I’m going to try to let go of baking every weekend. I’ve been batch baking muffins/cookies/insert mini snack here for my kid to take to school every week. I think it made me feel like a “good mom” knowing not everything he was eating for lunch/snack was store bought (I find making school lunches stressful and exhausting). But most of the time he doesn’t eat what I bake and I find myself getting ragey when I open his lunch box at the end of the day to find yet another not eaten baked treat. And what started off as something fun to do on the weekend - I actually used to love to bake - has become a chore. I want baking to be fun again.
I stopped cleaning my daughter’s room every weekend by myself. She is 4 years old and is capable of straightening up her things with my help. It doesn’t look as neat as I would like it, but she is taking more ownership of cleaning her room and how she likes her toys/books to be organized which is important.
I can tell it’s still bothering my husband because he loves her room to look really tidy with everything out of the way, but he has also been letting it go for the most part.
Very true- I tend to think I just pay more attention to how she plays so I understand that she doesn’t like it if I move all of her toys out of the way and just throw them all together. He tried to line all her toys up neatly, but she prefers that if they are lined up they’re still organized by what she’s using them to pretend- like her Barbie has been the teacher for the two little babies (so that Barbie is supposed to be Mommy taking care of babies like I do at school). And then her Fisher Price Little People all go together because those have been all the classmates who are having circle time with Elsa and Anna as their teacher.
And then the mighty pups all like to line up to wait their turn for the slide or cars like they’re playing outside. She loves to act out her day, and I don’t know that he’s thought about it like that, he just thought he could move everything off to the side. I am out of town this weekend, so I am curious to see what they do to clean up her room- I know he will take it upon himself to get her to clean it up more than it currently is.
The last time I was gone a few days, and he was in charge, I came back and her room was very clean, and he said they had cleaned it together!
I think of myself as pretty type B when it comes to my physical space, but emotionally, I can be very persnickety about wanting all figurative countertops to be clean before bed. Like, no one is going to bed angry, ever! Emails to important adults must be responded to perfectly, in a timely fashion! Everyone had better have a clear plan for self care this week because I don’t want to deal with the fallout! I’ve had to really bring it in and focus on just making sure I’m good, and that my kid is safe/warm/fed, and trust in the resilience of other adults, that they can handle themselves and their own discomforts. And that they’re not actually my problem to solve. At least not when I should be sleeping.
Also, I haven’t read “Quit” but I really liked “Drop the Ball” by Tiffany Dufu along these lines. It’s a good companion to “Fair Play” because it reminds you that before you decide how to do or delegate something, you should check it against your values and see if it actually needs doing. She and her partner will then actively put things in her column, his, someone else (like a sitter or family member) and... No One. To actively decide that this task will be done by No One in this season, I imagine, is very empowering.
Agree on Drop the Ball. Last weekend I realized that the entire concept of the Bambino app for caregivers is someone manifesting Tiffany Dufu's husband's method of hiring a date night sitter: ask them all, whoever responds first does it. No need for the cozy warm-up & subsequent back and forth.
I love this: "focus on just making sure I’m good, and that my kid is safe/warm/fed, and trust in the resilience of other adults, that they can handle themselves and their own discomforts."
Adding "Drop the Ball" to my reading list - thank you!!!
I love this idea and need to check out that book. This year after raging at the printer over trying to get Christmas cards to print right I told my husband I wasn’t doing Christmas cards next year.
He offered to do the printing next year but I was like it’s not just the printing, it’s also figuring out the photos, design and a million other small tasks. I’ve been doing it for over 10 years and just want a year off from it next year.
In the parenting workshop I held a few weeks ago, "giving less Fs about the holiday cards" was the #1 goal. It is so much labor! It is not just one to-do, as you said -- it's like ten, from pestering people for their updated addresses to buying stamps. Many said they're just not doing them anymore because they're just perpetrating IG parenting culture, this idea that everyone is having a perfectly matchy-match time and their kids are never crying and their marriages are a 24/7 makeout session, when we all know that's not true and it's making everyone feel bad about their mostly-good lives. And while I did cards this year, I totally felt that and may never do them again for that reason.
That said, a graphic designer friend of mine, Shannon, does do cards, and has totally reinvented this tradition for herself and her kid in ways that I think are cool -- she describes it better than I can, here in the comments of this post: https://ryanroseweaver.substack.com/p/roll-call-a-potluck-dinner-for-feelings
I love this idea and agree that this is essentially self care. When my partner and I get in any kind of Fair Play argument, the fact that I don't have to do all the things on my list is the first thing he brings up. But still I've never really thought about it this way -- ugh, is he right?!?!
I am the type of person who loves to cook and provide my family with healthy, homemade food. But yeah some days I have gotten okay at letting it go and getting takeout. It helps simplify my life for sure. Honestly, the act of picking it up is sometimes more time consuming than just making a simple dinner but it does help my brain juggle less.
Sometimes when I think I probably need to do laundry, I think about whether the kids have enough clean clothes to wait one more day. If so, it always feels so good to just put it out of my mind (until the next day...)
I'll definitely check back here for more ideas of lightening my list!
It's worth pointing out that one of the reasons it's so hard for us to let go is because our culture judges moms FAR more harshly than dads when things are amiss - like if the house is messy, the kid's clothes are stained, etc. It's easy for men to say "just stop having such high standards!" when they are never punished for not meeting them. We are.
I listened to Emily Edlynn's interview on Psychologists off the Clock on a flight home from a solo trip. When my family picked me up from the airport, I said, "Missed you, kids. Starting today you're getting $5/week allowance and some jobs. You can pick the jobs." I made a list of about 40 tasks. They each picked about 6 jobs. In practice, they do 3 jobs each a week (one a day M - W). Seriously, I never could have predicted this, but my 6 yo son does the kid laundry twice a week (a parent folds it at night. or doesn't and they get wrinkled from the basket or dryer). Same for getting the mail. It's his sister's job. I don't worry about it.
Thing I given up permanently: getting the car washed, sending Christmas cards, feeling responsible for looking at the mom group text, feeling bad that my daughter's hair is not brushed, mentioning school dress up days to my kids, coloring my gray hair, feeling like I need to actively mentor any young woman in my orbit (why did I think this?), adult laundry (I use a service called Happy Nest. It does make my nest happier and reduces conflict).
Adult laundry is the bane of my existence. It feels (to me) like I do way more of the household chores than my spouse. But I will separate before I do his laundry. I will not do it. In practice this looks like lots of dirty clothes in our room and him pouting about having to do it. I gather he works with a lot of men whose wives take care of this. I have even set up a laundry service that would pick up the duffel and bring it baCk the next day but he wont use it (out of discomfort? Shame? Who knows?). So I don't do His laundry but it causes discomfort nonetheless. I wish I could let go of trying to fix his discomfort around the whole thing
I've let go/lowered my standards on family dinner SO MUCH since my ex moved out, and it's been very liberating. I'm also assigning my kids more chores on the weekends (and lowering standards to be fine with how they do them vs it creating more work for me). I'm REALLY working on- if their dad is supposed to do a thing, I don't involve myself in how the thing gets done anymore. And I (kindly) uninvited 12 people to Christmas Dinner, which was a big one!
My partner and I planned our Christmas meals late last night, when we were already in bed, and I realized that I always feel pressure to plan holidays well ahead of time and yet am very bad at doing so, and this year we have hardly planned at all, until we felt moved to do so, and it felt so much more right.
This has been an EXTREMELY busy work week for me, and I have given myself permission to: skip my laundry, get dinner delivered, not workout, not make the bed, have my husband take my daycare pickup duties a few times, and ask for childcare from my sister so I can go to a holiday party. This is NOT how I normally operate but I looked at this week and just knew I couldn't do all of it. I'm not feeling my very best but its good to know my life will function without all these things happening.
I must be entrenched. I'm having a hard time coming up with something. Trying very hard to get the 6yo to make his bed, and that's not going great, but it's mostly going. He starts his laundry (with help), but I always end up holding the hamper, if you will, folding it alone after he's asleep.
I have, though, as I've mentioned before, stopped painting my toenails. Who has time to paint them, let alone let them dry? And there's a lot of mailbox Christmas-decorating in my neighborhood, and I have opted out of that. My mailbox will be fine without some greenery.
Those are good things to let go of! Maybe try to observe the various things you do over the course of this week and, when you can remember, ask yourself - is this essential to do right now? Is there anyone else who could do it instead? Etc.
I had a meltdown a couple years ago after making holiday magic for my kid mostly by myself, because the holidays are a really rough time of year for my partner and I was trying to avoid putting anything extra on him. After the meltdown, he said, "Ok, write down everything you did this year for the holidays. Next November, let's go through the list and split it up." I put a reminder in the calendar and we did just that. It worked really well! We took a couple things off the to-do list and didn't miss them. This year, we did the same thing but skipped bigger things like traveling cross-country and sending Christmas cards. I opted out of the neighborhood cookie exchange, too. It's been a mostly chill holiday season, which our family really needed.
My husband and I recently started a Friday night ritual of deciding together which ball we would drop for the upcoming weekend. Last weekend it was ALL the housework. The house is dirty right now. That’s ok. This week the house will get cleaned but something else will drop. Maybe we’ll skip a kid activity. Maybe we will let some laundry build up. I like this plan because it embraces imperfection, and I’m not taking on the inevitable guilt of that alone.
Getting my 3 yr old dressed in the morning. My parents take care of my kids right now so there is really no need for her to be 100% presentable when she gets dropped off. So in that spirit I put her in the car while in her pjs and hand her a muffin. This week I let go of trying to get shoes or a jacket on. She's just wrapped in her blanket barefoot and that's how I drop her off. I bring a bag of clothes for her to change into when she is ready later in the day. I know this will not work forever. But it is working for now.
That's awesome. I have recently stopped fighting my kids on weather-related clothing choices, unless I know they're going to be stuck outside for a long time and might otherwise die of hypothermia. If they're uncomfortable on the way to the bus or at recess, that's a valuable less for them to learn!
My therapist said to me years ago something that changed my life. "Lisa, when there is a hard way or an easy way. Take the easy way. Find every opportunity to do that." For me, that means: buying things rather than cooking or baking for school functions or potluck parties, donating money, if I can, rather than my time, retiring from chaperoning and driving for field trips (I did it every single time from kinder-4th. I did my time!), asking for and accepting help instead of being a martyr, lowering my standards in general, and buying frozen veggies. I try to remind myself what Anne Lamott said in Operating Instructions, "I was 35 before someone told me that a B+ was a good grade." Shooting for B's these day.
When my kids were young I gave up on having a clean house. I live with far more clutter and dirt than I'd prefer. I figure I'll get neat and clean back when the kids are in college. Even with an involved partner and older kids who have chores, it's just too much to keep up with. I have far more important things to spend my time on than cleaning! Ugh!
I also say "no" to most school help/ volunteer requests. Someone I read recently (sorry I forget who) pointed out that all that mom volunteer at school stuff is just one more way that women's labor goes unpaid! So much hidden uncompensated and unappreciated female labor in our society.
I'll offer another book for you: "Rest is Resistance" by Tricia Hersey. Great book about reclaiming our human right to just rest!
My house is also not clean!!!! And yes - such a good point about the school volunteer requests. Men sure don't have any problem saying no to them. So can we!
Oh these are good ideas--and I already feel like I make an effort to do less this time of year. Some things I intentionally do not do during this time: travel, wrap gifts (all reusable bags), address cards, make family plans with other people, make hard plans for ourselves, invite people over, schedule appointments, agree to any new projects. Something I think I will delegate to my husband (I have been doing more of this lately and it's brilliant) is the buying of gifts and supplies for the dog. I handle gifts to my husband, two kids, my parents and step parents whereas his responsibility is...me. This year I am giving him dog Xmas responsibilites.
Came back here to say, that after reading over this I decided that this was not nearly enough, so I asked huz to do all the stocking gifts too, and he was like "yup." SCORE.
One I’ve been working on letting go of is the need to make some complicated recipe for family gatherings. It often stresses me out to figure out a recipe and how to transport it but I feel like I should be bringing something homemade and often new and interesting! Trying to let go of that and being okay with just bringing something that is super easy to prepare or store bought.
Also not feeling guilty just signing up to bring the napkins to the school party!
I’m going to try to let go of baking every weekend. I’ve been batch baking muffins/cookies/insert mini snack here for my kid to take to school every week. I think it made me feel like a “good mom” knowing not everything he was eating for lunch/snack was store bought (I find making school lunches stressful and exhausting). But most of the time he doesn’t eat what I bake and I find myself getting ragey when I open his lunch box at the end of the day to find yet another not eaten baked treat. And what started off as something fun to do on the weekend - I actually used to love to bake - has become a chore. I want baking to be fun again.
I stopped cleaning my daughter’s room every weekend by myself. She is 4 years old and is capable of straightening up her things with my help. It doesn’t look as neat as I would like it, but she is taking more ownership of cleaning her room and how she likes her toys/books to be organized which is important.
I can tell it’s still bothering my husband because he loves her room to look really tidy with everything out of the way, but he has also been letting it go for the most part.
if he doesn't like the way it looks, he can close the door 😉
Or clean it himself!
This!
He did try, but she told him, “Daddy, you did it all wrong!”
Well... that's still HIS problem, not yours!
Very true- I tend to think I just pay more attention to how she plays so I understand that she doesn’t like it if I move all of her toys out of the way and just throw them all together. He tried to line all her toys up neatly, but she prefers that if they are lined up they’re still organized by what she’s using them to pretend- like her Barbie has been the teacher for the two little babies (so that Barbie is supposed to be Mommy taking care of babies like I do at school). And then her Fisher Price Little People all go together because those have been all the classmates who are having circle time with Elsa and Anna as their teacher.
And then the mighty pups all like to line up to wait their turn for the slide or cars like they’re playing outside. She loves to act out her day, and I don’t know that he’s thought about it like that, he just thought he could move everything off to the side. I am out of town this weekend, so I am curious to see what they do to clean up her room- I know he will take it upon himself to get her to clean it up more than it currently is.
The last time I was gone a few days, and he was in charge, I came back and her room was very clean, and he said they had cleaned it together!
I think of myself as pretty type B when it comes to my physical space, but emotionally, I can be very persnickety about wanting all figurative countertops to be clean before bed. Like, no one is going to bed angry, ever! Emails to important adults must be responded to perfectly, in a timely fashion! Everyone had better have a clear plan for self care this week because I don’t want to deal with the fallout! I’ve had to really bring it in and focus on just making sure I’m good, and that my kid is safe/warm/fed, and trust in the resilience of other adults, that they can handle themselves and their own discomforts. And that they’re not actually my problem to solve. At least not when I should be sleeping.
Also, I haven’t read “Quit” but I really liked “Drop the Ball” by Tiffany Dufu along these lines. It’s a good companion to “Fair Play” because it reminds you that before you decide how to do or delegate something, you should check it against your values and see if it actually needs doing. She and her partner will then actively put things in her column, his, someone else (like a sitter or family member) and... No One. To actively decide that this task will be done by No One in this season, I imagine, is very empowering.
Agree on Drop the Ball. Last weekend I realized that the entire concept of the Bambino app for caregivers is someone manifesting Tiffany Dufu's husband's method of hiring a date night sitter: ask them all, whoever responds first does it. No need for the cozy warm-up & subsequent back and forth.
I love this: "focus on just making sure I’m good, and that my kid is safe/warm/fed, and trust in the resilience of other adults, that they can handle themselves and their own discomforts."
Adding "Drop the Ball" to my reading list - thank you!!!
This recent post was really helpful to me in this regard!
https://substack.com/home/post/p-139197625
I love this idea and need to check out that book. This year after raging at the printer over trying to get Christmas cards to print right I told my husband I wasn’t doing Christmas cards next year.
He offered to do the printing next year but I was like it’s not just the printing, it’s also figuring out the photos, design and a million other small tasks. I’ve been doing it for over 10 years and just want a year off from it next year.
In the parenting workshop I held a few weeks ago, "giving less Fs about the holiday cards" was the #1 goal. It is so much labor! It is not just one to-do, as you said -- it's like ten, from pestering people for their updated addresses to buying stamps. Many said they're just not doing them anymore because they're just perpetrating IG parenting culture, this idea that everyone is having a perfectly matchy-match time and their kids are never crying and their marriages are a 24/7 makeout session, when we all know that's not true and it's making everyone feel bad about their mostly-good lives. And while I did cards this year, I totally felt that and may never do them again for that reason.
That said, a graphic designer friend of mine, Shannon, does do cards, and has totally reinvented this tradition for herself and her kid in ways that I think are cool -- she describes it better than I can, here in the comments of this post: https://ryanroseweaver.substack.com/p/roll-call-a-potluck-dinner-for-feelings
I love this idea and agree that this is essentially self care. When my partner and I get in any kind of Fair Play argument, the fact that I don't have to do all the things on my list is the first thing he brings up. But still I've never really thought about it this way -- ugh, is he right?!?!
I am the type of person who loves to cook and provide my family with healthy, homemade food. But yeah some days I have gotten okay at letting it go and getting takeout. It helps simplify my life for sure. Honestly, the act of picking it up is sometimes more time consuming than just making a simple dinner but it does help my brain juggle less.
Sometimes when I think I probably need to do laundry, I think about whether the kids have enough clean clothes to wait one more day. If so, it always feels so good to just put it out of my mind (until the next day...)
I'll definitely check back here for more ideas of lightening my list!
It's worth pointing out that one of the reasons it's so hard for us to let go is because our culture judges moms FAR more harshly than dads when things are amiss - like if the house is messy, the kid's clothes are stained, etc. It's easy for men to say "just stop having such high standards!" when they are never punished for not meeting them. We are.
Exactly!
PREACH - This is an amazing way to phrase this!
I listened to Emily Edlynn's interview on Psychologists off the Clock on a flight home from a solo trip. When my family picked me up from the airport, I said, "Missed you, kids. Starting today you're getting $5/week allowance and some jobs. You can pick the jobs." I made a list of about 40 tasks. They each picked about 6 jobs. In practice, they do 3 jobs each a week (one a day M - W). Seriously, I never could have predicted this, but my 6 yo son does the kid laundry twice a week (a parent folds it at night. or doesn't and they get wrinkled from the basket or dryer). Same for getting the mail. It's his sister's job. I don't worry about it.
Thing I given up permanently: getting the car washed, sending Christmas cards, feeling responsible for looking at the mom group text, feeling bad that my daughter's hair is not brushed, mentioning school dress up days to my kids, coloring my gray hair, feeling like I need to actively mentor any young woman in my orbit (why did I think this?), adult laundry (I use a service called Happy Nest. It does make my nest happier and reduces conflict).
Love this! I haven't listened to Emily's interview yet but I need to. She's so great!
My kids had morning jobs and afternoon jobs. They were small, but I didn’t have to do them, and our home ran a little more smoothly.
An enthusiastic seconding of not sending Xmas cards
We have switched Xmas cards to an Xmas email. Saves so much time and stress and you do not have to start planning things out in November!!
Adult laundry is the bane of my existence. It feels (to me) like I do way more of the household chores than my spouse. But I will separate before I do his laundry. I will not do it. In practice this looks like lots of dirty clothes in our room and him pouting about having to do it. I gather he works with a lot of men whose wives take care of this. I have even set up a laundry service that would pick up the duffel and bring it baCk the next day but he wont use it (out of discomfort? Shame? Who knows?). So I don't do His laundry but it causes discomfort nonetheless. I wish I could let go of trying to fix his discomfort around the whole thing
I've let go/lowered my standards on family dinner SO MUCH since my ex moved out, and it's been very liberating. I'm also assigning my kids more chores on the weekends (and lowering standards to be fine with how they do them vs it creating more work for me). I'm REALLY working on- if their dad is supposed to do a thing, I don't involve myself in how the thing gets done anymore. And I (kindly) uninvited 12 people to Christmas Dinner, which was a big one!
My partner and I planned our Christmas meals late last night, when we were already in bed, and I realized that I always feel pressure to plan holidays well ahead of time and yet am very bad at doing so, and this year we have hardly planned at all, until we felt moved to do so, and it felt so much more right.
This has been an EXTREMELY busy work week for me, and I have given myself permission to: skip my laundry, get dinner delivered, not workout, not make the bed, have my husband take my daycare pickup duties a few times, and ask for childcare from my sister so I can go to a holiday party. This is NOT how I normally operate but I looked at this week and just knew I couldn't do all of it. I'm not feeling my very best but its good to know my life will function without all these things happening.
Yesssss! Maybe you can keep not doing some of these things after this week, too!
I must be entrenched. I'm having a hard time coming up with something. Trying very hard to get the 6yo to make his bed, and that's not going great, but it's mostly going. He starts his laundry (with help), but I always end up holding the hamper, if you will, folding it alone after he's asleep.
I have, though, as I've mentioned before, stopped painting my toenails. Who has time to paint them, let alone let them dry? And there's a lot of mailbox Christmas-decorating in my neighborhood, and I have opted out of that. My mailbox will be fine without some greenery.
Those are good things to let go of! Maybe try to observe the various things you do over the course of this week and, when you can remember, ask yourself - is this essential to do right now? Is there anyone else who could do it instead? Etc.
I had a meltdown a couple years ago after making holiday magic for my kid mostly by myself, because the holidays are a really rough time of year for my partner and I was trying to avoid putting anything extra on him. After the meltdown, he said, "Ok, write down everything you did this year for the holidays. Next November, let's go through the list and split it up." I put a reminder in the calendar and we did just that. It worked really well! We took a couple things off the to-do list and didn't miss them. This year, we did the same thing but skipped bigger things like traveling cross-country and sending Christmas cards. I opted out of the neighborhood cookie exchange, too. It's been a mostly chill holiday season, which our family really needed.
I love this! Thank you for sharing!
My husband and I recently started a Friday night ritual of deciding together which ball we would drop for the upcoming weekend. Last weekend it was ALL the housework. The house is dirty right now. That’s ok. This week the house will get cleaned but something else will drop. Maybe we’ll skip a kid activity. Maybe we will let some laundry build up. I like this plan because it embraces imperfection, and I’m not taking on the inevitable guilt of that alone.
Getting my 3 yr old dressed in the morning. My parents take care of my kids right now so there is really no need for her to be 100% presentable when she gets dropped off. So in that spirit I put her in the car while in her pjs and hand her a muffin. This week I let go of trying to get shoes or a jacket on. She's just wrapped in her blanket barefoot and that's how I drop her off. I bring a bag of clothes for her to change into when she is ready later in the day. I know this will not work forever. But it is working for now.
That's awesome. I have recently stopped fighting my kids on weather-related clothing choices, unless I know they're going to be stuck outside for a long time and might otherwise die of hypothermia. If they're uncomfortable on the way to the bus or at recess, that's a valuable less for them to learn!
My therapist said to me years ago something that changed my life. "Lisa, when there is a hard way or an easy way. Take the easy way. Find every opportunity to do that." For me, that means: buying things rather than cooking or baking for school functions or potluck parties, donating money, if I can, rather than my time, retiring from chaperoning and driving for field trips (I did it every single time from kinder-4th. I did my time!), asking for and accepting help instead of being a martyr, lowering my standards in general, and buying frozen veggies. I try to remind myself what Anne Lamott said in Operating Instructions, "I was 35 before someone told me that a B+ was a good grade." Shooting for B's these day.
I love this!!!!! That's such sage advice.
When my kids were young I gave up on having a clean house. I live with far more clutter and dirt than I'd prefer. I figure I'll get neat and clean back when the kids are in college. Even with an involved partner and older kids who have chores, it's just too much to keep up with. I have far more important things to spend my time on than cleaning! Ugh!
I also say "no" to most school help/ volunteer requests. Someone I read recently (sorry I forget who) pointed out that all that mom volunteer at school stuff is just one more way that women's labor goes unpaid! So much hidden uncompensated and unappreciated female labor in our society.
I'll offer another book for you: "Rest is Resistance" by Tricia Hersey. Great book about reclaiming our human right to just rest!
My house is also not clean!!!! And yes - such a good point about the school volunteer requests. Men sure don't have any problem saying no to them. So can we!
Thanks for the book rec - adding it to my list!
Just now realizing room parent at our preschool has ALWAYS ended up being a female identifying parent.
Yupppppp
Oh these are good ideas--and I already feel like I make an effort to do less this time of year. Some things I intentionally do not do during this time: travel, wrap gifts (all reusable bags), address cards, make family plans with other people, make hard plans for ourselves, invite people over, schedule appointments, agree to any new projects. Something I think I will delegate to my husband (I have been doing more of this lately and it's brilliant) is the buying of gifts and supplies for the dog. I handle gifts to my husband, two kids, my parents and step parents whereas his responsibility is...me. This year I am giving him dog Xmas responsibilites.
Came back here to say, that after reading over this I decided that this was not nearly enough, so I asked huz to do all the stocking gifts too, and he was like "yup." SCORE.
One I’ve been working on letting go of is the need to make some complicated recipe for family gatherings. It often stresses me out to figure out a recipe and how to transport it but I feel like I should be bringing something homemade and often new and interesting! Trying to let go of that and being okay with just bringing something that is super easy to prepare or store bought.
Also not feeling guilty just signing up to bring the napkins to the school party!