You can’t add more hours to the day, but you can spend fewer of them in the car. In the Waterloo-Cedar Falls metro, the average commute to work is just 17 minutes.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average American spends about 26 minutes getting to work. That’s nine minutes longer each way. And over the course of a year, those minutes start to look a whole lot bigger.

Here’s how our commute looks across the metro.

Cedar Falls: 14 minutes
Waterloo: 16 minutes
Waverly: 17 minutes

Those are averages, which means plenty of your neighbors are parked and clocked in before the gas gauge notices they left.

Doing the math

Across the Waterloo-Cedar Falls metro, the average commuter gets back about 18 minutes every workday compared with the national average. Over the course of a year, that works out to roughly 75 hours. Put another way, that’s almost two work weeks you get to keep!

The best part is that those hours don’t arrive all at once. They show up a few minutes at a time, every morning and every evening, and that’s where a short commute starts to make a difference in everyday life.

Think about everything that gets built around the drive home. If getting home takes 45 minutes, a 5:30 PM appointment becomes a sprint, dinner gets pushed back, and stopping at home before an evening event may be off the table. Add one errand to the mix, and suddenly the whole evening feels scheduled down to the minute.

With a drive closer to 17 minutes, there’s room to stop at the grocery store before dinner, run home and change before the kid’s game, or meet a friend after work without coordinating schedules like you’re planning an international summit. And when the water bottle inevitably gets left on the kitchen counter five minutes before practice? Going back won’t derail the whole night.

Stretch those 75 hours over a few years and the number gets even bigger. That’s about 375 hours over five years and 750 hours over a decade. Suddenly, a few minutes saved on the way to and from work starts looking like a pretty significant chunk of time.

So what do you do with all that time?

We’ve got a few ideas.

Take back your mornings.
Sleep in a little, make a breakfast that doesn’t come in a wrapper, finish your coffee while it’s still hot, or fit in a workout before the workday starts.

Have lunch at home.
When home is a short drive away, lunch can happen at your own kitchen table and your dog gets to enjoy a lunch date. It’s a small thing that makes a Tuesday feel a lot less like a Tuesday.

Get on the trail.
A short commute means there’s still plenty of daylight left when the workday ends. Clock out at 5 and you could be on the trail by 5:17, with plenty of time for the long loop.

Say yes to the evening plans.
The kid’s game, the rec league, dinner with friends or the CVYP happy hour. Weeknight plans are a lot easier to keep when you’re home in 17 minutes.

Finish that book.
The one you’ve been “reading” since 2023. Your secret’s safe with us.

Seventy-five hours won’t show up on your calendar all at once. You get them back a few minutes at a time, tucked into ordinary mornings, afternoons and evenings throughout the year. And sometimes the best use of those extra minutes is doing absolutely nothing with them.

We fully support that, too.

How do you spend your extra time? Tell us on Instagram at @livethevalley. A few of our favorites might show up in a future newsletter.