Hi, my name is Caitlin O’Connor. I am a mom of four boys. Like most Americans, my family spends lots of time in the car. We drive to school and activities, run errands and take longer road trips on vacation. The average American spends 540 hours a year in a vehicle – that’s almost a month! I can relate – some days it feels like we live in our minivan.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I left a career in brand management at a large consumer packaged goods company to stay home with our kids. But I never lost my passion for marketing and for a product that was a perfect fit for our lifestyle: a car sun visor-attached tissue holder for mobile mishaps. And we have a lot of those. So I created Cargo® Tissues + Dispenser for on-the-go messes. Spilled coffee? Runny noses? No problem with Cargo Tissues.

In the meantime, we continue to spend plenty of time in the car, which means a lot of life is lived there. Family togetherness (for better or worse), carpools, friends, the license plate and other games, audiobooks, conversations about the quotidian and more weighty issues. We might as well anticipate, enjoy and otherwise celebrate this thing known as Life in the Car!

Let’s start our celebration by looking at some of the early stirrings of America’s car culture. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History currently has an exhibition entitled “America on the Move,” an exploration of the role of transportation in our history.

Wishing you a happy Life in the Car!