The school run, worked backwards from the door
We were late four days out of five and I kept trying to fix it by getting up earlier, which is the one thing that doesn’t work. The fix was writing down what the door actually needs and moving all of it to the night before.
For most of the first term we were late four days out of five. Not dramatically — ninety seconds, two minutes, the kind of late where you arrive as the door is closing and somebody has to open it again for you.
My response was to try to get up earlier, which I did for three weeks, and which achieved nothing at all except that we were the same amount of late while more tired. I want to be honest that I did this for three weeks before I questioned it.
The thing that actually fixed it
I wrote down, in the order they have to happen, everything that has to be true before the door can open.
There were nineteen things. Nineteen. Some of them were mine, several of them were invisible — finding the water bottle, the thirty seconds of negotiation about which coat — and one of them, it turned out, was the whole problem.
The book bag. Nine mornings out of ten, the last four minutes before leaving were four people looking for a book bag. Once I’d written the list, that was obvious in a way it had never been while we were living it.
Tom put a hook on the wall at her height that afternoon. Not a nice hook. It cost about two pounds and it is at exactly the height where a five-year-old can reach it without stretching, which is the entire design brief and the reason it gets used.
Everything that can move, moves
The rule now is that anything that can be done at night is done at night, and the test I use is: could somebody who does not live here get these children out of the house using only what they can see?
So: bags packed and hanging on the hooks, coats above them, shoes underneath. Lunches made, which is its own entry. Uniform out, including socks, which are their own category of disaster. Anything that needs signing, signed. Water bottles filled and in the fridge.
It takes about six minutes in the evening. It saves fifteen in the morning, and morning minutes are worth considerably more than evening ones, which is a rate of exchange nobody tells you about.
Breakfast before clothes
This one I resisted for months because it felt backwards.
Dressed-then-eat means a second wash of a face, a milk-splashed jumper, and — the real cost — a child who believes the getting-ready phase is over when it is not. Eat-then-dress means one continuous run at it, and it saves us about ten minutes, measured over a fortnight because I did not believe it either.
The number
We leave at eight-eleven.
Not “about ten past”. Eight-eleven, said out loud at eight o’clock and again at eight-five, because “we need to get going soon” is not information, it’s a mood, and a five-year-old will correctly identify it as one.
The oddly specific number does something to adults too. I cannot fully explain it. “Half eight” is negotiable in a way that eight-eleven simply isn’t.
What I still get wrong
Hair at the door. Every single time I think it will take thirty seconds and every single time it takes two and a half minutes, and I have now been doing this for a year without learning.
Things people email to ask
- How do I stop being late for the school run?
- Work backwards from the door rather than forwards from the alarm. Write down every single thing that has to be true before you can leave — shoes on, bag found, teeth done, coat — and move everything that can happen the night before to the night before. Getting up earlier does not work, because the time gets absorbed; the list is what actually changes.
- What should you do the night before school?
- Bags packed and by the door, uniform out, shoes underneath the coats, and anything that needs signing signed. The test is whether a stranger could get your children out of the house in the morning using only what is visible. Ours takes about six minutes at night and saves roughly fifteen in the morning, when minutes are worth more.
- Does getting up earlier help with school mornings?
- It did not help us at all. We tried twenty minutes and were late exactly as often, because the extra time was absorbed by the same bottleneck rather than removing it. Our bottleneck was one object — the book bag — and no amount of extra time fixed a thing nobody could find. Find the bottleneck first.
- Should children get dressed before or after breakfast?
- Breakfast first, in our house, by about ten minutes. Getting dressed and then eating means a second round of washing faces, changing a milk-splashed jumper, and a child who thinks the getting-ready part is finished when it is not. Food on the table before anyone is dressed, then dress, then shoes, then out.
Anna
Mid-thirties, former magazine copy editor, now works part-time from the kitchen table. Started this as a private record and only made it public because friends kept asking for the recipes.
If this was any use
Breakfast, for people who are not morning people
Four people, twenty minutes, and nobody in this house is at their best before about nine. What survived is three things on rotation, all of which can be eaten by somebody who is not fully awake.
Packed lunches, after two terms of getting them back
For two terms I made a nice lunch and it came home. Not some of it — the same three things, every day, in the same box, having travelled to school and back untouched.
The Saturday list that finally stuck
We tried a laminated star chart, a shared app, and a rota with everyone’s initials on it. The thing that worked is a piece of paper with four jobs on it, and it took us three years and about £40 of failed systems to get there.
Comments
They’re open, but they go through me first — every one is read and approved by hand, which is slow and occasionally very slow. Email is the fastest route, and I answer most of them.
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