There Has To Be A Better Way!

An undated neon green post-it of mine reminds me that many months ago I wanted to write about how I was so overwhelmed by the sheer process of just getting ready to get all of us out of the house each morning.  

I was regularly carrying the following things out to the car each morning:  my work bag with laptop and charger and important papers and calendar and all the purse-y stuff I need in it, my work lunch bag with a morning snack, lunch, and afternoon snack and ice packs in it, my pump with cleaned and dried cones, empty bottles, lids, milk storage bags, pumping bra in it, my work shoes (because I needed to wear easy to slip on shoes for infant drop off/pick up, but then change into not so easy to slip on/off shoes for work), my jacket/sweater, possibly my scarf and gloves, my coffee mug, Fox's baby lunch bag which had to have her jacket, shoes, socks, bottle, sippy cup, bottles of pumped milk, and daily instruction sheet filled out in it, Turtle's backpack with binder, homework, reading books, filled out forms, water bottle, and often packed lunch with afternoon snack, too, and ice packs in it, and sometimes loading the stroller and diaper bag, too, because we were heading somewhere after pick up where we would need that stuff not to mention if we planned to do a specific activity I might also need more snacks for both kids or whatever activity specific stuff we needed such as casual clothes and shoes for me or sports equipment or swimsuits, towels, goggles, toiletries, padlock or groceries or certain toys...

...and then at the end of the day I was unloading the two kids and unloading all of the above back out of the car and washing the pump parts, bottles, sippy cup, and sometimes pump bra and various clothing items, unpacking and processing as needed the items inside the three lunch bags, backpack, and work bag, which could mean lots of rinsing things, throwing things away, putting things away, signing things, fighting to convince a 6-year old to read/write/calculate things, sending emails, reading things, writing things, preparing presentations, and then late at night starting over with re-packing snacks and lunches and so forth...

...and then I would start all over again the next day.  

I swear I have packed and unpacked less for some vacations in my life!  

And I think this is the part where I am supposed to refrain from mentioning that Backtire typically grabbed his keys, wallet, and sunglasses, maybe a backpack with a laptop and just headed out the door each day.  

And I even sat around and put a lot of quality mental energy into trying to come up with some system that would streamline it all, but no matter what I did, I couldn't get around the need to put all of that stuff in the car each day and the fact that it had to be a lot of different little bags, too, because each one was traveling with a different person to a different location or certain items needed to be portable once the person got there.  So, everyday I dragged 10 or more separate items out to my car and just felt inefficient and annoyed and weighed down by it all.  

The whole thing is just so ridiculous and exhausting and takes up so much time and bandwidth.  If moms everywhere weren't having to pack and unpack and keep track of all this junk, do you know how many productive and creative hours the world would gain back? Millions of great minds are mired in trying to remember to prepare and lug all this junk around instead of teaching our youth, healing the sick, administering justice, generating products, providing services, designing the next best thing. Millions of creative minds are being wasted coming up with peanut free lunches instead of solving the world's problems or conceiving of art that enriches us all.  

And I want to say, as a friend of mind puts it, that I know that this is a "first world problem." But it still makes me crazy!  

(And I don't know why blogger is suddenly putting these giant gaps between my paragraphs when it didn't used to and it totally annoys me because I am very sensitive to formatting but I don't care to spend time solving it right now.)