When messy minivans attack: vehicle hacks for parents
I cleaned my van on Saturday morning and, I’m not going to lie, it was totally magical. I have a new-found love for that hunk of metal on wheels.
I was inspired by this column I wrote a couple of days earlier, which is in newspapers across the 9-0-2 (cool-people speak for Nova Scotia, maybe?) today.
If you’re going to write about cleaning your hell-hole of a minivan, you really feel compelled to practice what you preach.
Here’s a sneak peek of the “essentials kit” (yes, business cards are essential) I keep in the driver’s side door of my mini …
Of course, it’s not the only kit in there. Oh, no. There are many. I’ll show some more “after” pics tomorrow.
(Updated to add: There’s a new post on EVERYTHING I keep in my vehicle, and how I organize it.)
Today is all about sharing the HUGE list of ideas I compiled, so here we go …
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There’s less than two months of school left and the weather’s already perfect for lots of playground-hopping and mini roadtrips. It’s time to give your babe-mobile a much-needed wash and vacuum — SO. MUCH. ROAD. SALT. — and get it nice and organized for spring.
My own minivan? Definitely looks worse for wear right now. There’s at least one melted sucker in a rear cupholder and the remains of several broken Happy Meal toys. So I’m going to take my own advice and try a few of these vehicle hacks for parents …
- Keep a basket of snacks in the trunk — either individual packages or large containers with bowls for portioning out servings. It’ll save you from running through the drive-through if someone is suddenly starving, and it’s great for impromptu park picnics.
- Ditto for water and juice boxes. We always have a large jug of water in the back for emergencies and usually keep smaller water bottles on hand, too.
- Keep parental pick-me-ups — like aspirin, breath mints and gum you don’t feel like sharing — in the driver’s side door. The kids are less likely to rummage through it, compared to the easily-raided centre console.
- Are those annoying kids always whipping open the doors and banging them against the wall of the garage? Cut a pool noodle in half, lengthwise, and bolt the pieces into the wall at the spot where the door normally hits.
- Turn a plastic container into a trash can, or tie a bag to the armrest of the passenger seat. I picked up two $1 packages of mini trash bags and keep a package in each of our vehicles now because the garbage used to drive me crazy! Now there’s always a fresh bag right there, ready to use.
- If there’s a chance of frost in the morning, park your vehicle so it’s facing east. You’re increasing the odds of the sun melting it for you so you don’t have to wrestle with the scraper — minivan windshields are BIG. (We hopefully won’t need to worry about this tip until the fall, although my windshield was totally frosted this morning, so who knows?)
- Shell out for a phone-charger that plugs into the cigarette lighter (wait, does those actually exist for lighting cigarettes in 2016?) and never, ever leaves the vehicle. Get in the habit of charging your phone whenever you’re driving, and you’re less likely to get stuck somewhere with a dead phone.
- Keep a few boredom-busters in the vehicle. We have a small tote with a few books and quiet games we can pull out if we’re unexpectedly delayed or find ourselves at a home without toys, but we hardly ever need them. This means that no one remembers what’s in the bag and it’s a big exciting deal whenever we pull it out!
- If you’re going on a long trip — or your kids just get especially bored in the car — you can hang a canvas shoe organizers over the back of a front seat. The pockets are perfect for storing little toys, snacks and activities.
- If your little one is prone to carsickness or they’re just a messy eater, cover their seat with a fitted sheet to protect the upholstery.
- Get creative with containers. Travel soap cases are great for storing crayons and decks of cards. Empty DVD cases are a perfect spot for coloured pencils and drawing paper.
- Keep a summertime stash in your vehicle so you’re always prepared if you stop at a park or playground unexpectedly. It should contain a hat for each child, a towel or two (for splash pads) and a small bottle of sunscreen. Ideally, yes, you’ll already have sunscreen in a bag that regularly goes in and out of the house with you — because sunscreen can lose its effectiveness if it’s being baked in a hot car every day — but it’s better than nothing if you’re stuck.
- Keep wipes in a seatback pocket for wiping up sticky fingers, sticky faces, sticky spills, sticky everything.
- Don’t forget a first-aid kit. I have one in my vehicle that I don’t think I’ve ever used, but it’s there — including a mask and gloves in case I get a chance to use my CPR skills on the side of the road (something my instructor assured me would probably never happen). We do, however, use the extra stash of band-aids I added. Playground scrape season is coming, guys.
- Did a bottle roll under the seat a while back and now your minivan smells like a rotting animal? Hop on Pinterest and learn how to make a vehicle-ready essential oil diffuser from a clothespin, hot glue and felted balls.
- Picking up a drive-through meal and the cupholders are mostly full? Bring along a muffin tin and sit in on the passenger seat inside a deep plastic container — you can fit 12 drinks easily!
- If everyone will be eating in the car, keep a few plastic shower caddies around to hold their meal and drink — since, chances are, the cupholder’s been yanked off their booster seat and who knows where it is?
- Keep an old blanket in the trunk. You can use it at soccer games, picnics and beach outings during the spring and summer, and it’ll be an in-case-of-emergency item during the winter months.
- You know how the cupholders always end up sticky and crumb-y … or is that just my minivan? Put silicon cupcake liners inside the cup holders and you can simply pull them out and wash them (or replace them) when they start to get gross.
You might also like …
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| The complete list of what’s in my van (and why) |
Breaking the (work) cycle
I’ve been going through a strange period professionally, lately.
Sometimes I can’t even believe how much things have changed in the last almost six years since I started freelancing. I barely remember longing to line up work and hustling to fill my time with assignments. Trying to connect with editors and hoping they’d hire me for a piece.
These days, I’m lucky enough to work with a bunch of amazing editors and clients. My time is filled — so filled I have to turn down assignments regularly, which is a great problem to have.
But …
(There’s always a but!)
… to quote Justin Bieber (I think there’s a first time for everything) … “I’ve been so caught up in my job, didn’t see what’s going on, but now I know …”
I’ve been so caught up in my work — the endless cycle of pitching or accepting assignments, research, interviews, writing, editing all in order to feed the beast — that I haven’t really stopped to think beyond a week or two.
I’ve been living from assignment to assignment, type-ity-typing as quickly as my fingers can go, without really moving forward. Professionally, I’ve never been busier and while I love a LOT of what I do — the stories I write, the people I get to interview — it’s not leaving time for anything else.
I feel like I’m stuck on a hamster wheel, churning out content, and if I’m not careful I’m going to find myself in EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE five, 10, 15 years from now.
And that freaks me out.
It depresses the hell out of me, too.
The novel? The waking up at 5 a.m. to write? Has not happened in months. I tried getting up early again and it just didn’t stick. I was so tired! Even with a very early bedtime, I’m so tired. I feel like I’m going at 200 per cent capacity all of the time. Maybe my iron’s off-the-charts low again, I don’t know.
The idea of never actually publishing a book is terrifying. I want it so badly but I’m struggling to give myself the time to make it a reality.
For the past three or four weeks, I have been telling myself I’m going to dedicate a certain amount of hours each week to finishing the novel. Maybe 10 hours, I decided. I’ll schedule it into the calendar just like actual, paying work and I’ll force myself to —
Yeah, it never happened.
Being a freelancer means you have no stability in terms of getting paid, so it’s our natural inclination to panic at the thought of turning down paid gigs in order to do NON-PAYING WORK — even if it’s, like, your freaking lifelong dream?
If a client or editor is dangling a cheque in front of me, I can’t say “No, I have to work on my novel. I’m going to have to turn that down.” Because the oil bill doesn’t get paid from my novel’s word count, and I don’t think a well-edited first chapter will cover our monthly cell phone bill.
I don’t know what the solution is to getting my groove back and finishing this novel. How to fine the balance between focusing on paid work that keeps my family afloat and committing myself to the biggest, most important goal in my professional life: writing books.
In the meantime, you’ll find me on the hamster wheel with my headset on — interviewing someone, writing something, submitting something …. wondering how being an author is ever going to happen for me if I don’t MAKE it happen.
When your baby’s not a baby anymore
Our babiest baby turned four on yesterday, but anyone we’ve ran into in the past few months already knows that.
“My birf-day is April twenty-fifth — two five!” she’s been announcing proudly, just in case someone was unclear on the meaning of twenty-fifth.
We’re entering birthday season in our house. Our son, our eldest, is turning six in June and I’m not feeling much more than mild amusement. It’s like, “Wow, six! I’ve been a parent for six years?! Huh. Crazy.”
It’s going to be a happy occasion, heavy on the superheroes and Lego. He’s hounding us daily if he can open his gifts early (no) and that’s about it. Six isn’t a shocker birthday, like five was — OMG you’re going to school! — and it’s not as dramatic as turning 10.
(Eight, I think, will be a big birthday since I recall feeling much older when I was eight.)
But there’s something about the youngest child that makes every single birthday seem a bit painful. She’s the last baby we will ever have, and each year on April 25 we get further away from the days of freshly-laundered onesies and those fluffy cloth diapered bums.
(We also get further away from sleepless nights, colic, diaper explosions and tiresome pumping sessions, so it’s not all bad.)
First she was one and I cried that she technically wasn’t a baby anymore — she was a wobbly, curious toddler with delicious thigh rolls. Then when she turned two, I realized she still had been a baby and now she really was a true toddler. Her third birthday was emotional because, woah, she was a toddler/preschooler hybrid chasing after her big brother.
But four? Four is very different from three …
Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene …
DIY media cabinet from an old hutch
I’d been wanting to upgrade the flimsy basement “entertainment centre” for ages. What had originally been a spectacular (at the time) unit with a storage bridge spanning two tall cabinets and a low rolling TV stand in the middle was now just … a low rolling TV stand.
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| Ugh, right? |
Its companion pieces long sold, broken or donated, it was the last surviving piece of Zellers memorabilia in a household that strongly supported the big Z.
Since the TV is wall-mounted, the stand wasn’t living up to its full potential anymore. It held the stereo components and gaming systems along with a whack of junk. It was the perfect low height to collect empty glasses, beer cans, stray discs and the odd toy or two. It was a dust-collecting mess and it was time to replace it with something taller.
Luckily, fate stepped in. Remember a few weeks ago when my friend gave us her old hand-me-down dining room hutch? It was a standard two-piece with a lower bank of cabinets and an upper section with glass doors and shelving.
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| So much potential, right? |
We already had a hutch, so I knew right away we’d be separating it — and that the top section would be a perfect new media cabinet …
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
When summer sports suck
It’s that time of year when parents get panicky about registration forms and deposits. No, not school — heck, school’s easy to get into. I’m talking about the Seasonal Summer Sessions of Sanity-Sucking Sports.
While the pain of bringing a child into the world does indeed fade — otherwise no one would have more than one — I’m still cringing at the memories of last summer’s T-ball debacle.
Two nights a week, every week, of scarfing down our dinner and jumping into the van to race to the ballfield. Hot, cranky, buggy evenings when the kids wanted to play in the backyard with their friends but I had to herd them over to a dusty diamond. I do not do “outdoors” well at the best of times, but especially not at the end of a long day when I’m sweaty, frazzled (with frizzled hair) and swatting at the bugs.
My husband’s work schedule meant he usually couldn’t make it, and I’d be running back and forth between the playground — trailing after our three-year-old — and the field to catch a glimpse of my lil’ slugger whacking the tee — not connecting with the ball at all.
Although I was happy at the end of each practice, the timing could not have been worse for the kids. They would race over to the splash pad and kick off their sneakers at the exact moment the water is shut off for the evening. Sorry, kids. Now let Mommy crab at you for strewing your socks across the field and jam your sweaty little feet back into your shoes. The minivan will be stiflingly hot, we already drank all of the water and, no, we are not having freezies when we get home because MOMMY REALLY NEEDS TO GET YOU TO BED.
So it’s no surprise, really, that T-ball registration came and went without the Clarke family. No, thank you. No more T-ball — ever, possibly.
But then I had to consider soccer registration. We skipped the main league last summer so we could try a new family-run version that was far more casual. One night a week for only six weeks and everyone plays together in a totally non-competitive environment? Yes, please!
But this year, it seems, just about all of our friends would be spending many evenings at the soccer pitches as part of the main league. I considered it for half a second until I realized our almost-six-year-old would need to play two nights a week AND our almost-four-year-old would either play on a different night or on the same night, at the same time, but potentially at a completely different field … in the next town over. The idea of hauling both kids to soccer three nights a week — or somehow getting them to two different fields on the same night — was enough made me shudder.
Many of my friends are going to do exactly that — but I’m just not that parent, I admit it. I don’t like the competitive nature of these leagues, but mostly I just find them a huge pain. Our kids love to play and run around outside, but nobody in our family was pleased with the twice-a-week trek to T-ball — not even the kid who got to play in the dirt.
We’re not saying no to summer sports altogether. We’ll happily join the family-run once-a-week soccer get-together if it happens again, and the kids will do a session of swimming lessons (eight mornings in a row = way easier than eight weeks of weekly lessons).
But the big leagues with their multiple-nights-a-week commitments and jamborees? Nope, not for us — not this summer, at least. I’m dreaming of BBQs where we don’t have to rush, throwing stones into the water behind our favourite ice cream place, and evenings hanging out in the backyard with the neighbours.
There isn’t a participation medal in the world that’s worth messing that up.
xo
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