Hi, I’m Marie. Some thoughts about me.
I'm a writer, a mom of two, and the slow-mornings-and-strong-coffee kind of person who never quite became the cold-plunge type. I write everything you read on Morning Routine Club from a small wooden desk in Opelika, Alabama, usually before the rest of my house is awake.
I was the worst morning person you have ever met.
For most of my twenties I treated mornings like something to survive. I hit snooze four times. I drank coffee on an empty stomach and then wondered why I felt awful by ten.
When my first daughter was born in 2017, that approach stopped working overnight.
I started writing about it because nothing I read online actually helped.
Every article I found was either written by a 24 year old founder with no kids and a full meditation room, or it was a list of 43 things to do before 6 a.m. that nobody on Earth was actually doing. I kept thinking, where are the routines for tired people? For people with toddlers? For people who really, genuinely, do not want to drink celery juice?
So in 2019 I bought morningroutine.club for fourteen dollars and started writing. Mostly for myself at first. I tested things, kept what worked, deleted what did not, and slowly the site became a place where other people started showing up too.
A small site about ordinary mornings, read by a lot of ordinary people.
Six years later, Morning Routine Club is read by around forty thousand people every month. I have written more than two hundred routines. I have interviewed dermatologists about morning skincare, sleep researchers about wake times, and roughly a hundred regular readers about what their actual Tuesday looks like.
I do not have a team. There is no investor, no growth strategy, no big plan. It is just me, my laptop, two kids, a husband who is somehow even less of a morning person than I used to be, and one very patient golden retriever named Biscuit.
A few things I am pretty sure about by now.
These are not rules. They are the patterns I keep coming back to after writing about mornings for six years.
The best routine is the one you actually keep.
An imperfect routine you do every day will beat a perfect one you only do for two weeks. Always.
Most morning advice is written for one kind of person.
Usually a single, childless, well-rested person with a flexible job. The rest of us deserve different advice.
You do not need to wake at 5 a.m. to have a good morning.
What matters is the first thirty minutes after you open your eyes, not the number on the clock.
Phones in the first hour are a quiet thief.
The single biggest change most readers report is delaying their phone for sixty minutes. That is it.
Tiny is sustainable. Big is fragile.
Three small habits held for a year change a life. A twelve-step routine held for two weeks changes nothing.
Bad mornings are part of good lives.
A missed routine is information, not failure. The point is to come back to it, not to never miss.
What I do, more or less, on a normal weekday.
Not every day, not in this exact order, and not as photogenic as it looks. But this is the rough shape of it, between about 5:40 and 8:30 in the morning.
Warm lemon water, no phone
The first thing I drink is warm water with half a lemon. I refuse to look at my phone until this glass is empty.
Five minutes of stretching
On the bedroom floor. Cat-cow, a forward fold, one hip opener. Five minutes.
Pages, then coffee
One handwritten page in a cheap notebook before the coffee is fully made. The point is to think on paper before I think on a screen.
Walking Biscuit around the block
One slow loop with the dog. Sunlight in the eyes counts as caffeine for the brain.
Morning breakfast, every time
Eggs, fruit, a piece of toast. Always something with actual protein.
The four-step skincare
Cleanser, vitamin C, moisturizer, sunscreen. Nothing more, nothing fancy.
Watering the porch plants
Three minutes outside, barefoot if it is warm. It is a reset button.
Ten pages of something good
Before I open my laptop, I read ten pages of a real book. Fiction, ideally.
Every routine on this site has been lived in.
I do not publish anything I have not personally tried. Most articles take me two to four weeks because that is how long it takes me to actually do the thing, then revise it, then ask three or four readers to also try it before I write it up.
When I cite a doctor or a researcher, it is because I emailed them, sat with their work, and tried to understand it well enough to explain it to my mother in law without sounding like a textbook. I do not run AI-written content. I do not accept payment for recommendations. I do not pretend a routine works for everyone, because nothing does.
-
01I try it for at least two weeksIf a routine cannot survive two normal weeks of my life, it is not worth writing about.
-
02I ask readers to try it tooThree to five regular readers, different lives, honest feedback. Their notes shape the final piece.
-
03I check the science when there is anyIf a claim involves the body, the brain, or the skin, it gets verified with a real source before it goes live.
-
04I write it like I am telling a friendNo buzzwords, no scare tactics, no fake urgency. Just the version I would actually tell someone over coffee.
Things you do not need to know but might find fun.
Because every about page should have a few of these.
If something here helped, I would love to know.
Reader emails are honestly the best part of writing this site. Send me a question, a routine of your own, a thing that worked for you. I read everything and I write back.