The Perfect Sunday Morning

How to get the most out of your Sunday mornings and enjoy a slow start to the day.

Weekday mornings can be rushed affairs, especially when you have early starts, a lengthy commute, children to drop off in one or more places, or all of the above.

In these pandemic days of lockdowns and working from home, the daily rush out the door is now just a memory for a lot of people. Who knows if it will ever come back in the same way for many of us? But even if you’re no longer speeding out the house during the week and only commuting to your home office, it’s still important to differentiate the weekend mornings and enjoy that slower time.

Sunday morning is typically one of the slowest points of the weekend, and so it should be a little bit special. But you don’t need to pressure yourself with producing Pinterest-perfect brunches. So how do you create your perfect Sunday morning formula without causing yourself more work and stress?

Tips to enjoy a perfect Sunday morning

The worst weekend feeling is the one where you’re cruising into Friday night excited about the weekend stretching out before you, but then you blink and suddenly it’s Sunday evening and you’re moping in the kitchen thinking about packed lunches and wondering what happened to the time.

Having a relaxing and properly enjoyable Sunday morning can really help with that. Starting your Sunday in a slow, mindful way and doing things you really want to can help set the mood for the day and make it a regular high point of the weekend that you can look forward to during the chaos of the working week.

Here’s my recipe for a perfect Sunday morning.

Enjoy a slower start – but don’t get up too late

How good does it feel when you can switch off the alarm and wake up naturally? Catching up on some missed sleep by rolling over and sinking back into the covers is an essential part of the perfect Sunday morning experience. But try not to sleep for hours later than your normal wake-up time. This can disrupt your natural sleep rhythms and make it even more difficult to get up when the Monday alarm goes off, so aim to sleep no more than an hour later than normal.

Drink Your Tea or Coffee in Bed

Once you do get up, getting BACK into bed on Sunday morning to have a peaceful coffee is good thinking. But putting some breakfast on to cook while you’re back in bed is great thinking. If you have something like muffins or baked eggs, you can put them in the oven and sneak back to bed while they cook.

Catch Up On Your Reading

If you’re anything like me, you might be really enjoying your latest book, but during the week you average about 2 pages at night before you fall asleep and forget what you just read. Sunday morning is the ideal time to catch up as you’re drinking your giant cup of tea in bed while the breakfast takes care of itself.

Try not to fall down a scrolling black hole

One guaranteed way to wonder where your relaxed weekend morning went is to spend it scrolling social media for 3 hours. While it’s fun to catch up and see what’s going on with the world, try to set a limit on your time so you can do other things too.

Sunday Morning is Not for Rushing

If you have scheduled commitments on a Sunday morning, like sports or kids’ classes, then try to get up early enough so that there’s no rush to get out the door and you still get to enjoy a leisurely start to Sunday. Or – you could always switch your slow weekend morning to Saturday. I did that for several years’ worth of Sunday morning swimming lessons with my kids.

A Perfect Sunday Morning Includes Time to Yourself

Sunday morning is a great time to have some rituals that are just for you and when you can set aside everyone else’s demands on your time.

If you have small children, you’ll probably have to bribe them tempt them with a movie or activity they can do independently. Or if you have a partner, take it in turns to enjoy some time when no one’s coming to talk to you about Minecraft or ask you to “watch this” four hundred times.

Take a solo walk, have a bath, listen to a podcast, go out for coffee, stay in bed and finish your book – do anything where you can just be.

You might also like:

• How to Create Your Perfect Weekend
• Have a Hygge Weekend
• How to Stop the Sunday Night Blues

Sunday Breakfast or Sunday Brunch?

Do you breakfast or brunch on Sundays? Stay in or go out? Round here we tend to keep it fairly simple and have pancakes, croissants or bacon rolls.

If we go out for breakfast (although the last time was pre-corona, so I barely remember!) then it would be for French toast or a full English.

Whichever you prefer, the key is to have something a bit special that you wouldn’t normally have during the week, but that’s easy to make and doesn’t require you to stand by the stove.

A Sunny Sunday Morning Walk

If it’s a beautiful sunny Sunday, then head out for a walk, maybe to somewhere new. If you’re able to get to some open / green space then do that. We’re lucky to live close to hills, woodland and the coast so we try to make the most of that. In the winter I take a small flask of hot chocolate to keep everyone going.

A Rainy Sunday Morning Stretch

Of course in an ideal world, your Sunday mornings are always pleasantly sunny, but if it’s a wet weekend in November or a freezing February morning (or just midsummer in Scotland, lol), you might not be so keen to leave your cosy home.

In that case, try following a gentle yoga, pilates, or stretching video. Just enough to wake you up and make you feel good, but at a Sunday morning level.

Enjoying Sunday Morning At Home

We’re all at home more now. But if you’re at home all week, how can you make your Sunday morning different enough to be the relaxing, restorative time you’re aiming for? Honestly, I think you have to ringfence it. No housework. No work-work. Switch off distractions. Move any moveable commitments to another point in the week.

Once you’ve got a relaxed Sunday morning routine in place, you won’t want to give it up.

What’s your perfect Sunday morning?