A Mom Demonstrated What Happens When The ‘Refill Fairy’ Doesn't Come
Have you ever just stopped refilling the soap dispenser as an experiment?
One of the hottest parenting topics of the moment is invisible labor — all of the small, hidden tasks that moms take care of, from remembering everyone’s shoe size to making summer camp reservations. Of course, because it’s invisible, it’s really hard for other people to see or understand the extend of the mental load, especially partners and children.
In recent years, moms have been demonstrating invisible labor via a few fun family experiments, such as leaving a dirty plate in the middle of a floor with a $20 bill taped to the bottom of it — only for no one to pick it up for weeks. Then, there was the mom of a tween who turned her kid’s dirty sock into a slowly growing museum exhibit, with hilarious consequences.
Then there’s Kay, known as @theearlybirdhasanxiety on TikTok. She made a tiny decision to simply stop filling up the soap dispenser in the kitchen — you know, just to see what happens next. It turns out that no one knows what to do when the “refill fairy” doesn’t visit.
“People want to know why wives and mothers are so frustrated,” she begins, waving the soap bottle around while wearing an apron. “This is our soap dispenser that sits by the sink. It’s been empty for a week. I’m the only one who ever fills it.”
What happened after a week? You guessed it: not much.
“We’ve gotten to the point where they’re taking the lid off — you can see how it’s half-twisted off — so they can dump what’s left in there out rather than just fill it,” she says. “I’m going to lose my — !”
It feel like most moms can deeply relate to our spouses and kids doing anything other than fixing the problem, even if that thing takes more work and time.
“I swear they believe in the refill fairy or something,” she captions the video.
Is this worse than when family members get out a new roll of toilet paper and then just carefully balance it on the empty roll?
Down in the comments, a lot of women could relate hard.
“If I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done,” one mom commented simply.
“I left 3 Chez-Its on a couch cushion for three days,” bemoans another. “They just sat around it. Hello???”
And a few had good ideas on how to change the tides.
“My husband thought he did a certain task more than me so I started texting him every time I did it so it wouldn’t be invisible,” one woman offered.
“I make it a point to have other people (either husbands or kids) do these things while I’m standing right there. Yes, it’s annoying, but they eventually get the point. I’d rather be annoyed doing that a few times than consistently doing everything all the time.”
Finally, though, the point got through to at least one clueless person — in a touching way.
A user named Nick shared, “I wish I could go back to being younger just so that I could redo so much to take off my mother’s load. So much was simple, but I never did it because ‘mom will take care of it.’”
Kay replied, “Break the cycle and show up for your spouse when/if you have one.”
Like Nick says, it’s so simple to share the load. Let’s all do it more often.
