Last fall, I confessed the embarrassing disarray in
which the kids and I kept our family car. The self-explanatory term, Junk Bus, confirmed many hurried families also understand our situation. We spend massive chunks of time in our vehicles.
Even if children ride in an actual bus to school, modern
parents are transporting their kids by car/van/SUV to what can feel like an
endless collection of activities. Night after night. Week after week. Season
after season.
Kids pile into the car after school, with zero time for a leisurely chat at the kitchen table over animal crackers and milk. What's the solution?
Portable bites for the ride to the latest sport or lesson or class. What's the
result? A messy car. Wrappers left in every crevice. Drinks spilled. Extra
shoes and jackets tossed to the floor. Homework papers strewn throughout the
seats.
By the end of the evening, we're rushing into the house for
showers, stories and bed. Who has the extra two seconds it takes to whisk the
trash from the car? At least that was my
excuse.
What would happen to our cars, and thus our lives, if we
stopped all the running?
By happenstance, our family's schedule took a much
needed break in 2015. Starting in May, the activities which used to keep us
bouncing around town disappeared. At first, the extra time at home felt oddly
wrong. All of my friends were at ball fields several nights a week, but for the
first time in eight years, we were not. Our spring was so low key, that after a
month of having dinner at a reasonable time, I was addicted to our family being
home together. As summer approached, I strived to keep up our pattern of peace.
I scheduled almost nothing for the kids to do. Swimming lessons and one
football camp were the only plans on
our calendar. From the mom who normally signs each child up for at least three
events every summer, it was a drastic shift toward simplicity.
Spending days and nights without a schedule was
liberating…for the children and their chauffeur. The car remained cleaner,
while our yard became dotted with the signs of summer: sidewalk chalk, jump
ropes, bubble wands and an array of balls, bikes and scooters. Instead of my
bossy barks and their tired whines, the sounds of laughing kids filled the steamy
Michigan air.
I dreaded the day when our carefree summer would come to a
close. School starting would mean more duties, responsibilities and timelines. What would happen to our lazy nights
together? Could we handle the chaos again? An injury sidelined our one
child who was going to play football, so our fall also became wide open. Here we
were, in new territory once again, experiencing our first fall without any
sports or classes. Mark had been coaching every year since 2008, but with football over, he was home. The kids were home. We
were all home.
While I don't expect this trend to continue indefinitely,
because our kids will eventually choose to participate again, I am relishing in
it while I can. The frantic lifestyle is so common, that stepping out of it may
seem impossible. Until this year, I
wouldn't have considered this break necessary, but now I realize how invaluable
it was.
Resting on my nightstand is one of the year's hottest best sellers,
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Japanese organizing expert, Marie Kondo, teaches readers to purge their
homes of possessions to achieve happiness. Why hold on to a stretched out
t-shirt from college that is only taking up space in your pajama drawer? Toss
it! It is just as simple to apply her methods to our personal schedules.
We can ask Kondo's famous question of anything we might set our
families up to do.
"Does
it spark joy?"
If the answer is no, then we can and should discard it from our lives. We
may be tempted to think that all of these filler events in our days are joyful and continue to do them out
of habit or guilt. If we look a bit more closely, we may notice that all of the
activities which keep us away from home might be stirring up anything but joy. Are
we spending too much money? Keeping the kids out too late? Not enjoying enough
family dinners? Putting too many miles on the car? Causing tears, anxiety,
stress and burn-out?
The solution is so simple. Erase it. Delete it. Change our
life!
My calendar for 2016 is fresh and blank and features photos
of cows doing yoga. I'm going to be conscious this year to fill the squares
with what matters to my children, my husband and me. What will you do this year
that sparks joy?
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