One of the most challenging, and often overlooked, aspects of juggling multiple children is just how long it takes to get them out the door, into the car, and buckled up. Now, with three kids, we have it pretty much down to a science, but it is still a massive time suck.
I started thinking about what makes it so hard to simply leave the house with people 1/10th your own age. Before shoes and jackets can go on, sometimes you have to break up a toddler pile-up...
...or you might have to remove a baby from a lunchbox.
There's the occasional lost tooth...
...and the time it takes to label it so that it isn't accidentally thrown away when doing dishes (again).
And every once in a while, you have to wrap up a massive adventure of Little People in Japan Town.
But thinking this "out the door" issue through, everything outlined above is just regular parenting, whether you're heading to the car or not. So, I decided to look only at the time it takes for kids to get their shoes on, get their stuff, stumble out the door, jump in the car, and buckle-up.
"C'mon." you might be saying, "Even with three kids, that's no time at all! What's the big deal?" Well, as is
occasionally my wont, I've been running some numbers.
Let's assume that the average trip consists of getting shoes on, heading out the door, getting into the car, and then completing the process upon return (travel time in the car not included). We'll refer to this as a "complete trip." On average, there are at least three "complete trips" per day with kids, each day of the week.
To calculate the total time, I made the following assumptions:
- 1 Kid: 5 minutes per trip
- 2 Kids: 7 minutes per trip
- 3 Kids: 8 minutes per trip (You get more efficient. You can't help it.)
In addition to these average "complete trip" times there are bonus minutes!
- Baby Bonus: An extra 2 minutes per trip whenever you have a child under 2
- WTF Bonus: A weekly bonus of 10 minutes per week for meltdowns, car seat issues, food explosions, forgotten backpacks, it goes on and on
This structure in hand, I set out to calculate the total time spent simply getting out the door and then back in. For reference, I considered a full day as 17 hours (giving myself a leisurely 7 hours to sleep).
The First 3.5 Years: 1 Kid
- 9,665 minutes; 161 hours; 9.5 days
The Next 2.5 Years: 2 Kids
- 9,147 minutes; 152 hours; 9 days
The Last 1.5 Years: 3 Kids
- 6,255 minutes; 104 hours; 6 days
The Grand Total for the Last 7 Years:
- 25,067 minutes; 418 hours; 24.5 days
Yup, well over three weeks of my life so far have been devoted to simply getting kids into a car and back out again. Not that I'm complaining, just kind of amazed. There's so much hidden time devoted to kids that we never really consider, but maybe that's the best part about it. You don't really truly begrudge the time you've lost (though, sometimes, you wish it were still there). It's all part of the job. All part of putting together a family. And yes, while I'd love a three week vacation if I could magically convert my "out the door" time into "quiet time," I still end up spending it with these three.
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