Recently, I found myself feeling a bit “all over the place” in my routines and habits. I was sticking to them for the most part, but piecing them together and not really feeling the flow that comes from a really solid routine. Plus, when I feel all over the place, my kids sense that, it affects my work, and even how I talk to my husband. So that’s why I took some time out of my week to think about WHY I was having so much trouble sticking to my routines.
It goes so much deeper than a time management issue. When I’m running around the house, trying to get things done, going from one room to another and back again, I’m not being conscientious with how I use my time, which eats into my productivity.
It goes much deeper than a time-management issue. When I’m running around the house, trying to get things done, going from one room to another and back again, I’m not being conscientious with how I use my time, which eats into my productivity.
Have you ever felt like this? Here’s the thing… you don’t need to go back to your journal and write down a “new routine.”
You need to physically think through your routines and how they’re working. How do you do that?
Let’s start at the very beginning…
What’s the first step to figuring out if your routines need a bit of a facelift? Think of how you feel at the end of every day — are you feeling grounded and productive, or frazzled and stressed?
If it’s the latter… you probably want to think about the physical flow of your routine!
For example, does your morning routine look something like this: wake up, go across the house to wake the kids up, head back to your bedroom to change, going into the kitchen to grab some water, walking back to the bathroom to brush your teeth, going back up the stairs to help the kids, back downstairs for the laundry, out the door for school drop-off, back to your neighborhood for grocery shopping, into work…
Just saying all of that makes my head spin! But that’s what so many of us working moms do every single day.
There’s got to be a better way, right?
My favorite method for creating routines
Enter Melissa Thompson’s GoCleanCo method!
If you listened to Melissa’s episode of the podcast, you’ll know that her organizational method was an absolute game-changer for a successful morning. When I was thinking through the physical flow of my routines and trying to figure out how to do it without banging my head against a wall, I realized there was a simple solution, staring me right in the face: Melissa’s method. Well, more accurately, it’s GoCleanCo’s.
This method helps you clean a room from top, down, left, and right — but it’s also an efficient way of organizing your life and following physical routines. Can you see how that would make a daunting task so much simpler?
The same principles apply here. Organize your routine so that you’re doing things in the same area of the house FIRST, and then moving on to another area.
Waking up? Change your clothes and brush your teeth in the bathroom first. Then, wake the kids up. NOW head downstairs to start breakfast and throw a load of laundry in. For Melissa, she used this method to move her toothbrush to the bathroom near her backdoor, so that when she was done brushing her teeth, she could just leave the house!
This method is an absolute life-saver, and has added at least 10 minutes to my mornings! You can use it in all of your routines — from morning to evening, school drop off to grocery shopping. It’s flexible, which is my favorite part.
Stack and attack
If you’re not jiving with the GoCleanCo method, there’s another one I love from Maria Menounos called “stack and attack.”
Essentially, what you do here is pretty simple: you stack your chores or errands so you take care of the ones in the same vicinities first.
You can do this with literally any routine in your life. Does it make sense for you to go to a nail salon all the way across town, then trek back to pick up your groceries, when there’s a nail salon next door to the grocery store? Probably not.
What I want you to do is map everything out, from household chores to errands. Then, see where you can make changes to your routine in order to save you time and gas money. If you don’t HAVE to pick up a coffee from the place 15 minutes away from your kid’s gymnastic lesson and could stop in at the one down the block instead, it’s always better to try to “stack” these habits.
Take honest inventory
The most important thing to remember is that we’re trying to make our daily lives simpler and easier by placing like errands or chores next to one another. You want to examine every routine and make sure that it doesn’t just work mentally, but PHYSICALLY as well. Are you wasting time zig-zagging back and forth, or do your routines have a physical flow that makes sense?
Now go make those routines flow!
If you loved this discussion, I have something else for you! Inside The It’s About Time Academy, you’ll get perfect mix of time management coaching and community to help you live with intention, get things done, and spend time on what matters most.
Inside the Academy, you’ll learn:
- How to set yourself up for success, week after week
- How to use your dreams and big ideas to create a vision for the future
- The secret to making better decisions about how to spend your time
- How to prioritize and plan your day without feeling overwhelmed
- How to live with more intention and end each day feeling accomplished
In this solo episode, I talk about:
- Why your routines need a physical flow
- How to cut out overwhelm and save time in the process
- My 2 favorite methods for creating routines that make sense
Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Stay Curious: How To Be A Better Listener, Cultivate Connection And Use Your Time Well Featuring Melissa Thompson
- Go Clean Co
- The Everygirl’s Guide To Life by Maria Menounos
- The It’s About Time Academy
- 1:1 Coaching with yours truly!
Related Episodes
- Stay Curious: How To Be A Better Listener, Cultivate Connection And Use Your Time Well Featuring Melissa Thompson
- Priorities Vs Productivity: Choosing What’s Most Important
- How To Start Habits That Stick, And Kick The Bad Ones
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