I haven’t always been the cleanest person. By clean, I mean tidy. I LOVE having a clean home but sometimes I look around at the mess and just don’t know where to start. But one place in particular that needs to stay clean is my car! It gives me so much anxiety when my car is messy. I can’t stand when you get into someone’s car and no matter what you do, you can’t help but sit or stand on something! Or when you open the doors and things just spill out like a volcano.
Oh please, I hope you didn’t get the impression that my car is immaculate all of the time. Actually it’s quite the opposite, most of the time! Does it give me severe anxiety, yep! Does my family care, nope!
Example A:
Last week, this baby was spic and span. Took about 2.5 days and here we are! And, to be honest, this is actually pretty clean!
Picture it with me- you spend your Sunday afternoon cleaning your car, throwing away old McDonald nugget boxes, wrappers, bags, and other miscellaneous junk. You gather all of the shoes, clothes, toys or other items that absolutely don’t belong in the car, and take them inside. You get the shop vac and get all the little crumbs out from the crevices of the seats and tip over the car seat, only to realize there was some sort of sticky, liquid substance spilled on it! You open the new air freshener you purchased to mask the smell of the sports bag that was left open in the backseat.
You sit back for a good 5 minutes and take in the beauty of your newly cleaned car. It almost feels like it did when you first purchased it.
The next day, you go out to the car, after racing kids to after school activities, eating a quick dinner in the car, and taking the dog to the vet, to a horrific scene. Your newly cleaned beauty was again, TRASHED!
That’s pretty typical of a mom life though, right? We are constantly and repetitively cleaning the same messes because our sweet children DO NOT CARE! I mean, kudos to the moms who’s kids almost always clean up after themselves WITHOUT being told. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you do it? Did you take their favorite toy away every time they made a mess? Were you on them all the time like a drill sergeant? Did you scare the living day lights out of them and threaten their life so they would stop leaving things in the car? I’m not here to judge, a sister just needs some help!
And if you’re S/O is anything like mine, you hear “gee, your car is a mess” way too often. Yes, honey, it is.. thanks to your offspring, and on occasion, YOU. And I’ll give credit where credit’s due, sometimes my husband will surprise me and clean out my car. It feels a little like Christmas morning! But still, bro, just leave the snarky comments to yourself. Or better yet, use them on your kids so they stop making the mess!
And I can just hear it now “one day your kids will be all grown up and you’ll miss having their messes to clean up.” I know without a doubt that I will miss my children’s laughter filling my home. I will miss their little shoes and I might even miss making their lunches for school one day. But I promise you, (and you can quote me on this) I will absolutely never, EVER, miss the messes they leave for me to clean, especially in my car!
The Meltdown Mama 