Nobody Warns You How Much Shit There Is to Remember When You’re the Mom

I can’t tell you how many days I feel overwhelmed.

Not because there is one catastrophic thing happening.

Because there are 147 tiny things happening.

I have to remember if it’s hot lunch day at school.

I have to think about what coat my kids should bring based on what the temperature might be at one o’clock in the afternoon.

I have to remember the next doctor appointment.

The dentist.

The eye exam I still need to schedule.

The agenda that needs to be reviewed and signed.

I have to remember that one kid doesn’t like that specific kind of yogurt.

That there are birthday parties coming up.

That somehow we also have multiple hockey ice times this week.

That registration for whatever school activity they suddenly desperately want to join is about to open, which means I need to watch my inbox like I’m waiting for Beyoncé tickets because apparently being twelve minutes late to a registration email can change the trajectory of a childhood.

I have to remember who is running low on what.

What needs to be washed.

What needs to be bought.

Who is coming over this weekend.

Whether we need groceries before then.

And whether the house currently looks like people live here or like everybody was evacuated with four minutes’ notice.

None of this is a crisis.

This is just life.

Things come up.

Things need to get done.

And every one of those things somehow needs to be sorted into an already-full week.

They are tiny things.

But they are constant.

And as soon as three things come off the list, four new ones seem to climb on.

Somehow, you are the operating system.

It’s Not the Task. It’s Remembering the Task Exists.

A lot of these things only take five minutes.

That isn’t the problem.

The problem is remembering:

That it exists.

When it is due.

What needs to happen first.

Who needs to do it.

Whether you need to buy something before you can do it.

And what happens if nobody does it at all.

That is the part people don’t always see.

The appointment might only take an hour.

But somebody had to remember it needed to be booked.

Find the phone number.

Book it.

Put it in the calendar.

Remember it again two months later.

Arrange the rest of the day around it.

Make sure the kid gets there.

Possibly remember whatever follow-up comes next.

The visible task is one thing.

Managing the existence of the task is another.

And that takes up a lot of brain space.

A hundred tiny things eventually become one giant feeling.

Overwhelmed.

And sometimes you don’t even know why.

Nothing terrible happened today.

Nobody is sick.

There is no emergency.

But your brain feels like it has 36 tabs open, one of them is playing music, and you cannot figure out which one.

Your Personal Life Does Not Clock Out When You Go to Work

A lot of us go to work during the week while our kids go to school.

So naturally, while we’re at work, we’re thinking about work.

• Emails.

• Deadlines.

• Meetings.

• Problems.

• People who need things from us.

But there is also another little operating system quietly running in the background.

• School.

• Sports.

• Appointments.

• Groceries.

• Birthdays.

• Laundry.

Whatever someone needs tomorrow morning that they definitely did not mention yesterday.

I cannot tell you how many times I have been sitting at my desk at work and suddenly remembered something like:

Shit. There’s some ridiculous themed school day tomorrow.

Now I’m mentally doing logistics.

There’s something happening tonight.

We are not making whatever elaborate Pinterest creation the school apparently expects when we get home.

We are also not going shopping at bedtime unless I want the entire household to descend into chaos.

So suddenly I’m mentally rearranging my lunch break, my errands and whatever else I had planned because I remembered one more thing.

Apparently this is project management now.

And this is what makes the mental load so exhausting.

It isn’t just remembering.

It is constantly rearranging the puzzle pieces so that everything somehow fits.

You’re Carrying the Household in Your Head

None of these things individually is catastrophic if it gets missed.

Missing a themed school day is not going to destroy a childhood.

Forgetting one birthday gift probably won’t end a friendship.

Ordering pizza because the dinner plan fell apart is not a moral failing.

But when you compound all of the little things that need to happen, especially when several of them need to happen inside a short window, it becomes obvious how much of your household you are carrying around mentally.

Research actually has a name for a lot of this: cognitive household labor, or part of what we usually call the mental load.

It isn’t just doing household and caregiving work.

It includes thinking ahead, planning, organizing, anticipating and remembering what needs to happen before anyone else even notices the task exists.

Which feels extremely accurate.

And that constant pressure of not wanting to drop anything?

That is exhausting too.

You don’t want to forget the school form.

You don’t want your kid to be the only one who didn’t bring the thing.

You don’t want to miss the registration.

You don’t want someone to run out of what they need.

You don’t want to disappoint anybody.

So you just keep holding all of it.

Single Motherhood Adds Another Layer

And I want to be clear here.

Being a single mother does not automatically mean you have an inactive co-parent.

Plenty of single moms have involved co-parents.

But during the time when you are the only adult running your household, there is no passive second brain sitting beside you.

There is no one casually saying:

“Oh, hey. I remembered that thing for tomorrow.”

Or:

“I already picked that up.”

Or:

“I saw the email. I handled it.”

Sometimes, if you forget something, it simply does not happen.

That changes the load.

There isn’t another adult quietly catching pieces as they fall.

During your time, it is you.

And your household is depending on you to keep a surprising amount of shit moving in the right direction.

And Yes, Sometimes We Are Part of the Problem

This is the slightly annoying part.

Because as much as there is a lot to carry, sometimes we are also making it heavier than it needs to be.

Maybe you refuse to delegate.

Maybe somewhere along the way you decided nobody can do it correctly except you.

Maybe you say yes automatically before checking whether you have any actual room left in your week.

Maybe you haven’t built systems.

Maybe everything lives in your head.

Maybe you have accidentally made yourself the default person for absolutely everything.

I have done all of those things.

And if we are going to complain about carrying too much, we also have to be willing to ask whether we are still voluntarily picking some of it back up.

Your Brain Is Not Supposed to Be the Family Filing Cabinet

At some point, the answer cannot be:

I just need to remember better.

No.

You need less to remember.

Getting things out of your head and into a system is one of the simplest ways I’ve found to make life feel slightly less chaotic.

Get a calendar.

Keep a running life-admin list.

Use recurring reminders.

Automate whatever can be automated.

Create systems for things you do repeatedly.

And give your children age-appropriate responsibility instead of automatically doing everything for them.

In our house, one of the simplest systems is a weekly dinner plan on a whiteboard.

The kids help decide what they want to eat.

It goes on the board.

That tells me what I need to buy.

It also eliminates approximately 400 repetitions of:

“What’s for dinner?”

Look at the board.

The board knows.

I also keep a wall calendar where the major household events live.

• Sports.

• School events.

• Birthdays.

• Days off.

• Appointments.

• Anything that affects the week.

Then I keep a separate agenda for the things that actually need to get done.

Tasks.

Things I’ve been putting off.

Personal priorities.

Even things I want to make sure I do for myself, like walking or working out.

Because apparently if I do not put myself on the list, I will happily manage everybody else’s life and then wonder why mine feels neglected.

Getting it all out of my brain lets me actually see the week.

And once I can see it, I can start figuring out how all the pieces fit together.

You Probably Don’t Need More Discipline

I think this is where moms can be unnecessarily hard on themselves.

You don’t necessarily need to become more organized.

More disciplined.

More efficient.

More capable.

Maybe you just need fewer things relying exclusively on your memory.

The goal is not to become a woman who can flawlessly remember 147 things.

That sounds terrible.

The goal is to design a life where 147 things do not require active memory.

There will still be hockey schedules.

School emails.

Appointments.

Birthday parties.

Groceries.

And someone will still announce at 8:46 p.m. that they need poster board for tomorrow morning.

Because apparently that is simply part of motherhood.

But maybe the answer isn’t getting better at carrying everything.

Maybe it’s finally putting some of it down.

Writing it down.

Automating it.

Delegating it.

Putting it on the wall.

Getting it out of your head.

Because your brain has enough to do without also being the household’s calendar, filing cabinet, reminder system, grocery list, event coordinator and emergency backup plan.

If you’re also running a household with 36 tabs permanently open in your brain, join the TMIC Pep Talk. We’re figuring out systems that make life easier without pretending motherhood is ever going to become completely organized.

XOXO,

That Mama