Do you go through the contents of your child’s backpack every day? Twice a day, maybe, once to see what made it home and once to make sure nothing is leaving the house that shouldn’t?
Or, are you more of a flip-through-it-on-Friday mom, or even prefer to just let it ride for weeks at a time?
The videos you’re about to see may just convince you it’s time to keep a closer eye on your child’s backpack contents — especially if that kid has the tendency to be a collector and a creator.
This Mom Headed To TikTok To Share
Most of us have, at some point, let our kids’ bag go unchecked for a bit too long. Some kids will clean out their own bags, always trying to keep it light enough to carry easily, and others just keep adding more stuff, like a squirrel collecting for the winter.
This child, though, seems to have attempted to put the whole world in her little backpack. I am not exaggerating when I say that the mom’s cleaning-out process reminded me of the scene in Mary Poppins where Julia Andrews produces a full-length mirror from a small carpetbag. I wasn’t sure she was going to ever make it to the last item.
On the way, we get a peek at just how creative her kid is. This child is on her way to either an Etsy account or a design school scholarship because she is full of ideas and has no hesitation about turning them into reality.
We’re seeing dolls made from chenille stems, a ghost made of clay, Perler bead art, drawings, and salt-and-pepper shakers made from glitter and tiny pompoms.
On The Grosser Side Of This Child’s Collections
Not everything in the bag is adorable, though.
The first gross thing we see is a stick-on fingernail. That’s not so bad until the mom lets us know that the kid has never done her fingernails. Is this a small sample of sidewalk treasure? If not, where did this child find a fake fingernail?
Some of the other items are only creepy because we don’t know whose pocket they came from: a laundry token, for instance. We have to wonder whether the foil used in some of those creations had a prior life connected to food items and should have been discarded rather than reused.
The food remains are the worst, including something the mom assures us was once Takis, a partial sandwich in a Ziploc bag, carrots that appear to be transitioning to their liquid state, string cheese, and a seemingly infinite number of wrappers.
There’s so much stuff in this bag that it takes two separate videos for the mom to get through it all.
And at last, the big reveal: apparently, the school has provided the kids with a delicious snack of packaged edamame beans, and, like the carrots, they are beginning to liquidify. Worse, they’re leaking.
Backpacks Can Be Pretty Disgusting
While this particular backpack definitely sets a high bar for yuck factor, parents should know that even if you’re keeping your child’s bag emptied regularly, they are lugging home a ton of germs.
One study done by the Clorox brand in 2022 found that kids’ clothing came home “28 times germier than the average toilet seat,” and backpacks rated “31 times germier than the average cell phone.”
(That study was done by swabbing items and testing them for colony-forming units (CFUs), which is a method of counting bacteria that can be expected to multiply.)
When kids come home with food in their backpacks, this number is likely to increase, so keeping those backpacks empty and washing them regularly could go a long way toward reducing the germs we’re harboring in our homes.