The Perfect Evening Routine Checklist for Working Moms

Inside: Rock your busy working mom schedule with this evening routine checklist and organization tips!

Every night you go to bed dreading the morning rush.

Every evening you just want to sit on the couch and relax, exhaustion taking over.

Sometimes it feels like an endless cycle, doesn’t it? But mornings do not need to be chaotic. And evenings can be a fabulous way to be productive to prepare for the next day.

Here’s a checklist of everything that needs to be in a routine for your busy evenings.

Do you have an organized working mom schedule? What does your evening routine look like? Let’s chat about some mom organizing!

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Why evening routine ideas are important for working parents

Just like we need a good working mom morning routine, we also need an organized working mom evening routine.

Both round out your organized working mom schedule and are important pieces of the overall picture!

While it’s easiest to be lazy and not do much in the evening, I find that contributes to more stressful mornings. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t like my mornings to be extra stressful. It’s complicated enough getting myself and a tiny human ready to leave the house in the morning, go to daycare drop off and get to work.

It’s not enough to have a to-do list, but you need to know what important things are coming up next so you don’t have any surprises. Planning ahead for the next day, and looking ahead for the next week can help us stay on top of things and fight off mom brain.

What’s the #1 tip for working moms that saves time? An organized evening routine, of course!

A well-thought-out evening routine checklist can save you a lot of time in the morning and throughout the day!

The key here is routine. It’s something specific you do during a set time. That way, you don’t forget. That way it becomes a habit.

Implementing an organized evening plan for the next day is crucial and helps make the morning run more efficiently.

So what’s on your evening routine? It can be as simple as:

After-dinner clean-up
Packing lunches
Bedtime routine for the kids
Mommy self-care time
Planning tasks for the next day/reviewing calendar
Laying out clothes for the next day
Putting everything that needs to go out tomorrow by the door or in your bag (or in your car)

How long should your evening routine take? I would say let’s not make it last longer than an hour because we will not want to do it. Start small, don’t overwhelm yourself before you even get going. You can always get more elaborate and add more tasks to your evening routine as you go.

What does an organized Evening routine for working moms look like?

I would suggest having two evening routine checklists. One will be a daily evening routine, and the second will be your weekly evening routine.

Weekly evening routine ideas

Once a week, you want to do a more thorough planning session. I like to do this on Sundays (read more about Sunday prep). Do a brain dump of everything coming up in the next week, all the tasks you want or need to get in the upcoming days.

Then review your family wall calendar or your digital Google calendar. What important events are coming up? Are there special dress-up days at daycare or school? Do you need to remember to bring a particular toy for show and tell? Do you have any lunch or dinner plans you can’t forget?

Plan out your meals for the week. Make sure you get your grocery shopping done and maybe even do some meal prepping if you have more complicated recipes on your meal plan. Doing that prep on the weekend makes it quicker to cook the meals on the weeknight.

Put all these in your planner for the week, with your weekly to-do list.

You can use the lovely daily agenda printable I have prepared for you for this practice.

Grab your Master Agenda now!

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Daily evening routine ideas

Your daily evening routine checklist should contain the big categories you want to hit, but the details may look slightly different depending on what you have going on.

Kitchen Tasks

Evening routines typically start after dinner. So start yours with the kitchen tasks you need to do every night. What might that look like for you?

Putting away leftovers.
Washing dishes/setting the dishwasher.
Packing lunches for the next day.
Maybe a quick tidy up of counters? Wipe down of surfaces.
Feeding pets/letting dogs out for their last potty break.
Set the coffee pot schedule.

Plan for tomorrow

Take a moment after all the chaos of the evening is done (i.e. children are in bed, and dishes and food have been put away) and think about the next day. Write out the tasks you need to get done tomorrow – are there any specific things that absolutely must be completed? Add in any meetings and appointments, so you know when you’re not available to work on those tasks. Add any phone calls you need to make, and any errands you need to run before or after work.

If you’re a night owl, you might want to do your daily gratitude practice in the evening. Review the day, reflect on what went well and what you’re thankful for, and journal that.

Clothing

I hate that morning I don’t know what to wear feeling. I suggest you plan what you are wearing tomorrow and lay the clothing out. Getting dressed in the morning is hard for me – I keep staring at the closet and not seeing anything. So I like to plan out my outfit the night before when my brain is still working (as my brain isn’t yet working when I first wake up). Having an organized working mom wardrobe with easy to wear and mix and match pieces is key here, too.

I lay out my preschooler’s clothes too, for easier getting ready in the morning. That really helps with the morning fog. He’s starting to be able to help pick out his clothes and lay them out with me, so I’m looking forward to having less involvement in this line item soon.

Pack Diaper Bag or Backpack, and your Mom Bag

Think about what you need for daycare. Do you need to add diapers/pull-ups? Did you wash that blanket (my toddler loves this airplane blanket) for daycare? Check your child’s change of clothes (in case some were used yesterday).

Pack your own bag – do you work out after work? If so, put a clean set of clothes in the gym bag. Maybe replace the water bottle. Check your purse for random receipts and anything that needs to come out and go somewhere else in the house, and make sure you have your wallet, phone, keys, and other essentials.

Mommy self-care time

This is an important piece! We have to remember ourselves, mamas. We are often putting ourselves last. And that’s a shame because we can’t give others our best when we’re not at our best.

I like to shower at night before bed rather than in the morning because it relaxes me and helps me sleep. It also saves me tons of time in the morning, obviously.

I also love a warm cup of tea when winding down. It helps so much!

This might also be your workout time if you’re not a morning person. I really need to start adding exercise to my evening routine!

Finally, be sure you’re going to bed on time to get enough sleep. Yes, I know, mom life means we are up at all hours with our littles. But we can still try to get more sleep by not going to bed after midnight (just me?) – so set a decent bedtime for yourself so you can at least attempt to be in bed for 8 hours, even if you don’t get to sleep for all of them and end up getting up with a child a few times.

Grab your Busy Mom Master Agenda Printable

I made you a present! I know many people love to write down their to-do list and schedules; something about writing makes it more meaningful to the brain. So here’s a master agenda printable you can use as your working mom daily routine checklist and planner, to write out your schedule of appointments and important tasks!

Consider this your working mom schedule template!

Remember – write out your master agenda plan the night before!