• Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Priss and Vinegar

  • Motherhood
  • Culture
  • Food
  • Style
  • Relationships
  • Essays

10.12.16

10 Family Chores That Take WAY Longer Than They Should

#momlife

#momlife

Because I’m grumpy today (told you it would be back!), here’s a list of all the crap parents do every day that takes way, WAY longer than it should. So, the next time a friend asks “What have you been up to lately?” chances are it’s one of the following inexplicably time-consuming tasks:

1. Maintaining your family’s calendar.

Because if you forget who has Sharing Day when, your kid will never stop talking about that one time you forgot Sharing Day.

2. School drop-off & pick-up.

Once you’ve signed in, performed your daily minimum of small talk, and peeled a weepy kid off your leg, you’ve already blown 20 minutes of the precious few hours your kid is actually at school. And if you don’t arrive at pick-up early, you know you’re never going to get a parking spot…

3. Putting away ALL the laundry.

Washing and folding are actually vaguely satisfying, but putting away clean laundry takes f**king forever.

4. Ditto for groceries.

Even if you streamline grocery shopping (holla, Instacart and Good Eggs!), putting away said groceries is a mystifyingly-involved process that no one else can ever get right. Or maybe this is just me?

5. Signing your kids up for sh*t.

Preschool, extracurriculars, summer camps. I’m very grateful we can do these things for our children, but MAN, it’s a never-ending stream of exhaustive research followed by a mountain of forms. Ooops, just spilled my G&T on that emergency contact list!

6. Sweeping the kitchen. Hourly.

Because cracker crumbs and crayon shavings and playground sand. I’m basically Lady Macbeth forever sweeping those grey hardwoods that will never, EVER be clean.

7. Dealing with children’s art.

Because teachers dutifully save every scrap of paper your kid so much as breathes on, parents then have the excruciating task of 1) deciding what merits saving, 2) figuring out how to store the keepers, and 3) trashing the other 80% like spies in the night so their kids are none the wiser.

8. Carrying shoes upstairs. And downstairs. (Repeat to infinity.)

Because we don’t do shoes in the house, my children routinely remove their shoes upon entering. (Brooks also yells “No shoes in the house!” at guests, of which I am equal parts proud and mortified.)

So then we have messy mountains of shoes at every point of ingress and egress to our home, which (sorry) I’m just not down with. Then I proceed to carry armloads of shoes upstairs and rage organize them in everyone’s closets. (Yeah, this is probably just my thing.)

9. One word: Garage.

“Cleaning the garage” is my husband’s favorite and it seems to require doing CONSTANTLY. Guess who gets to hang with the kids solo while he’s “cleaning” and listening to sports talk radio? Oh. Right. ?

1o. Maintaining your kids’ wardrobes.

Even if you’re not especially fussy about your kids clothing, staying on top of what fits, what doesn’t, and what is paint splattered beyond recognition is essential. Because if a stained, two-sizes-too-small “Star Wars” shirt ends up in your kid’s drawer, your husband WILL say she can wear it to school and then you have to be the killer of dreams.

//

Whew. That feels better. Feeding into grumpy mom rhetoric isn’t my jam, because in between doing all these crap chores I get to build forts, snuggle kids, and color in my RBG coloring book. But sometimes, especially when a kid hasn’t been sleeping much for no reason whatsoever (BROOKS!), a girl’s gotta vent. So thanks for that. 

These Might Also Be Your Jam...

  • Aaaaand We're Back…Aaaaand We're Back…
  • A Girls’ Weekend in New YorkA Girls’ Weekend in New York
  • Easter Menu Planning, Part 2: A Spring Supper to Please Traditionalists and Hostesses AlikeEaster Menu Planning, Part 2: A Spring Supper to Please Traditionalists and Hostesses Alike
(Visited 1 times, 15 visits today)

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Motherhood

Back to Home Page
« Are There Limits to Playground Sharing?
What I’m Watching // Fall TV 2016 »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Danielle G says

    10.13.16 at 1:03 pm

    #11. Emptying out the car everyday, then finding a place for all the crap that just came out of it — just thinking about it makes me want to cry.

    • Heather says

      10.13.16 at 4:47 pm

      Ha! I wrote (and deleted) one about cleaning out the family car because I don’t really do it that often. But I should. Which is bad. ?

  2. Liv says

    10.13.16 at 11:59 am

    Also #7 made me laugh out loud because it’s just so. true. (!!)

  3. Liv says

    10.13.16 at 11:58 am

    Yes to all of these!! The only substitution I would make is replace #9 with “Yard Work/Gardening.” 🙂

    • Heather says

      10.13.16 at 4:55 pm

      Ha! Our backyard is currently under construction, but I suspect a similarly urgent “chore” will arise once it’s completed ?

  4. Emily O'Brien says

    10.12.16 at 7:59 pm

    Agree on all of the above! Sweeping, shoes, sweeping, shoes!

    • Heather says

      10.13.16 at 10:25 am

      When Charlotte was 3, she told me she wanted to be “a mommy” when she grew up. When I asked her what she thought mommies did, she replied “sweep the floor and make dinner!” ???

Primary Sidebar

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Hi! I'm Heather.


ABOUT // MANIFESTO

You guys, there’s a Priss & Vinegar Newsletter!

Sign up to receive it on the regular.

  1. Does pale gray-ish count as a color? (Don't…
  2. Five Girly-Girl Children’s Books That…
  3. What You Should Know About Reading My Blog, Part III
  4. Why I Judged Formula Feeding Moms
 

Food

The Coziest Fall Recipes You 100% Need in Your Life

Motherhood

When You See A Child Alone In A Car

Snapchat

Follow prissandvinegar on Snapchat!

Footer

Priss & Vinegar

on
Instagram

Priss & Vinegar © 2021Built with and Genesis Framework by Bellano Web Studio

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.