My best buy during my time on maternity leave with Adrian was my shopping trolley from IKEA. I wouldn’t call it life-changing, and it doesn’t rank quite as high on the awesomeness scale as baby slings, but it made a big difference: it let me get things done with a lot more ease.

Now that I am back at work, transporting kids and things is still a major part of everyday mothering. This season the challenge has grown because they need to go to different places: Adrian is still at nursery but Ingrid goes to school. Ingrid transports herself, really, but she is not old enough to do it all on her own, so I get to do a lot of walking.

On a normal Friday afternoon I spend just about two hours walking back and forth across Spånga. Train station, school, other school, nursery, supermarket, other school, home.

Spånga is full of hills, and this has been a rainy autumn. So this season’s best buy is a rain coat. Not a waterproof jacket but a proper coat in rubberized nylon that reaches down to my knees and keeps me drier than an umbrella. Just like the trolley, it is not life-changing but it makes daily life a lot easier. No more struggling to push a stroller up a steep hill with one hand, while holding my umbrella with the other (and a bag of groceries with the third).

A lot of mothering seems to boil down to having enough hands. I’ll buy anything that frees up a hand or two.