The daily grind, why coffee each day is essential to me

Budgeting, this is what you do when you go from two incomes to one, which happened in my case to coincide with having a baby, especially when one babe becomes two. You consider your ‘must’ spends, you cut back on your ‘need to’ spends and those ‘random- I’m swiping my credit card on a new wardrobe to make me feel better’ spends disappear.
But….. the one thing I made sure was in my weekly spend budget was enough to get me a coffee. daily. if. not. three!!!
My husband, not a fellow java drinker questioned what the point of our sparkling new nespresso machine was if I had to budget for a daily coffee to be purchased out and about. I explained to him this:

The beautiful Nespresso pod machine is my go-to for coffee number 2, or for days when it’s actually too difficult to get out of the house, hailing, late in the afternoon and no cafes around me are open, that’s when it’s a perfectly good option. However the taste and experience of a real espresso machine made coffee is a priority in my day. Still, he didn’t get it, “why pay for coffee when you can make it at home, spend that money on something else” he said.
I make my own lunch (with the exception of a day or so a week), even prior to having kids I always did being gluten intolerant and preferring healthier options (less processed, i.e. knowing what is actually being served to me) where I can, not to mention the savings over years calculated spending money on lunch + drink + coffee etc. at the office.

But for me that daily cafe brewed coffee is like the holy grail and my reward for achieving two major goals.

Goal 1: Getting yourself dressed, (not always showered), kids dressed (sometimes, PJ’s are looking far more fashionable these days than ever before- have you noticed?), kids somewhat fed- if not toast and breakfast foods in hand for the walk/car, pram/car packed, screaming fits, shoes on. shoes off and thrown about the room, snacks and water bottle previously packed suddenly found half devoured and spread across driveway, arguments about who get’s to sit in which seat of the pram, bottles of suncream opened and generously applied to legs, face, clothing, dolls, you name it, every patience pushing mess creating thing a child could do seems to happen somewhere between the moment you awake to when you actually manage to get out of the house. This I suppose is why I don’t often leave my postcode (and surrounding codes) on non work days because that ‘leave the house dance’ is just so bloody time consuming and cuts into possible coffee drinking, socialising and out of house time that in turn fires up the stress levels for this old mumma.

So, anyway my first goal is to get out the front gate, whether we are walking or driving that moment we step out the gate I take a deep breath knowing I have survived the morning rush and we have done it (it literally feels like I’ve won a golden ticket). I may run back inside a million times to collect the things I’ve forgotten but I’ve done it, somehow I have managed to break out and hit civilisation.

Goal 2: The other goal for my day is to successfully sip a cup of coffee. It might not just be the taste of a good coffee (fortunately I’m surrounded by some excellent cafes) and the kick up the arse it give your tired body but it may also be that simple conversation with the barista or waiter that helps you as a parent to know that somehow throughout your day of goo-ing, gaahing or yelling and responding with patience (aha otherwise screaming) to your toddlers tantrums that you know you have conversed with an adult, made it out of the house and done something for you. By the time you drink the coffee it may be cold, spilt on your clothes, or even ripped out of your hands by your toddler but you made it. out. clothed. with kids. whom are still alive. and you saw and even spoke with other adults.

You then return home to your sky high pile of washing, unwashed bottles and breakfast plates, unflushed toilet attempts by your toddler and a list of meals and chores to do around the house, but it doesn’t matter because you did something with your day, you accomplished something for you and that my friends is all you need each day to make the parent/child balance work.