5 Ways To Make Family Mornings A Little Easier

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Mornings are a stressful time for most families. When one of your kids won’t get out of bed, another one spills milk down their shirt, and your husband can’t find his, it causes a huge amount of chaos and confusion, which makes getting to work and school incredibly difficult. As common as this situation is, it is far from unavoidable. Thankfully, there are ways you can make mornings a little easier for your family and get everyone where they need to go without the stress.

1. Start The Night Before

One of the reasons mornings get so manic is that there’s a lot that needs to be done in a relatively short amount of time. To make your life easier, do some of these jobs the night before. This means setting out yours and your kids’ clothes, helping them to pack their bags, setting the breakfast table, and packing the lunches. You can also make sure that your children have a bath or a shower so that they don’t have to rush to have one in the morning.

2. Wake Before The Kids

The last thing that you want in the morning is stress and work from the very moment you get up. To avoid this, you should wake up a bit earlier than your children and carve out some time to get yourself ready and relax with a cup of coffee or tea. You could sit and eat breakfast with your partner, have a cup of coffee, read a chapter of a book, go for a jog, or whatever else helps you to focus and set a positive tone for your day. This will make the transitions to school and work a lot less hectic and help you to feel a lot calmer.

3. Follow The Same Schedule

To avoid chaos and confusion, follow a routine to ensure that every single morning is as predictable as you can make it. Your routine will likely be a little different from your child's, in which case make sure that they fit around one another and don’t clash. If there are shared bathrooms, ensure that everyone has a chance to get in the bathroom, or your mornings will quickly descend into arguments.

4. Buy Another Family Car

Although this tip isn’t appropriate for everyone, if you only have one car between your entire family, you might want to consider buying another one. Our oldest daughter turned 16 two months ago, so we are in the process of evaluating if she'll need her own car. We have some time as she can't be licensed until she turns 17, but we are researching our options carefully so that we don't make a mistake and end up having to apply for a refinance auto loan. Having multiple cars means that every driver in the home has one, so you can get yourselves to your respective destinations easily. This also means you have a backup car if one of yours breaks down.

5. Get To Bed Early

Waking up in the morning is rarely fun, but what makes the ordeal that much worse is waking up after having barely any sleep. Because of this, it’s important that you and your family get to bed early every single night. Lack of sleep makes you cranky, exhausted, and emotional, which will make your mornings that much harder. Once you have a daily routine and schedule in place, it will be easoer to stick to strict bedtimes.