How to Get Out the Door on Time in the Mornings! | Clutter Video Tip

⚡️ UPDATE: The Clutter Diet program has officially ended. I’m now helping professionals and entrepreneurs with personal branding and communication at 👉 BePutTogether.com ✨
Having no morning routine can leave you feeling rushed, battered and bruised before you even start your daily commute. Just a little preparation can help you get ready and get out the door intact. In today's video Lorie Marrero is getting out and illustrating the techniques she uses to do so in one piece. Following these tips will make getting out the door less stressful and more efficient each day. You can search Twitter for #ClutterVideoTip also to find comments on our organizing tips. Lorie Marrero is the creator of ClutterDiet.com and the author of The Clutter Diet: The Skinny on Organizing Your Home and Taking Control of Your Life. Lorie also serves as the national spokesperson for Goodwill Industries International and ambassador of the Donate Movement.

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Hi. I'm Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book & online program, I was just on my way out the door so I thought I'd make you a video about how to get yourself out the door on time. This is a struggle for lots of people.

It all starts with our morning and evening routines. The night before, anything you can do in advance such as gathering up items, making decisions, can help you save tons of stress and time in the morning when everybody's scrambling around trying to get into the car. Doing things like packing backpacks, packing a briefcase, packing lunches the night before, laying out clothing, all of those things are easily done before and they can streamline everything when you have the minutes ticking away in the morning. Look at that morning routine and try to simplify any kind of grooming and beauty routines that you have and gather up items & centralize them so that that process in the morning is as simple as possible. Have an organized closet so you can find outfits & put them together & not have a big stressful mess facing you when you wake up.

Electronic calendars have a lot more space in our appointment fields, like notes fields & location fields, where we can put a lot of information and hardly anyone is really using those. I see people doing that in the most basic way if you take the time to fill in some of that information it can really save you a lot of stress when you are ready to go. If you need driving directions look them up in advance. Paste them into the notes field of that appointment, paste the address there, & on some smart phones you can just click on the address and it will take you to a map.

Here's a question that I teach in my book, The Home Office Handbook: What can I do before, during, or after this appointment to improve it? Thinking about anything that you could look up, the driving directions, thinking about anything you might need to bring with you, anything you need to do to prepare for a meeting. If it's a business meeting, you might need to research that person or their company, you might need to bring business cards or a computer. If you are going to be with your kids, you might need to bring a lot of changes of clothes or something like that. You might even think about the after so that if there's a thank you note that needs to be written, you can get a step ahead of that too. Capture all those things in the appointment fields so that you have that information at your fingertips.

Another thing I want to talk about is gathering up your stuff to bring with you. We've talked in another video about purse organization, that is really half the battle, knowing where your purse is and having everything you need in it so you can walk out the door.

Now, we also have talked in another video about a destination station. This is the place where you enter and exit the house the most frequently. You want to have at least some hooks there. I am in a temporary apartment right now. My destination station here is behind me. It's very basic. I have a hook for my purse, and I have a hook for my keys. And if that's all you can do, great. If you have room & you have a better set-up, you can do some shelving or some kind of piece of furniture where you can have all kinds of stuff for yourself. Shoes & socks for the kids, you can have umbrellas, hooks for the backpacks, you can have an errand shelf for anything that needs to go out the door with you. Think about how you can create that destination station in your home.

One of the things that's really helpful is if you have a lot of things to carry with you, you can use a tray or a basket to consolidate those trips & to even gather these items in advance.

If you like these tips, there are more where that came from if you want to get our weekly newsletter it comes out every Thursday. You can find out more about that at clutterdiet.com/freetips.

See you next time, and