A how-to guide to Master Your Morning Routine with Kids

Getting yourself and your kids up and ready for the day and out the door on time is no small task. Sometimes it can feel like nothing but chaos and barking out commands. But what if I told you that school mornings with your kids could be peaceful and relatively stress-free? Don’t believe me? Keep reading to find out how to master your morning routine with kids!

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One of the worst mom guilt moments I experience is when the morning has been chaos and I am rushing my kids out the door with a hurried and frustrated ‘I Love You’. I don’t want my last interaction with my kids to be frustrated and forced.

I want the morning to run smoothly and I want to send my kids off to school with a big squeeze and a happy ‘I love you, have a great day!’ sort of attitude. So what can you do to make sure your mornings run smoothly?

One of the main ideas behind changing your morning routine is changing when you do certain things. The tasks that you perform aren’t changing at all. You are just being proactive about the inevitable and doing them in a different order.

Prep for the day, the Night Before

Do your kids eat lunch from home that you pack them every morning? Do your kids play after-school sports? Or do you wake up every morning to a house that is a complete disaster? The reality is, is that you still have to make your kids’ lunches, you still have to get their after-school sports bags ready, and you still have to tidy up the house. But instead of living life flying by the seat of your pants, do these things AT NIGHT.

Mom hugging her kids on a peaceful school morning

Clean house, happy Mom

I don’t know about you, but my mood seems to be directly affected by the state of my house. I wish it wasn’t so, and I have tried to change that for years, but I simply feel more peace in a clean home. So every night before I got to bed, I have several tasks that I complete to make sure that I wake up to a clean house. There are some nights, I am just too tired. But I would say about 95% of the time, I do these things:

Wash the dishes, and load the dishwasher
Start the dishwasher
Wipe the counters
Do a 10-minute pick-up

Doing these simple tasks allows me to set myself, and my day up for success. Because nobody likes waking up to a dirty house. If you do, you are always trying to play catch-up.

Other Morning Prep Tasks

There are a couple of other tasks that I like to do the night before that helps my mornings move a lot faster. The first one is to prioritize my tasks for the following day. That way, when I wake up and get going, I know what I need to work on first.

The next thing may sound a bit silly, but it can really be helpful in the morning! Setting out your outfit (and/or your workout clothes) for the following day can cut out a lot of time that you would otherwise spend trying to decide on an outfit.

Master Your Morning Routine with Kids

So far we have talked about the things that you can do to set yourself up for success for the following day, but what about your kids? There are also several things that kids can do (or things you can help with) to make your kids’ mornings go smoothly as well.

Get homework done the night before
Pack home lunches and store them in the fridge
Pack backpacks (don’t forget the library books!)
Set out your outfit for the next day
Gather needed equipment or clothing and pack your after-school sports bags.

A lot of these things are things that your kids can do for themselves! You just need to make sure that they are getting done! And don’t be like me and make the mistake of not checking what food your daughter packed in her lunchbox. One time, my daughter put in an uncooked package of Top Ramen for her lunch! ????

Master your Morning 5-Day Challenge

To help you makeover your morning routine with kids, I have created a small 5-day challenge to help teach you step-by-step how to transform your chaotic mornings into peaceful ones. Sign up below to receive my occasional newsletter and get your free printables!

I recommend printing these pages on white cardstock, and using a laminator and laminating sheets so the pages (and outfit tags) are sturdier and they will last longer!