Night Time Routine – Getting Ready For The Next Day

A couple of the most common requests from the Planning With Kids survey were for:

  • More info on the day to day stuff I do that makes our house run smoothly.
  • Insights into other families and how they manage the daily situations.

Over the year I will be sharing with you posts from other mums and how they manage with particular parts of the day. They will be from a combination of bloggers and non bloggers. Being the planner I am, I have already asked some lovely mums for posts that I will publish in October!

For each part of the day I will either post about what we do in our house, or if I have already written about it, I will link back to the relevant post. It is part of the “What Other Mums Do” series. As the series grows all the posts will be collated with this tag for easy reference.

So today I am very excited to introduce the first one, which is from Claire Hewitt. Claire blogs here and describes herself as “a fabulous mum, marketing guru, and domestic goddess failure. She sometimes waffles on about her love of handwriting. She works in Social Media for a large Melbourne Maternity hospital, where she gets to have her fix of gorgeous babies without having to give birth to them.”

Claire will take you through what she does the night before that helps her get organised for the next day. You can see my previous post on the subject here 10 Things To Do Before You Go To Bed.

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I am not late, I don’t miss things, my kids don’t turn up places with teeth and hair unbrushed (usually) but this is something I have always had to work on.

My mornings are my worst time. When considering going back to work after having children, I even included the frantic mornings as a ‘con’ on the list of to go or not to go back to work, was the stress to our household worth it?

But I have now been getting to work, dressed and organised for over five years and there are a few things that I have learnt (the hard way) that are essential to making this happen.

Clothes ready

The night before, while the kids are in the bath, please note that mine are not of the drowning in the bath stage now, do not use this time if you have little ones, always remain in the bathroom with them, but I use the time of getting jarmies out and ready to also be getting clothes for the next day out. We have a mainly unused second lounge which is where the clothes for the next day go. ALL OF THEM, socks, shoes and hairbands included.

I also place the hair brush here, no matter how many I buy, we can never find them when we are running late.

Bags ready

On the floor beside this I have the required crèche or school bag at their feet, with hats and drink bottles and what ever is required, other than food.

I also have my own work bags here, as I work from home and in the office I have to lug around a great deal of stuff. I need to collate it all, bag it up and be ready to go.

Getting me ready

I find getting out of bed difficult. I find going to bed difficult. It doesn’t take a smart person to work this out. Going to bed too late ruins my mornings. I have an 11pm limit now. I find this hard, but I do persist and that is lights out time.

On work days, I shower the night before, simply because my hair takes forever to dry and could take up 15 minutes of precious time in the morning.

Breakfast ready

I also have breakfast slightly organised. Breakfast is not a choice. Miss School gets weetbix and Miss Creche gets porridge with sultanas and honey. They take forever to eat, but I have accepted this is the way things are and this is when I get ready myself.

Lunches ready

As for lunches, well, I am still working that out. So far I have only had to organise two. It went well, I gave a call out for help for new school Mums and was given some helpful tips which I am starting to work with.

My last two things are to make sure I have petrol and/or public transport tickets.

And I put the dishwasher on after dinner and unpack it before I head to bed, this way I don’t always return home to breakfast sitting on the bench too.

You can connect and find out more about Claire at these places:

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What are your must dos, the night before?