Shower Schedules & Suburban Survival: A Mama’s Morning Mystery
Shower Schedules & Suburban Survival: A Mama’s Morning Mystery
Back in the olden days—ya know, pre-kids and pre-puppy—getting ready in the morning was a relatively simple task. Wake up, stumble to the shower, sing a little off-key Beyoncé, maybe even exfoliate if I was feeling wild. These days? Getting ready is like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube… blindfolded… while someone yells “MOM!” every 47 seconds.
Let’s start with the shower. Do I get up at 5:00 AM to beat my husband to it? Sure… if I had actually fallen asleep before 2:00 AM. Otherwise, I’m just trading my last sliver of sanity for a few moments of hot water and a shampoo that promises “volumizing results” but mostly just mocks me.
Okay, let’s say I don’t get up at 5. By 6:00 AM, the hubs is in there with a podcast playing on full blast and enough steam pouring out to turn our bathroom into a sad little rainforest. Now the kids are up, one needs help finding clean socks, the other is yelling that she doesn’t like “that kind of cereal anymore,” and Nugget—the sassiest 8-pound dog this side of Atlanta—is standing by the door like he pays the mortgage and expects a proper morning walk.
So what’s a mama to do? Wait till school drop-off and then shower? Great, except now I’m getting dressed twice in a three-hour span like I’m hosting a suburban awards show (“And the award for Most Impressive Dry Shampoo Use goes to…”). Plus, I’ve got exactly one hour before preschool pick-up and I’m wandering through Target with wet hair and raccoon eyes, hoping nobody from church sees me.
And don’t even suggest I wait till 3:00 PM after big sis is out of school. That’s when everyone suddenly needs all the snacks, Nugget starts doing zoomies, and someone remembers they need a poster board right now for a project that wasn’t mentioned until this exact second.
Dinner? Don’t get me started. Once food is flung, kids are bathed, and bedtime routines begin, the last thing I want to do is shower. But alas, there I am at 8:30 PM, deciding whether to deal with the blowdryer for half an hour or sleep with soggy hair and wake up looking like a disgruntled poodle.
Everyone always talks about how hard it is to shower when you’ve got a newborn. Y’all, I am almost 7 years into this motherhood gig, and it ain’t gotten easier. Some days, I get to shower. Some days, I put on makeup. But the stars have to allign to get to do both.
So I’m putting this out to the universe—how are y’all doing it? Is there a secret? A support group? A magical dry shampoo that also serves coffee and handles school drop-off?
Until then, I’ll be the mama in the school pickup line wearing oversized sunglasses and praying nobody looks too closely.
#RealMomLife #ShowerStruggles #SouthernMamaChaos #PlanItMom #PlanItMomUS #AtlantaMomLife #MommingAintEasy #GeorgiaMama #NuggetNeedsToPottyToo
