The Mental Load of Back-to-School: 9 Emails, 1 Missed Appointment, and a Full-On Panic

My Back-to-School Overwhelm Cost Me $600

A triple-charged PTA fee, an unread dentist appointment reminder, and 9 unopened school emails on Labor Day morning—my mental load hit a breaking point before fall even really started. This episode is about why that "admin crap" always seems to land on one parent, and why missing something doesn't mean you're failing.

Who Should Listen

• Moms carrying the bulk of household and school administrative tasks, even if you’re in a relationship with a genuinely helpful partner

• Anyone who's missed a form, a fee, or a deadline and spiraled into shame about it

• Parents feeling the fall administrative overwhelm hit before the season's even really underway

• Listeners who assume they're just "bad at tracking things" when the real issue is structural

Chapters / Timestamps

• 00:00 – All the Fall Admin Labor

• 01:03 – Welcome and Why I Panicked

• 03:11 – The Deeper Issue

• 05:06 – Why It's Not Your Fault that Things Slip Through the Cracks

• 07:13 – Closing

• 08:44 – Programming Note

What You Get In This Episode

• Why the mental load of school admin defaults to one parent—even in households with genuinely equal partners

• A reframe: missing something isn't a personal failing, it's evidence of a workload that was never built for one person to carry

• Why "8 productivity hacks to stop missing things" isn't the answer, and what to focus on instead

• Real, small ways Caitlin's distributing the load: writing things down immediately, handing off specific tasks to her husband, scheduling reminders instead of relying on memory

• An invitation to share your own "unset dentist appointment" story for solidarity

Saaaaaaaame.

Host Bio

Caitlin Kindred is the host of Not Quite Grownup, a podcast for moms navigating the gap between who they're "supposed" to be and the messy, real version of adulthood.

Sources & Mentions

• Ali Wong's comedy special Don Wong—referenced for her line about how much more successful she'd be with a wife

• The Help—referenced briefly regarding the historical unpaid labor of Black women managing households for white women

• Smash Mouth's "All Star"—referenced/paraphrased ("the tasks keep coming and they don't stop coming")

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Read this Episode's Full Transcript

The Mental Load: 9 Emails, 1 Missed Appointment, and a Full-On Panic

Caitlin K.: [00:00:00] Y'all, I just spent my Labor Day morning reading through nine unread school emails, including one from the PTA treasurer about how I was charged for our donation three times, and no, that's not in our budget. And then I realized that I still hadn't set up my son's dentist appointment that I was emailed about two months ago.

I'm not gonna lie, you guys, I panicked, uh, for a couple reasons. One, how is my bandwidth stretched so thin that I missed being charged that fee three times, and the eight other emails this weekend, one from two months ago? And two, WTF, like what else have I missed? So I started searching my inbox, filtering, combing through things, just trying to ease my panic.

I got the treasurer started on our refund, and no, I still haven't set up the dentist appointment.

[00:01:03] Welcome and Why I Panicked

[00:01:00]

Caitlin K.: Welcome to Not Quite Grown Up. This is the show for moms just trying to keep themselves together. If you're new here, please subscribe to get notified of new episodes, or if you're a listener and you know a mom who gets it, please just share this with them.

Anyway, I don't think my panic is just about the triple charge and the unset dentist appointment.

It's that I'm already here and it's Labor Day. It's only Labor Day. So I know it's just gonna keep coming. It's like that line from All Star by Smash Mouth, except instead of the years keep coming and they don't stop coming, it's the tasks. Just replace the word years with tasks. And that really overwhelms the hell out of me, which then scares me because my response to overwhelm is a paralysis Sunday with a shame spiral topper.

So that's fun. And there's a real cost to all of this, you know? It's not just [00:02:00] my sanity or yours. This time it cost me an extra $600. That's fun. But what about missing picture day or the field trip permission slip or the sack lunch day because I was too exhausted to read my damn emails?

There's something super unfair about all of this too, right? It's... I'm incredibly fortunate to have a partner who believes in shared family labor. He does the things that I ask, and he does things without me having to ask, which is a privilege I know many moms don't have. But the unfairness is that most of this administrative labor defaults to one parent, usually moms, even with great partners, and no one decided that on purpose.

It just kind of happened. And then when we miss something, no matter how small it might be, [00:03:00] we feel like we've failed at a job that we didn't sign up for, weren't trained for, and is actually the job of two or more people. And that's just it.

[00:03:11] The Deeper Issue

Caitlin K.: That's the issue. All of this crap, the administrativia. Guys, I said that in one take. Go me. Big word. Whoop. All of that, the household labor, the mental load of taking care of a family, it was never, ever, ever built to be manageable by one person. And I could get into this whole historical aside here about the unpaid labor of Black women who managed households on behalf of white women.

Um, if you haven't read The Help or are in, into history at all, like, now's the time. Like, go. But this isn't the time for that discussion, although there are roots in that, so something to think about. But anyway, all that admin work, you're gonna miss something [00:04:00] because of that. It was never, ever, ever built to be manageable by one person.

You might actually be bad at tracking things, sure, but even if you aren't, all of that stuff is distributed across a dozen disconnected apps, emails, flyers buried in the bottom of your child's backpack, and no one can keep track of all that alone, not when there are other things to do As a former teacher, I know that the folks in schools understand that the majority of parents work.

Most of those teachers are working parents themselves, so I promise you they get it. But it still kind of feels like there's this built-in assumption that someone is always home, always checking email, always available during school hours, and that's an assumption that doesn't match how most households actually run.

And, and maybe they did at one [00:05:00] point, but that's just not reality anymore.

[00:05:06] Why It's Not Your Fault that Things Slip Through the Cracks

Caitlin K.: You know that line from Ali Wong's comedy special, I think it's called Don Wong, pretty sure, where she says, "Do you know how much more successful I would be if I had a wife?" And she's dead serious. But that's because it's true.

There's a reason it resonated with so many of us. It's fricking true. L- let's just take the wife s- out of there, and let's replace it with personal assistant, someone whose entire job is to make sure that I manage deadlines and made decisions. They get bonus points if they do my laundry. Then, then I probably wouldn't miss stuff, because I'd be sharing all that work with someone who wasn't also doing other work.

As it is, I'm sharing that work with my husband, who is also doing other work. Things are gonna get missed [00:06:00] So I'm not gonna do the toxic thing here and create some listicle that says, "Here are eight ways to fix your productivity so that you don't miss any more of this..." shirt. Shit. Stuff. My notes has a swear word there, so I g- I'm skipping over that. You're welcome.

Because the shift here is not a productivity fix. You are plenty productive. There is nothing wrong with you The shift here is realizing that the volume of stuff that you're managing was never a personal failing to begin with. It's a structural failure. It's a mismatch. You can blame the patriarchy because all of this is rooted in that, and again, there's, you know, a lot of historical [00:07:00] racism somewhere in this mix.

But don't blame yourself for missing things because there's literally no way on this earth that this is all your fault.

[00:07:13] Closing

Caitlin K.: I'm probably not gonna stop missing things, and I can guarantee that the consequences of the things I miss will cost my family or me something. Hopefully not another $600. But I can distribute the things that are in my head. I can write them down when they come to me. I can say to my husband, "When you're at the orthodontist with our son while I'm at the vet this week, please walk across the hall and make that damn dentist appointment."

I can schedule emails and texts to go out when I think of them, and I can move on from my guilt when something slips through the cracks because I simply just can't do it all.

For now, that dentist appointment, still not made. And that's, that's okay. [00:08:00] But at least now I'm thinking to myself, like, "Okay, it's not because I'm failing, it's because I'm one person doing a two or more person job."

So if you have your own unset dentist appointment buried somewhere in your inbox or whatever your own version of a triple charged fee you didn't catch for a couple of months is, tell me what it is. Not so that you can beat yourself up about it or have me beat you up about it, but just because I want you to know how many of us are carrying that same thing.

So send it to me. There's a text message link at the top of the notes. I'd love to hear what it is.

[00:08:44] Programming Note

Caitlin K.: Thanks for listening to this episode. I know that, uh, in the past I've released new episodes weekly. That said, um, in an effort to practice what I preach and give myself space to do this show well, [00:09:00] I've decided to stick with these bi-weekly releases, so I'll be back with a new episode in two weeks.

See you then. Love you, mean it. Bye.