5 Minutes for Parenting’s weekly column, A Dose of Humor, is here to remind you to take your humor pill regularly as the best medicine to treat the side effects of parenting! It features a different blogger every week and is hosted by Rachel at Grasping for Objectivity in My Subjective Life.
This week’s contributor, Steph, has three kids, two dogs, and one husband (thankfully!). She travels through life chasing kids, avoiding all housework, eating her husband’s cooking, consuming lots of chocolate, and trying to grow in her relationship with God (not necessarily in that order). She documents her journey from her house on a dirt road in rural Georgia at The Red Clay Diaries.
What do you find when you “decrapify” the SUV?
In case you haven’t already gathered, I’m not particularly domestic. But today I woke up and decided to turn over a New Leaf. To do something Productive. I was going to Clean Out the SUV.
Or “decrapify” it, as my long-suffering husband says.
[crap (n): junk that is found in a location where it serves absolutely no purpose except to clutter up our lives]
Don’t tell him, but I really just wanted to play with my new camera. It’s so little and cute and red! And I think it takes decent pictures… What do you think?
Let’s see some close-ups of things that don’t belong here, shall we?
Various maps, none of which help me with local driving.
Charlie Sr’s leftover (melted) taffy from our trip to Silver Dollar City in Missouri…. In JUNE.
The special trash bag/tissue dispenser that I bought ten years ago for the truck. Empty. Always. Because they all prefer to put trash in the door pockets:
Okay. You got me. That’s MY door. I should’ve said WE. Today the trash bag went into the giveaway pile in the basement.
But look! It’s not just me! Here’s what we have courtesy of the husband, Mr. Wouldyoupleasedecrapifyyourcar:
What are these three unrelated things, you may ask?
1) An ice scraper that until today lived in the driver’s door pocket (the one that’s now officially a trash receptacle). Today I went to put the scraper with the winter accessories like mittens and scarves because it’s September and we live in Georgia where we have snow on the ground like one day every two years and we always park in the garage where ice doesn’t form on the windshield. My Boy Scout husband has asked me to keep it handy, so into a cubby in the way-back it goes.
2) A cover for a dome light. Does my SUV have a dome light? No. This cover fit on the dome light that was in here. Before we had it replaced with a DVD player. When we bought the vehicle. SIX years ago. I’m not allowed to give it away until I confirm that it doesn’t fit the dome light in our other Toyota. You know, Just In Case.
3) A wrench that I don’t remember ever owning. Even Charlie has no idea. Into the junk drawer. You don’t see the tire gauge out here, because I know better. It lives in the center console.
Finally, a veritable pharmacy:
Somehow I don’t think we need three different bottles of pain reliever. Especially since the only person who asks for it while we’re on the road is Abby. And do I have children’s Tylenol in here? Nooooooo. The nausea medication – great idea, and we’ve put it to use. But the 2005 expiration date just convinced me it was time for it to go.
The other trash went straight into a bin, or you’d see that it was a pretty big pile.
This is actually a conservative haul.
Missing from this cleaning session are:
One leaky Burger King cup, half-filled with melted frozen lemonade. (The other half of the liquid would have flooded the vehicle cupholder. And the cubby below it. Which would also be full of now-soaked trash.)
Three pair of Abby’s shoes (She always leaves extra shoes in the truck – except when she forgets to put shoes on at all and we don’t realize it till we reach our destination at which point we have to buy yet ANOTHER pair of cheap flip-flops.)
Six of Abby’s stuffed animals, her Leapster, and her Toilet Paper Roll Collection.
Five pair of socks, various sizes. (But they’ll be back when we no longer have sandal weather.)
Perishable food like a McDonald’s ranch dip container or milk or cheese – or the baggie full of fermented grapes I found under my seat last spring. Mmmm, winey.
12 DVDs, to all slide around on the floor and end up leaning against the door the kids will get in when I pick them up in the carpool line.
Melted chocolate or crayons filling the little dents in the floor where the seats latch in place. Last time, based only on the scent, I think it was Milk Duds. Charlie scraped it out with a screwdriver.
All done! Yay me!
I should do this more often, I tell myself. Today I got to listen to Good Morning America on satellite radio and drink my coffee and enjoy the temperature in the 60s.
But then I remember it’ll be just as full of junk three days from now. Is it just me, or do Mom Vehicles have some sort of crap critical mass setting?
I guess I should be grateful. It probably serves as ballast to prevent a rollover when I take a curve really fast. Safety feature and all.
This post was originally published on September 22, 2008 at The Red Clay Diaries.
If you would like to be considered to be featured in “A Dose of Humor”, please email Rachel at [email protected].
Decrapifying my SUV is a two-part deal: 1) remove ALL the crap and even the non-crap, and 2) SCRUB and VACUUM endlessly because we have a very hairy and slobbery dog.
But he’s worth it.
Wow! I can honestly say my car stays clean. I am a neat freak. Tip: Always take stuff out that does not need to be there each time you get home. Helps keep down on the clutter.
[…] over here […]
I’m with you, Steph. My SUV unfortunately often needs decrapifying. Much more often than it actually gets decrapified. The problem with Candace’s suggestion (for me) is that I usually have my hands full of 10 loads of stuff already, including a toddler, a toddler’s juice, a toddler’s diaper bag, groceries, other purchases, my purse, and my drink. No room for decrapifying. And since one of my pet peeves is taking more than one trip from the garage, well. . . hey! Can you come clean out mine?
LOVED IT! Read it upon your original post. Loved it again today! Thanks for making me laugh! So good to read you on here!!!
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