Spring Resolution: getting ready in the morning

One of my resolutions from last week was to work out exactly how much time I needed to get ready in the morning. Lately I’ve been getting later, and later, and later. It’s no good! I hate being rushed in the morning and I think that starting the working day with a feeling of preparation and the deep inner calm that comes from not-rushing is really valuable.

To achieve the resolution I’ve decided to re-assess each part of the the process of getting ready and getting out of the house, which I roughly divided into a three - getting dressed and showering et al, having coffee and breakfast, and completing any waking up rituals. The plan is that when I know how much time each part takes me I can work out a better routine and get up at a more realistic time.

The re-assessment of the amount of time I was taking was in part inspired by this article I read on Already Pretty. The woman who blogs there estimated that she could complete her dressing process in 40 minutes minimum (that is - no fussing about). As I read this I thought:

a. 40 minutes! Without make up! What the hell does she do in the morning? 

and

b. It's not a race, but if it was I’d win hands down because I’m pretty sure I can get dressed in a fraction of that time. Hahahahaha.

Once my smugness about my dressing-briskness-and-potential-race-winning had subsided, I realisedhow misplaced it was. Because I have no idea how much time it would take me to get myself dressed and made up and showered if I had as much time as I needed. In the weekdays I’ve always arbitrarily given myself about half an hour to have a shower and get dressed and have made that work - which means that most mornings I jump in and out of the shower, don’t wear make up, don’t dry my hair and don’t rub any unguents on any part of my body except my face.

My questions then were: if I did my ideal number of girly things in the morning, how long would it take me to get dressed - should I try and allow for an extra fifteen or so minutes? Am I cutting myself short and rushing around when I could be taking my time? Do I really give a crap about wearing make up and having dry hair etc etc anyways?

Over the last week I’ve made some kind of attempt to answer them, and have come to the following conclusions

1. To do maximum girly things, I need to allow a minimum of 45 minutes. This assumes a day where I’m not easily distracted and where getting dressed isn’t difficult 
2. This more generous amount of time probably goes some way towards explaining why I’m usually late.
3. To avoid the aforementioned difficulty I should probably lay out my clothes the night before 
4. Wearing a smear of make up does make me feel slightly perkier about the day, as does having dry hair. This is something I should try to do.
5. Even the thought of being late doesn’t make a large impact on how fast I move - as in, I’ll cut things out but I rarely move any faster. More time is vital. 

So, part one of the three part re-assessment is completed and I now know that I was cutting out fifteen minutes of potential lady-time. I shall now allow myself 45 minutes to primp each morning which I'm sure will make the whole kit and caboodle that much more fun!

Next, I’ll give the breakfasting process a re-assess. I’ve fallen off the breakfast bandwagon again, and I LIKE breakfast, so how that happened I'll never know.