Why A Routine is Important - Even During the Summer

It took be a good year to perfect my morning routine. Last summer I really worked hard on perfecting what I felt like I needed to do every morning and night. And it worked really, really well. Until we got Koda and my morning was focused around getting her out to go to the bathroom (a struggle when she was a puppy), feeding her and when I had enough time, walking her. So now I have had to refigure my mornings.

One of the best things you can do is establish a morning routine. When you have a perfect morning routine, you don't hate getting up and you really start your day off on the right foot. Some things you can add to your morning routine: take a short walk, eat breakfast, read the news, read a chapter of your book, or wash your face.

I seriously thrive on a routine. I feel so lost since I'm not in school. While I definitely don't miss the stress, I definitely miss having a set routine and feeling like I'm getting a lot of things done. For a while after the Spring semester ended I didn't do ANYTHING. It was such a hard and stressful semester that I didn't want to do anything much less have a routine.

Now that I've had time to relax a little bit I know that I do not do well when I don't have a routine. If I don't have what I want to do written down somewhere, I will not remember to take my medicine or wash my face. So over the last couple of weeks I have developed a routine that I really like, and I hope it will help you, if you're struggling as well!

Here is what a typical day in the life looks like (when I'm not working 9-6).

I wake up any time between 7 and 10. That's a super wide range but I have a ton of alarms set starting at 7, because that's my goal to start waking up at. However, some days I'm more tired than others. I wake up, fix Koda's breakfast and make myself a cup of coffee. I spend the next 20-30 minutes watching an episode of whatever I'm watching right then. A couple of weeks ago it was Broad City, but I finished that and now I'm watching the Mindy Project. Depending on how much I have to get done, I'll start planning my day then or read while I'm watching.

After an episode I get my walking clothes on and let Koda out to go to the bathroom and take her on a walk/run. After we get back I make sure we both have water and I head to the second room/my office and do 20-30 minutes of yoga and workout. You can see my workout routine here. Then I fix myself a cup of coffee and depending on how late or early it is I'll fix myself a piece of toast and an egg. But if it's already 11, I'll just wait until lunch.

If I have a lot of work I'll do my post for the day right then and do all of the blog things that I need to do. Then, depending on how much work I have to do, freelance work has been slowing down lately, this could be an hour to 4 hours of work, I'll eat a quick lunch and get back to work.

After I'm done with work for the day I'll then do some cleaning or whatever needs to be done around the house. If it so happens to be clean already (usually not the case) I'll read whatever book I'm reading while Kayla plays video games. We typically eat dinner around 6-7 so we'll cook dinner and wait for our food to settle before we walk again.

Once it gets to be around 7 or 8 Kayla and I will take Koda on a walk before we feed her dinner. Sometimes after Koda eats we'll go to hang out with our friend or she'll come here but a lot of the time we'll just relax and watch Survivor or she'll play a game and I'll read.

If for some reason I didn't workout earlier in the day, I'll do it after dinner after we walk Koda. Then for the rest of the night I read, write in my journal and make sure I'm checking off all of my "daily tasks" (more on that in a couple of weeks). Then I brush my teeth and wash my face and head to bed!

Like I said, having a routine helps keep me as sane as possible. What does your routine look like?

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