8:03 a.m. and my phone says 127 unread. Class WhatsApp. September edition. Someone’s made a bake-sale spreadsheet in five tabs. Someone else has announced their husband owns a circular saw and is therefore “happy” to build stage scenery. There is an eye-roll emoji floating in there with the force of a legal notice. I am drinking cold tea and pretending I didn’t see it.
Old me jumped on every ping. Helpful, available, slightly sweaty. I’d skim the chat while packing lunches, miss the actual deadline the chat was about, then apologise twice. Kids got the twitched version of me. This year I wanted different. Spain helped. Slow coffee, slow replies, nobody clutching pearls if you answer tomorrow.
So I tried rules. Not perfect ones. Just enough. Phone stays face-down until after drop-off. Evening check before bed. In between, silence. I told two close mums: if it’s actual money due or a real emergency, text me direct. Everything else can wait an hour. I wrote two tiny scripts in Notes. One says “sorry, can’t help this time.” The other says “yes, if you still need.” Paste, send, move on. No essays, no emojis that could be misread.
Did the group notice? Possibly. The first mini-crisis arrived with the bake sale. I let it wash past. No colour-coding opinions, no running joke about my brownies. And nothing terrible happened. Whole table sold out. Max licked icing off two cakes and called it the best day of his life. Jack traded a KitKat for a toffee that could repair roads. Lily came home pink-cheeked and sugared. The world turned.
Meanwhile, the house kept heckling. Sun through the rooflight at homework time. Glare on the TV at exactly the moment I need five quiet minutes to chop onions. Me, climbing a chair twice a day because the pull cord hides behind a plastic plant. I am not taller than gravity. So I looked at proper window control like an adult. If you’ve got a pitched extension or big rooflights, apex blinds and lantern blinds that run on a simple schedule are boringly life-saving. I’ve been eyeing a smart setup from ClearlyAutomated.co.uk so mornings and movie nights just… happen. Up at 7, down at 8, no speech from me, no debate from them. Same logic as muting the chat. Fewer manual tugs. Fewer “Mum, the sun.”
There was a wobble. Someone hinted that not replying in the hour is “unhelpful.” I typed three paragraphs in my head, deleted them, and sent the small script. Then I put the phone in the fruit bowl and took Max to kick a ball at a fence. When I checked later, the thread had moved on to lost property and a pair of mystery socks. Not my circus, not my socks.
What changed here wasn’t the group. It was me not auditioning for Most Available Mother. Two check-ins a day means I actually read the school letters instead of half-reading 80 messages about them. Dinner stops burning. I get to be silly with Lily while the pasta boils. Jack beats me at a five-minute chess game and gloats like a pro. I still miss things, naturally. Last Tuesday I forgot the £2 for the class fund and sent in a handful of coins that looked like pirate treasure. It was fine. The teacher smiled. The planet kept spinning.
I won’t make this a manifesto. It’s just quieter. Fewer pings, fewer climbs onto the kitchen chair, fewer late-night apologies. I’m learning to let good enough be good enough. The group will survive without my spreadsheet edits. The blinds will go down by themselves. And I might even drink a hot tea before October.