It is so easy to get off track during the summer months.  Without the structure of school days, we may forget to eat a healthy breakfast at a regular time, abandon basic personal hygiene (for teenagers!) and generally take way too long to get out the door, leaving much undone.

Here are two tools to help your mornings flow more smoothly:  The “Morning Line-Up” and “Back to Ready”.

We use The Morning Line-Up every day:

1. Start out with a clear bathroom counter.
2. Take out all the items you need to get ready; we’ll call these the Usual Suspects in Your Morning Line-Up.  Every day, lay all the Usual Suspects on your empty counter.
3. My Usual Suspects include Antiperspirant, Face Lotion with SPF 30, toothpaste and brush, hair products, contacts and solution, lip stain and powder, etc.
4. Next to these are my kids’ deodorants, toothbrushes and pastes, a comb and fingernail clippers (someone always needs those).
5. Now, as we use the item in our Morning Line-Up, we put the item back in the cabinet (or drawer, or basket under the sink, which ever you prefer).
6. You can make this even easier by dedicating one shelf / basket / etc. for just your Usual Suspects.

This idea reaps multiple benefits:

1. At a glance, I know what I have used or not, and I don’t forget things.  And I know when I need to nag my sons to finish.
2. We can add new habits to the line-up, if there is something we want to improve upon.  For example, I added my contacts and solution to my Line-Up when I decided to wear them more regularly.
3. I have a client cultivating a “Swipe and Swish” habit to tidy up the bathroom every morning.  So she adds Windex and paper towels to her counter as part of her Line-Up.
4. The Morning Line-Up can also be used to improve other areas of your life, for example, nutrition.  When I got forgetful about my daily vitamins or supplements, I bought one of those daily medication sorters.  Now I leave it on the counter in the morning, and put it away when I am done.

The other tool I want to offer you is “Back To Ready”. 

This is a proactive, positive step to help me and my clients get a handle on our lives and our homes. “Back to Ready” means we feel ready for whatever the week throws our way.

Working from home, I find it difficult to focus on work when my home feels unfocused.  In my defense, to a casual observer my home would not look cluttered.  But I know when things are left undone, and because of who I am and what I do, I have a very low tolerance for any sense of disorganization.

So Back to Ready is very important for my success!  What does “Ready” look like?

• Beds made;
• Bedrooms tidied up / surfaces cleared off;
• Clothes and shoes (oh, the shoes!) dealt with— Dirty ones in the hamper, clean ones put away;
• Breakfast dishes in the sink or dishwasher, table wiped off;
• Bathroom cleaned up, towels hung up, surfaces clear, mirror wiped clean;
• Papers gathered together for me to work on them, or purge or shred them.

“Back to Ready” takes 30 minutes on a Monday morning (you pick your own day!).  It involves starting laundry and a sink of soapy dishwater, going room by room and collecting clutter, emptying trash and vacuuming.  I start it before the kids go to school, so they can tidy up their rooms and put away whatever clean laundry they may have.   And we pick Mondays because we are very hard on our home on the weekends!

Pick one spot to start, and start there every week.  You can choose the easiest room first (my youngest son’s), or the most public room first (the entry way and living room), or the hardest room first (kitchen).  It’s up to you, just choose.  Now, only spend a few minutes in each room—this is not major cleaning, this is just maintenance between cleanings, and preparing for the week ahead.

Carry a notebook, too, to jot down the random ideas that come up during this particular exercise.  The ideas could read “Need laundry detergent, need snacks for baseball, bake cookies for friend, teenager needs new dress shoes,  change smoke detector batteries, etc.”

I hope these two ideas help you get yourself and your family out the door in a calm and organized manner.  Summer is a great time to try something new when it comes to morning routines, so give them a try and see what works for you.  Enjoy!