The daily rhythm of my home is changing soon, and it will be more important than ever to make sure our mornings run smoothly.

I remembered reading on Life As Mom about the idea of a Morning High Five for her kids. Picking the five most important chores, she made for them a colourful chart, like this:

Morning High Five chart from Life As Mom (click through for a printable and other awesomeness)

I decided to be creative and/or mysterious, so I mysteriously traced around the girls’ hands on coloured paper before school this morning, and whipped up my own version of the chart while they were away:

This is Lilly

This is a list for the girls, but there are kind of two lists in it for me.

The early morning list

So, there is literally nothing more important for me in the morning than making sure these things happen before 8:30am, for not only Lill but for Bella, Henry and myself. We all need to get through the full cycle of toilet, breakfast, dress’edness, teeth and hair, and the girls backpacks need to be packed. It’s nice if more things get done (a la breakfast dishes, made beds and so forth) but those can wait until after the school run. We must be realistic about these things. So I’ve split my school-morning routine into two. One is my own “High Five” list, and the other is all the entertaining (ha!) “extra” tasks that aren’t as mission critical as those that Get The Kids Out The Door.

The School Night Preparedness List

This is the most important, because nothing, nothing ruins the feng shui of a morning like the echoing cries of “Mum, I don’t have any clean knickers!” and frantic washing of yesterday’s lunchbox in order to fill it with today’s lunch. Horrible, stressful way to start the day, rummaging through the un-folded washing to find a uniform top and the right kind of undies and socks.

Well worth the effort, even when Bejewelled is calling to me.

What’s on your Next Day Preparedness List?