Don't do too much the night before
Maybe you should rethink your night-time prep routines
Over the years, I’ve done a lot of interviews with magazines and websites about how to save time while getting everyone out the door in the morning. A usual line of questioning: What should I do the night before?
My answer is…not much. Interestingly, that answer seldom makes it into the article, because it goes against a lot of conventional wisdom!
So let me explain. No matter how much you get ready the night before you will still have to do something in the morning. Most people don’t sleep in their work clothes. If you wear make-up, you don’t sleep in your make-up. You’re going to have to get yourself, and any other people going with you, physically out of the house, with all that entails.
Moving tasks, not reducing them
This means that when you spend a lot of time preparing things the night before, you are essentially spreading your getting ready over the night and the morning too. That often means it takes longer, in total.
Perhaps there are reasons for doing this spreading (like if someone needs to leave very early and that person likes fancy breakfasts, or you worry you’ll forget something). A lot of my kids shower at night, though mostly so they don’t need to go to school with wet hair. That’s all fine, but if your goal is to save time, getting ready the night before won’t necessarily serve your goal.
Instead, if you want to save time, look for ways to make the mornings easier.
Instead of laying out outfits, have a rotating set of outfits that look great on you. You just put on the next one in the rotation and you’re good to go.
Instead of making kids’ lunches the night before, have the kids buy hot lunch at school. Or, if you need to make lunches for small children, you can throw a few things together while you are in the kitchen eating breakfast.
Speaking of which, instead of prepping or setting out breakfasts the night before, make really streamlined breakfasts. Kids can make their own. Or batch hard boil a bunch of extra eggs while you’re making Sunday breakfast, and let these eggs become the center piece. Paired with a cheese stick, or some smoked salmon, or toast, and a piece of fruit, you’re good to go.
Instead of finding kids’ shoes and backpacks, and putting them by the door, have a place where kids take off their shoes and backpacks and never let these things go anywhere else.
Why life feels like no fun
The reason I’m so sour on elaborate night-before preparation rituals is that they tend to cut into leisure time. People put the kids to bed, do chores, get ready for the next day, and then get to their fun. But if the getting ready takes too much time, then the fun doesn’t happen until late. And so people stay up late because they want their fun!
The trouble with this is that the one thing that is guaranteed to make a morning horrible is not getting enough sleep. This makes the impulse to spend a lot of time getting ready the night before counter productive!
So, instead, enjoy your leisure time at night. Then make your mornings easier by not taking on jobs that shouldn’t be yours, and by making your own getting ready as streamlined as possible. It’s generally better to get ready once rather than get ready twice.
I have a counterpoint to this advice. For me, getting things ready the night before DOES save time, because I’m employing another piece of advice I got from you, which is to match tasks to your mental state. In the mornings, it takes a bit for my brain to fully come online, so in the meantime I’m distractible and can’t think clearly - I might stare at my closet thinking too hard and too long about what to wear, or I might be doing one thing, remember another thing I need to do and do that thing, then do other things, and only then remember the first thing I had started but never finished doing. So, trying to do everything I need to do to get ready with my morning brain ends up taking much longer. The night before, however, I’m more clear-headed and focused. So even though I’m doing the exact same things I would be doing in the morning, I’m doing them *more efficiently* than I would in the morning, and thus still saving time overall.
Once, I packed up our backpacks on a Sunday night, put them ready by the door, so we wouldn’t need to scramble in the am, and we got burgled! The packed bags with our laptops made it super easy for them. Lesson learned. But in all seriousness, we now largely wfh and have 1 kid with uncomplicated prep needs, so we don’t do a ton of prep the night before. We are all night showerers though. When I’m teaching, I’ve got a very early start, so I pack my bag and set out clothes but nothing extensive.
We like to start the day with a clean slate (counters clean, dishwasher stacked) but otherwise don’t do a ton of prep. My husband packs the snack while kiddo is eating breakfast. When I’m feeling organised, I’ll sometimes make up a basket of uniform sets so T can just grab and go, but the uniforms are fairly straight forward (leggings, polo, jumper).
Lunches… we have free school lunch in Scotland and it is such a massive improvement in my life. I really feel bad for my pals who pack their kids lunch. But also, maybe they could just tell their kid to lump it? But I have a happy eater who quite enjoys school lunch. T is at camp today which doesn’t provide lunch and I thought it was a faff packing lunch, considering what is nut free etc.