sounds pretty sensible to me Thanks

I don't anymore, but then I don't work outside the home now. As a family when our children were at home and during the school year we had the habit of having everything ready from laying out clothes (no changing your mind in the morning allowed) to having homework checked and backpacks loaded and at the door.
When I did work, I pretty much did the same thing. It's a life, morning and whole day saver.
~Becky

I do it and it really does help.

Although, I'm normally in bed by 9:30 on a good night :)

-clothing set out for me and the boys (saves on the fumbling in the dark for colors)
-my lunch packed and in the fridge
-my little pile of stuff to take to work, purse, keys, phone, any paperwork or other items
-house picked up (for me, I cannot beat having a fresh CLEAN start to the day)

I have an after dinner routine. Clean up dishes, run the dishwasher (or program it to run during the night), take out garbage, lay out tomorrows lothing, take a shower, go to bed.

Funny typo:

lay out tomorrows lo[a]thing...

I can understand this, seeing as these are trying times.
What about the next day's fear?

-Lena

Here is a link that might be useful: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

I try to get everything done by 8:00 so I can relax and not worry about the things I need to do before bed. I also get up about 20 minutes in the morning so I can relax. If someone wakes up I send them back to their room. I find if I don't get my 20 minutes of quite I am grumpy for the rest of the day.

Excellent idea. I try to do this but it doesn't always happen. I do better on school nights because I have to hit the ground running in the morning. On weekends, though, I get lazy and things really slide and I'm paying for it Sunday night.

My lifesaver habit has been FlyLady's getting dressed to the shoes every morning. I get up a half hour before everyone else so I can grab a shower, get dressed, read my comics and start the coffee before the "real" day begins.

Fear and loathing ... LOL!

My version is the " be sure to do it way before 10:00" rule, which seems to mirror a lot of folks above. DH's alarm goes off about 5:45 a.m. I've learned that by 10:00 pm I'm really fading, and get extremely cranky if I still have to clear clean laundry off the bed, do dishes, or whatever--all of my tolerance is just gone--pfft. Sometimes I feel like a 2-year-old. Then also I have the tendency to get all rev'd up again if I do start that, and so have to take another half hour or so to settle down, and then don't want to get up in the morning.

A good while ago we started the "dishwasher break" if watching a movie at night, or even TV--either get the kitchen all cleaned up before 8pm or so, or "stop the tape" (old lingo)midway and stretch, clean up and load, then finish the movie.

It fits in not only with preparing for your day or events, but also respecting your own rhythms and not setting yourself up for bad cranky moods when you don't have to--same as keeping thing simple when you've got evening committee meetings or guests in town or other things.

I'm a night person...so my "clean the kitchen" alarm goes off at 10:30pm. That's after the "put away laundry" alarm around 8:30pm has already been taken care of. I usually settle in bed with a book or to sleep by 11:30 or so, so the kitchen is my last stop before the bathroom (remove makeup, etc) and then bed. That way the kitchen is at least passibly decent in the morning.

I do a load of laundry Mon/Tues/Thur/Fri nights every week, which keeps it caught up pretty well. And I have alarms for those too, of course, just earlier in the evening. :-)

My mom always had everything cleaned up from dinner, the next day's stuff laid out for all of us, all homework checked, and anything else that needed to be done by about 7 each night. I just can't seem to get it together. My kids go to bed at 8:30 and that last hour is always a frenzy of checking homework, finding band music, brushing teeth, and laying out their clothes for tomorrow. Then after they are in bed I finish (usually actuall START) cleaing the kitchen, laundry, laying out stuff for the next day, making lunches, etc. By 10 I am just dead!

When I was a working gal raising my 3 boys on my own I'd do the usual things after work shop, dinner, homework etc. Then I stretch out with the boys and read them stories in bed. At 11 pm my mom would call me on the phone to wake up and do the house stuff and get ready for tomorrow.

jamie_mt, I use alarms, too! If I have set leftovers to cool on the counter before they go in the fridge, I set the microwave timer to go off in 45 minutes. That was I remember to put the leftovers in the fridge... otherwise, the leftovers might never make it into the fridge! I also set the timer to limit how long I sit down to relax after work. I give myself about 30 minutes, and then it's time to start dinner.

And, frankie_in_zone_7, we do dishwashing breaks, too. When we sit down to eat in front of the TV, we can get so involved in our movie that we can forget to do the dishes. So we try to pause the DVR and go do the dishes during a commercial break. Sometimes I even set a timer to go off to remind me to do this!

To this day, we clear the table after dinner. (Queen Elizabeth could be dining and she would have to help) Everybody takes one thing and puts it near either the refrig or the dishwasher and then puts their dish, silverware, etc. into the dishwasher. the reward is desert or after dinner drinks which aren't necessarily alcoholic, and we can linger over those for a long time.
If I have overnite guests --which is often--when they leave, I ask that they strip the bed and toss the sheets and towels into the laundry room. I am a gracious hostess but not a maid.
I did have somebody once that told me that according to Emily Post, what I was suggesting wasn't proper etiquette. My response is--Emily runs her house, and I run mine.