30 Phrasal Verbs for your Morning Routine

Vanessa: Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.

Good morning, let's talk about it.

We all get up in the morning, right?

Even if you are working from home, or watching your kids from home, or not leaving the house

much in general, you still have a morning routine.

A great way to remember new English phrases is to use them in your daily life, so today

I'd like to invite you to join me on my morning routine as I talk about phrasal verbs that

you can use in the morning during your routine as you get ready for the day.

Are you ready to join me?

Let's go.

Every morning I wake up to my alarm clock, or I wake up to my baby.

I try not to doze off again and push snooze but sometimes I do.

Finally I turn off my alarm clock and roll out of bed.

Notice the pronunciation of this phrasal verb to roll out of bed.

I didn't say I roll out of bed, I said I roll out of bed.

The T here is going to change to a D sound, and this means that you are not so enthusiastic

about waking up, you just roll out of bed.

You could also say I get out of bed, that's a more neutral phrasal verb, but if you want

to let people know you are really tired when you woke up this morning you might say, oh,

when my alarm clock went off I just rolled out of bed, walked to the car and went to

work.

You are kind of like a zombie this morning, you just rolled out a bed.

Next I go into the bathroom and wash off my face.

Wash off does not mean that I am completely erasing my face.

You can just say wash my face, but we can also use this phrasal verb wash off my face

if you feel like you have some kind of dirt or grime that's kind of thick on your face.

Maybe after you were sleeping there's some, we call this sleep, that kind of crusty stuff

in your eyes, you might want to wash the sleep out of your eyes.

So we are washing it out, wash the sleep out of my eyes or wash off my face.

Next I will put on some makeup.

Usually I just put on some makeup under my eyes to mask how tired I really am and I will

put that away.

Sometimes I put on my glasses for the day and sometimes I choose to put in my contacts.

Now we're saying put on my glasses because they're going on my face, but I'm putting

in my contacts because they're going effectively in my eyeball, they're going in my eyes.

So I put in my contacts and I put on my glasses.

After I've washed off my face, put on some makeup, put in my contacts or put on my glasses,

it's time to brush out my hair.

We could say simply brush out my hair and that means you're getting the knots out of

your hair, or it could mean that you're taking your hair out of some kind of thing.

For me, this is a braid, so I'm taking my hair out of the braid and I'm brushing out

my hair.

It's kind of like erasing the knots from my hair, I'm brushing out the knots from my hair

and now it is wavy.

Usually I do this on days that I record videos, on other days my hair is just a wild mess,

but because I am recording a video today you get to see behind the scenes, taking my hair

out of braids, it is a simple and easy way to have a wavy hair.

And I think it's a lot of fun, you get to have braids, you get to have wavy hair, and

it's as you can see takes 10 seconds.

Amazing.

That's what I like the most.

I don't know about you but I hardly ever have my hair down.

This is what it's called when your hair is not tied back.

This is a hair tie, there are a lot of regional words for what to call this thing.

I call it a hair tie, but because I'm a mother, I have two young children, I'm always looking

down or helping or playing and working in the garden, I'm always doing a lot of things,

I can't have my hair in my face.

So that means that I need to use a hair tie and I need to tie back my hair.

We can use two different phrasal verbs for this.

We can say tie back or tie up, and you can kind of get the image here.

I'm tying it back or I'm tying it up, and it means the same thing.

I'm making this.

Do you know what this is called?

It's a little bit strange, it's called a pony tail.

A pony is a small horse but you can get the image of a tail of a horse kind of looks like

this, right?

Swish, swish, swish.

So I'm making a ponytail in the back of my hair.

What if I had two?

What if I had two of these and I wanted to tie up my hair like this?

Ooh, do you know what these are called when you have two hair ties?

Well It is not a pony tail because ponies don't have two tails.

Instead these are called pigtails Pigs don't have two tails but I guess this is just referring

to how a tail of a pig is kind of curly, maybe originally pigtails were kind of curly.

I'm not exactly sure but these are pigtails.

Sometimes I wear pigtails, sometimes I don't but they kind of get in the way when I'm trying

to do things so usually I use that first expression, I tie back my hair or I use a clip, and we

could say I pull back my hair.

So here you can see I'm pulling back my hair and putting it up in this clip.

So here we used similar ideas but with two different verbs, to tie up, to tie back, to

pull up, and to pull back, it just depends on what kind of device you're using, a clip

or a hair tie.

They're kind of interchangeable too, you can pull back your hair with a hair tie, no one's

going to figuratively split hairs over this.

This means get upset about small little differences, nobody's going to get upset about these small

differences, so you can use them interchangeably.

Next, very important, I've got my toothbrush and I need to put on the toothpaste and simply

brush my teeth.

I need to spit out the toothpaste.

After spitting out the toothpaste I need to put back my toothbrush into the little toothbrush

cup.

Now that I'm ready from the shoulders up I need to get dressed.

Specifically I need to pick out my clothes.

I think I'm going to wear this dress today, it's a lovely summer day, so I picked this

out.

I do have a closet where I could put clothes, but for some reason I just like to have this

little bar here to put my most used clothes on.

I find myself more likely to hang them up and to take care of them if it's really close

to my bed where I get changed and I change my clothes before I go to bed, it's easy for

me to remember this.

I also have some drawers, some dresser drawers, with some clothes in them like socks or pants,

things like this, but it is summertime so I'm going to only wear this sun dress that

I picked out.

Usually by then my baby is awake and it's time for me to pick him up.

Good morning baby.

Is that how you feel about the morning?

You want to tell us what it's like to be a baby?

What's it like to be a baby?

Is that really what it's like?

Oh wow.

Yeah, little sweetie.

I never drink coffee but most mornings I make some tea.

To make tea I need to heat up some water in a kettle.

We can call this a tea kettle, a hot water kettle, or just a kettle.

And after the water has heated up I need to pour out the water into my teapot.

After the tea has steeped for three or four minutes I need to pour out the tea into my

mug, or we could say simply I need to pour the tea, or we could say pour out the tea,

that's fine, or we could say I'm going to fill up my mug with some delicious tea.

This is some green tea that I added some dried lavender to.

I have a lavender bush in my yard and I put some dry lavender in here and added it to

the green tea, it smells amazing.

I forgot to show you but I also whip up some breakfast.

To whip up means that you're making something really quickly.

Usually it's not very thoughtful, it's pretty simple, and for me this morning I just whipped

up a piece of toast.

Typically this means that you're making something instead of just cutting something.

So for example part of my breakfast is this cantaloupe that came from our garden.

A cantaloupe is a melon, I don't know if they have it in your country, but it's pretty typical

here.

We actually grew this in our garden.

When I cut this cantaloupe I wouldn't say that I whipped up the cantaloupe because I

didn't make it, I didn't create this, even though yes it did come from our garden.

But instead, because the toast, I put some butter on it, I put some jam on it, I actually

made it in a way, we could say I whipped up some breakfast.

But if you're just opening a granola bar and eating a granola bar, or if you're just cutting

a piece of fruit and eating it, you're not really whipping up breakfast.

You have to have some kind of making or creating that happens.

So for me I whipped up breakfast, I made a piece of toast, and then I cut up this cantaloupe.

Finally it's time for me to go over my plans for the day.

Go over is simply another way to say review.

Usually I try to be pretty organized because there's so much going on in my life.

I have a toddler, a newborn, a husband, so I need to keep up my relationship.

I'm also an individual so I need to do things for myself as well, and I am your English

teacher and I run my own English teaching business, so there's a lot of different hats

that I have to wear.

For me the key to my sanity is to keep organized.

So I usually have a list of the things that I want to accomplish that day or maybe that

week, and in the morning I go over my plans for the day.

Because I work here from home I don't need to go anywhere to work, but if you are going

to the office at the end of your morning routine, when you open the door of your house and leave

your house, you can say I'm heading out the door.

This isn't just your head going out the door, it just means that you're leaving your house.

I'm heading out the door or I'm heading to work.

We use that expression head to talk about the movement here.

I'm heading out the door, I'm heading to work.

Where are you going?

I'm heading to work.

Great.

We can use this phrasal verb.

I hope that you enjoyed following me on my morning routine.

Now I have a question for you.

Can you use three of these phrasal verbs to describe your morning routine?

It's time to take action and use what you've learned.

Please write a comment below using three of these phrasal verbs to tell us what you do

in the morning.

Thanks so much for learning English with me, and I'll see you again next Friday for a new

lesson here on my YouTube channel.

Bye.

The next step is to download my free ebook Five Steps to Becoming a Confident English

Speaker.

You'll learn what you need to do to speak confidently and fluently.

Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more free lessons.

Thanks so much.

Bye.