Streamline Your Week Series: Clothing

Taking charge of your entire weekly wardrobe on Sunday is one of the easiest and most impactful ways to streamline your morning routine.  Spend the Colt's game halftime on Sunday and try one, some, or all of the following suggestions to save tons of time and tears gettingyou and your family ready throughout the week. 

• Wash, fold, put away all laundry.  By end of day Sunday, shoot to have all of your laundry washed, folded and put away.  
• Having all clean clothes will give you the largest outfit selection pool.  It will also make you feel more prepared and allow you to check one item off your mental to-do list.
• If that seems as unrealistic as my beloved Fighting Irish winning the National Championship, don't sweat it.  Try to do at least one load that has the most important items such as the kids' sports jerseys, your favorite pair of scrubs, school uniforms and your husbands' black socks.

• Pick out your whole family's outfit(s).  You have a couple different options here.  You can simply pick out everyone's outfit before bedtime.  Or, you can challenge yourself to decide on outfits for the entire week on Sunday.
• Go 'shopping' through drawers and closets the day before to help minimize headaches caused by whiny teens who stamp their feet and declare they have NOTHING to wear.  Don't forget to choose outfit accessories such as jewelry, handbags and shoes.
• I have heard of people picking out outfits for the entire week at one time!  These early birds often have bags or boxes labeled with each day of the week and put their chosen outfit in the corresponding day.  Given the propensity of the weather to drastically fluctuate here in Fort Wayne, you should probably keep a sweatshirt handy for when the temperature drops suddenly.

• Iron your clothes on Sunday.  I am not allowed to iron in my house.  Come to think of it, Audrey isn't either.  My husband went to a Catholic high school and was responsible for ironing his dress shirts for school everyday.  That tradition coupled with the fact I loathe the chore and am not good at it means my husband does all the ironing...including my clothing.
• The moral of this anecdote is that every Sunday I politely suggest to my husband that he might want to iron all shirts/pants necessary for the week.  He usually responds with a smart comment about my deficient ironing skills and trudges off to the laundry room.  Time passes and he emerges, glistening in sweat, proudly taking his crispy shirts back to the closet.  Morning rolls around, and he thanks me for reminding him to iron because he can hit snooze one more time.  I thank him for doing the dreadful job.

Getting all of your clothes 'staged & prepped' on Sunday can help save time, avoid tears and frustration, and most importantly, press snooze one more time.