Unless you are in my immediate family or one of my closest friends, having anyone request to join me in my car will absolutely make me cringe with embarrassment. My car is almost always messy and dirty, it’s a guarantee. I wish I could blame that on my daughter and pretend it’s due to having a child, but my car has been trashed since wayyy before she was born. I would also love to blame it on Willis (our dog), and he may actually be partially responsible because I always have spare blankets and towels in there in case he gets muddy and I don’t want him to make the car EVEN dirtier, but honestly, he’s rarely in my car these days so I can’t really shift the blame to him either (and again, my car has been embarrassing since before we had him). I’m just a messy car person and there’s no getting around it or any real excuse.
My brother recently reminded me that there was a period of a couple years where I drove around with a random Lite Brite in the trunk that my husband had bought at a flea market and absolutely refused to part with, but never once used it or ever removed from the car. My car is a bit of a black hole for stuff, things go in and never come back out again. Back in the day anytime I had to open the hatchback something would inevitably fall out of it onto the ground. I used to always be in awe when I used my husband’s car and was able to fit the groceries in the trunk so easily with room to spare. I really don’t know why it’s such a struggle to keep my car clean, but I’m determined to figure out the secret of clean car people.
So, when I began writing about this at the beginning of the week, I figured this was a perfect time to clean out my car and take before and after pictures to show everyone my success. However, things didn’t quite go as planned. My daughter graduated from preschool this week and though I knew I’d be an emotional wreck on the day of, I don’t think I quite realized how much it would affect me in the days leading up to it. My first clue should have been that my nighttime snacking was out of control. Second hint was when a slight stressor at work occurred which was fairly minor but ended up ramping up my anxiety/avoidance reactions way more than necessary. When I started to cry at the grocery store the night before her graduation as I was buying flowers for her, it all finally clicked into place, and I realized why I’ve been such an (even more than usual) ball of nerves this past week.
Each day leading up to graduation my husband would gently remind me that I should probably clean my car because my mom was going to be coming with us to the graduation. To which I would snappily reply back each time that I will do it and it won’t take very long, and don’t worry about it because my mom doesn’t care if my car is messy anyway (all very true). Since I’d given up on my original goal of having a squeaky-clean car by the end of the week and moved into “move enough of the crap from the back seat to the trunk so someone can sit down” mode, I knew it wouldn’t take very long at all, and it didn’t.
The morning of graduation I just grabbed all the random items that were in the car (three pairs of old boots of my daughters that I plan to donate that had fallen out of the bag I’d put them in, about ten empty water bottles, three old sheets and blankets (for Willis), a dog bone (also Willis’…obviously), two snow scrapers, a pair of my shoes, multiple reusable grocery bags, and some other random trash) and threw the trash in a bag and threw the rest of the items into the trunk (which already contained a box of stuff to donate that’s been traveling everywhere I go for the past two months or so, a bicycle, and a garment rack (don’t even ask…I bought it like a year ago thinking it was going to be a huge help with organizing but then changed my mind and it has yet to even leave my car). Then I grabbed the dust buster and vacuumed the back seat because I didn’t want my mom to get any dog hair on her clothes on the way. And we were ready to go!
Then, as we were getting in the car my husband insisted that my mom sit in the passenger seat (and rightly so…duh!!! Why was I thinking she’d be sitting in the back seat??). So, picture me then rushing to grab the items that were in the front seat (which I’d of course completely ignored in my first round of “cleaning”, and throwing them into the backseat before my Mom sits down on the completely unvacuumed front seat. Ridiculousness. As I said from the beginning though, my Mom doesn’t care if my car is messy or not, so though it was pretty unfortunate I’d planned completely wrong, it was one of the few things that didn’t actually add any stress to the day (thanks for being you, Mom!)
The moral of the story is, sometimes when you’re in survival mode, you’ve got to just let the grand plans go and prioritize the things that really need to get done. I managed to get the teachers thank you gifts and write up cards for them, got my daughter flowers and a special “surprise” gift for her graduation, and we got to the graduation with time to spare. Maybe in the near future I’ll be writing a new post with some beautiful car pictures to share…cross your fingers for me!