I hate doing the school run. Hate it, hate it and hate it. I
have worked to crushing deadlines and have walked out on stage in front of
almost 300 people and have felt less stressed. I know that I am not alone in
this hatred and as such I thought I would give you all a few tips and tricks to
make the School Run go more smoothly. I appreciate that I am no professional in
this area but I’m sure that you will find these “hacks” incredibly useful.
So firstly, get EVERYTHING ready the night before. Lay out your
own clothes, your child’s clothes, the cat’s clothes, lay out everybody’s
clothes, all members of your household must have their clothes laid out, ready
to be grabbed and thrown on in the horror of the morning panic. I have been
known to go to bed fully dressed as I find this can save as much as 47.8
seconds in the morning. I also find that putting toothpaste on the child’s
toothbrush the night before saves approximately 3.8 seconds. It does go a bit
hard overnight but if you distract them by pretending there’s a spider in the
bath you seem to get away with it. My daughter has long hair and by plaiting it
before she actually goes to bed, I
estimate I can save another 53.2 seconds in the morning. If a packed lunch
needs to be made, make sure it is prepared the night before and placed in the
fridge. You may need to use half a pack of Post-it notes writing reminders to
yourself and sticking them all over the house and car in case you forget it,
but it does save around 2 minutes and 12 seconds. On second thoughts, if it’s
winter time, you could just pop the packed lunch in the car the night before.
Now, breakfast. Isn’t it annoying that children need to eat breakfast? Mine
refuses to eat green gloop from the Nutribullet, so I find it useful to have a
box of Aldi’s Breakfast biscuits in the glove box of my car. Lifesaver. I also
make sure that my car is facing the correct way for us to jump in, slam the
doors and speed off scattering gravel. There is a terrible feeling of despair
and impending doom when I run out the house in the morning and realise that I
am going to have to turn my car around. This takes 29.3 seconds and is enough
to make us hit the time slot where we have to follow Old Bob along the road in
his Suzuki Swift (I think Suzuki were trying to be ironic) on his way to
collect the daily papers. There are no overtaking opportunities on country
roads and even if there were, you wouldn’t be able to get past Old Bob as he
never uses his mirrors and thinks his “Swift” is the same width as static
caravan.
Another thing I have learnt about the school run is that it
is important that your child goes to bed early and is therefore not like an
extra from The Walking Dead in the morning. You on the other hand will be
knackered before you have even left the house. I hadn’t realised this until I
became a parent but apparently anyone under the age of 16 is physically
incapable of hurrying prior to 9 o’ clock in the morning.
We did try sleeping in the car one night to see if that
would enable us to make it to school on time. I had a terrible crick in my neck
for days afterwards and my partner got very angry as my head kept hitting the
steering wheel whenever I dozed off and thus kept setting off the car horn, so
I really wouldn’t recommend it.
The only way I can see through this problem is to either buy
a house next door to the school or to become really good friends with the
school caretaker and sneak in at 5 o’clock at night when she is just about to
finish the cleaning. There; sorted.
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