The swim bag smells of chlorine and damp towel, which is the smell of Saturday. It lives on the hook by the back door from April to September and gets emptied on Saturday afternoons, with Isla's hair still smelling like a municipal pool. Today I tipped it out on the kitchen floor to take stock, because it's the first properly warm weekend of July, and I wanted to see what we had before we needed it.
Isla's lesson is at 9:30, in a pool that smells like a hot bath that's been through a tunnel. Alfie and I watch through the glass with the other parents, and afterwards he gets twenty minutes in the shallow end, which he treats as the main event of the week. Rob is on his round, so he hears about it at tea, in detail, from both of them at once.
What's in the bag
This is the kit, with the number of summers it's done and what it cost when I bought it:
- Two rash vests, £6 each from Vinted: both on their third summer, and both Alfie's now (one of them started life as Isla's)
- Three wet bags, £4.50 each: third summer, one with a peeling lining
- Isla's swimming costume, £14: new in March, the third she has had since lessons began
- Alfie's swim shorts, £3.20 from Vinted: new this year
- Two pairs of goggles, £4.50 each: new this year, as always
- Two sun hats, one legionnaire style and one bucket: Isla's is from 2024, and Alfie's bucket hat, £5, is a replacement
- Paddling pool, £12: third summer, one puncture patch, one slow leak
Sun cream is a separate line on the grocery receipt, and I don't count it here. It's about £14 a summer, and it never lasts as long as I'd like. Once it's properly warm it goes on at the kitchen table before the school run. Alfie hates the smell. Isla does her own and misses the backs of her ears every time, so I do those at the door.
What gets handed down, and what doesn't
The rash vests have done the best of all. UV tops are unisex, so Isla's old one passed down to Alfie without anyone noticing. After Easter Priya sent over a bag of Zain's outgrown ones, and Isla's old costume went to Anaya in return. I've stopped keeping a tally of what goes back and forth between us. It balances out, mostly.
The wet bags are the quiet heroes. A £4.50 drawstring bag with a waterproof lining means a wet costume and a wet towel stay in one place, and not in the footwell of the car. Three summers in, the lining on the oldest one has started to lift at the seam, so I've put it on the retirement list for August. They're the only thing that stops the back seat of the Skoda from smelling like a changing room.
What we replace every year is the stuff that dies in chlorine. Goggle straps perish. Costume elastic goes after about eight months of weekly lessons, so the new one should see Isla through to the autumn. Alfie outgrew last year's shorts in a growth spurt that took us all by surprise, and I found his replacements on Vinted for £3.20.
What I'd do differently
I'd look at the kit in March, not at the poolside. This year the elastic on last year's costume had gone, and I found out when Isla stood on the pool edge holding it up with one hand. Alfie left his old bucket hat on the sand at Filey last August and we only noticed when we were back on the A64, so that one wasn't a chlorine casualty, just a sea one.
So far this year we've spent £31.20 on replacements: the costume at £14, goggles at £9, the shorts at £3.20 and a hat at £5. The rest of the kit is the same stuff that was in the bag last July. That's what I like about it. A kit that has done three summers and is going into a fourth is quite a lot cheaper per swim than anything new, and I do love a per-swim figure.
There's a heatwave forecast for next weekend, and the paddling pool is going up on Thursday. I've put out a hat for Rob, who has told me he will not be wearing it. We'll see.
