How I Built a Morning That Carries My Whole Day

I’m a homeschooling mom of 3 children 5 and under, and I get everything done by 10 in the morning. The reason I’m able to do this is because I don’t follow the conventional wisdom for productivity. I didn’t want to get more done. I actually wanted to slow down but get the things I absolutely needed to do done earlier in the day so that I could have the rest of the day to do whatever I wanted. I had no idea this was possible, but I figured out a way to get all my priorities done by 10am. In this blog, I’ll show you how to manage your time by building your days backwards in order to make this possible.

I used to run the rat race of racing through the day trying to get it all done. I’d see one mom doing this or that, another mom doing something else entirely. And somehow my brain decided that all of it should fit into my own days, too. I realized: I was living someone else’s life. Or rather, I was trying to live ten different people’s lives all at once. Never mind that I have three children under five, that we homeschool, and that I run an entire household — my brain was convinced I could do it all.

Spoiler: I could not. And the worst part? I wasn’t even chasing my own expectations. I was chasing everyone else’s, stitched together into one impossible standard that no actual human could meet. I wasn’t stewarding my time. And then something hit me… time isn’t ours to begin with… it’s God’s, and I’m just responsible for stewarding it well. So I knew I needed a radical change to how I was doing this. I was fully prepared to cut out half the things I do in a day… but I didn’t end up doing that.

Instead, I stopped planning my day at the beginning…and started building it backwards. Now, my homeschool is done, dinner is prepped, my home is in order and we’re in the car by 9:45 every single morning to go do something fun, social, and life-giving.

I’m about to give you my full morning routine. And routines, I’ve found, have this unfortunate tendency to make us feel either wildly inspired or quite inadequate—sometimes both at once. So before I say what follows, let me say this: I’m not suggesting you do all of these things, or even most of them or really any of them. I’m simply showing you what works for me in this particular season, with these particular children, in this particular home of ours. Your morning will look different. It should look different. The goal isn’t to copy my routine; it’s to understand the principles behind it so you can build something that actually serves your life, not someone else’s.

What “Everything” Means

I’ll first tell you what I mean by ‘everything’ done by 10am. Then I’ll tell you how I make it happen in my own home, how to do this yourself by building your day backwards, and then finally, I’ll show you a timeline of how I fit all my tasks in before 10am. You’ll see that it does, in fact, work with my schedule.

So here’s what that actually looks like in practice—because theory is lovely, but we, as mothers, live in the land of spilled milk, dirty diapers and missing shoes.

When I say “everything,” I mean the things that matter most in this particular season: my quiet time with the Lord, my workout, homeschool, dinner prepped, and the day’s chores. By 9:45am, if I did absolutely nothing else, I’d still be in a decent place. Not winning any awards in any of those categories, but not drowning either.

I wake up very early by choice, which makes me either quite disciplined or slightly unhinged depending on who you ask. All my friends think I’m crazy, to be honest. But here’s the deal…if you’re not a morning person, everything I do in the morning is essentially self-care and can absolutely be done in the evening if you so choose.

For homeschool, we do just two subjects at a time. But we do them very intentionally, and we do them four days a week without fail. I let go of trying to replicate an entire school system in my living room. Turns out, less really can be more when it comes to teaching children.

I keep dinner mercifully simple. And chores take thirty minutes or less. Usually less. My house is not perfectly clean. It’s good enough. And good enough, I’m learning, is actually really good.

And by complete coincidence every single day at 10am—we are out of the house. Everyday is something different, but it all happens to start at 10am and happens to be about 15 minutes away from us. One day we have a bible study, one day a moms hike, one day we do my children’s extracurriculars, etc. – so we are out of the house by 9:45am.

This only works because of my method for building your day backwards. Here’s how to do it…

1. Start With Your Desired Outcome

Most of us plan our days the way we read books: beginning to end, left to right, morning to night. We wake up and think, “Okay, what needs to happen today?” and then we’re off, racing through a mental checklist that somehow keeps growing even as we’re checking things off. It’s exhausting. And it doesn’t work.

Instead, your first step is to think about your evening. You’re lying in bed at the end of the day, doing your little bedtime routine, and what do you want to have had done that day? Start there.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: you don’t need more time. You need sharper priorities. And I know that sounds like something stitched on a throw pillow, but it’s true. The beauty of how God designed time is that constraints actually give us clarity. Boundaries force us to choose. When you have all day to do something, it takes all day. When you have until 10am, suddenly you know exactly what matters.

For my family, having a tidy and mostly clean home is important to maintain sanity and peace in our home. Simple, nourishing, home-cooked meals are a priority. Schooling our children at home is important. And personally, having a dynamite morning routine is what helps me to make all this happen, so I prioritize that.

2. Make 2 Lists

Next, make two lists. The first: things that must be done, or you’ll feel like you’re drowning. The second: things you’d like to get done but wouldn’t lose sleep over if they didn’t happen. That second list lives in the margins of your day – in the bonus hours, in the unexpected pockets of time. But, it doesn’t get prime real estate in your morning.

Then, decide when you want all your must-dos done by. For example, you may have an anchor time like myself that you can use like me. Just ask yourself, when does my day actually start pulling me away from the home? That is your anchor. Thats when you want your priorities done. Then, again, build backwards from there.

This is why I front-load our mornings so aggressively. Because when I win early, I actually enjoy the rest of the day. I’m not sitting at Bible study mentally cataloging the seventeen things waiting for me at home. And anything that gets done after 10am is just a bonus. That’s the cherry on top of a day that’s already successful.

If This Feels Hard Right Now

If you are in a season where your nervous system is fried and you are just barely keeping your head above water, do not start by trying to get everything done by 10am. It wont work, and it will lead you further into burnout because you’re starting with a cracked foundation. The only reason I’m able to make this work is because I stopped living in fight or flight and very intentionally calmed my nervous system which is what I talk about in my free workshop. When you are in survival mode, you do not need an ambitious routine—you need a doable one.

But this is also why I always say there is only so much a routine can do for a mother who is still stuck in survival mode. If your brain is still living in fight-or-flight, you can have the prettiest plan in the world and still feel like you are running around in a frenzy. One of my students said when she finally got out of survival mode: “I actually got more done than when I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off!” and that really is how it tends to work. It’s like when you aren’t living in a state of constant panic, time somehow expands and you get more done.

Another student said when she got out of survival mode she actually looked forward to what she got to do for the day and saw each task as an opportunity rather than an inconvenience. And another student said getting out of fight-or-flight helped her “get through the day feeling more energized and capable of doing this work that God called her to.” Thats the goal—not just checking boxes, but actually being able to show up well inside the life God blessed you with.

My Secret to Making This Work

Now, here’s my secret. It works like a charm, but very few moms actually do it. Train your children to be contributing members of the household.

Listen, in the mornings, everyone in my house has a job to do, and nobody is stagnant. Even my 1 year old has a job or at least I make him feel like he has a job so he gets used to being on the team in our home. I’ll make this clear when I give you my timeline later, but this comes at some up-front cost. You have to train your children how to do these things, and they won’t be done well at first. For example, my 3 and 5 year old do all the dishes start to finish. But this came at the cost of teaching them how to do it. It also comes at the cost of them not being done the way I like it. I’ve learned to let that go because the fact that its done is better than me pushing myself to burnout in order to get it done myself.

So for the dishes, first, they started with just loading the dishwasher. My 3 year old sprays the dishes and my 5 year old loads them. They would inevitably do it carelessly, and we would do fun little training sessions after. I would go drawer by drawer in the dishwasher and say oooookay…can anyone tell me what looks off here? They would shout – that cup is flipped over! Then they would make it right. Go down to the next drawer, okay anything wrong with this picture? The spatula should go on the top shelf – Yes! Good job!

Once they mastered loading the dishwasher, I taught them how to unload it by first teaching them the silverware and my 3 year old owns that job, then teaching the bowls and my 5 year old owns that, then I give them two more categories…the kids cups and straws – 3 year old takes that and the kitchen utensils – 5 year old gets that.

This is just an example of one big chore that actually takes a LOT off my plate. Think, this knocks 2 birds out with one stone. For one, they’re doing a chore that would have taken 10 minutes of my precious time, but it takes 30 minutes of their time, and that’s time they’re 1: learning a skill and 2: occupied with a task so I don’t have to give them something to do and they aren’t causing trouble with each other because they’re bored.

And yes, dishes get broken, but actually less frequently than you think because one broken dish and they learn real quick that broken glass is a bummer.

**I do take all the sharp knives and stuff out of the sink before they do the dishes.

My Full Routine

I wake early before the children and get all my self care done for the day – workout, bible time, journaling and daily planning, morning walk, etc. I have multiple videos about my morning routine on my channel, and how I’m able to wake up before my kids – but for me, this is key. You can do your routine at night if you choose, though.

Around 7:00am – my two older children wake up. They get themselves dressed, make their beds, and do their chores while I make a quick breakfast for my husband and children.

7:15am – everyone is at the breakfast table eating while my husband and I chat and I make coffee and start dinner prep. This might look like putting a roast in the oven to slow cook all day and chopping sweet potatoes and prepping the salads.

7:30am – I wake the baby, and nurse him. Yes, even if he’s still sleeping. That way he naps longer in the afternoon.

Usually while I’m feeding my little nursling, my older children are finished eating, and they get washed up and start on the dishes.

Around 7:45am – I plop my little one on the counter to eat his breakfast while I finish dinner prep and play our playlist of hymns and bible verse songs. We do the Truth and Grace christian catechism book and have since my eldest was 2 so the hymns in my playlist are the ones we’ve learned from that book. I used to sit down and line by line memorize the hymns with the kids and that was just too much with the Bible verse memory and the catechism questions as well. I’ve found that just playing the playlist in the morning helps them to memorize the songs without it taking up our school time.

So at this point, I’m prepping dinner, my little one is eating breakfast and my 2 older ones are still doing dishes.

Usually by 8:30am – dinner is completely prepped and all chores for the day are done – keep in mind, this all came with lots and lots of interruptions – diaper changes, kissing ouchies, etc.

By 8:30am – I’m usually ready to start school, and this is when I will take advantage of the baby having a full belly and some mommy time while I prepped dinner, and he will do some free play while I do our first subject with my 5 year old – reading. We do the 100 easy lessons book, and its been amazing. We started this book a long time ago. When he had just turned 4, and I would just do like a quarter of a lesson at a time and took it painfully slow for this type-a mama. But now we are starting to cruise through, and it’s clicking which has been so rewarding. Usually, the two youngest are sitting on my lap by now because the excitement of my eldest’s reading wins draw them in.

By 9am – the children all play independently, and I get ready for the day. This takes me exactly 20 minutes to get ready – full hair and makeup, get dressed, and make my bed. While I do this, I play the Abeka Bible song CD for them while they dance and play.

Around 9:20am – we do our second subject which is morning Bible time at the kitchen table. We do the catechism questions from that truth and grace book I mentioned, bible verse memory using the simply charlotte mason bible verse memory method, and our bible curriculum out of the Abeka curriculum. At this point, I’ve gone through the Abeka curriculum twice, and I’m on the third round. We have the old and new testament curriculum as well as the salvation series, and I just go through one at a time.

Bible time usually only takes about 15 minutes tops and after that with whatever time we have left I’ll do some flash cards, worksheets, learning games, or something like that, and we always have to be out of the house by 9:45am in the car on our way to whatever the days activity is.

A Simpler Way Forward

So if you feel like you’re constantly behind…like your days are running you instead of the other way around…it’s not too late to change that. You don’t need more hours. You need sharper priorities, and to build your day backwards.

If you need a whole home reset, and you need to get out of survival mode before you even think about implementing anything else into your days, the link for my free workshop is below.