Three mornings a week I am responsible for having my two boys and I out of the house between 7:15 and 8:00 am. This is no easy task around here, especially because most of the feet in my house don’t really want to be up, let alone out the door. Below are a few of the tricks that we use to get out the door in the morning. I know they are not rocket science but it’s what works for us?
Laying out clothes the night before. I make sure to have the boys clothes laid out the night before. This helps so that if my husband is dressing Corbin for me than I know I will approve of what he will be wearing. This helps Coulter from the debate of what tractor shirt he would like to wear. Lastly, it helps me because Coulter doesn’t actually have a lot of pants and it’s not uncommon for him to not have any clean pants. I really need to get him some new pants hemmed up.
Setting the timer and gaining free time. Our best trick for getting our dawdler out of the house is to set the timer for ten minutes. Coulter loves to play games on our phones and we let him have his “remainder” time to play. He has ten minutes to be dressed with coat on and then he gets to play until the timer goes off. This also works for tv time in the morning. This also helps teach him that when the timer goes off, the tv goes off regardless of where you are at in the show.
Showering the night before. We do our best to get our boys shuffled through the shower at night. This not only helps us get out on those early mornings but I don’t have to worry about the washer competing for the hot water. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just the washer but I am getting really bad about remembering to start the dishwasher at night… This tip also ensures that wet hair doesn’t go outside when it’s 23 below zero.
Breakfast on the go (yogurt parfaits & using dried fruit). Most mornings my boys get a hot breakfast so on these mornings I reserve the cold cereal and yogurt. By dressing up our yogurt and having it already dished out in containers that Coulter can pour himself makes this that much easier. I can trust that he can make his own yogurt parfait while I am getting dressed. We tend to eat a lot of trail mix or dried fruit in the car as well as they get breakfast at daycare. I want to keep their snack light that morning because they don’t need two breakfasts, but it’s usually 2 – 2 1/2 hours after waking up before they get to eat.
Sometime ago I read the trick of taking your morning dishes out of the dishwasher and this means these dishes are already unloaded for you. I love this trick and try to implement it when I remember to actually run the dishwasher at night.
I recently read on another blog (I don’t remember where, but this was left as a comment) that one mom runs her dishwater first thing in the morning and everyone is responsible for washing their own breakfast dishes. This was a brilliant idea! I can’t wait till the boys are old enough for this idea as breakfast dishes are the easiest to wash. Usually not a lot of grease is on them so they don’t necessarily need the “heated” wash that little hands can’t stand.
