I used to live on the third floor of an apartment building.
After a while, you learn very quickly that every trip matters.
If it couldn’t be carried this time, it could wait until the next time I happened to be coming upstairs. What it could not do was convince me to walk back down three flights of stairs just because I forgot something.
So I got efficient.
Or at least that’s what I called it.
Which is probably why, to this day, I still find myself attempting to carry:
- groceries
- my purse
- a water bottle
- the mail
- a jacket
- and somehow a coffee cup balanced on whatever fingers remain available
all in a single trip.
What’s interesting is that I no longer live on the third floor.
The stairs are gone.
The urgency is gone.
Yet the habit remains.
Because somewhere along the way, carrying everything at once started feeling productive.
As if making two trips would be evidence of poor planning.
As if efficiency and overloading myself were somehow the same thing.
The reality is that most of us have probably performed some version of the parking lot balancing act.
Arms full.
Keys nowhere to be found.
One item slipping.
Determined to succeed anyway because we’ve already committed to the mission.
And when we finally make it to the door without dropping anything?
There’s a small, completely unreasonable sense of accomplishment.
Like we’ve won something.
Maybe that’s why we keep doing it.
Not because the second trip is difficult.
Because somewhere in our minds we’ve decided the second trip means failure.
When really, it’s just a second trip.
And honestly, after carrying half the contents of the car in one load, it might have been the easier option all along.
