Laravel: Take n model instances from database based on date

As the question states, I'm trying to get from the database, from multiple tables, n (variable) number of records ordered by earliest date.

The tables don't really have much in common so not sure if a join is the way to go.

I have at least 4 models and at this moment I have two possible ways to in my mind:

Either find out which dates are the next n, and try to build my list from there, or take n from each and then compared them and sort them by the date (which seems a bit trivial)

How should I go with this one?

via Chebli Mohamed