How to End Your Day Right as a Busy Mom: The Perfect Mom Night Time Routine

You know that moment when the kids are all finally in bed, you’ve kissed their sweet little faces even though they did ask for an extra water or potty break for the 50th time.

You get back into your kitchen, living room whatever and just feel an instant brief moment of peacefulness! It is SO quiet. 

Everything is perfectly tidied up, because your mom night time routine is on point. So you grab some hot tea and cuddle up with a book or your favorite TV show. 

But that isn’t what actually happens is it. 

Problem – Having a Mom Night Routine Feels Boring, and Tiring

If only the perfect mom night time routine could go a little something like above. But this is how it usually actually goes…

You ignore the mess that isn’t cleaned up, plop down with your phone and start doing the scroll and think I’ll get to the kitchen clean up in 5 minutes. I am SO tired, I need to sit for a minute.

Valid. Yes Momma, you ARE tired. But…suddenly it’s actually been half an hour and the magical kitchen maid didn’t get around to cleaning the kitchen for you.  

I know, I understand COMPLETELY the feeling of dread and exhaustion that comes with thinking that you have SO much that you still need to do after you finally get your little angels into bed. If you are struggling to get your kids to bed on time, get some help for that here.

Personally, I have had it more often than not. That it’s been one of those crazy run off your feet, never stop days. My husband is out working late in the fields and by the time the kids are in bed I still have a mountain of mess in the kitchen. 

Along with wet clean clothes in the wash, some more dirty in the laundry room sink because there’s been an accident or two. And there is still a bill that really, really needs to be paid because mail day is tomorrow…

Even just thinking about it while writing it is making me feel bored, tired and un-motivated. 

The problem is…

You really don’t want to give yourself a ‘to-do’ list specifically for the evenings. The evenings is when you want to relax and hang out. You want it to be “ME TIME.” 

You live for the independence of not having to answer to a constant stream of requests anymore for those sweet few hours. Me too.

How to End Your Day Right as a Busy Mom: The Perfect Mom Night Time Routine

Once I started viewing my evenings as opportunities to prepare myself for success the next day, the more I felt motivated to utilize a routine. Sometimes you just need a bit of encouragement to get started if you are feeling too burnt-out to even start.

Now at the same time, you have to figure out YOUR OWN personal perfect night time routine according to what phase of life you are in.

You are not obviously not going to have the entire evening to yourself when you have a newborn. So don’t set yourself up for disappointment by having unrealistic expectations. 

So let’s think about things step by step and see where we end up.

Step by Step Instructions for Creating Your Own Perfect Mom Night Time Routine

Step by step: record these answers on a piece of paper, to help come up with your ideal mom night routine

1: Determining Your Expectations With Your Kids

• How old are your children
• Does anyone go to school/childcare on a regular basis
• When do my kids usually fall asleep by each night
• When does the bedtime process begin and how long does it take
• Do any of your older children have specific needs from you, after siblings are in bed

2: What is important/specific to you

• What are your goals
• What habits do you want to work on
• Do you have a long ‘getting ready for bed’ routine
• What time do you want to be sleeping by
• What do you enjoy doing in the evenings
• Do you feel best when you finish up tasks from your to-do list that day, or are you comfortable having carry-over to the next day
• When does your spouse go to sleep (if applicable) and do you want to be in bed at the same time
• When do you like too, or need to wake up
• Do you need to leave the house daily as well? What is your typical daily schedule like

3: Help

• Who helps you with bedtime
• Who helps you with nightly cleanup chores
• Are any older children capable of helping put siblings to bed (this can be a great way to teach them some selflessness and responsibility)

4: Come up with a plan for

Use the answers to these questions we looked at above to help you come up with a reasonable expectation and plan for…

1. How much time you have in a night
2. What your desires are for leisure, habit forming, or working towards specific goals
3. How much time you need to keep for available for cleaning so you can start your new day with a ‘resetted home’
4. How long you should dedicate for your ‘getting ready for bed’ routine and what that includes

5. Create your routine

Once we have our questions answered, and some reasonable expectations set. We can then make the actual routine itself that we want to follow each night.

Night time routine ideas

Now we can see some sample routines to give you a good starting point of ideas. You can incorporate any of these ideas into a personalized nightly routine by also taking into account your answers from the questions above. 

Creating a personalized mom night time routine, instead of taking someone else’s generic ideas and using those as is – will help you wake up feeling prepared and ready to start every new day efficiently. 

Plans for next day

Assess what is happening the next day. Bonus points for writing it down in your planner. This helps you to be in the right frame of mind for what the day is going to throw your way.

Then you can also determine your priorities for the current night, to make your next day run smoothly.

Dishes Washed

Do a dishes/dishwasher reset (either turn it on and empty it before bed, or turn it on and open the door when done so it’s dry for the morning

Tidy Up

Quick tidy up – hopefully your family will help you with this, either right before or right after supper.

Efficient baths

Try to do baths before supper (if you have really little kids still): do this if you find supper ends too late and you are struggling to get kids into bed fast enough.

I know they get super dirty during meal-times again, but I still find this works great for our family. 

Don’t delay bedtime

Get the kids into bed on time. An over-tired kid won’t do you any favours the next day.

Prep some breakfast for yourself

This is especially important if you…

• Have health goals
• Never have time to eat properly in the morning
• Find that you require a large balanced breakfast to feel energetic
• Or just are too busy getting everyone ready in the morning. That you find you can’t eat right away with your kids. Munching on your breakfast while you get them ready can save time.

Clean up

Clean up supper cooking messes while you’re cooking if you can, so that after supper you just have to put away the plates into the dishwasher and put away the food itself. 

The perfect mom night time routine is good for you, your home, and your family

In case you need some reminders for why you should end your day rights as a busy mom by having a good routine

• Routines are not just for kids, we need mom night routines too. Our brains love it
• If you don’t have specific plans for how to spend your time in the evenings, but want to try to become a more organized, intentional mom how will you reach that goal?
• The best way to become more organized is too be accountable to the time you have in each day, and use small pockets of time whenever you can to form the habits that set you up for success
• Not having a routine can turn into late nights, and tired mornings when you loose track of time enjoying your leisure
• If you don’t use your pockets of time wisely when they are available – for ticking off the steps of your nightly routine, you will be that much more behind if you face interruptions from kids or anything else.

That’s it for now!

Talk to you later,

Amy