I have tried many things to make mornings run smoother in my house — especially school days — like reconfiguring my kitchen so kids can make their own breakfasts, making lunches the night before, and choosing clothes a week in advance.

One of our more successful family hacks is an alarm set to kid-approved music that tells us when it’s time to leave the house. We use a SONOS speaker that alerts us ten minutes before we need to leave, but any cheap musical alarm clock will work for this. When the music plays, we all drop what we’re doing and report to the backpacks and shoes area get ready to leave.

This trick radically improves the need to remind or raise my voice to get action because the music just keeps on playing without me saying a word. (For kids upstairs, we will often yell “SHOE TIME” once but after that, they know the drill.)

Music plays for about 15 minutes and if we’re still home, then I raise my voice and act crazy. But that only happens about 2% of the time so I’d say we’ve found a good trick.

Would this work in your house?