7 Things To Do Tonight When Preparing For Tomorrow
Do these 7 things each night when preparing for tomorrow, and the next morning will be less hectic, and your day will run smoother.
We've all woken up when the alarm buzzes and want to put our head back under the covers and go back to sleep.
Unfortunately though, life doesn't often allow us to do that, so we've got to take steps to make each day the best it can be.
Many of us have busy mornings, with lots of stuff to do, and often a very limited amount of time to do it.
But you can do yourself a huge favor by doing the following 7 things each night, before you go to bed, that will set yourself up for a better morning.
And we all know that when our morning goes well, it tends that the rest of our day does as well.
So here's the 7 things I suggest you do each night:
1. Quick Tidy Up Throughout The House
Life happens during the day and things get messy. Hit the "reset" button each night, before going to bed, by doing a quick tidy up of the house.
I'm definitely not talking about a full house cleaning session here, but just tidying up, by putting things away and back in their place.
Don't feel like you have to do this alone either. Make it part of the kids' bedtime routine, and/or you and your partner can pick up the common living areas of the house together before going to sleep.
You can learn more about the tidy up routine here, and what I mean by tidying, versus cleaning or even decluttering (each of the terms means something different!)
2. Clean Your Kitchen, And Run The Dishwasher If You Have One
The kitchen is the heart of the home, so making sure it is clean each night before you go to bed will really help your morning, and your whole day, run more smoothly.
You can check out this daily checklist of kitchen cleaning tasks here.
While I encourage you to do all the listed tasks, if nothing else wash all your dishes, either by running your dishwasher, or washing them by hand.
This allows you, in the morning, to easily empty the clean dishes from your dishwasher or put away the air dried ones from your dish dryer rack and have clean dishes for use all day long.
3. Make A Realistic To Do List For Tomorrow
Your day runs smoother if you've got a plan for it, and it's best to make that plan before you go to bed the night before.
Doing your planning then allows you to write down your thoughts so you know you won't forget something, and that lets your brain take a well needed rest.
You can definitely use any old piece of paper for your list, but it can be helpful to use a similar format day after day for your to do list.
I've got a free printable to do list form you can use, and it's got only 10 spots listed for tasks. That's the absolute maximum number you should write for yourself during the day, and you may want to limit yourself even further.
I've also got a similar printable daily agenda, that incorporates the daily to do list, along with a few other goal and schedule tracking tools, if you'd like to give it a try instead.
Limiting the number of tasks on your daily list is helpful, because it requires you to prioritize and be more realistic. After all, if you have 82 things written down to do tomorrow you're setting yourself up to feel like a failure because there is no way you'll get it all done.
4. Choose Your Outfit For The Next Day
Every day feels better when you're dressed in something that makes you feel good.
What you choose doesn't need to be fancy, but it needs to be something you're not afraid to open the door in, or to run out and do an errand wearing, or to feel good in while working.
In the morning, with all the other hustle and bustle, it can be hard to make these decisions with all the distractions going on around you. So instead make them the night before, perhaps after the kids have gone to bed and you have a few quiet moments to focus.
You can learn more about setting out your clothes the night before, or even for several days in advance, here in this article.
5. Set Up For Breakfast In The Morning
I'm sure you've heard the saying, "the most important meal of the day is breakfast."
Well, it really is. You need to take the time to feed yourself and your family something nutritious and filling, but when things get crazy this can be what we tend to skip.
Setting up for breakfast the next morning doesn't have to be complicated, and actually can be something tacked onto your kitchen clean up routine. Perhaps pull out some bowls for cereal, or set your programmable coffee maker to make your coffee in the morning to help you wake up, or cut fruit to add to your yogurt in the morning.
If whatever preparation you do the night before helps your kids more easily serve themselves breakfast in the morning as well, while you're able to focus on other things or just eat something yourself, all the better!
If you are always trying to figure out what to eat for breakfast, make sure to add breakfast planning into your normal meal planning routine, to make this task even easier!
6. Gather Or Prepare Everything That You'll Take Out The Door With You In The Morning
There's nothing worse than running out the door, kind of late already to get the kids off to school, for one of them to realize they forgot their homework inside the house. Uggghh.
Make the morning a bit less crazy by making sure everything you need to take out the door with you, or that your kids need to take to school, is ready the night before.
This goes for packing backpacks, work or gym bags, making sure coats and gloves are ready for the cold winter morning, and that lunches are packed and ready to go.
In the case of lunches, if you've got to keep your lunch containers in the refrigerator overnight, and not sitting by the door, no problem. But do pack them the night before whenever possible. If something will get soggy if left overnight do as much prep the night before as possible, so you have as few steps to complete lunch making the next morning as possible.
You can learn more about how to create and organize a station in your kitchen to pack lunches for school and work here.
7. Get A Good And Full Night's Sleep By Heading To Bed Early
And finally, nothing helps you tackle your day with enthusiasm and a positive attitude more than feeling well rested. To do that you've got to get enough sleep, consistently, so make sure you leave enough time for zzzzz's.
If you consistently do these 7 things each night, before bed, you'll soon find you're more regularly having less hectic mornings and each day will run more smoothly, overall.
Do you have any more habits you do each evening that I've missed? I'd love to hear what you do below, in the comments.
In addition, these are obviously just my suggestions. You should ultimately figure out what things help you the most, that you can get done the night before, to make the best of your morning. Incorporate whatever those things are into your evening routine. You can check out even more ideas of what you can do as part of your evening routine, plus get a free printable evening routine checklist form you can fill out, here.
In addition, here's 5 habits to make your morning run smoother, for when you get up and going each morning.
Want To Do More Decluttering Missions? Get Started With Declutter 365 Today!
Once you declutter one type of item in your home I bet you'll want to declutter some more. After all, decluttering gives you a great reward for even a small investment of time and energy.
The Declutter 365 system is designed to help you declutter, over the course of a year, your entire house, with just 15 minutes of decluttering each day!
Hundreds of thousands of people use this proven system to get rid of their clutter, and bring peace and calm back to their homes.
Declutter 365 works to guide you to clear the clutter without overwhelm, focusing on just one small area at a time, and without making a huge mess in the process, so you see consistent forward progress without all that "messy middle" that makes it even harder to function in your home than before you started.
In addition to building a daily decluttering habit, the Declutter 365 program, along with the accompanying 52 Week Organized Home Challenge, teaches you the skills, habits, routines, and mindsets necessary to maintain the clutter free and organized state of your home from now on, so it'll never be as messy and cluttered as it is right now, ever again.
If you haven't already, make sure to get your copy of this year's Declutter 365 annual calendar here (it's FREE!), find today's date, and do 15 minutes of decluttering on the day's mission. Then, repeat again tomorrow, and again and again. Over the course of the next year, if you do this 15 minutes per day, you'll declutter your whole house!
Get This Generic Room Decluttering Checklist + 32 Other Decluttering Checklists For Your Home
Whatever room of your home you're trying to declutter you can use this generic room decluttering checklist to help you know exactly how to do it. The checklist helps you break down any room into smaller steps, to make the process less overwhelming, and helps you choose a good order for tackling these tasks.
I've done the hard work of breaking down these tasks into smaller more manageable steps for you, so you don't get overwhelmed or worry you're forgetting a task, and you can go at the pace you want, whether that's fast or slow.
In addition, you can tackle these decluttering tasks in whatever order you want when you use these checklists!
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