I Tried to Write Down Everything It Takes to Leave the House

I tried to write down everything it took to leave the house with my kids. Not everything we brought. Everything it took.

The plan was to go to the children’s museum on a Saturday morning. My husband had been assigned a last-minute mandatory overtime shift, which meant he would be gone for another full day on top of his normal 48-hour shifts. I would be home with our six-year-old and 21-month-old.

I dread those weekend days alone.

Not because anything necessarily goes wrong, but because things can snowball so quickly. My six-year-old needs a snack while I am changing a diaper. She asks again, but my hands are still full. By the time I can help her, she is melting down. Then the toddler starts melting down because I have put her down to help her sister.

Or the toddler takes forever to fall asleep for her nap. My six-year-old reaches her limit for watching television alone and comes into the dark bedroom where I am trying to settle the toddler. Now I have to start the nap over while reassuring my six-year-old, and somehow remain regulated myself.

I am probably hungry, because I am almost always either hungry or tired. So I had a plan.

The children’s museum is one of our favorite places. It has an outdoor area where both girls can wander and play. They are contained enough that I do not have to hover over every movement. They actually play together there. It takes about 40 minutes to drive to the museum, which also uses up a meaningful portion of the morning. It is a good plan.

But for the plan to work, the toddler cannot wake up at 5:30. If she wakes up that early, she will probably fall asleep in the car on the way home. If she falls asleep in the car, she might miss her actual nap. If she misses her nap, the rest of the day becomes much harder.

So the trip to the museum begins the day before.

I need the toddler to sleep well Friday night. There is not much I can do to guarantee that, but I can make sure she eats enough during the day so she does not wake up hungry. I can hope she had a good nap at daycare on Friday so she is not overtired by bedtime. A good daycare nap might help produce a good night’s sleep, which might keep her from waking too early, which might keep her awake during the drive home, which might preserve her Saturday nap.

This is where I first lost control of the list.

I was trying to write down what it took to leave the house on Saturday, and I was already documenting Friday’s daycare nap.

Let’s say the toddler sleeps well and wakes up at 6:30. The museum opens at 9, but there is a playground outside that my six-year-old likes. We could arrive at 8:40 and let her play before the doors open. That would mean leaving at 8. It would eliminate some of the morning television and the aimless period when everyone is wandering around the house, getting increasingly restless.

In order to leave at 8, we need to start shoes, coats, and teeth around 7:45.

In order to start getting the girls ready at 7:45, I need to be dressed, including shoes, before then. The easiest way to do that is to wake up before the toddler. I cannot plan for that.

Sometimes she wakes up at 6:30. Sometimes she sleeps until 7 or 7:30, which gives me enough time and autonomy to get myself ready, help my six-year-old, and pack the bag.

Other mornings I do all of it while holding a 20-pound toddler on my hip, or while getting half dressed and then stopping to chase a toddler carrying an open marker through the house.

But let’s say I am dressed. I need the right clothes. I wear leggings because the day is going to be a feat of spectacular athleticism. I need leggings with secure pockets so I can reach my phone easily without having it fall out while I am chasing someone, lifting someone, crouching, carrying the bag, or loading the car. This means the leggings with the good pockets had to be clean.

This means I did laundry the day before.

I had never considered laundry part of taking my kids to the children’s museum. Apparently it is. I also wear tennis shoes so I can run after them if I need to. Then I pack the bag. I need snacks. Not a snack. Snacks.

I like to snack. My children seem to eat only snacks and no meals. They like different foods, and the foods they like change without warning. One day they are excited about Cheerios. The next day Cheerios are personally offensive.

I have a chronic fear of not bringing enough food. Hunger derails the entire day. It makes every bump worse. The girls start bickering. A minor inconvenience becomes the worst thing that has ever happened. Speed bumps become showstoppers.

So I pack crackers, pouches, yogurt-covered fruit, veggie straws, and Cheerios. Then I pack the cold food. Cheese squares. Cucumbers. Apple slices. Grapes. A protein shake. A cup of milk. The cold food needs a freezer pack, which means I had to remember to put the freezer pack in the freezer the night before.

The snacks go into a collection of containers we have accumulated over the years. Spill-proof containers for the toddler, even though she will probably want whatever her sister has. Plastic bags for the cut fruit and vegetables. A container for the cheese. The containers are all different shapes and sizes, but we have a system now.

We also have a bucket of car snacks, although my six-year-old has learned that some of them get stale.

Then there is the water bottle decision. I can bring one 32-ounce water bottle for all three of us to share. That is perfectly acceptable to everyone, but it means I cannot put the Liquid I.V. packet I want in the water.

Or I can put the Liquid I.V. in my 32-ounce water bottle and bring two more water bottles for the girls. Because it is acceptable for all three of us to share one water bottle, but it is not acceptable for just the two of them to share one water bottle.

These are apparently the rules.

So if I want electrolytes, I carry three water bottles.

Even the water is not just “pack water.” It is a decision. One small preference of mine changes the number of objects I have to fill, carry, distribute, monitor, collect, and bring home.

I check the diapers. The wipes. The changing pad. The change of clothes in case someone gets filthy in the sand pit. The sweatshirts in case it is cold. My keys. My wallet. My sunglasses.

I bring the stroller just in case, even though I probably will not use it.

While I am doing this, I refill the toddler’s milk cup. I pour Cheerios into a bowl. I notice that she has become too quiet and go looking for her. She has found the markers. I wipe marker off her face.

My six-year-old calls, “Mo-om.”

I try to remember what I was doing.

I go to the bathroom. I have company.

This is the part that is difficult to represent in a list. The tasks do not happen one after another. I am preparing for needs that will exist two hours from now while responding to needs that exist right now.

Everything that goes into the diaper bag is either a consumable that needs to be replaced or a washable item that may not have made it back into the bag after the last trip. The bag is never simply packed. It is in a constant state of being depleted, dirtied, emptied, restocked, or adapted to whatever the children currently eat, wear, spill, refuse, or require.

Packing the bag is the part I resist most, and I am not entirely sure why.

Maybe it is because the work contains so little forward motion. I pack a snack and someone eats it before we leave. I put on socks too early and my six-year-old takes them off. I load the bag into the car and then unload it because I need something from the bottom.

You cannot put the socks on too early.

That is another rule.

Let’s say we are finally in the car by 8.

Did my six-year-old go to the bathroom before we left?

She needs to, because the museum does not open until 9, which means we cannot use the bathroom when we arrive early for the playground.

I learned that the hard way once.

Now I am deciding whether the playground time is worth the risk of arriving before we can access a bathroom.

I am also calculating the drive home. If the toddler falls asleep in the car, how much sleep will she get? Will it be enough to destroy the real nap but not enough to make her rested? Will her sister keep her awake? Is protecting the nap worth leaving earlier? Is it worth cutting short the part of the outing we went through all of this to reach?

These are steps too, although nothing physically happens when I do them.

No object is packed. No shoe is fastened. I am just running possible futures in my head and choosing which one seems least likely to collapse.

Then we leave.

We drive. We snack. We sing along to music. I pass food into the back seat. I referee the snacks because the toddler wants everything her sister has. They exchange toys, or they fight about toys.

By and large, I daydream.

At the museum, my six-year-old does her own thing. We know the place well enough that I am not constantly worried. I lose sight of her for a few minutes and find her again. Eventually we make it outside, where I can sit in one place and see most of the area.

The girls play.

Around 11, we get back into the car.

The toddler stays awake because her sister is far too interesting.

We make it home.

The outing goes pretty well.

That is important. This was not a particularly bad day. No one got sick. We did not turn the car around. There was no catastrophic public meltdown. I had a plan, the plan mostly worked, and we went somewhere we love.

I started this exercise because I wanted to record everything it takes to leave the house with children.

But the further I got, the less possible the task felt.

The list did not start at the front door. It did not start when I packed the bag. It did not even start when we woke up.

It reached backward into daycare naps, dinner, laundry, freezer packs, and the hope of a decent night’s sleep. It reached forward into the toddler’s afternoon nap and the condition of everyone’s nervous system later that day. It branched into weather, bathrooms, snacks, sibling politics, car sleep, pocket depth, and whether wanting electrolytes was worth carrying two extra bottles.

I stopped trying to finish the inventory.

Finishing it would require me to reconstruct the entire system. I would have to revisit each decision, remember every interruption, and document every piece of knowledge I used without realizing I was using it.

That would be another shift of the same work.

Maybe that is part of why the work of leaving the house stays invisible. Not because nobody notices it. Not because it is impossible to name any individual task.

It stays invisible because the labor is not the list of things we bring.

The labor is knowing that Friday’s nap might affect Saturday’s drive home. It is remembering which leggings have the good pockets. It is understanding that three people can share one water bottle, but two sisters cannot. It is knowing when to put on the socks.

It is continually adjusting a plan while standing on ground that keeps moving beneath your feet.

We left the house at 8.

It went pretty well.

I just could not tell you exactly how we did it.

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