SAHMs: Here's the Ultimate Guide for Creating Your Perfect Morning Routine

Are mornings difficult for you? Are you a night owl (and tired mama) whose kids wake up bright-eyed long before you’re ready to admit it's morning again?

I've put together the ultimate guide to creating your perfect morning routine and you can read it right here. It's a morning routine guide for moms who want happier mornings not just for themselves, but also, for their families.

Ready? Let's get started…

Lifelong Night Owl Tales of Woe

On the one hand, morning 'larks' prefer getting up and going to bed early, and are at their peak performance early in the day. On the other hand, night 'owls' like sleeping in and staying up late, and don’t perform well until afternoon or evening. - Psychology Today

A night owl is someone who not only prefers to be up later at night, but functions better later in the day or evening, and does not do so well early in the morning. Sleeping in works better for them.

A typical preferred schedule for a night owl might be going to sleep around 2 or 3 in the morning and waking up around 11 a.m. or noon. Is that similar to the schedule you would choose, if you could?

For night owls, going to bed at what seems like the right time, often leaves them lying awake, wishing they could fall asleep.

And then they frequently glance at the clock, still awake, and recalculate how much sleep they’ll get if they fall asleep soon. But they don’t fall asleep soon, because they can't.

I am all too familiar with this struggle.

I was born just before midnight, and I suspect I have struggled to go to sleep on time ever since. I remember lots of childhood nights, lying awake well past the time I went to bed, bored, and wishing I could be in the family room, watching TV with my parents. I could hear the faint sounds of whatever they were watching, and those sounds called to me.

My mother seemed surprised and annoyed each time she came to check on me, and found with my eyes open, still wide awake. She didn’t know what to do to fix it, and neither did I.

I know I did not get enough sleep during my childhood. Did you?

Children who are wide awake at bedtime and sleepy the next morning, often grow up to be adults who struggle to conform to the cultural norms of going to bed at a reasonable hour, and then getting up in time to go to work, or begin the day with their own wide-awake children.

Has that been your experience? It certainly was mine.

When my work days began at 8:30 or 9:00, I struggled nearly every day to make it work. I’d fall asleep right after David Letterman said, “wake the kids and call the neighbors.”

And the next morning would find me struggling to wake up, feeling like I was moving through molasses as I tried to get ready as quickly as possible so I wouldn’t be late. Eventually, I was eating in the car, and putting on my makeup, during the half hour drive to work just to try to give myself a better chance of getting there a minute before I’d be late.

Once my son became my personal alarm clock, the struggle continued, just in a different way. He was bright-eyed and bushy tailed, eager to hang out with his mommy, and I could barely open my eyes.

What is the solution for those of us who struggle with an early-morning wake-up call? Many night owls try to become a morning person.

Become a Morning Person?

There is lots of advice out there about how to become a morning person, but is that really possible? You can wake up earlier, start your day earlier, and decide to go to bed earlier at night, but can you become a morning person?

Based on what the experts say, I think not.

Most people can’t simply switch wake up and bed times, because their bodies won’t allow them to. Our circadian rhythm is controlled by a tiny area in our brains, the suprachiasmatic nucleus. -Dr. Nathaniel Watson, co-director of the University of Washington Medicine Sleep Centre, incoming president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. -BBC

But it is possible to get to the point where you are waking up in the morning, naturally, without an alarm, at your ideal wake-up time.

Your Ideal Wake-Up Time

Do you know what your ideal wake-up time is? Though it is less likely to be an exact time on the dot than a general range of time, it provides for the amount of time you need each morning.

That sounds simple, but for those who struggle with getting up on time, or with getting ready as quickly as we need to in order to be ready for our obligations, it may not be simple at all.

And I’m not saying that your ideal morning time is your preferred wake-up time. But it is the time that would make your morning life, and your mom life, run the most smoothly.

What’s your ideal? It may be affected by the time you go to bed, because functioning your best, on any given morning, is likely to depend on sleeping enough and sleeping well the night before.

Do you struggle to get to bed or to sleep on time? That would push your ideal wake-up time forward in a flexible schedule. But if it’s not as flexible, then we need to get you a better night's sleep.
 

Your Best Night's Sleep

For night owls, what constitutes getting to bed or to sleep on time may be different than it is for morning larks, those who love mornings. And if you don’t work outside the home, getting up early enough to go to work on time is not an issue.

Plus, there’s no universally agreed upon best time for going to bed and falling asleep. But whatever late turns out to be, for you, it will deny you the sleep you need.

So the goal becomes whatever time gets you better sleep and enough of it.

But with no agreed upon standards, your ideal bedtime will be based on your lifestyle and needs. If you’re a mom, it also will be based on what time your children wake up, what time school starts or homeschool begins, and when you need to sleep in order to be your best during their mornings.
 

What is Your Ideal Bedtime?

Experts suggest that we need 7 to 9 hours of sleep in order to function optimally and be at our most healthy. So, in order to find your ideal sleep time, you need to know when your ideal wake-up time is.

If it takes you a while to “yawn and stretch and try to come to life,” (Dolly Parton, Nine to Five theme song) then your wake-up time probably needs to happen before your kids get going in the morning. How long does it take you to wake up properly and be ready to roll?

And what time do your children wake up? If it takes you an hour or two to be functional, then you’ll need to get up an hour or two before your children do, and be asleep 7 to 9 hours before then. That hour is your ideal bedtime.

It may take some experimenting to find those numbers. And you may need more time in the morning than you think.

Does it need to work out perfectly? Perfection may not be possible.

I find that I need to be awake and out of bed at least 3 hours before my son wakes up – probably because I am also an introvert – and now that he’s a teenager, and we start our homeschool day later in the morning, that works out well.

But when he was younger, I couldn’t make that work, and had to settle for 2 hours when I really needed three.

So aim for the best combination of sleep time and waking up, and then make the very best of whatever way it shakes out in practice.

And once you have your ideal bedtime and wake-up times in mind, the problem becomes getting yourself to sleep at that time, if you’re a night owl. What’s the best way to get to sleep at that time?

Well, you may have heard or read that getting to sleep on time will become much easier if you back away from your devices an hour or more before you want to go to sleep.

Ninety percent of people in the U.S. admit to using a technological device during the hour before turning in, and children often use electronic media to help them relax at night. If you’re among these nighttime technology-users, you may not realize the extent to which this can make it harder to settle down to sleep. But it can. The truth is, using electronic devices before bedtime can be physiologically and psychologically stimulating in ways that can adversely affect your sleep. -National Sleep Foundation

I found this to be true in my own life. I had just moved, and had to wait a week before my cable appointment. Plus, no one came at the scheduled time, which added another 2 weeks of being without my favorite TV shows!

But here’s what happened that surprised me.

I found that without having the TV on all night, it was easy to go to bed a couple of hours earlier than I normally did. And not only that, I would go to bed, thinking I’d probably read for an hour or so, and find myself getting sleepy in 20 minutes or less.

It was so easy. I got more sleep, and woke up earlier than I had been getting up before the move. So, to be honest, I felt ambivalent about finally getting everything set up with cable.

Would I be able to stick to my new schedule once those late night shows were available? I knew the answer was probably going to be no, and I was right.

TV can be irresistibly tempting. But it also, apparently, throws off your sleep biology and will make it harder to go to sleep at the time you have chosen.

Unless you are able to talk yourself into turning it off ahead of time.

But once you’ve turned off the TV, stepped away from the computer, and put your phone aside, what do you do then?

Do you like to read? Or listen to music? Have another hobby, like knitting?

This is where creating an ideal evening routine comes in.

How to Create an Ideal Evening Routine
for Better Mornings

If you need an earlier wake-up time, and thus, an earlier bedtime, then getting your evening routine right will empower you mornings. But what would make for an ideal evening routine?

Let’s talk about that next.

Here are 4 must haves for your evening routine…

(1) It needs to help you wind down well enough to become sleepy when you need to, so it will be easy to go to bed when you’ve chosen.

(2) Though this one isn’t a must, it is ideal – your evening routine should help you let go of and recover from any stress you experienced during the day.

(3) And ideally, your evening routine will give you time for things you love to do.

Reading, watching a movie, spending time with your family. In an ideal evening routine, there is time for what makes life sweeter.

(4) But that also means that eating dinner and getting the dishes done need to happen in time for the rest of your evening routine to occur.

How can you carve out time for an evening routine and what would it include?

Once you have planned an evening routine that will work for you, it’s time to craft the ideal morning routine.

5 Must-Haves for Crafting
Your Perfect Morning Routine

(1) It needs to give you plenty of time to come to life before having to function well.

(2) It needs to help you be more present to your children and what they need.

(3) It needs to make it easy to be on time for whatever you’ve got on your morning schedule without having to rush.

(4) It needs to empower and support the day you want to create.

(5) It needs to create the feelings you want to experience. How do you want your mornings to feel?

And would slower mornings feel better?

7 Reasons Why a Slower Morning Routine Will Make Your Mornings Easier

Slow morning routines are morning routines during which you don't rush through the process of getting ready and you take the time for self-care or other experiences you'll enjoy as you gradually wake up fully and become more alert.

Slow mornings don’t rush. In fact, they are carefully designed to move more slowly, and to bring what is needed to the person who got up for them.

So, aside from the beauty and wonder of slow living, in general, slower lifestyle mornings may actually be more practical for those of us who struggle with mornings.

Here are 7 reasons why…

(1) They give you the time you need to become fully functional. You’ll no longer have to do something while you’re only half awake.

(2) They eliminate the stress of rushing and falling behind in your schedule.

That frenetic, rushed, harried experience that happens when there’s something to do that feels urgent, but there isn't enough time, is part of what can make mornings so unpleasant in the first place, right?

(3) They give you the opportunity to create moments and experiences that help you enjoy mornings more. Like a self-care routine. Or morning coziness.

(4) If you're a woman of faith, a slow morning routine will give you enough space in your morning for a quiet time that fosters a deeper connection with God.

(5) Slowing down your morning routine will give you time to set and attune to your intentions for the day, and prioritize the ones that are most important.

(6) Your slower morning routine could be designed to give you some alone time before the deep dive into interactions with your family and others.

(7) With a slow morning routine, you can take back your mornings, instead of being owned by them, so that mornings feel better.

I'm a big advocate of designing your morning routine based on the way you want your mornings to feel.

But if you don't have a morning routine that you've created, and made time for, then you lose some of that freedom to choose the way you want mornings to feel. And they are much more likely to feel rushed.

So, I’m suggesting a slow morning routine, but how long should a morning routine be?

There is no ideal amount of time it needs to take. Instead, it’s whatever amount of time you need to become fully functional.
Do you know what that amount of time is, for you?

Even if you don’t fill it up with mindful activities, then your morning routine will allow that much time to pass. Silence and sips of tea are just as good as anything else you might include, as long as you don’t pressure yourself to be completely operational before you’re ready.

Cozy Mornings & Hygge Moments

What if you could make mornings more cozy?

Denmark winters are cold, dark and dreary.

But Danish people fought back with hygge and they won! Could deliberately creating cozy, hygge moments help you take back your mornings the way it helped them take back winter?

The definition for cozy is giving a feeling of comfort, warmth and relaxation.

And hygge, pronounced hue-geh, is a word that is hard to translate precisely into English, but involves the same kinds of cozy feelings.

Hygge is an intended focus on creating warmth and coziness, both through what you do and what you place into your environment. It is an emphasis on doing all the comforting things you enjoy, and it’s a way to enhance those moments so that they are even sweeter.

So if you love to read, hygge plumps the pillow on the chair you’re sitting in, brings you a cup of tea, lights a candle nearby in your favorite scent and hangs your favorite throw over the back of your chair in case you get cold.

If you love spending time with your friends, hygge invites them over for game night, but tells them to come in time for nachos & beer first, and promises dessert after the games are over so your friends will stay longer and you’ll have an even better time.

Then, it adds cozy atmosphere in the room where everyone will be by keeping a fire lit so they’ll want to stay inside where it’s so warm and cozy, rather than leaving to face the cold.

Hygge is like a cozy best friend!

Simply put, according to the dictionary, it’s “a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture).”

What would it be like to add elements of hygge coziness to your morning?

I know it has worked for me, over and over again. When getting to work on time was a struggle, and there were days I wished I could stay home, the promise of making my cup of tea when I got there, and lighting a vanilla candle or two, helped me have something to look forward to when I got there.

By the way, back then, no one seemed to care of you set your building on fire, so I was able to light as many candles as I wanted. But unfortunately for me, that soon changed, candles were disallowed, and I had to come up with other ideas.

I also made my office look like a cozy living room and seeing it, with my throw across one chair, and my other decorative touches, made me feel good each morning, and every cozy change I made helped make those mornings easier.

Now that I work from home, my mornings include a great big cup of tea, and any candle I want to light. Plus, other cozy moments that make each morning easier than mornings used to be.

Could that work for you, too?

Here are 5 ways to create cozy, hygge moments each morning…

(1) Light a tealight candle. This could be especially soothing if you wake up when it is still dark out, or not quite fully light.

(2) Drink your favorite beverage and give yourself time to linger over it.

Let yourself relax fully. And make that moment just about the tea or coffee, not a backdrop for whatever else you are doing.

(3) Spend your first moments in your favorite room and make it look cozy. Open the blinds or curtains to let the sunshine in.

Maybe you could have your beverage on your balcony or patio, so you can breathe in fresh air and watch the birds fly from one tree to the next.

(4) Instead of checking in on social media, to see whose pictures and status updates suggest they are is having a better life than everyone else, spend a few minutes reading, or listening to music that inspires and energizes you.

(5) Give yourself enough time to connect with someone you care about and you get to have the cozy warmth of that connection at the start of your day.

12 Ways to Use Aromatherapy
to Empower Your Morning Routine

I've created a cozy morning aromatherapy guide, with essential oil recipes and blends you can use to empower your morning routine.

To find out more about it, and how to access it, fill in the form for the morning routine quiz. You can use aromatherapy as part of your next steps in creating an ideal, personalized morning routine.

But first, let's look at 12 ways essential oils can be a positive influence on your mornings...

What’s so remarkable about essential oils is that they influence the whole being. Just as they are the catalyst that can make a wound heal, or a mind relax, so can they transport a soul. – Valerie Ann Worwood, Aromatherapy for the Soul

(1) Morning aromatherapy can ground and center you for a peaceful morning.

(2) You can use it to help you relax deeply for your morning meditation.

(3) Use morning aromatherapy to help you think clearly as you write in your self-care journal.

(4) Morning aromatherapy can help you stay focused on a task or project you need to get done.

(5) You can use it to help you wake up fully and become more alert each morning.

(6) Morning aromatherapy can help you leave behind the cranky mornings and have cheerful ones, instead.

(7) It can help you be more present with the kids.

(8) It can help you stay on task instead of becoming distracted or returning to sleepiness.

(9) Morning aromatherapy can support the way you want to feel as you do your yoga sequence or poses.

(10) Morning aromatherapy can help you banish the sluggishness & molasses moments that make it harder to move through your mornings.

(11) It can help you return to calm more easily after a stressful moment in your morning.

(12) Morning aromatherapy can help you create coziness as you spend mornings with your family.

Journal Prompts & Questions for Reflection

What changes have you felt inspired to make as you’ve read this post?

What will you need to do to make those changes possible?

Is there one change or shift you could make right away?

Putting it All Together

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve taken in a lot of information about how to create an ideal morning routine. 

Keep in mind that gradual change is more lasting. And creating an ideal morning routine is not about the shoulds, it’s about empowering yourself to create the best morning experience you can have.

Doing that will transform mornings for your children, too.

Start small and adjust as needed.

What’s the first change or shift you feel inspired to make? Tell me in a comment.

See you next time!

Love, Jeanine

P.S. Just a reminder that you can take my free, printable
morning routine quiz & then, watch my video for
results & next steps. Fill in the form here to access it...