Our 2022 Highlander did not survive our children.
Three years of letting them eat in their car seats with no rule about it left crushed snacks worked so far down into the seat rails that no vacuum was ever getting them out, and a full archive of Trader Joe’s stickers pressed onto the inside of the doors by two kids who understood the car to be an art project.
We are in our car constantly, between driving to our studios all over the Bay Area, the road trips up to Tahoe, the 35 minutes to my parents, the hour to Jason’s parents, the activities, the play dates and exploring the city.
We’re also the kind of family that keeps a car until it is completely, undeniably done, which is how we were still running a 2005 Highlander this year at about $2k a year in maintenance that we just kept paying because the thing still started.
That was the car our au pair drove, which made it the car my kids were in most weekday afternoons. Then this spring I drove it myself for the first time in a while, and the accelerator was jerky, the whole car creaked, and when I went to brake I genuinely questioned whether it could keep handling the hills we live on.
I got out and went to Jason immediately. I wasn’t going to wait around for it to fail with my kids inside.
So it was time for our au pair to take over the 2022 Highlander, and for us to get that all electric SUV we’d been eyeing for years. It’s by far the most we’ve ever spent on a car and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. (Keep reading past the list for the full breakdown of the car we landed on and why.)
My biggest hesitation was whether a new car was going to survive our kids. Buying nice also meant handing them something new to destroy.
We bought it anyway, with new rules, products and systems that have kept it squeaky clean so far… and with way fewer arguments between them, which was a surprising result.
The rules: The only snacks allowed are carrots, cucumbers, and apples, which is to say nothing that crumbs and nothing that gets sticky. And no stickers, or anything else that leaves proof it was ever there. Both kids understand both rules and both kids still ask me for a snack every single time we get in the car, which I have convinced myself to read as optimism rather than defiance to save myself from constant annoyance.
The thing that stopped the fighting isn’t something I bought from Amazon. The second row in our new car has tray tables, like actual airplane tray tables. The whole war these past three years was apparently about territory.
Four months in, the car is still clean. Everything below is what’s keeping a very nice car alive with a 6 and 4-year-old in it every single day.
My car must-haves
Seat Protector placed underneath the car seats
Mini Vacuum This is weirdly satisfying to use
Car trashcan instead of “throw it on the ground” they now have a spot for trash
Caddy to put in between the kids to store their toys
Magnetic Tracing Pad and Magnetic Alphabet and Counting Pad no-mess kid entertainment
Magnetic Tiles we have a pack of these in the car
Clixo Itsy Magnetic Building Toys magnetic toys >> anything else for car toys
Mini Magnetic Cars a twist on magnetic building blocks
Stainless Steel Baking Tray I know, this seems so completely random… and it is. But it’s the perfect surface for all of the above magnetic toys and regardless if you have tray tables or not, trust me your kids need these in the car!
Chicco GoFit Booster Seat after extensive research, this is the one I landed on because of the latch
Slim Convertible Car Seat I actually sold my Nuna for this one, way slimmer and less bulky
💬 What's your one car rule? Give me the crazy ones.
The Podcast is BACK 🎧
The podcast is back, and I started the season with Jess Jacobs, CEO of Coterie. We chat about what actually keeps her household running, why "divide and conquer" may be making things harder for both parents, and the very good opportunities she's saying no to right now.
So which car did we get?
I’ll tell you, but the car itself is just the first useful part I’m sharing.
What I also want to hand you is the thing I couldn’t find anywhere while I was researching this: the six criteria we shopped against, a side-by-side of our two finalists from someone who test drove both with a 6 and 4-year-old in the back, what it actually costs us to charge (about $15 at home!!), what the self-driving genuinely does and doesn’t do, and the one decision we made that contradicts everything I just told you about how our family buys cars.
I hit the Substack bestsellers list last month. And I credit it to sharing the months of research on European summer camps, along with my deeper thoughts on tools, systems & mindset for working moms. Curious what’s on that side of the paid subscriber archive? Only one way to find out.