People talk about mental labor of running a household and I will give you a half-day example. In order to feed my children breakfast and make lunch and get them into the car for carpool, it helps to start with a clean kitchen that started the night before. 

At eight last night, the kitchen was covered in dishes from an early dinner and the sticky lunch boxes the girls brought back from school. The girls are supposed to help. The youngest one unloads the dishwasher and puts away the clean dishes and the oldest loads and runs the dishwasher. This is the oldest one’s job because dirty dishes are “icky.” This physically and intellectually should be easy for a seven- and thirteen-year-old. We will revisit this later. 

Ideally that would have happened earlier, but the time between 5-6 p.m. was taken by dropping off Eliana off to swim team and getting Ivy ready to go to child care so Tim and could attend the marriage class at our church. To a simple observer, that would have been putting on her shoes. 

My first-grader, however, insisted on dressing up for church in a dress. The fact that this was night on a Tuesday and not Sunday morning was meaningless to her. She also needed an audience for selection, and assistance tying the bow. There is a cost in both time and emotional resources for this exercise in fashion. Also it was lightly raining, so a yellow sweater ended up covering the final effort. 

Eliana made it to swim team, and Ivy and I made it to church and met up with Tim who came directly from work. He had asked that I bring a fresh shirt for him to change into so he would not have to attend wearing safety orange. What is with this family and clothing? His request had been agreed to, but abandoned in the pursuit a timely arrival and because I plain forgot. 

So at eight, after everybody returned from  their evening activities, the kitchen was looking worse for wear. The dishes in the dishwasher were clean, but still not put away and the sink in the kitchen was still full. I walked the dog and Tim got the girls to do their chores without my help or reminding. Again, for folks new to the world, having kids do jobs is often more effort than just doing them yourself. When I returned the kitchen was cleaned and no one was even crying. 

Just before we congratulated ourselves in having it all together, my phone rang. It was the childcare worker from the church letting us know that a yellow sweater had been left behind in the Sunday school classroom and we could collect it later from lost and found. I made a mental note to make an alarm on my phone reminding me next Sunday to locate and retrieve it.