This healthy smoothie hack from the Weelicious creator will save you *so much* time in the morning

When you have three kids and two businesses to take care of, you need to grab tiny moments of R&R whenever you can. For Catherine McCord, a culinary school grad and the creative force behind the healthy parenting website Weelicious and the family-orientated organic food subscription box One Potato, that means attending to a little self-care before she’s even brushed her teeth. 

Welcome to My Morning Routine, where Catherine and other good-life gurus share their personal (frequently surprising, often healthy) morning rituals—to help you make your a.m.’s more awesome.

Catherine McCord
Founder of Weelicious and One Potato

I wake up at 6 a.m. to an alarm…and also to a bird. We have a poor, sweet, psychotic bird that keeps crashing into our window every two minutes for hours. So that’s how I get up.

The first thing I do is put lots of moisturizing lotions and oils onto my face to let them set in; I find my calm in the morning with these little luxuriating things. I love True Botanicals and Annemarie. They are both Made Safe-certified brands, which is even more strict than the Environmental Working Group (EWG) about which ingredients should be in beauty products. Then, I brush my teeth.

The first thing I do is put lots of moisturizing lotions and oils onto my face to let them set in; I find my calm in the morning with these little luxuriating things.

Next, I go through emails for about 20 minutes because I need to know what my day is about to be. I’m trying to use my phone only when necessary, but I have two companies and they’re like little babies—they get checked all the time.

Once I’m like, “Okay, I get it, I see what’s going on,” I head downstairs to make smoothies. My next book is calledThe Smoothie Project, which was something I started two years ago. For a period of about six months, my son wasn’t feeling well and I was trying to figure out what was going on with him. It turned out that, because he was a vegetarian, he was eating a lot of foods that were hard to digest. So, I started making him a smoothie every morning. Two years later, I still do it—but now I make them for all of us.

Sometimes I make smoothie jars ahead of time. I put in nuts, seeds, dates, collagen supplements—anything I would want so that I can just dump it into the blender with a fruit, a vegetable, some milk, and I’m ready to go. The flavor changes every day so that everyone gets excited, but most days they’re made from fruits and vegetables, bee pollen for immunity, and hemp seeds for omegas (which experts say can help prevent heart disease, depression, and anxiety).

Once the smoothies are made, I bring the kids downstairs for breakfast. They actually sleep much later than I do! My baby doesn’t even wake up on her own—I  have to get her up between 9:00 and 9:30 a.m. every day. She’s the total princess of the house, like, “Don’t bother me.”

When my kids started school, I committed to myself that I wasn’t gonna be the “sweatpants housewife.” So, I attempt every day to wear an outfit, even if it’s very paint-by-numbers.

While the kids are drinking smoothies, sometimes with toast or a bowl of oatmeal, I get school lunches together. I prep them the night before—it’s the only way I can ever get lunch made. I try to make something different every day so my kids don’t get bored, but if you really looked at a week or two’s worth of lunches, you would see similar ingredients in there. I just jazz them up each day. Today we had “sushi sandwiches,” which are like rolls with bread that you can put anything from cream cheese to tapenade to peanut butter and jelly in.

Once I get everybody out the door, I get dressed. When my kids started school, I committed to myself that I wasn’t gonna be the “sweatpants housewife.” I was like, “I will not only wear Lululemon!” So, I attempt every day to wear an outfit, even if it’s very paint-by-numbers.

Then, there are a few different dry shampoos that I use. One that I love is from Drybar—just a spritz of that and all of a sudden I feel like I’m ready to go with tousled hair. And I wear Coola sunscreen on my face every single day.

Finally, I have my coffee and smoothie. I’ll either try to take them to work or I’ll drink them at the house. I’m lucky because I work half the week from home and half the week from the office, which is just a mile-and-a-half away.

Speaking of working from home, here’s how to make your DIY office a stress-free haven. Plus, find out why remote work may hinder your chances of success, and what to do about it.