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.
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Thanks so much.
Bye.