Nikki Pennington is a busy mom of three lovely boys, and with three kids comes a mess. Every parent knows it can sometimes be impossible to keep not only the kids' rooms clean but also your car.
From school to soccer practice and even beach trips, the car can sometimes feel like a second home. If you've ever felt insecure or embarrassed about the way your car looks inside, have no fear, because Nikki is here to tell you it's fine the way it is!
In an inspirational post on Facebook on August 22, 2017, Nikki "comes clean" about her messy car. She snapped a candid photo of the inside of her car and what it looked like after a full school year.
No, you won't see pristine seats and clean floors, in fact, it's the opposite, with towels and cans everywhere.
“I realized that you don’t have to be a perfect mom to be a good mom,” Nikki tells LittleThings. “Your highlight reel on social media doesn’t have to be filled with immaculately clean homes or cars all the time because the reality is motherhood gets messy sometimes.”
Keep scrolling to see her photo and read her post to all moms!
Nikki Pennington is the mom of three boys aged 7, 5, and 3, which means things can get pretty hectic. If you've ever had kids in your car then you know just how messy they can make it.
That's why on August 22, 2017, the mom took to Facebook to post a photo of the inside of her car.
"I'd like to give a shout out to all my fellow hot mess school moms," she wrote in her post. "The moms that haven't been able to find the floor board of their vehicles since August 1st of last year."
While many moms and parents like to boast about how they have their lives together and organized with kids, moms like Nikki are speaking up for the parents whose lives look more like hers.
Nikki wrote a lengthy note to moms like her, ones who "live inside their cars four times a day, five days a week and don't have time to clean up that mess."
This is the photo Nikki posted. You can see there are water bottles and other items all over the car — the result of having three children!
"There wasn't a particular moment, it was just an accumulation of lots of moments," Nikki tells LittleThings about why she wanted to post the photo.
This is Nikki's entire note to parents everywhere who have messy cars just like her.
She wrote:
I’d like to give a shout out to all my fellow hot mess school moms
The ones that let their child out at the drop off line and yesterday mornings breakfast wrapper rolls out with them
The moms that haven't been able to find the floor board of their vehicles since August 1st of last year
The moms that just found that homework assignment they were supposed to sign on August 1st as they were cleaning out their cars on the last day today
The moms that tell the teachers the endless pile of soda cans from the entire year are only there because they are teaching their kids about recycling
The moms that jump out quickly at the pickup line so get their child so they can maneuver the entire pile of the school years special projects to the side
To the moms still trying to find where that smell in the truck is coming from that started sometime after August 1st
To the moms that live inside their cars four times a day, five days a week and don't have time to clean up that mess they just move it over
To the moms that pull up the drop off line with a minute to spare and hear everything in their vehicle shift as they slam on the breaks because breakfast, snacks, school projects and emergency toys while waiting in the pickup line pile up fast y'all
To the moms that really aren't sure where some of the stuff even came from
So here's to the end of the year, my car is filled to the brim with memories of this school year, I lived in my car, I promise I'm not a hoarder or homeless, I'll clean it up on the last day of school, trash rolls out of my truck in the drop off line, my house isn't this messy, I'll try harder next year, hot mess school moms
May we know them, may we love them, may we confess we've all been one, may we promise to look the other way when we see one and not mom shame and may we all know we are doing the best we can even when our car looks a hot mess like us
Thanks to Nikki's candidness, other moms wanted to tell her that their cars look exactly the same!
One mom named Kay replied to Nikki's post with a photo of her own messy car.
Along with the photo, Kay wrote:
This is my floor board. I try and try and tomorrow I will try again. But we have been to volleyball practice, gymnastics, the grocery, school shoe shopping, and now here we sit in the car after 7pm waiting for the oldest spawn to get out of karate. We will hopefully eat dinner by 8:30 or so… But we will do it together as a family. And everyone will go to bed happy and full, well not me – mom will stay up and do laundry and chores. And tomorrow, the floor board will probably still look the same. Once school starts the schedule gets even crazier… But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I doubt when my kids look back they are gonna say “remember mom’s floor board”!!!
Like Kay, Elizabeth was so proud of Nikki's transparency about motherhood and how it's not always perfect. She even shared her own photo of the trash she'd recently cleaned out of her car.
"This is 3.5 weeks worth of junk mail, empty apple sauce pouches, water bottles, coffee cups, etc," she wrote.
Whether it was praise or agreement, one thing's for sure: Nikki's post is relatable to parents everywhere who know what it's like to have a chaotic and sometimes messy life but wouldn't trade it for the world!
Nikki will take a messy car if it means she gets 10 extra minutes with her sons that could have been spent cleaning.
That's why she closed her post with this line: "May we all know we are doing the best we can even when our car looks a hot mess like us."
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