I am not a soccer mom, my kids go to daycare, preschool, kindergarten and afterschool care. The amount of time they are actually with me in my car is very small. Yet, my car looks like I drive them around all day, with weeks of accumulated junk on the floors and in the back.
Yesterday, I transported a couple of friend's kids in my car to a kindergarten end-of-the-year party (still with me?) and I felt compelled to clean out my car. Why you ask? Wasn't I just going to be transporting a couple 6 year olds around? What do they care? Well, heaven forbid they go back to their parents (also not soccer moms) and tell them. Then what would I do. I would be embarassed. I would not be able to look at my friends. I would be horrified to think what they thought about my house, or worse yet, my parenting skills.
The rule in my car is this - if you are having a snack, or you have just wiped your hands clean, or you have an empty water bottle, chuck it on the floor. I don't want to be reaching back, taking my hands off the steering wheel just to get trash. And, I make an effort to clean it out every once in a while.
The funny thing is, once in a while is not very often. When I cleaned out my car this week, I found a form announcing my daughter's school pictures (may 4), a form for my son's field trip (due may 18), a handout from that fieldtrip (may 19), the old notebook we were using for my son's piano lessons, a woven placemat my daughter made, as well as a case of empty water bottles, miscellaneous wrappers from miscellaneous snacks, and lots of hair clips.
Fortunately, my kids don't care, I don't think I have really lost anything important or irreplaceable, and frankly, this is one of those social niceties I am willing to let go. But sometimes I feel bad that I am teaching my kids to throw their trash on the floor of the car. What happens when they go into someone else's car? Heaven forbid!
