My Morning Routine with Elegance

A part of the essense of elegance is planning

The calmness of the morning

I'm a morning person. That does not mean that I talk, listen to the radio, watch tv or anything noisy. That only means that I love going up and start the day. But I’m careful about my start. A part of the essence of elegance is planning without stress.

It is during the morning routine I plan for the day ahead. The key to elegance is to plan for just enough and not too many activities. To avoid stress and to get a great pace of the Day. For the benefit of keeping the level of elegance of mind.

The alarm clock goes off at 06:24 during a normal day. I have a habit never to edit my Alarm Clock list to the sheer Joy of my husband. It's a long list with many 06:24s to choose from.

The smile on his face and the laughter he gives when he sees my long Alarm Clock list has kept me from deleting anything.

The routine of waking up at the same time has its own benefits. I pull the curtains apart and wonder where this day will take me. Don’t misunderstand, I don’t just follow the day- I plan for it but you can’t plan for every minute. That’s the beauty;-) There is always room for the unexpected.

My cat loves the routine too. She walks with me to the kitchen and shows her will to get fed. She gets her food on the small plate from the Sunday Tableware. Her little corner in the kitchen is also a slight part of the best elegance we can offer her. With her satisfied, I start brewing coffee and set the table for breakfast.

Our cat Maja born in 2007

My husband likes to sleep a little longer so that gives me a peaceful moment to plan the day by myself. I use a pen and post-it stickers in my Dairy, very old school. I am old-fashioned in that sense that I don't use any digital tool for it. It suits me.

Same thing with the old-fashioned newspaper. I love to open the printed version of the ink made edition. The articles I read make no digital fingerprints.

I can skim the articles and read from different sections. I can explore areas I haven´t been shown interest in earlier and not presented to me by an algorithm.

I love my morning paper. Printed version. Old school.

I like my husband to hand the morning paper to me. So I call him when the kitchen table is set and the Moccamaster Coffee-machine is ready.

He then gets it and joins me at our breakfast table.

Elegance at the Breakfast table is part of a great start of the Day.

Coffee machine

Erik gets his news from the smartphone. Our deal is that he has it on silent mode. The softly played classical music in the background is not to be disturbed.

Morning radio or TV is not to be on. The gentle start of our senses is demanding that no extra noises, no loud news broadcast, and no upbeat music is allowed. The birds outside is always appriciated.

When breakfast is done we have a habit of “holiday mood ”

Erik gets redcurrants from our garden between July until October to garnish the bowls with natural yogurt and müsli that we have for breakfast. A few slices of banana is also a part of the dish.

Erik tidies up the table and he cleans the kitchen without hesitation or a pause. The elegance of not postponing things. As soon as the kitchen is done and the dishes are in the dishwasher we both move back to bed.

This is my dedicated time to social media and correspondence. We read and get inspired. We inspire by posting. Laying in bed. Spending the time as we would after breakfast on a holiday spent in a nice hotel.

The plan for the day is now already set. We discuss issues and spend time together. Once a week I have a personal trainer and twice I play tennis at 08.00.

The other days we leave bed for the second time at 07: 45. The first thing we do together is making the bed. A well-trimmed routine. While I put my clothes from the wardrobe out on our bed, my husband gets first cold water in the shower prior to the warm water. He loves this ice-cold start that makes him totally awake.

Morning feeling

Morning routine bed

When he leaves the bathroom I have already arranged his clothes for the day on our bed. It’s like a small mood board;-) Like the first footman in Downton Abbey, I carefully choose his daily outfit. I make sure the colors fit mine so we match.

He chooses his own cuffs though. He uses cuffs with his shirt every day. Just as Mark Zuckerberg uses his Grey T-shirt or Steve Jobs wore his black polo Erik uses his blue or white French cuff shirts and have a different pair of cuffs every day. It is his small detail of everyday elegance. Same routine. Same style. Different cuffs. His style is very much the same but his Jackets and shoes vary.

When I am done in the bathroom my husband is dressed and has started to work by writing emails and communicate with his software development team in Cairo on Skype.

By 08.30-09.00 we are ready to drive to work.

This is our morning elegance in practice. I normally have a great start this way. I wish you the same!

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