It’s summer, which means we spend most weekends at our lake cabin up north.

Such a strange sentence to write. I never thought I would be a cabin owner. I spent most of my childhood packing up and going to my dad’s house every other weekend and I hated it and had no intention of recreating this in my adult life. Only a child of divorce could truly know the luxury of having just one home.

But we got desperate mid-pandemic and bought a cabin and now we pack up every Friday and head up north, and it’s great and not anything like getting a divorce. I love the cabin, I love the lake. It’s nice to get a change of pace and definitely nice to get out of the city in the summer.

But the meal planning. The grocery shopping. The cleaning. It is never-ending.

“But Casey,” you protest. “Can’t you just meal plan for the whole week, grocery shop for the whole week, and bring everything up to the cabin that needs to come up?”

I could, if my refrigerator wasn’t gnome-sized. Grocery shopping for an entire week when we will just be at home is already stretching the limits of physics in my pantry. We have guests at the cabin nearly every weekend, so I’m buying even more food for summer cabin weekends. I would be stashing tortillas in the art cabinet and eggs in the basement shower if I did it that way.

And I’m cleaning all the time. Cleaning the cabin bathroom on Sunday afternoon so it’s ready for us and our guests the next weekend. Coming home and cleaning the home bathroom on Wednesday afternoon. Back to the cabin and cleaning the bathroom on Sunday afternoon again.

And don’t get me started on sheets and towels.

And all of this is happening with my kids home on summer vacation complaining that they are bored and leaving a trail of books and socks in every room.

Anyway, I actually really like hosting our friends at the cabin and this is the price that I pay. But how do people with full-time jobs handle the constant march of feeding people and cleaning things?!