Things You Can Do At Night To Make Your Morning Easier

Even if you are one of those lucky "morning people," as a woman of the modern world, there is no doubt that you sometimes fall prey to the chaos that a work or school morning can fling at you, especially if you are a working mother. You also must have experienced the sad truth that a crazy, hurried, or unsettling morning can contribute to those same harried feelings hounding you throughout the rest of your day. It's like a doctor's appointment book — if you start late, you're going to run late, and if you run late in one area, you're going to run late in another. You get the picture.

How can you achieve calmer, more manageable mornings for yourself and your family? There are really only two ways to get more time at the start of the day: get up earlier (no thanks!), or get more done the night before.

In addition to utilizing a sleep app to help her optimize her mornings, Mejia also mentioned that she has had a lot of success "turning late night guilty pleasures into early morning rewards." For instance, the desire to watch "just one more episode" of your fave TV show when you should really be heading to bed instead can be parlayed into a promise to yourself that you can watch it while making a healthy breakfast tomorrow morning. "Now I'm not only cutting out a bad evening habit that's sure to leave me exhausted the next day," she told me, "but I'm [also] giving myself a little extra motivation to get up and get going a little earlier on any given weekday. Win-win!"

If you need a little extra help bribing yourself because your willpower is low, Wired recently wrote about a new life hacking app with a corresponding lock box called kSafe that might do the trick. Users can "put something [they] want in the box (think: TV remote, candy, iPad) and set a goal on the app... Only when you achieve that goal can you access the goods. Save me from myself, kSafe!

I spoke with Rachelle Isip, a widely quoted author and professional organization and time management consultant, about her tips on what you can do at night to make your mornings easier, and she had a lot of good wisdom to impart. One of the most interesting suggestions she had, however, was that you shouldn't leave all your next-day preparations until the last thing before bedtime. Why? Not only will you be sitting around dreading those chores all evening if you do, but you'll also wake yourself back up with work after you've already gotten yourself unwound for sleep. Instead, she suggests "setting an evening cutoff time for morning prep," ensuring not only that you'll get everything necessary handled, but also that "you'll have enough time to relax, unwind, and enjoy your evening." So how much time should you leave? According to this "order expert," you'll want to "aim to finish your morning preparations at least one hour before bedtime."

The obvious benefits of showering at night versus in the morning are hard to ignore. Depending on how quick you are, you'll save between 15 and 60 minutes in the morning if you don't need to bathe and wash and dry your hair. Speaking of drying, Dani Faraj, a professional stylist at Brighton Salon in Beverly Hills, told Bustle that one of the reasons it's better to wash your hair at night is that it can help you avoid needing to dry your hair with damaging high heat. "It is better to wash your hair at night rather than the morning so the hair has time to dry naturally [without high heat]. Especially for [hair that's been colored]," Faraj said.

Showering at night can even help you sleep better. The warm water can have a relaxing effect on muscles, as well as a soothing effect on your psyche. It's even been suggested that you can go longer between needing to change your bed sheets if you shower at night, since you'll track less sweat and dirt residue into the bed. There seems to be a whole lot of upside to this showering at night thing.

Do you tend to forget certain necessary items like your phone charger, your debit card, or your gym bag when you leave for work in the morning? We have a quick fix for that! Heather Lindstrom, an "organization aficionado" and lifestyle blogger at Style*Mind*Chic Life, swears by her concept of a "can't forget it place... where you always store your items to grab in the morning, like a briefcase, backpack, day bag, umbrella, etc."

It could be a shelf or cubby by the front door, or a section of your desk where you have your morning coffee and read emails at the start of the day. It should be a place that you're guaranteed to look at before heading out to start your day in the big, wide world. You won't be able to get anywhere if you don't have your car key or your MetroCard, so stash items you need help remembering in the same "can't forget it place" the night before. This will also nip those hurried morning sessions of running around like a chicken with your head cut off trying to collect everything you need and pack your bag. Lindstrom also advised via email: "Add a charging station to the space so your phone/iPad, etc. will be in your line of sight as you gather your items for the day."

It's getting late into the evening, and you have a sink full of dishes, lunches to pack, a shower to take, garbage to put out... looking at all these nighttime prep activities for an easier morning might just look like a tradeoff between having a harried morning, or a harried nighttime at this point, right? Well, Harriet Jones, a cleaning and maintenance expert for Go Cleaners London, suggests realizing when you need help and asking for it. As long as you don't live alone (or with only young very kids), your home comes complete with built-in helpers. "You need help with the domestic tasks, and it is perfectly okay to confess it," Jones told me via email. "Involve your family members in the quick daily de-cluttering and not only you will get assistance, this will also help [any] children [you may have] to develop habits they will need later on."

Don't have kids yet? What about a partner or roommate? These people should be responsible for helping with domestic tasks. And if you do live alone, consider figuring out if hiring domestic help could be in your budget.

Many of us are not morning people. Or even if we naturally are, being so busy or thinly spread out that we don't get enough sleep can make us too sleep-deprived to cash in on our natural "morning person" wiring. It can be hard to combat the frenzy of a busy work or school morning, leaving us stressed or unprepared for the day. Besides just basically waking up earlier, which is simply not realistic for many of us, all the experts I consulted with agree that a good nighttime prep ritual can do wonders to alleviate morning turmoil. Even simple things, like many of the ones discussed here, can really do a surprising amount to make your mornings easier and set a more positive tone for your day.