do the checklists on their own.
Now you may be thinking that your kids are too young to have their own routine that they do by themselves each evening. And I completely understand that. my girls are 3 and 6 and they still need quite a bit of help to get through their evening routine.
But having the evening routine as a checklist takes away a lot of the negotiating when it comes to getting ready for bed.
The checklist also helps them get excited about getting ready for bed and it gives them some independence.
So if you have any difficulty getting your kids ready for bed, I recommend trying out the checklist!
My Kid’s Evening Routine
- Put on Pajamas (By Themselves)
- Put Clothes in the Laundry or Away in the Drawers (By Themselves)
- Brush Teeth (With Help)
- Go Potty (By Themselves)
- Read a Story (With Help)
- Sing a Song (With Help)
- Say a Prayer (With Help)
- Turn on Lectrofans (By Themselves)
Once they get to the part of the routine where they are reading, singing, and praying, Ross and I rotate back and forth with helping them.
This allows each girl to get individual mommy and daddy time and it lets them read stories that are appropriate to their ages.
If you aren’t sure how to create a simple, effective bedtime routine, check out How to Create a Bedtime Routine for Your Kids.
4) Mom’s Evening Routine
The last routine that we need to set up is our evening routine.
I think it is important for moms to have an evening routine because it can be really easy for us to keep doing housework until we go to bed. And it’s really nice to start and end your day with a little bit of “me” time.
But when we create our evening routine we don’t have to go back to square one since we already created our wish list on our scratch paper of all of the things that we wanted to do when we had a little bit of free time.
So we are just going to grab that Prioritized wishlist from back when we were creating our morning routine and look at the items that didn’t make the cut.
Now keep in mind as you are creating your evening routine, that you want to take your personality into account.
You might be looking at my morning and evening routine thinking “wow she is getting so much stuff done, I should do that too!” But remember that I have a Type A personality, and I LOVE being busy and working.
It’s actually relaxing for me to get work done… I know, I know, I’m a little crazy 😂.
But if you have a Type B personality, or a Type C, or even a Type D personality, the things that I enjoy probably won’t interest you… and they definitely won’t relax you!
You might enjoy reading a book, having a bubble bath, working on a craft, or maybe even just sitting and doing nothing for a while.
And that is totally ok!
You want to do whatever will help you relax and get ready for bed.
My Evening Routine
- Put on Pajamas
- Wash My Face
- Make and Drink Tea
- Work on Classwork
- Work
- Brush My Teeth
- Read a Book
6) Write Your Routines Into Your Block Schedule
And the final step is to take your Daily Block Schedule and write down “Mom’s Morning Routine, Kids’ Morning Routines, Kids’ Evening Routines, and Mom’s Evening Routine” in the correct blocks.
The reason that we want to put these into our daily routine is that it can be really easy to build these routines and never get around to using them.
By putting your routines into your Daily Block Schedule, the routines will become helpful tools that enable you to live a better life.
I hope you found this helpful! Let me know in the comments what your routines look like!
Be sure you grab your free Easy Home Management Checklist to see every routine that will help simplify your life.
Ready to Start Easily Managing Your Home?
If you are ready to get organized and make a plan that will help you run your home without stress, check out my course Put Your Home on Autopilot!
This course walks you through the steps to get your home practically running itself!
In Put Your Home on Autopilot, you will learn how to set up effective cleaning systems, set up your day for success, and start making time for the things that matter most.
In just one month you will go from feeling overwhelmed to in control. And if you have any questions along the way, I’m only an email away!
I hope to see you inside the course!
(Or if you are more of a do-it-yourself kind of gal, you can just grab the Autopilot Workbook and work through it yourself. 🙂
