One Improvement

One major improvement to my get-ready time has been to remove oatmeal cooking from the morning. I have four bowls to prepare for each morning, and here's the breakdown:

• My own oatmeal. I generally eat this cold. During this recent period of overtime, I would take the resealable bowl to work and eat the oatmeal there. Since it was cold anyway, I started cooking it the night before. That's about two extra minutes freed up in the morning.
• My son's oatmeal. My son recently turned one, and he eats oatmeal all day. I cook one bowl and he gets a portion of it at most meals. His oatmeal is generally cold by the time he eats it, so why not cook it early, too?
• My daughter's oatmeal. I don't cook this. My wife cooks it closer to breakfast time so it's warm. However, it is my duty to prep the bowl (put oatmeal and water in the bowl) and place it in the microwave. We've noticed no ill effect from letting this wet oatmeal stand in the closed microwave overnight.
• My wife's oatmeal. I don't cook this one, either, but there isn't room to let it sit in the microwave. So I pour the oatmeal in the evening and then put the water in before I leave in the morning.

This means that what used to be over five minutes in the morning has been reduced to less than thirty seconds in the morning. An internal element has been mostly converted to an external element. I previously didn't explore this possibility seriously; sleeping about four hours a night pressed the issue for me, though.

Peace!