Shortcuts can have a ripple effect that runs through your entire day. Seemingly small steps can really add up to less stress as you move through your daily routine. So, what better time to start than the morning? Watch this video for some of my favorite shortcuts for getting going in the morning.
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Transcript:
Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of The Clutter Diet Book and on-line program, and today we’re going to talk about streamlining the processes that are involved in your morning and evening routines. So, we talk a lot about having routines, which means a pattern of behaviors that you do to get yourself ready for the day or getting ready for the next day in the evening, and I want today to look at the processes that you do over and over again within those routines that maybe could be streamlined and centralized to make things feel less rushed in the morning and more relaxing in the evening.
So, I want to share with you my favorite tips around this set of cabinets in my own kitchen. This is my definite morning and evening routine station. These are my medications and supplements that I get into the most often, and I’m also making coffee out of here, or tea, and I have a lot of the stuff I need for the coffee, tea, smoothies, and other things that I’m doing all right here.
Here are some of my favorite tips that may help you. They’re small things but they add up to give you that more peaceful feeling in the morning. So first, we have a helper shelf here that adds more storage. We have a video about those that you can watch. Also, I use sorters, and I do this once a week, opening all the different pill bottles and putting them in there instead of every day opening each individual pill bottle again and again. That’s very helpful.
Also, if you have items that have come in the original sales container that are not necessarily very visible or easy to dispense out of, you might want to remove them from the original box and put them into a container that is visible and accessible. So, these vitamin powders from my friends, the Caltons, they are in this box, and I’d rather just put them in these glasses so that I can easily select a flavor that I want and see them more easily, and it just feels better to me. So that makes things go a little more quickly.
Also, you may get things in powder form that come in bags, and it’s very hard to maneuver those bags without spilling some of the powders, especially if you buy things in bulk, the bag can be kind of flimsy from the store. For those things I do like to get a container that works better. It could be a mason jar; it doesn’t have to be some kind of fancy container. But in this case – this is peanut butter powder, which is nice for smoothies – what I do is I cut off a piece of the original packaging so that I can have either instructions or nutritional information that I might want to refer to. I just roll that up and tuck it in there. But my favorite tip of all is to go to the dollar store and get two or three extra sets of measuring spoons. It doesn’t cost you very much at all, but then you have all this flexibility to leave the spoon right in the container where you’re using it the most frequently. So this is a tablespoon in this case. I don’t have to wash this and go hunt it down tomorrow if I’m looking for it again; I can just use it, put it back in here, and leave it there.
So sometimes, it doesn’t take much to add an additional tool; maybe it’s a duplicate of a tool that you already have, like a pair of scissors or something, but having it in the right place makes all the difference so that you’re not backtracking, and you’re saving yourself some steps. Another thing I do here, and I do this in a lot of my cabinets, is I put a strip of cork tile here so that I can keep little instructions and reference information that I often refer to, and keep that handy.
It doesn’t take much either to buy things that are attractive and useful that do save little slivers of your effort in the morning. This is a sugar dispenser that just flips open when you turn it upside down. It’s a one-handed operation. This cost me two dollars at a discount house-wares store. So it holds my Xylitol sweetener, and it just looks pretty, and I like it, and I’d rather not deal with a big messy bag, and the zipper across that bag and everything. This is better.
Along the same lines, if you make smoothies a lot, kids love this. It feels like an old-timey diner. This also cost me, I don’t know, maybe five dollars, and it looks great on the counter and it’s a lot more fun and pretty, instead of rummaging for the straws in a drawer. Again, what you’re doing is you’re saying, “Hey, I use these things all the time, I’m going to make it simple and make it part of the landscape so that I can actually find and use what I need more easily.”
Lastly, I want to add that if you’re running back and forth across the kitchen to get spoons and glasses all the time for mixing up things, like these powders, you might want to just keep one spoon and one glass handy for yourself, like I do here in this basket, and I rinse it out each time and I wash it every couple of days. But I just keep it there so that way a couple of times a day if I’m needing to mix up some Mighty Maca greens or something like that, I can have that handy.
Again, it’s just all those little slivers of effort that are saved. I hope you’ve enjoyed these tips and please share in the comments how your processes are going. You may have snack packing and lunch packing that you’re doing; certainly you have your make-up and your hair products that you’re working with. In the bathroom, there are lots of places where you can look at your tools and materials and make tiny little tweaks like this to make it easier. So, let us know how it’s going and we’ll see you next time. May you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.
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