I posted a while back about going down to one car. I’ve had some people express some curiosity about how I’m handling it, so I thought I’d update the situation. I’ll try and do this every here and there.

I’ll be honest. It’s not easy. But there are only two days most weeks where it takes any extra effort.

The first is on Thursday mornings. That’s the day we had already had Ariel signed up for gymnastics classes. They aren’t within walking distance and taking a cab is impractical when you think about dealing with car seats for two children.

So I take my husband to work first. The trick is that he is supposed to have a car, so I have to return it to him and have him drive us home after class.

Then there are the Saturday morning Reading and Writing Together classes, which I’ve also been blogging about. Those days my mother comes up to watch Gage and loan me her car so I can drive about 5 miles to that class. Got lucky the second week when my mother was sick and my inlaws had to pick someone up at the airport. My older sister came to town, so she was able to help out. But we did have to consider missing that class because I can’t take Gage to it, so the childcare aspect matters as much as the car.

The hardest part is not being able to run errands until my husband is home. It’s just a little weird feeling. There’s no other choice, of course.

I know there will be challenging times. For example, when Gage needs his next followup with his surgeon, the surgeon only sees his pediatric patients on a certain day within a particular time frame.

People who know me have been quite sympathetic. One of the moms at Ariel’s preschool has offered to pick us up on rainy days since she has a van (she runs a daycare), so I may not have to walk if the weather’s too bad.

The insurance savings come out to a few hundred a year. I’ll know more when the paperwork actually gets here. Of course, we lose the multi-car discount so it’s not as much as it would appear just looking at the policy. We’re only saving about $50/year on the registration renewal.

Gas savings are harder to pinpoint. I do much less running around and have to plan my shopping more carefully. I definitely go to the store less because I’m more careful to get everything I need. Can’t run back to it all that easily if I forget something, after all.

If you include the time in which my car wasn’t working but we didn’t have it diagnosed yet, I haven’t had a car of my own for about a month now. I get a bit fidgety sometimes being more stuck at home than usual, but it’s really not that bad so far.

[tags]cars,one car family[/tags]