Mornings with young families come with sluggish starts, playing short-order chef to tots with the ficklest appetites, and desperate quests – not for grails that are holy, but socks that are hopefully un-hole-y.

Mornings with little feet pattering in various directions are filled with parents’ words repeated, more impatiently with every utter.

It means reminding one to brush his teeth while assuring another that indeed, we all wish we could hop back into bed, but it’s back to school instead.

It means egging on our kids to eat their eggs – and the rest of their breakfast, too.

These mornings signify commencement to another day which was yesterday promised to be better scheduled, more structured, but just didn’t work out that way.

Does this controlled chaos sound the teeniest bit familiar?

If not, my awestruck, sincerest congratulations.

But if your mornings resemble ours even a little and comprise of corralling sleepy-eyed troops in the slowest of motion while on deadline for carpool, there are quick fixes that can help ensure a slightly smoother morning sail that hopefully wraps with an important evening capstone – eating dinner – together and on time.

Ripple effects from off-kilter daybreaks can be brutal, and if your morning’s not done right, getting your evening on track may be all the more challenging.

We often hear that most complex problems have truly simple causes, and so simple adjustments to our evening rituals the night before can help set better, more positive ripple effects in motion the following day.

Since summer’s breezed by and we’ve dived head-first into a new school year among thousands of other families nationwide, our morning routine has needed a gentle nudge of TLC.

My husband and I decided that in order to concoct better mornings, we’d need to rock a good prep routine the night before – and stick to it. We’ve begun laying out everyone’s clothes, double-checking our coffee timer, and triple-checking that our kiddos pick up their toys. We make sure lunches and snacks are packed, backpacks ready, dishes washed and put away.

But the most important adjustment we’ve made is to enforce an earlier bedtime and stick to it, knowing full well that bedtime’s a time-intensive ritual.

Schools are beginning to drastically change start times with the hopes of catching children at peak alertness, according to each school’s take on various recent studies. We can’t control when the school day – or work day – begins, but we can get everyone tucked in nice and early to ensure a good night’s Zs.

The art of establishing and sticking to a routine is a seldom easy task.

Our mornings remain imperfect, but they’ve improved. At the very least, our new morning routine has allowed wiggle room when our sluggish kiddos just can’t seem to wiggle out of their rooms.

Is our rise-and-shine regimen still bursting with spinning plates? You bet.

But perhaps by implementing earlier bedtimes and prepping what we can ahead of time, we’ve decreased our plate crashing chances a bit. And one of these days, I’ll find those matching socks.

— Michelle Cote is the creative director of the Journal Tribune and a nationally-syndicated columnist. She enjoys cooking, baking, and living room dance-offs with her husband, two boys and a dog. She can be contacted at mcote@journaltribune.com.