I can’t stand starting my day off badly. It’s so hard to recover from a frantic morning, which is a bummer because mornings have such a tendency to be rushed and stressful.

However, if you could shorten your morning routine, maybe you could be in less of a hurry or even get a few more minutes of glorious sleep!

There are a few ways to get ready faster in the morning that’ll make all the difference.

If you want a major morning routine overhaul, make sure to check out the Make Over Your Mornings Course. In 15 minutes per day, you’ll learn how to make mornings less frustrating and even how to create time for the important, not just the urgent.

How to Cut Your Morning Routine in Half

1. Put Down Your Phone!

That’s right, I said it.

I’ve been realizing that we all use our phones or tablets a whole lot more than we think we do.

I know that I’ll often think “I’ll just check one thing real quick…”, but I end up getting distracted by a whole bunch of things (email, Facebook, and responding to a text…). At the very least, it ruins the flow of getting ready in the morning when I’m constantly taking a break from what I’m doing to glance at my screen.

I dare you to try this for a few mornings.

Don’t look at your phone while you get ready and see how much faster it makes you. You could put it on “do not disturb” for 20 minutes so there aren’t notifications tempting you.

If you get ready faster than expected, then you can sit down and have some quality phone time before you need to leave. 🙂

2. Do It the Night Before

We do as much as possible the night before as part of our evening routine so that we don’t have to get up super early to take care of this stuff.

• Make Lunches: This is the first task that goes out the window if you’re short on time. It usually means you spend more money and eat less healthily by getting fast food for lunch. 
• Shower: I prefer a relaxing shower where I’m not worried about what time it is. Plus, my hair takes for.ev.er. to dry, so it’s actually easier to just shower at night. 
• Plan Breakfast: This is usually more of a mental thing. I think through what we’ll eat for breakfast so that there is one less decision to make in the morning. 

3. Set It Out

Setting things out is a huge time saver! Plus, it’s stressful to need to leave and be frantically searching for keys or the sweater you wanted to wear.

It’s extremely helpful if you can have your kids and spouse get in the habit of setting these things out as well so everyone is ready to go much faster.

• Outfit: Each night before bed, I look at the weather for the next day and pick out what I’ll wear. Yes, I do this even though I work from home. Making decisions is rough for me in the morning and it takes me 10 minutes to pick out an outfit in the morning, but only 2 to do it at night.  
• Bags, Keys, Wallet: We set any bags we’ll be taking with us the next day by the door. Our keys always go in a small tray by the door, so there’s no searching for anything important. 
• Homework/Backpacks: This is basically the kid version of the point above. 

4. Time Yourself

There is a lot of value in timing yourself while you do certain tasks. I’m not saying you should have a stopwatch going every single morning, but every once in a while it might help to realize how much time you’re spending on your hair, your makeup, or in the shower.

Seeing that you spend 20 minutes on your hair and makeup each morning might help you realize that you could simplify your routine. Or it might help you realize that you keep checking your phone and that’s why it takes so long ;).

Try timing how long it takes you to shower, do your hair and makeup, or eat breakfast.

It might help you realize where you could stand to simplify things. Or you might realize that you’re doing great, but need to work on setting out your purse and keys so you don’t spend time looking for them.

I love each of these tips, but I have to say that my favorite is #1. Why are we so darn addicted to our phones that we can’t spend 15 minutes getting ready in the morning without taking a look?

Putting down your phone, doing some prep work the night before, and timing how long it actually takes to get ready can help you cut your morning routine in half.

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⇒ Which of these tips do you think will help you the most? How long does it take you to get ready in the morning?