The Things Parents Find In Their Car Cupholders

Whether you have a futuristic minivan or late-model sedan handed down from your own parents, nothing screams “family car” like the contents of your cupholders. Spoiler alert: They will never contain actual cups. Those are kept rolling around on the floor, of course!

The first half of the list below are items currently in the six cupholders of my own mid-sized SUV. Sure, I could have cleaned them out before sitting down to write this, but then my two kids would have simply refilled them with the other half of the list by morning.

‘Fess up: How many of those things are in your cupholders right now?

• Dehydrated dandelions from last summer

• Tweezers

• Baby fingernail clippers

• A cable you thought was to your car phone charger

• Very dirty pennies

• Crumpled-up gum wrapper

• A pretzel rod

• Part of a craft your kid colored in with markers that stain your hands each time you accidentally touch it

• Part of a scrap of paper with a shopping list on it

• A pen that works intermittently

• Used Wet Wipes

• Something with SpongeBob on it

• Amusement park token

• Soil

• Orange crumbs

• Chewed gum (not in wrapper)

• An address to some kid’s birthday party

• Crap your kid found in the playground mulch and decided was “treasure”

• A Used BandAid

• Juice box straw

• Balled up dirty tissue used to squash a bug your kid freaked out about being in the car

• Stickers

• Mini tub of bubbles from a different party than the one you have the address to

• Part of a crayon

• A Dorito

• Stickiness you have no desire to learn the source of

But, really, why fight a losing battle when I can save my energy for more important things, like dancing in my kitchen and dodging the kickball I keep telling them not to throw in the house?