Routines

 TOO. MANY. THINGS.

Y'all, being a grownup is TOTALLY HARD! There is always shit to do, and it's all necessary. Make your bed! Feed the cats! Get ready to go to work! Do your taxes! Renew your passport! Make a doctor's appointment! Floss! Clean the bathroom! It is exhausting and decidedly NOT FUN. And if you're like me, these things won't just happen naturally, you kind of have to make it so.

Routines help with this.

Inspired by the FlyLady's morning and evening routines, I made morning and evening routines for myself when I started this whole project. What things definitely need to happen right when I wake up? What things need to happen when I get home from work? It's different for everyone, but once I established what tasks needed to be complete every day, and how to work daily house maintenance into those, I found that I could get it all done within fifteen minutes and still have time to work on whatever organizational or life projects I was into.

I also found that not following my routines actually contributes to me having a bad day. If I leave my house in a rush without eating breakfast or drinking my water, or having time to check my agenda, I find myself grumpy and impatient for the ENTIRE DAY. Inevitably, if I don't make time to get myself together in the mornings, I get all kafuffled and I'm off-balance. That sucks.

My morning and evening routines, of course laminated so I can check off stuff.

My Morning Routine

All of this needs to happen between the time I wake up and the time I leave the house.

1. Drink two glasses of water - you need 8-10 glasses of water every day! That's two litres. Having two glasses of water, one right after the other, right when you first wake up, immediately wakes up your body and hydrates you after spending the last (hopefully) eight hours zonked out sleeping. It also makes you poop almost immediately, which is important! You don't want to start your day all plugged up!

2. Fill cats' water dishes - you're not the only one who needs water every day. Fresh water for your pets is important!

3. Eat breakfast - Bitches love french toast.

4. Get ready - Self explanatory. Whatever that means to you - put on clothes but no makeup, put on makeup but no clothes, etc - but get ready to face the day and leave your house. This is especially important EVEN IF YOU HAVE NOWHERE TO GO. It makes a difference in your attitude to get dressed every day.

5. Make your bed - the single easiest way to make my bedroom look clean. If you're the type of person who doesn't like to make their bed every day, I'm not judging. But I bought new zebra-print sheets recently, and you can be damn sure I'm making that zebra print bed every morning without fail.

6. Take vitamins - there are some who think vitamins aren't actually absorbed by your bloodstream and that we shouldn't waste money on them. They're probably right.

7. Check agenda - I like to check on my plans for the day. There have been occasions where I've gotten all the way to work without checking my agenda and then realized that I was supposed to stop and pick up treats for my staff on my way in. Checking my agenda helps to eliminate this!

8. Make coffee - I buy coffee when I'm out and about, but when I leave my house, a travel mug of coffee comes with me. Bitches need energy! Also travel mugs eliminate excess waste from paper cups. Go, environment, go!

Stephen (my husband and love of my life) has his own morning routine, which, for him, includes emptying the dishwasher and sweeping the kitchen floor. He usually does this while he feeds the cats. The two most high-maintenance areas of our home are the kitchen and bathroom, and having the daily maintenance of those two rooms be part of our daily routines cuts way down on the time it takes us to clean them up each week. Really, all we have to do for those rooms in our weekly cleaning is mopping the floor.

My Evening Routine

All of this happens between the time I actually get home and the time I go to bed. A lot of my evening routine is designed to make my mornings easier and maintain the bathroom.

1. Remove makeup - Obviously, not everyone will have to do this. For me, if I don't do this right when I get home, and I put it off until it's time to go to bed, then it won't get done. And going to bed with my makeup on is the number one thing that makes my face look like a can of smashed assholes. So I do this as soon as I get home.

2. Wash makeup brushes - okay, this is exclusive only to me. I don't understand how people can use dirty makeup brushes on their faces, over and over. If you leave an eyeshadow brush dirty, it means that any new eyeshadow you apply will always look muddy because you're using a dirty brush. If you use the same foundation brush over and over, your foundation won't apply properly because you're using this stiff, foundation-caked brush to do it. So I clean my brushes every night.

3. Swish and swipe bathroom - another FlyLady original! The Swish and Swipe keeps your bathroom clean and company-ready all the time. You wipe down your sink and counter and then swish the toilet bowl with your toilet brush, and then wipe it down. I use a microfibre cloth on the sink and a disposable Lysol antibacterial wipe for the toilet. This takes me five minutes or less, and means that my toilet and sink are always clean and shiny!

4. Clean mirrors - while I'm at it, I also use some window-cleaner on the bathroom mirrors. Do you know what this means?! It means that since my bathroom gets cleaned every single day, the only thing I do for it during weekly cleaning is the bathroom floor. Same with the kitchen.

5. Evening skincare and shower/bath - some people shower in the morning. I just prefer doing it at night. It makes my morning faster. I also clean the shower every night with my microfibre cloth (you wipe down the walls and tub with it, it takes maybe 90 seconds), and guess what? It's one less thing I have to do during my weekly cleaning.

6. Put out tomorrow's outfit and makeup - deciding what I'm going to wear the night before is the most valuable time-saver for me. Anything where I'm just standing there deciding something slows my mornings WAY down and leaves less time for me to eat breakfast. AND THEN WHERE WILL I BE WITH NO FRENCH TOAST?

7. Get bag, lunch and coffee ready - I stick everything I need for the next day in my bag, make my lunch usually while Stephen is making dinner, and get the coffee machine ready. We have the kind that you can set, so it means that I can set it to start up fifteen minutes before I have to leave the house the next day and not have to stop my makeup routine in the morning to get it ready.

8. Cuticle balm, brush teeth, get to bed 6-8 hours before waking up - I NEVER remember to apply cuticle balm before I go to bed, so I added it to my evening routine. If I don't do this regularly, I get hangnails!

It seems really involved when I look at this altogether, but it's not. Part of my problem before all this happened was that I felt overwhelmed and depressed when I'd think about all there was to do. Establishing daily routines cut that down and helped me to stick to regular, scheduled tasks so I always felt accomplished and calm. Try it out! Don't tell me that the idea of making your own routine index card checklists isn't getting you all excited.