At 8:36 on a Tuesday in March, Alfie was at the bottom of the stairs in one shoe, explaining that the other one had "gone to live somewhere else". Isla was upstairs hunting for her reading record. Mabel was asleep in my coat. We left at twenty to nine, reached the gate at 8:54, four minutes after the register, and our names went in the late book while Priya, who has never been late in her life, pretended to look at her phone.
That was the week I stuck a Post-it on the kettle and kept a tally of every time I raised my voice before we left the house. Twenty-three, Monday to Friday. Rob leaves for work at about twenty past five, so the mornings are me, two children and a cat who wants breakfast, and by Wednesday I sounded like a sergeant major.
Why it's 8:32
Gates open at 8:40 and the register is at 8:50. The walk is 12 minutes on the map, but with a scooter, the zebra crossing and Zain waiting at the corner it's nearer 14. Then Alfie has to hang his coat on his peg and put his book bag in the tray, which takes three minutes because he narrates it. Out of the door by 8:32 gets us into the cloakroom with a minute to spare. Leave at 8:33 and we're running the last stretch, which with a five-year-old on a scooter means calling "kerb!" every twenty yards.
What's by the front door now
Rob screwed a rail of four low hooks to the hall wall one Sunday, £6.50 from the hardware shop. One hook for each coat, one for each book bag. Before that the coats lived on the newel post and the bags on the third stair, which is where you find them with your foot.
Beside the hooks is an A4 checklist in a clear plastic pocket, with a dry-wipe pen on a bit of string. Isla's has seven lines: teeth, hair, shoes, coat, book bag with reading record, lunch from the fridge, water bottle. Alfie's is the same without the lunch (he has school dinners) and with scooter and helmet instead. Isla drew little pictures down the side for him, because he can't read most of the words yet. A toothbrush, a shoe, a very good helmet.
The first version had fourteen lines. Isla looked at it, said "that's a lot" and walked straight past it for a week. I cut it to seven and it started working. Alfie loves it. He is the only one who ticks things off, and he does it before they're done, so there is a bit of quality control involved.
The night before
The checklist only works because most of the checking happens at seven in the evening, when nobody is cross yet.
- Uniform on the chair, socks tucked inside the shoes.
- Isla builds her own lunchbox from the list on the fridge after tea. I check it, and it goes on the middle shelf.
- Water bottles filled and standing in the fridge door.
- Book bags packed and hung on their hooks, reading records signed.
- Letters read, dates on the whiteboard, any money in an envelope in the right bag.
- Whoever is last downstairs looks at the sky and decides which coats go on the hooks.
There's also a phone alarm at 8:25 called "shoes". That is the real one. It goes off in the kitchen, and the kids know that after it there are seven minutes.
What didn't work
The hooks went up too high the first time. Alfie's coat spent a week on the floor under his hook, and I assumed he was being awkward until I stood at his height and saw he couldn't reach. They came down by 15 centimetres. A sticker chart lasted four days, mostly because Isla informed me she was nearly nine and too old, and Alfie ate one of the stickers.
And it doesn't solve the missing shoe. Alfie takes them off in the lounge, wherever he happens to be at the time, and no checklist knows where that is. We've settled on a rule that shoes go back in the hall basket before tea, and it holds about four days in five.
On Monday we were at the front door at 8:31, everybody in shoes, Alfie ticking the last box with a flourish. I'd like to say I stood there in triumph. I actually went back in for my keys, and we left at 8:33 anyway. The Post-it on the kettle says five this week, against thirteen by Wednesday in March, and I'm keeping it up there.
