how to prep for crazy weeks

My alarm goes off from Monday to Friday at 5am. Now I don’t know about you, but I am not very functional at that time of day and yet I still have to look functional and be fed by the time I walk out the door. Then I don’t get back in the door until almost 6pm and have just a few short hours until I head to bed. This doesn’t give me much time and I want to spend it with my husband not getting ready for the next day.

Now there are a few things that I have started to do on a daily and weekly basis that helps to make my mornings and evenings more relaxed and my life a little less crazy.

FOOD

1. Breakfast Prep: I am not a person who can go without food in the morning, but I don’t always have the energy to make myself breakfast so I do it on the weekend. There are a few different ways that I go about that, whether it is batches of smoothies that I make and freeze in mason jars and take out the night before, or some mini quiche that are quick to heat up.
2. Lunch Prep: I also always make my lunch the night before. While I do these each evening I make sure that I take leftovers or easy lunches that take less than 5 minutes to prepare. This also makes sure that I am being healthy at work as I have fruits and vegetables instead of going for something in the cafeteria or at the mall.
3. Dinner Prep: Fortunately dinner is a meal that I don’t have to make during the week as Nigel gets home earlier than I do, but I do help him out a little bit. I plan out the meals for the week for both of us. I don’t like not knowing what I am going to make at the end of the day so having the meals planned makes both of our lives easier (plus it means I am not wasting any food as I plan around what I have in the fridge and buy food for what we are going to eat).

OTHER PREP

1. Clothing: If you have been following me for a while you know that I did a 10×10 challenge where I only wore 10 items of clothing for 10 days. Now while I have gone back to my full wardrobe I really liked having outfits ready to go for each day. I now have started picking out 5 outfits on Sunday that are ready to change into each morning. I still have a choice in which one I want to wear each day, but I don’t waste those precious morning hours struggling over what to wear.
2.  Slow Wake-up: I hate rushing in the morning which is why I set my alarm to go off long before I need it too. I would rather ease into my morning so that means I have one alarm that wakes me up but I can doze off again after turning it off, then with my second alarm I have to turn on a light and either do some reading or look at my phone to start waking up my brain and with my third alarm I have to get out of bed. This means that by the time my feet hit the floor I still have time to eat and get ready, but I am already mostly awake.

Now these things don’t take me a lot of time on the weekends, but they save me so much time, stress, and energy in my busy weekdays. I have enough to worry about to not have to stress about a few simple things is very freeing.

What do you do to help make your mornings easier?