6 Ways to Simplify Your Morning Routine

Call me crazy, but I love watching morning routine videos on YouTube in my spare time!  Something about them is soothing, and I like to get a glimpse into the things that people do to set their day up for success (especially how they make their coffee/tea!).

I believe the key to a solid morning routine is preparation, and when you have children, mornings can be even more hectic with no preparation. Today I will be sharing 6 ways to simplify your morning routine and minimize (or even eliminate) the stress of the morning rush.

1. Select and iron clothes for the week

This is one of the best things I do that helps to keep the mornings flowing.  I choose my daughter’s clothes for the week every Sunday (I sometimes also iron them on Sundays), so in the morning I just pull the outfit for the day, lay the clothes out and let her get dressed.  Before I started getting her clothes together in advance, I would find myself wasting at least 10 minutes of the day trying to find what she’s going to wear and ironing everything.  That’s 50 minutes a week wasted!  Now it takes around 15 minutes once a week to get everything out and prepared because I’m not stressed from a time crunch and my mind is more prepared to get it all done with ease.

2. Make lunches at night

Something that I have always done is prepare my lunch the night before work.  I like to sleep in, so the more I can get done in advance, the better!  When my daughter began going to school, I did the same for her lunches.  Again, I am not trying to be stressed out in the morning or deal with a time crunch.  By making her lunch at night, I save time in the morning to allow myself to have a smooth morning and sleep in a little longer.  The key to making lunches is to have a good variety on hand of items at all times.  Here's a post all about how I prep my daughters lunches.

3. Put vitamins together and put a glass of water next to them

We should be taking vitamins daily.  It can be easy to forget this important part of your day, so if you are trying to get into the habit of taking them, keep them on the counter along with a glass of water the night before so you will see them and take them right then.  I’m not a fan of swallowing pills, so I have an awesome liquid vitamin that stays refrigerated.  I keep the bottle right in the front so it’s the first thing I see when I open the fridge!

4. Prep or program your coffee/tea

Whatever your morning beverage of choice, you can prep the items at night for easy making in the morning.  If you have a programmable coffee maker, utilize that feature and let the smell of your coffee greet you without having to make it yourself in the mornings.  If you don’t have a programmable machine, you can just have all of your items laid out for easy access (mug, sweetener, frother, premeasured beans, etc.).  These small things add up and contribute to a smoother morning with less time wasted.

5. Cook and freeze breakfast items

There are many items that can be made in advance and frozen for breakfast during the week.  I love to do this with pancakes and biscuits, but this can also be done for breakfast casseroles, breakfast burritos, sausage biscuits, etc.  By making these things ahead of time, breakfast preparation in the morning is faster and the meal can be warming up while you’re getting dressed, packing bags, doing your hair, etc.

6. Get a decent night of sleep to prevent snoozing.

I say decent because good oftentimes doesn’t happen since we’re busy doing all the things!  Aim for a decent night of sleep- maybe 6 hours? If you get a good night of rest, you will wake up not feeling the need to sleep longer and hit snooze.  Snooze is the frenemy you wish you never had.  It makes you happy to snooze, but you end up losing time in the mornings and this is oftentimes the cause of a hectic morning.  I am a self-professed night owl, but lately I have been consciously going to bed earlier than normal.  I have noticed a HUGE difference in how I feel, obviously, but I also have a larger window to have “me time” before I log in for the work day.  This is because after my husband and daughter leave for the day, I have another hour to relax and do things for me that I normally would put off because I’d go back to sleep for the hour instead.  Don’t get me wrong, sometimes me time still involves getting another hour of sleep, but it doesn’t happen as often as it did because I no longer physically feel the need for it as much as I used to.

What are some things you do to have a smooth morning?  Do you have a morning routine that you love, or is it something that you’re working on perfecting?  I’d love to know- tell me in the comments.

3 Popular Online Tools With Built-In Automation

I always talk about ways that automation can make your business and blogging processes easier (here are all my posts about automation).  You may want to start automating some of your processes, but just don’t know where to start.  My first piece of advice is always to check the integrations that are a part of the programs and online tools that you already use (aka native integrations).  The setup for these integrations is usually easy since you’re only linking one app to the one you’re already in, and the integrations often contain automation to make your workflows smoother.

There are many tools that include native integrations, but today I will be sharing three popular tools and some of the useful integrations that focus on automating your tasks.

1/ Trello

My favorite tool for organizing everything from business tasks to vacation planning to Christmas planning has different types of automation built into their platform.  

• Google Calendar sync- this is an awesome power-up (power-ups is what Trello calls their add on tools) where you can connect your Google Calendar to a Trello board, and when you schedule due dates for cards and/or tasks, they will also sync to your calendar.

• Custom automation using Butler- you can create custom automations for your boards and cards using Trello’s automation tool called Butler. You can easily create automated tasks for the following:

  • Automation Tips- this is where Trello suggests automations you can set up based on your activity in your Trello boards. If you frequently do the same types of things in your boards and cards, it suggests an automation to set up for it.

  • Rules- this is where you can create a custom rule to make a task automatically occur based on the rule you have set. Think of this as the rules in your Gmail or Outlook email accounts that you can create. You can get very specific with the actions you want to occur, and the setup

  • Card Button- you can create a button that performs an action that you have set for it. For example, if you want to push a button to make all tasks in a card be marked off rather than clicking each checkbox individually, you can create a button for that.

  • Board Button- this is the same concept as a card button, however, the action that you set for this button will apply to all cards in the board that fit the button criteria. For example, if you want to archive every card that is complete on your board, you can do this with the click of one button.

  • Calendar- this type of automation is where you can set up recurring actions. For example, if you want a card to be created in one of your lists every Monday at 7:00 am, you can set this up to occur.

  • Due Date- due date automation can occur based on due dates you have set for cards and/or checklist items. For example, if you want all cards that are past due to move to the top of a list in your board, you can set the automation up to do so.

2/ Canva

Canva is such a useful and popular tool! I have a graphic design degree and was taught to use Adobe products for creating graphics, however, the ease and multiple layers of functionality that Canva brings is making me consider switching over to them for the bulk of my graphic design creations.  Aside from its ease of use, did you know it even has automation built into it?  One of the best automation features is that you can schedule your Instagram posts directly in Canva using the Content Planner or the Canva Editor.  This means rather than downloading your designs then uploading them to IG or another scheduler tool, you can do it all without leaving the app!

If you use Canva to create your social media graphics and other content, this is a perfect way to streamline your social media process. You can schedule posts for Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook (pages and groups), Slack and Tumblr using a computer or mobile devices (productivity on the go!).

Notes:

• You must have a Canva Pro, Canva for Enterprise, or Canva for Nonprofits users account to use this feature and an Instagram Business account for IG posts.

• Instagram Stories and Reels aren’t supported on desktop, but you can share Stories and Reels from the Canva mobile apps.

• You can only schedule one image to post at a time, so carousels are not compatible with the scheduler.

3/ MailChimp

Mailchimp is still an incredibly popular email marketing platform with plenty of native integrations. There are too many to name in fact, but here is a snippet of different online tool categories they integrate with:

The two integrations that I find most helpful are-

• Canva- you can create designs for your emails and save them directly to your Mailchimp account. This is useful because you no longer need to save your designs to your computer then upload to Mailchimp. Though this isn’t exactly automation, the integration speeds up your workflow and streamlines it…something equally as helpful as automation to me.

• Instagram Content Block- a great feature for cross-promotion (promoting your content in different places at once) is the Instagram content block. This is an integration that shows your instagram feed in your Mailchimp email. You can control how the feed appears in the email, and you can even include the posts full description to further promote your brand message.

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These are many different ways that you can add automation easily to your processes in tools that you already use daily. Check the Integrations section of your favorite tools and see what you can start automating today!