When I turned sixteen, my parents bought me a brand new Volkswagen Jetta and I was so proud of it. I washed it every single weekend — a full detail, including scrubbing the tires, vacuuming the floor mats, and carefully wiping down the dash. I learned it from my dad, who kept his car so meticulously clean that one time the dealer personally bought my dad’s car when he went to trade it in. (My dad bragged about that forever afterwards, by the way.)
These days, I get to see the thinly-veiled look of horror on my dad’s face when I drop off my kids at his house and he opens the car door to reveal the terrifying mess in my backseat.
Y’all my car is dirty. I mean, it is literally filthy. It could be featured on some kind of TLC show — a mix between Hoarders, Marie Condo, and Dirty Jobs. They could come in with hazmat suits and marvel at the fact that I am basically driving around in a mobile garbage dump, pose an intervention to make me come to the realization that I need professional help, and then clean it up for me (obviously). And I would really, REALLY wish that it would stay clean, but I would know in my heart that inevitably, it would be back to its filthy state in less than a week.
What are the top five biggest differences between my sparkling clean Jetta at age sixteen and the filthy Nissan that I’m driving now?
Kids
A full-time job
A really long commute
A tired momma
Sometimes a dog, but mostly the KIDS
When I went back to work full-time after having my second child, I was careful. I knew that our long commute across town would necessitate eating breakfast and snacks in the car, so I purchased special spill-proof snack cups and sippy cups that could snap open and closed. Every late afternoon when we returned home, I would unload EVERYTHING from the car, pick up all of the toys that has carelessly been thrown on the floor, pick up pieces of snack that had spilled, and sometimes even get out the handy vac to clean up the crumbs. I was sorting through papers sent home from school, cleaning out lunch boxes and re-packing them, cooking dinner, cleaning dishes, handling bath time and bedtime, and sometimes trying to fit in a load of laundry or two before inevitably dropping to sleep on the couch while trying to enjoy my brief “free time” at the end of the day. I became burned out and exhausted just a few months in. I had to start subtracting items from my to-do list, just for the sake of my sanity. The daily tidying of my car was one of the first things to go. (Slicing fruit for lunches was another. I discovered pre-sliced/bagged apples in the produce section of my grocery store, and it changed my life.)
My afternoon and evening are less stressful without the added task of meticulously cleaning my car. I just grab the basics (backpack, purse, lunch boxes) and leave the rest behind. Sometimes I look at school papers, and sometimes I let them pile up. Sometimes I nag and make my kids help pick up the toys that they dropped during the commute home, and sometimes I just turn a blind eye and take them to ride tricycles around the neighborhood instead. I have found the right balance between working and enjoying my afternoon/evening, and if my car has to suffer for it, I’m okay with that. It means that I will rarely see the floorboards in the back seat of my car through the layer of debris that is ever-present, but I’ve made my peace.
The internet has plenty of nasty things to say about women with dirty cars. (I know; I’ve Googled it.) One website, trying to help men determine whether or not to pursue a potential girlfriend, instructs them to take a look at the inside of the woman’s car to learn more about her. According to the author, “Women with messy cars are usually irresponsible, disorganized, or lack self-control in their lives.” Or she’s just busy. There’s also that. Another website laments that messy cars are a typically female characteristic, as men generally take much better care of their automobiles. Probably because said men aren’t busy with keeping the entire inside of a HOUSE clean, as well as cooking nightly dinners for a family, I think to myself with just a smidge of bitterness.
I know myself, and I know that it’s unrealistic to try to do everything 100%. Maintaining a clean car just isn’t going to be my thing. At least not until my little backseat-terrorists have moved out of the house. (And then I’ll be exchanging my dirty car for a clean but lonely commute).
