Three back to school tips to hack your mornings

As summer holidays are unavoidably passing by, many of us are already planning for the back-to-school season. I get you covered with three super duper productivity hacks. And they don’t include the wake-up-earlier tip! Let’s make back to school season a little bit less stressful.

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1. Get as much as you can ready the night before.

I know what you’re thinking… Well that’s the first time I’m hearing that (said sarcastically, of course). Now, I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel here. Just hear me out.

You know how they always say you should get ready the night before? Well, that includes your kids. By involving them in the process, not only do you teach them a habit of having a routine, but also make sure they feel safer going to bed. As you probably know, routines are very beneficial for everyone, but especially kids. And especially the little ones. Make a check list for your kids, using prompts helps them to move through the routine. Use pictures with small children.

You can read about the benefits of routines in children’s lives here.

Your evening routine affects your morning routine

Starting with the time your kids go to bed. To ensure that they are physically capable of getting out of bed on time, they must sleep an appropriate amount of hours. Of course, you know your kids best, and understand their individual needs… but just in case you wonder, here’s an estimate of how long they should sleep according to their age. Now, let’s do some maths. Think of the hour your kids should ideally wake up, subtract the hours of sleep they need, and the result will be the time your kids should be falling asleep. This is what it looks like:

Back to school mornings are a shock to the system

So make sure YOU get enough sleep! The more rested you are, the less grumpy, stressed and on-edge you are. I can assure you from experience, that when you control your own emotions it is much easier to control those of your children. So the key here isn’t really to wake up before your kids, but to wake up rested and be able to deal with anything that the morning might bring upon you.

Imagine your kids, after such a long time of having little to no structure, going back to school might be a challenge. Make sure you are calm enough not to fall into any power strugles (which is easier said than done, I know). You need to be as relaxed as possible, so make sure to…

Have everything ready the evening before

Just imagine… You wake up, rested, put on the clothes that you picked the evening before, no thinking, no choices. You dress your kids, or they dress themselves. You have everything you need ready to go, packed lunches, homework, projects, anything you need to go to work or run errands once out of the house. You are calm enough to nip any arising conflict in the bud.

Back to school morning: the evening before

Here’s a handy checklist of mini-hacks to organize your evening before:

• Check weather forecast for the next day (I like to ask Google Assistant – not sponsored btw) and pick your outfit.
• Let your children pick their own clothes. If they’re small, you can give them two choices of each item, or teach them how to choose clothes that match and are appropriate for weather conditions. I use two cute hangers I found in a local dollar-store style shop, a baby-blue one for my son and a pink one for my daughter (they love thier hangers). I heard of parents using cardboard with drawn outlines of their kids.
• Check your calendar for the next day to make sure you don’t miss something important.
• If you or your little ones bring packed lunch, make sure you have everything ready the evening before. Keep the items that need refrigeration in the fridge.
• Make sure to prep breakfast as well.
• If your kids are big enough, involve them in picking their lunch or preparing it.
• Even though it might sound odd, take a shower in the evening instead of in the morning.
• Make sure your kids are in bed on time to have enough hours of sleep. Same with you!
• If there’s anything you need to grab in the morning, write it down and stick the note to your front door, your car keys, etc. Make sure you don’t have to come running back home.

2. Make good use of your smartphone

That includes both the evening before and the back to school morning as well. One pretty brilliant way I found (again, not sponsored by any way) is to use routines in Google Assistant. There is a preset routine that helps you leave on time. You activate the routine by talking to your Assistant. It has programed delayed responses every set period of time. So your smartphone will chime and tell you that you should leave in twenty minutes… Then ten… And so forth.

Add your evening routine

Google Assistant is pretty intuitive, but in case you need help, here’s an article on how to use it. Estimate at what time each person should be in bed and count further back from then to figure out when to have dinner, get everything ready for the next day and get ready for bed.

Once you’ve figured that out, set a Google Assistant routine to match your needs. That way you don’t have to set individual reminders, and your command activates a domino effect of chimes signalling a change of action.

You can even teach your children (if they’re old enough) to give the commands, ending with something like “Hey, Google, play sleep sounds”. Or with a command of “Good night Google”, you can program your Assistant to say good night and say the names of everyone in the family and then automatically play sleep sounds, or even dim the lights or turn them off if you have smart bulbs.

Be smart with your phone

Remember when I said (well, wrote) make good use of your smartphone? Well… falling in the rabbit hole of social media isn’t exactly what we could call good use. Especially before sleep. Actually, after waking up either.

Surely, you know by now that blue light in our devices messes up with our circadian rythm, making it harder to get the much neede restful sleep. That’s already common knowledge. What we’re missing is the morning knowledge… or rather the knowledge about the morning use of social media.

The bad news is that checking your messages, or emails, and scrolling down feeds on social media platforms very first thing in the morning makes you very reactive. When we wake up, our brain is in a very susceptible state. It means that when we check our phone, other people’s business is the first thing on our mind. And that’s making us reactive, instead of proactive.

Reading work emails or checking news causes stress even before we take the first glorious sip of that hot fresh aromatic coffee (can you guess I am writing this part pretty late at night?).

Another problem is that you teach your brain to distract more easily.

And the result…

Now, let’s do some maths again: (you slept, but you didn’t rest because of blue light + you’re already stressed + you’re reactive, which means anything can trigger you + you’re easily distracted, so it’s not that hard to forget something) * your toddler having a meltdown over a yellow cup (cause blue is the new black) + your preschooler singing the same five words over and over again + your partner can’t find their something + maybe a dog/delivery/neighbor situation = a catastrophy.

To conclude this very visual rant, the hack is:

Put your phone down, mama! Put it down! Every (school night) evening and morning… Do it for yourself.

3. Keep organized

Now, this one is really difficult for me personally, because I am naturally very disorganized. But there’s still some time left… We can do this!

Declutter as much as you can

It’s simply practical to start with decluttering. Why? Imagine spending 10 mintues organizing your kids’ felt pens, only to discover with their first homework that 90% of them are dry. Frustrating, to say the least.

Here are a few ideas of where you might want to begin with:

• Dry felt pens.
• Summer clothes you know will not fit your kids next year.
• Rubber flip flops that snapped.
• Toys they never play anymore.
• Broken pencils or rulers.
• School clothes that they outgrew.

Now that you’re only left with what you’ll actually use…

…start organizing your spaces.

Check dollar-store shops for organizational items. Remember to measure any furniture you want to use to ensure the boxes/baskets/crates fit well. You might also look for anything you need online. Check the delivery date to have it set up and ready to roll by the end of summer holidays.

The one rule you should follow is: a place for everything and everything in its place.

This is the hardest part. For me at least…

Keep it organized for as long as possible

The idea that helps me wrap my head around keeping things organized and tidy is the one touch strategy. I learned it from a female youtuber Emily Norris.

She explains that she tries to put the things in their place with one touch. For example, coming back home you should hang your coat on the coatrack straight after taking it off. That’s one touch.

The opposite would be to leave on an armchair or a sofa. Then you have to pick it up again to put it away. This forces you to touch it again, creating a mess in the so-called meanwhile.

Make sure you have a designated space for all the school bags, sports equipment, handbags, coats, shoes, lunchboxes, etc. Preferably somewhere near the door. If your kids are small, provide them with a little stool or chair to facilitate putting their shoes on.

Giving away stickers or snacks for putting their things away straight after coming back from school might be a good idea to get you started. Remember to reward yourself as well.

Use the weekends to reorganize and regroup. Adjust your strategies. Move furniture. Declutter some more. Whatever you need to keep the ship afloat.

Final thought

These three strategies for making your back-to-school mornings run more smoothly are great. If you apply them, your mornings should be more calm and run much more smoothly. Remember to stick to routines when possible, but also be flexible when not.

And most importantly, take care of yourself. If you don’t have time to prep lunches, grab something on the go instead of staying up late trying to do everything perfectly.

It works, I know…but only up to a point.

Burnout is a real thing and a serious problem among women, and especially moms.

Educate yourself and take care of yourself. And I don’t mean the perfect insta-moments of bubble baths with aromatic candles. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice. But it’s not always the elaborate self-care ideas that help the most. Sometimes it’s running, sometimes screaming, sometimes a vanilla cupcake or maybe a kickboxing session. Whatever fills your cup, so that you can fill your family’s cups from what overflows, not depleating and draining your own energy to a point when there’s none left. Because that is when that blue-is-the-new-black sipping cup becomes a reason enough to lash out on a toddler.

So beat that pillow, eat that cupcake, go for a walk and go to sleep on time.

You’ve got this!

Do you have any strategies that might help fellow moms in their struggles? Comment below.

And remember, sharing is caring!