Making My Mornings Easier | Pre Work Routine
I gave myself the full 6 months of my probation period to get into some sort of routine with work. I didn’t push myself to get on with my own freelance work, I tried to find a life work balance and let myself take Christmas for the busy period that it was. But one thing I have had honed from the very beginning has been my pre work routine.
I’ve shared a snap of my outfits on my Instagram on a Sunday night a few times now and am always met with exclamations of how organised I am/how people need to start doing the same so I thought it was about time I shared what I do, to make your mornings easier.
When I laid out my outfits for my first week of work my friends said ‘that’ll never last - but last it did. I have found my pre work routine invaluable to getting used to office life, a life and routine so alien from my years of self employment. I won’t lie, it’s not every single week but I’d say it’s easily been 90% of them.
When we have guests staying in the spare room I use to hang my work outfits or when I’m knackered or when I’ve been away on the weekend then the routine goes out of the window - but it’s definitely that following 5 days I feel slightly on edge in the mornings before going into work.
My pre work routine lets me feel prepared on a Sunday night for the working week ahead and more importantly - saves my valuable time in the weekday mornings which I can use for an extra half hour in bed.
Do laundry;
I rarely find time mid week to get any laundry done so the weekends sees my poor washing machine on overdrive. At the moment the weather hasn’t been nice enough to dry clothes and on the line outdoors so my bedding and towels get a blast in the tumble drier over the week and my clothes get popped on the airer for the week to dry off.
Even though my poor machine gets a battering with a few loads back to back it feels good to have an empty laundry basket on a Sunday night and I take time to put all the dry laundry away from the airers. Getting the laundry done is a good start into getting me prepared for the week and means I don’t have to think about it in a mid week evening at all.
Clean the house;
Clean house clean mind and all that. It’s hideously boring of me but my Saturdays often look like a supermarket run followed by a clean of the house. I try and tidy up most evenings when I get home so it’s not overwhelming come a Saturday morning but I do a proper clean every weekend I am home.
I didn’t realise how much a tidy house affected my mental state until I had a house of my own and now I can’t work pThe roperly nor sleep properly if everything is a shit tip. Now it’s spring I open all the windows, crank my speakers up and get the hoover out. It’s not a deep clean but I hoover, dust, tidy up, clean the kitchen and bathrooms and change the bedding and towels and it makes me feel all relaxed on a Sunday evening knowing the house is looking it’s cutest for the week ahead.
Plan my bujo;
The perfect Sunday evening routine if I ever thought of one no? I normally go to my Mum’s on a Sunday afternoon so by the time I get home in the evening and have my tea I am normally all ready for Monday morning so my evening is mine to watch the TV, do a bit of work and plan my bujo.
I have a look at what’s coming up in the next week, migrate any tasks that I haven’t managed to complete this week and plan my week around what’s in my notebook. If there’s birthday’s coming up the following week then I get birthday cards ready to go, if I have Etsy orders then I package them ready to be posted on the correct day and I try and plan out when I have time around work to do things like pop to Mum’s or see my niece or get petrol or milk.
Choose my outfits;
The absolute most crucial part of my pre work routine for sure is planning my outfits. I am 100% one of these people who puts an outfit on only to not feel right and then subsequently pull everything out of their wardrobe, hate everything and end up crying because I have nothing to wear. By planning my outfits for the week ahead of time on a Sunday morning, I not only avoid that scenario but this is also where I save the extra time in the mornings.
I don’t try my outfits on prior to planning them, I generally have an idea these days of what works and what doesn’t for work so I am able to pick up bottoms and tops and jackets that I know will be fine together and on the rare occasion I’ve knobbed it up, well it doesn’t take 2 minutes to find a new top does it. I look at the weather for the week ahead to see if there’s a day I should abso avoid that skirt and pumps combo and I also take into account what I’m doing on my lunchtime/after work. For example on days where I go to my niece I don’t wear anything white or likely to be ruined by a mucky 3 year old and on Friday’s I tend to wear something comfortable because end of the week innit. I also pick out jackets and shoes but underwear, makeup and earrings are very much a spontaneous on the day choice.
Plan my meals;
This is the one thing that tends to slip if we’re busy on the weekends and is the one Joss contributes most to. We do our supermarket shop on a Saturday morning, either together or one or the other if I’m busy or he’s at a cider event and then we plan meals dependant on what we’ve bought (or quite often plan the meals first and buy based on that).
Planning meals feels kinda stale and a bit much but the weeks we don’t are the weeks we eat like shit and feel all uninspired about all the food in our cupboards. I have a wipe clean board in my kitchen where we write down our meals as reminders and we take a lot into account when it comes to planning it. Often I am out in an evening so Joss thinks about all the meals he can eat when I am not there (mainly curries and chinese full of nuts!), we like to cook something hearty and more time consuming on weekends when we have the hours, he cooks for me on days I am home late from seeing my niece and we also eat shit on a Friday.
Planning our meals also means I can see where I am likely to have leftovers like pasta or potato salad for my lunches in the week which I often need as a quick meal to microwave in the office if I’ve been out in my lunch break. Other than that I have things like wraps or a sandwich or pop into town once a week and that way, when I know roughly what lunch I am having I know if I need to set my alarm earlier to prepare it, or that blissful 10 minutes later if I know I have cold mac and cheese in the fridge.
Pack my bag ;
And finally, the last cog in the pre work routine is one I do every night before a morning in the office - packing my bag. I use the same work bag every day so on the whole it’s got my whole life in there but I try and get it sorted every night before work so I know I don’t have to remember anything when I’m rushing out of the door running late at 8.45am.
If I have birthday cards or Etsy orders that need posting then they go in the bag the night before. If I have something to drop off my to my Mum or something for my niece then that goes on the chair next to my bag to be put on my front seat in the morning, as well as things like trainers to drive in if I am wearing heeled boots to work.
I tend to pop a bag of crisps or a snack into my bag the night before, anything that won’t go off and then all that’s left for me in the morning is my water bottle, my lunch and my phone charger. Jobs a goodun!
And there you have it - my pre work routine. It’s nothing fancy, it’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s a few easy steps you can implement into your weekend that make my Monday mornings feel a little bit easier. And lord knows we all need that amiright?
