Your family vs its shit
I have a solution 🕳️
My sons were both at sleepaway camp last week, and my husband was out of town as well, visiting a friend.
The very first thing I did after everyone’s departure was clean up their shit. It was almost like an animal instinct, the inverse of a dog going off to make a nest before she gives birth.
This is the shit that is invisible to the naked eye day to day, but when you realize nobody will be home to take it back out and drag it around again, you don’t want to see it—at all, like:
Crocs near the door but not put away.
Gigantic-ass baseball backpacks that leave trails of sunflower seeds and dust.
A few water bottles on every surface.
Pens, pencils, and batteries that could be either dead or alive.
Small random piles of paper that might need to be sorted through… or not.
For several days, I lived alone in my house with no roommates except the dog, and as you can imagine, I cherished how few times I ran the dishwasher or washing machine. I mainly ate dip-centered meals and desserts, never sullying a pot. At night, with nobody’s sleep to preserve, I sang loudly to the music in my earbuds, alarming (no: impressing) the dog.
To my witchy surprise, I found I actually did miss my family, although I tried to remember that along with their day and time-filling selves came their space-filling shit.
I used to be a pretty tidy person before I had children. Then came the kids and their stuff, and then COVID, when I had to really live among the stuff, so I ended up getting better than I ever wanted to be at tolerating living in a house where things don’t get put away regularly. In many cases, forcing the kids to clean up every night would be absurdly Sisyphean since many of their activities involve works-in-progress, requiring markers and paper, puzzles, Legos, and cards. I like that they initiate these kinds of projects, even if they take up a lot of real estate, so I choose the battle of trying to tolerate it (aside from every other Tuesday when the cleaning people come and it’s oops out of my hands, you have to pick it all up, sorry.)
All this tolerating of crap has made me a messier person, to my dismay. After all, there’s no point in putting my shit away right away if nobody else is. What, are they going to start noticing and want to emulate me? I end up figuring, “Well if all these baseball cards and newspapers are out here on the counter, I am not going to rush to put away the canned goods from the grocery store,” or “Who’s going to notice if there are two wet washcloths on the shower floor instead of just one?” So I can be mad at myself along with everyone else.
The upside is that my time alone last week in my pristine house did create a new well of affection that let me absorb everyone coming home and immediately leaving their shit everywhere again. By the way, totally unrelated, if your kid draws with a thick black Sharpie on a thin piece of paper over nothing else on top of your white stone countertop and the Magic Eraser is not sufficient, I recommend adhering a Clorox wet wipe to the spot with some Saran Wrap and tape for about a half hour before Magic Erasing again.
All this is to say, I invite you to join a venture I’m starting: The Personal Black Hole (NYSE: PBH).
I just listened to a book on nuclear war and feel like this shouldn’t be too hard for scientists to create. The PBH functions a lot like your average SimpleHuman trash can, except inside is a small black hole where you can shove anything in the way at your house. Where does all the stuff go? Nowhere! Or maybe somewhere we don’t understand yet. The point is, it won’t be your problem.
Think about all the time you’ll save putting things away, telling people to put things away, or figuring out where to put things. No more dishwashing backups where the dishes are piling up next to the sink while the dishwasher is depressingly full. No more towering laundry pile to remind you that when you are done with one tedious task, another huge one is waiting for you. Just put it all in the black hole.
The black hole is also great for:
Hard-to-clean high chair trays
That one beer in the refrigerator takes up the space of four beers because it’s still connected to the plastic can carriers
Toy sets you want to get rid of, but you can only find 3.5/5ths of the pieces
The huge wad of plastic shopping bags that only grows larger because certain people keep forgetting to take them to the store to re-use them
Takeout food containers that are either too tiny or punched with ventilation holes to use again, but you feel bad about tossing
Clothes that are damaged/soiled enough that nobody would want them as a hand-me-down/donation but also don’t seem in that bad shape, so you hang onto them in hopes an elegant solution will reveal itself
Leftovers in the fridge you’re waiting for someone else to either eat or dispose of with no evidence.
Slime your kids made
Piles of forgotten yet still essential beach rocks
Little connector recharger cords that don’t seem to go with anything anymore
Your spouse’s pile of things they’re allegedly going to get around to reading
It’s a “green” solution, too! As far as we know. Please join us and be a founding member of the PBH and join those of us whose lives will be changed for the better by saying, “Just stick it in the hole.”
Some random things I should be over but am not
In case you’re a new parent and wondering whether, with time, you get completely confident and never second-guess your decisions, the answer is: not if you’re me! These were some parenting culture things I let get to me this week:
My inability to not read the comments section on articles that directly contradict parenting choices I’ve made to seek out the most critical ones just to assure myself that strangers out there are taking the time to type out their thoughts on what fuckups parents are. You’d think I’d know better by now, but I don’t!
The damned if you do/damned if you don’t choices re: older kids and smartphones. Sometimes, it feels like your choices as a parent are: Hand your kid a device that will most likely harm them psychologically at some point vs. doom them to be socially left-behind little babies. With no in-between. (I learned this week that some kids bring cell phones to day camp and use them, which gives me feelings. My hopelessly left-behind middle schooler has to just….do camp like a peon, like in the olden days, like an infant, like a sucker, and I strangely feel bad for him.)
“Summer.” I’m having a hard time adjusting this week to the feeling I should get all my work done by the early afternoon so I can do fun warm-weather things with the kids after they get home. But my work doesn’t comply with this timeframe (not to mention the kids would probably rather get to do screentime after being forced to hold off during the day by their fascist parents.) I told some dad friends the other night I felt guilty that I have been unable to compartmentalize my work time so that I can end it each day and switch seamlessly to summer vibe time. “…Why?” they asked me. Takeaway: It’s essential to have supportive friends.
End credits
Thanks for reading Evil Witches, a newsletter for people who happen to be mothers. New here? Here’s what the newsletter is all about.
If you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions for future issues, you can reply directly to this email or leave them in the comments. Our Instagram, curated by Carly O., lives here, and the Evil Witches archives live here.
If you are not a paid subscriber, I hope you consider joining us.
You sponsor stuff like you see today and get access to subscriber-only content, intimate, funny and helpful threads where we have candid, funny, sometimes hard discussions. Some upcoming issues I have cover things like talking to your kids about (parental) addiction, whether parent friends can stay pals even after their kids drift apart, and an expert take on whether you can actually force yourself to savor the parenting moment the way people seem to think you should or that’s just a mean thing people say.
One witchy thing
It's hard to be the one who Sees the Things. No one else in this whole multi-generational sh*tshow Sees the Things. I swear my typical daily routine is:
- Pick up spouse's shoes. Put them on the shoe rack.
- Pick up child's shoes. Put them on shoe rack.
- Step on Elsa, driving her tiny plastic fingers deep into the tender soles of my feet.
- Pick up spouse's shoes. Put them on the shoe rack.
- Pick up the used paper towel wad someone was keeping because there was still a good corner in there somewhere.
- Do a load of dishes.
- Pick up spouse's shoes. Put them on the shoe rack.
- Pick up the Inexplicable Socks. Why did someone take off their socks in the kitchen?
- Pick up spouse's shoes. Put them on the shoe rack.
- Do a load of dishes.
- PICK UP SPOUSE'S SHOES. pUT THEM ON THE SHOE RACK.
- Remove the bird seed from the dining table.
- Take the legos from the bathroom. Mental note to ask child why lego brand bricks and pieces were in the tub.
- Do two loads of dishes. Ponder how it is possible for a family of three to use 27 plates in a day (when _one_ of uses two. Two. I promise it's possible. Please. I beg you. Where are you going with that oversized handwash-only cutting board).
- PICK up SPOfnekxiejckskfj
Oh my god the summertime schedule adjustment is murdering me. Camp pickup is at 4 (preschool was 5:30) and even though my workload is light this summer, the psychic adjustment to ending my workday (ie my me time) 1.5 hours earlier is awful.