Do you find your­self fraz­zled every morn­ing as you’re get­ting ready to head to work, drop the kids off at school or head to school your­self?  You mum­ble, “why me?”

You vow to do some­thing about it right away, and then the next morn­ing repeats itself, much like clock­work.

Here are some things you can do to jump-start your morn­ing.  Lay out what you’re going to wear the night before.  If you car­ry a brief­case, back­pack or purse, make sure it is ready and near the front door.  Add cof­fee to the cof­feemak­er the night before, set out non-per­ish­able break­fast items, such as dry cere­al and a bowl, if that’s what you nor­mal­ly eat in the morn­ing.

I will give you a quick glimpse of how I spend 15 min­utes the night before and 15 min­utes each morn­ing.

My hus­band, Ter­rance and I are very rou­tine.  We eat pret­ty much the same things for break­fast (lunch and din­ner) Mon­day-Fri­day.

We start our morn­ing with a hot lemon drink.  We drink our lemon tea at home and eat our break­fast at work.  We always have boiled eggs, (every oth­er day we throw the yolk out and eat just the egg white, for health rea­sons) half an avo­ca­do and a piece of pro­tein, usu­al­ly turkey bacon.  I also make a green smooth­ie every sin­gle morn­ing.

Our lunch is usu­al­ly also our din­ner from the night before.  I make sure I make enough for my hus­band and I to take as lunch left­overs.  These are neat­ly packed in con­tain­ers the night before as well.

I start the dish­wash­er at night and in the morn­ing, I have my smooth­ie mason jars and glass lunch con­tain­ers cleaned and ready to go.  I lay out our lunch bags, and arrange the fol­low­ing in what looks like a neat­ly orga­nized assem­bly line.

I fill up the tea ket­tle the night before and place it on the stove so that all I have to do in the morn­ing is turn it on.  I also lay out a cut­ting board, a whole lemon, a lemon press­er, a knife and a large cup.  I also make sure there’s enough water in the pot for my cof­fee and the lemon tea my hus­band and I share.  As the water is boil­ing I turn to my cof­fee press­er.

On my counter, I also lay out my cof­fee press­er the night before, cin­na­mon and nut­meg pow­der.  I keep my cof­fee in the freezer–I’m a bit of a cof­fee snob and like to add dry spices to my cof­fee and drink my first cup over my com­mute.

It’s also impor­tant to note that I’ve become a bit of a min­i­mal­ist so my home remains clean and free of clut­ter (more on keep­ing an orga­nized pantry and kitchen lat­er).

I also know what we’re hav­ing for break­fast the night before, so if they are eggs, (I like fresh­ly boiled eggs) I keep a pot with water and all I need to do in the morn­ing is add a few eggs and start the stove.  A lot is hap­pen­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and is the rea­son it takes us 12–15 min­utes to com­plete this entire process.

I also have a cook­ie sheet foiled and neat­ly placed on the counter so that all I need to do is turn on the oven. Actu­al­ly, I turn on all three at the same time: tea ket­tle, water pot for the eggs, and oven for the turkey bacon.

In a des­ig­nat­ed fridge con­tain­er, I keep all the things that go into our smooth­ie for the week.  I have three dif­fer­ent bags of greens and four dif­fer­ent types of super foods (chia, pollen, flax, flex seeds and goji berries).  In this same con­tain­er I also have fresh blue­ber­ries and rasp­ber­ries.  I keep bananas (and avo­ca­dos) at room tem­per­a­ture on the counter and read­i­ly acces­si­ble.  All I have to do is take out the con­tain­er, grab the Vita­mix (also on the counter), pour all the ingre­di­ents, fill it with water and start it.  It lit­er­al­ly takes me 3–5 min­utes to blend, put the con­tain­er back in the fridge, fill up our two mason jars, and rinse clean the blender.

By this time the water has boiled and I can then start our lemon tea.  I have already squeezed a whole lemon, added a table­spoon of apple-cider vine­gar and a pinch of cayenne pep­per.  I then pour the water over the mix and let it cool down enough to drink.  By this time my hus­band has show­ered, dressed and is ready to jump in and take over.

I hop in the show­er, which takes me about 3–5 min­utes.  I have my clothes laid out the night before (actu­al­ly I hang every­thing on a mobile cloth­ing rack on Sun­day for the whole week).

My hus­band drinks half the lemon tea and leaves the rest for me (lemon tea is great in the morn­ing for diges­tion). He then emp­ties the dish­wash­er, takes the turkey bacon out of the oven and starts pack­ing our break­fast.  He takes two boiled eggs, four pieces of bacon and half an avo­ca­do.  I take 3 pieces, 1 boiled egg and the oth­er half of the avo­ca­do. He loads our lunch (prepacked the night before), break­fast and smooth­ie into our two lunch bags.  By this time I am ful­ly dressed and am putting on my make up.

Ter­rance gives me some sug­ar (kiss­es) and takes off.  I head over to the kitchen, start drink­ing my lemon tea, wipe down the coun­ters, and place dirty dish­es in the dish­wash­er.  I bring my tea back to my make­up sta­tion and fin­ish up.

Oh, the cof­fee, you ask?  Yes, that’s already in my cof­fee mug, sealed-shut and ready for me to grab and go.

This sounds like a lot and like we’re rush­ing, but it’s hon­est­ly a real­ly peace­ful and calm morn­ing rou­tine and it all starts the night before!