KonMari and Decluttering. Ep 30

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing position and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode thirty. We'll be talking about decluttering, the whole life changing magic of tidying up or not tidying up, and the case maybe. But speaking of books and impactful books, Sarah is thinking of writing one. Tell us about that. Yeah, I am, and I actually have no idea what kind of form this is going to take, so it may be a self published ebook or I may actually delve into trying to get it published, though that is quite the ladder. I'm not sure I'm ready to climb right now. But anyway, I do want to write it one way or the other, and I would like to write a book on planning because I am very passionate about this subject, as you guys have figured out, and I got quite the response on my blog when I put out a request for a service. Well basically, I offered to do a planning makeover for three guinea pigs, and I thought maybe i'd get like ten responses, and I'm now up to eighty and that was even just with the one link. I mean, people just poured it on in there, like how they planned, what wasn't working for them, how they felt like things could be better. And so I just kind of want to get not that my system is the only system, but it is a system, and I think I have a lot of ideas and I've done a lot of thinking there. So so yeah, so right now my step is I'm going to do my three planning makeovers kind of see where that takes me. I have an outline, but I kind of want to do the makeovers first because I think that will help me with my overall direction. It is fascinating because I look at the stats for the podcast, and the planner Palooza episode I think is currently among our highest. Yeah, it's number one or number two, and it had a long tail to it like people kept coming back to finding it in the in the list and going to it. I think you're really onto something. I think that you can own this topic, Sarah. Awesome, Yes it would. If there was a topic I was going to own, that would probably be it. So but you have something going on writing wise as well. Well, yeah, but this is more of just a sticking with my goals that aren't then being externally monitored like like yours, you know, trying to do stuff that we set as our own goals and stick with them. I've been writing five hundred words of fiction a day, so every weekday, so five days a week I write five hundred words at least. And the idea is to write my way through novella see how it goes. But I find that once you have something, it's easier to make it better then if you don't have anything at all, because it better to take a bad first draft and make it better. So I just want to get it out there, and I think it's a good discipline to keep writing, and I do the blog. So that's the discipline of nonfiction writing and just sort of writing in general. But fiction is a slightly different piece. So I've been working on that. So I've stuck with it for a couple of weeks, now over a month. Can we have a teaser on what it's about? Well, who knows that? Whose one will ever see the light of day. It goes back and forth between Norway and Indiana and with little vignettes at different points in time, with the main character as a young man named Charlie who's you know, figuring out his way in life. And he works, he runs this museum that is devoted to his grandfather, was a famous novelist, like wrote one of these sort of lines of American literature kind of series of books. And so he runs the museum that's devoted to his grandfather's legacy and he so it's basically had his whole life defined by that to sort of struggle of like how he feels about that and whether he kind of sees himself as doing anything different or sticking with that. But you know, there's there's action too, There's there's other things going on. There's a disappeared bust of senior citizens on the way to the museum, because you got to have some action going on in addition to the but the mental struggles, so you know, we'll see what made you choose a male protagonist to try, because I never and I've read a couple books recently, you know, I think male writers doing female main character as well and female main characters badly, and it's interesting to see the split between them. I've also seen a couple you know, female writers do some men writers, I mean, do male narratives, you know, better or worse than others. And so I'm very curious. I just, you know, honesty, if I can get myself inside the head, or if not inside the head because it's not in first person, but at least focused on a young man, and see if I can do that, I think that sounds awesome or at least very interesting. Well, you know, and we were talking about the options you have these days, Like I who knows if any publisher would ever be interested in this whatsoever. But I can publish it myself and you know, tell my own email newsletter list about it, and my blog readers, and that's your guest listeners, and that's you know, especially when we're talking about experimental fiction, that's kind of as many readers as would be interested in it anyway. So maybe I can just you know, people would be like, oh, it's a Laura thing. Maybe I'll check it out. So, yeah, we're working on that. You know, I'm I'm organized about the writing. I'm maybe a slightly less organized about my physical space, which is my horrible segue into our No, No, that wasn't horrible. I actually I think you're I wish we had pictures because I think your physical space is probably less chaotic than you give it credit for it. Maybe it depends. I mean often when I take pictures of it, it's not you know, it's on its better days. I probably cleaned the office once a week. Once every other week, I clean it up, but I always still have piles like there's it's just that I know what's in the pile, and that's a difference. And the question is, as we get into our topic, is to those piles far as well? I mean, the problem is, like, you know, there are things in life that don't spark joy, like my you know, speaking contracts do not spark joy. Like my paper clips do not spark joy. I think Marie Condo would argue that maybe the we I mean, I like to get paid, that's sure, but I you know, I have a stapler. I'm not really sure that it needs to spark joy, but I do still need a stapler. So I mean, maybe you have reached the beautiful state, or even your stapler sparks joy. I think it does. I mean, I think I guess. Okay, so we'll have to give a little bit of background in case there is one listener out there who has not read Marie Condo's life changing Magic of Tidying Up, which came out a few years ago and has now been parodied about nine thousand times. It was also a subject of one of my favorite podcasts lately is By the Book, And they take a self help book and they follow it by the Book for two weeks and then they record a hilarious account of how that went. So, once I know a book has hit that, like, you know, it's sort of like become its own joke. Those podcasts are very sort of different temperaments, right, like one what really doesn't like to do anything that is in these books, and so it's sort of funny like how she rebels against them. But yeah, oh but they have such great chemistry. But anyways, so so yeah, so once you a book has gotten to that place, you know, probably everyone's seen it, and it's sort of overplayed. But in my life, I am completely serious about this book. Do I follow all of the recommendations to the letter, Absolutely not, But do I feel like it has had like a lasting impact on how I manage my things in my space? And then even beyond that, She pishly, I guess I'd have to send that and Laura would have to say no. So that's kind of what we're going to Delman Decluttering Debate of twenty eighteen. Yes, now, I actually reread The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up in advance of recording this episode, and I think Murray Condo or I'm not sure if I'm saying that exactly right, but she she makes a couple of good points, and I think partly it's, you know, the idea of economics applied to life, which I always like in general, and so I think she's got a couple of good advances on there. One is the idea of sunk costs, which are people are horrible about sunk costs. So this is when you've already put money into something and you can't get it back, and yet people feel like they need to keep chasing that money and stick with something even though you can't get that money back, Like if you need to kill something, do it now, as opposed to keep going after that sunk cost. So she has a great way of thinking about this in the sense that even if an object was expensive, if you need to let go of it, thank it for its service to you, right and she I mean she has spent years tending this Shinto shrine, which there's an element of Shintoism of like objects having spirits, and so this is very much reflected in this book of you know, these objects have spirits. We could thank the spirit for its work or maybe that we see its purpose was to have given us this joy in the store when we got it, and its purpose is not to stick with us for the rest of our lives. So sunk costs can be let go of when you thank something for its service and move on. So I love that idea for schedules, Like, you know, just because you've been working on a project for three weeks at work doesn't mean you can't kill it. Like you could totally kill that project, and maybe it would be good for everyone to say, all right, well, we will thank that project what it has taught us, and now we can move on right instead of putting three more weeks into it to see if you can change things. Absolutely, and along those lines, I know I've heard somewhere read somewhere that you know, people assign more value to something if they already have it, and I think that applies to both time and objects and also fits along the lines of sunk costs and Marie Kondo, would I think beg to differ. Yeah, you know, just you have it and people are stuck in the innert ship. Well, I have it, so why would I get rid of it? It's like, no, you have it, but does it deserve to be kept well? And that's the zero based accounting principle which is also here in her books, which is that you know a lot of companies. For instance, it's like, well, we had X devoted to this department, and why devoted to this department and Z devoted to this department last year, and so we're going to do something that's related to X, Y and Z for the next year. And because these were in the budget, they'll definitely be in the budget next year as well. But you don't have to think that way. You could say, well, we start from zero, like everything has to earn its place in our budget every year, and that kind of keeps people more on their tiths. And I think that's the same thing with her spark Joy I did just that you know, it's just because somebody is in your house doesn't mean it deserves to stay there. And so rather than thinking about, well what am I going to chuck and one of my objects am I going to get rid of? Think instead of I'm only going to keep that, which sparks Joy. So it's just you knows, this zero based acounty is also a good way to you know, keep things from being in your schedule just because they're in your schedule just because it's Tuesday. You don't have to have that staff meeting just because you've always had the staff meeting on Tuesday, right, So you know, that's another useful thing. And to use an overplayed very it's getting very overplayed, but the intentionality term, it's like, you know, you have this in your home or you have this in your in your life because at one point, but use that fancy word that everyone uses, do you intentionally still want it to be there? If you can't say yes, then get rid of get rid of it. So yeah, I mean On the other hand, of course, it's not possible to have a schedule or a house where everything sparks joy. I mean it's like, you know, I don't like going to the dentist, but as long as my teeth are in my mouth, like, I can't have somebody else do it. So you know, we all have the equivalent of paper towels and such in our lives. See, that's a funny thing. And that's where I guess I'd beg to differ because my definition of sparking joy is different than yours. Like if I looked at my planner and I saw dentists, I mean, yeah, you're right, that's not like super fun. But somehow I could be like, yeah, that does spark joy because that's an important part of caring for myself. Or the stabler sparks joy because I only have one stabler. I know where it is, and I need to use it, and I'm going to use it when I use it. And the idea of having like one specific object in its place that's serving a specific purpose that alone sparks joy to me. So those contracts that you have or my tax forms, if I know where they are and I don't have redundancy and you know, they're not causing a hideous amount of visual clutter. Like to me that that does spark joy of joyce practice me. I definitely agree about having a home for things, and I think that, you know, one of the things that has made our life functional is like the kid's shoes and backpacks have to be in a certain place and if they are found anywhere else in the house, the child is warned and it has to go back to where it's supposed to be, because if there's shoes all over the house, like we're never getting out of the door. I mean, that's just they have to you know, there's a certain amount of time it takes to get on the bus, and if the stuff isn't there, you're hunting for it. And it probably helps not having a lot of redundancy there, which would be kind of con mari Like do you want to have like twelve pairs of shoes and eight of them are like half beat up, but you kept them because they're like okay? Or do you want like your kids to each have like there are two pairs of shoes that they actually wear and therefore, of course, I mean, they grow out of stuff and then we have to keep it for the next kid. So there's yeah, I mean there's a lot of stuff. I mean, that's I guess that's the thing. There's I think visual cleanliness sort of you know, whether things are all put away or whether there are piles or that. I mean, some of that is more of an aesthetic preference, that is true. And I would say you are probably more into the clean surface. Not I am, but I'm looking at my desk. It's it's pretty clean. I mean there's like right now, I just have my microphone and the papers we have for doing it. But I do have like one pile and then I have like a physical inbox because I've looked, I've carefully edited those piles, and I want everything in those piles there, like I've thought about it. That's true. I don't have excess stuff on this desk that like I that are just there because I put them there and I feel for me and I know this isn't true for everyone. That helps me to focus better, just like with my email I and we can get into that too, because I think that's like like a side of it for me, Like I like to have it completely empty because I just do for me. There's a certain freedom in that, in that sort of clean slate, because when you feel that there's a clean slit, you feel that there's nothing you need to do then or what is the appeal email wise? Yes, yes, exactly, Like I know I've gotten down and I only clean it weekly, And I would say I do the same thing, like I don't. I don't obsessively clean off shelves every single day, although I try to get rid of excess stuff to keep the bar low of cleaning fairly low. But if I yeah, it's the same thing. Like it's like I know, there are not loose ends dangling out there in the wind. And this is especially true for email because if I did, then I'd always have them popping into my head at various It would be very distracting to me. Yeah, so yeah, see, I mean I kind of try to reach a point where I've dealt with everything that I've decided I'm going to deal with on the email front. But then I don't care if it's archived or I'll just leave it sitting in the inbox because I guess I just don't. It doesn't bother me if there's like a pile of stuff in the inbox. Yeah, that there says there's like six hundred unread messages. But I think I've decided I'm not doing anything about the six hundred unread messages. Like I know, I've gone back at least a week or two and there's nothing there that I'm gonna deal with. And at that point, it's like you're not dealing with it anyway. So I think that what would happen if you just hit Mark Allah's red and then hit archive everything. I don't know, Maybe I it's funny because it's like stuff like that just doesn't it doesn't cross your rate. It doesn't kind of like stuff on a stuff on a counter. You're like, I'll get done there because I remember you told a story once about stuff in your bathroom that like you left there for a really long time. It was it was on the podcast. Yeah, I'm sure I have there for a really long time, and I was like, Wow, it didn't bother her. It really didn't bother you. Yeah, And that's where I think there's maybe a little fundamental personality and I think, you know, I really want again, like we need grudge and rubin to make a dicot. I mean, like there's like people who care about stuff lying around and there's people who don't. And I think, like that's that's another tendency. Yeah, there must be another tendency or or just that are bothered by things that are slightly off in their physical environment. Because I maybe it's that with my car, Like I got my car back from the shop and whatever is somebody had fiddled around with the time and date on it, and so the time and date in my car is wrong, and as I'm thinking about it now, it's been wrong for two months. And yeah, I would never I haven't and I need sometime. I need to know what time it is, Like, am I running late? Like you know that's the clock you look at when you're driving somewhere, right, But yeah, I just know it's an hour and forty six minutes ahead, and so I know roughly if I'm so. For whatever reason, it's like my mind is like easier to just subtract an hour and forty six minutes than to bothering to reset the clock. I don't know, it's I guess there's a that does sound rather weird now that I think about it, I should probably go refix my clock that's so interesting. Oh my gosh. Well, I want to talk more about kN Marien, but I also want to hear you had some interesting negative feelings about the overall philosophy and the book itself. Well, I did because I felt it was mostly aimed at women. And you know that there's all this stuff life begins when you put your house in order. And I really so that put your house in order is, of course understood metaphorically, I guess, but I think that a lot of women read this is like literal, like I can get my house in order, and then I can go do great stuff in the world. Now, I would agree that if you can't find your shoes, it's going to be hard to get out and do great stuff in the world. But on some level, you know, women already spend a lot more time on housework than men do. And one way to create more open space for other things in life, such as spending more time relaxing or you know, maybe working a few more hours, or spending more time on hobbies or spending more time with family and friends is to spend less time on housework. And you know, so I often tell women who are concerned that they're spending more time on these things in their husband. It's like, well, there's not necessarily a set amount that absolutely has to be done, So one way to make it even is for you to do less, which is probably easier than asking him to do more in many cases. So I think that for many women there's this life changing magic in not tidying up, saying that, yes, even though there are toys on the floor, you can relax, you can go to bed if you want to watch that TV show. It's okay, Like you don't have to pick up the toys first and then watch the TV show. If you're tired and you'd like to relax, go ahead and have that leisure time. Because women often talk themselves out of leisure time because they feel like the house needs to be tidy. And it's true, that's a stereotypical like female complaint about you know, they don't feel like they can, yeah, stop until the work is done, and yet their husband's on the couch with a or what's up with that. It's like, no, you can actually be on the couch with a beer too, And that's a point. Bridget Shulty that book overwhelmed, I mean, because she starts it off in the beginning, it's all about you know, my husband was like sitting on the couch of the beer while I'm cleaning the oven, and it's like, well, okay, did the oven? Was it catching fire? Like? Is that why you hat to clean it then? Or is it because you know, we have this story in our heads that we can't relax until all the housework is done. And men don't walk around with that story, and so we can either try to get them to have our story or we can adopt their story. And so I think one, you know, opens up a lot more space than the other. I will say in the defense in this book, well it maybe Japanese culture. I don't know. No, I was going to say that, well, this book is very Japanese. So I think a lot of things about it. You know, when you apply to a US context, it's it's hard. And I think that includes their concepts of gender roles. And also, of course, like she's talking about tidying up a tiny little Tokyo apartment, like she says to put everything in one category in the middle of the floor. It's like, well, if you have multiple floors in multiple rooms, that is not so straightforward. But so it's Japanese, So I think that makes some of the gender stuff a little, you know, more complicated. The other thing I will say is just for my anecdotal My husband was just as into this book. Maybe not quite as into it, but he was definitely into it, like he wants to condo his stuff too. Yes, we use it as a verb and has participated, and both of us I've taught both of our gendered children's the phrase, oh are we going to give it away? Or keep this spark choric? So I think you don't have to have it be an entirely female book. And actually, if there are listeners or if there are people out there, I'd love to hear a male take on this book that doesn't make fun of it a street faced sincere male tape. Yeah, I mean there's some of it. The tiny Tokyo apartment. It must be like she's like, store everything in one storage place, because when you're getting stuff out, you have a purpose that you want to make it as easy as possible. The way I'm like, I cannot imagine the thought of like putting diapers and wipes somewhere central every time to then go to the chain your basement and there exactly, just not or you know, even stuff like taking your bus pass out of your bag every night and putting it somewhere like okay, I mean again, I will objects I'm giving my bag time to rest. I know I would walk out the door without my bus pass every single morning if it wasn't like in a bag, if I was trying to commute that way, So I would, I would. You know, you have to figure out stuff that works for you. She also says you'll never need to do it again, You'll never need to tidy again. And I think you again I called her out on that one. I did that that to me is a negative. I actually think it would be a great yearly exercise for some people, because again I do like it, but I don't think it's a one and done thing, and things like her recommendation on the bags is to literally empty your bag out every single day. I do not do this, but I will say her discussion about this has made me more aware of auditing the contents of my bags every so often, so like I do tend to look at the contents of our now I have a diaper bag again, our diaper bag each weekend, and make sure do I have You know, do I have last week's wipes all wadded up in a bag? And you know, do I have enough diapers in here they have the right size, because that seems to be changing like every week. So yeah, there are grains of salt I have used, even with my love of the book. Yeah, I think that would be the frustrating. And she's promising that it'll be done forever, like you'll never have to tidy again, and then it winds up being an annual thing because then it's just more time devoted to tidying, and that is true. And I will say on your vein, like I think I would get the impulse to tidy constantly, and I think a lot of women struggle with this, especially if you have young kids that are sort of like dumping something on the floor moving on to something else, and oh I can't relax because I have actually fought that very consciously, to the point where I try not to tidy as they're playing. But I guess unlike you, I still I don't feel great going to bed if it's all out there. And that may also have to do with our house, like we don't have a basement, so if I don't tidy like I'm going to trip and fall on something. There is a practical component to this, so it's like I purposely don't put everything away all day. I just put my feet up and do whatever I'm going to do, or hang out with the kids or do my own thing, but then do a one time thing at night, and for me at least, I don't find that time as wasted as like, I know, the life changing magic of not tiding would be like, oh, I could be working doing work, but no tidying to me is like a mindless pleasure because I can put on a podcast and just put things away. So to me, it's like it's not an ore thing, it's an ant thing. Yeah, what if you like it? I mean that's certainly some people get really into it. I mean we've sort of made fun of Real Simple magazine in the past, and I was reading it. I think every issue there's something that makes me go, oh, my goodness. And this past issue they were doing a kitchen organization slash makeover of somebody who's getting her kitchen remodeled, which of course is you know, something I'm also dealing with at the moment, so I'm sure I was drawn to this, and the organizer actually took all these women's spices and decanted them into matching spice jars, which, you know, because she's like, well, now they all have the same kind of lid and they're the same size, and isn't that great? And I'm like, but why, like so we just wasted all these other spice jars that they came in just to have them all look uniform. You know, it just seems like we spend a lot of time on it. We spent a lot of extra packaging on it for reasons that don't seem entirely clear, other than maybe somebody's aesthetic preference that like, this is the way a spice jar drawer should look. But I mean a spice drawer doesn't have to look like that. And I say you, probably I'm not spending that much time looking at my spice draws or either, so oh, definitely not, you know. And maybe people are in life looking a lot at the spice drawer. But if you're not, and there might be other things you might want to spend your time on, I would say that decanting all your spices into identical jars is probably not a great I think this book may be better for well, and you are too like people who can deal with like doing things pretty well and not being obsessed with perfection. Because to me, like the spice drawer would be like make sure there aren't duplicate and expired spices so that you can see the spices. But I agree that's taking it like a whole other level that should probably just waste time. I do, however, want to put in a plug for Marie Condo's folding method. It's everywhere if you haven't seen it. It's putting things so that they stack on edge so you can actually see everything in a drawer. This is not just aesthetics, folks. This is so functional, Like you can actually see everything in a drawer. It is revolutionary. I stand behind it all the way. You're not doing it, you should try it and then let me know what you think. So how you have to like roll your stuff and then stack it. It doesn't take any longer that it doesn't take any longer than normal folding, but you kind of make it into like a rectangle and then you stack it on its edge so like a row of T shirts, you can see like the top edge of everything. I really don't find it take. I mean, if you're normally stuffing your stuff in the door without folding it at all, then yes, I guess this would take longer. But if you're folding it in any way, shape or form, then this takes the same amount of time. And yet because they're lying on their edge, when you open the door, you can see every shirt. Now do I do the things she suggests, like put them in color order and hang from like small to large. No, I do not, because again I'm not about perfection with this, but the actual being able to see everything and the folding method, I think is it's actually really helpful, and it may lead to you throwing things out because if you can see everything and you realize, oh, I've got seven redundant shirts and five of them are faded, you might kind of question whether you actually need that many. Yeah, she's particularly militant about socks, eh, Marie Condo. I was like last I think one of the funniest parts to me is she said when she watches the schoolgirls walk by, and she sees that the elastic on their knee socks as well, and she's like, I know you're not folding your socks, right, So take with that what you will. There are a lot of Japanese schoolgirls whose knee socks apparently are not being folded correctly, so driving Marie kinda crazy. I don't know. Yeah, well I would sorry, I want her to write a book she's now since since writing that book, she has had two children, and very close together. I'm at ed. I think it's two little girls and maybe they're like fifteen months apart at the most. So I'd really like her to write another book now and see if there's anything she would change an how she does anything. I know, I mean it would be interesting to see how their house is organized now with the little kids stuff, which does, as we have both seen, come in sort of regardless of what you do. And we're we are looking at doing a whole episode on birthday parties, so uh, you know, prepare ourselves for that. Best of both world listeners. Do we have anything else to say about? You know? I think that was I think that was pretty comprehensive. But we as usual, you know, I'll be instagramming as this week comes out and Laura will write a post, so this will be a fun one if anybody wants to weigh in, And again, yes, I would welcome the mail perspective, but not if they're just going to make fun of it. Yeah, exactly, exactly. All right, Well, let's go to Love of the week sort of on the storage or decluttering idea. I guess in the sense that commercials are clutter and I have been loving this week. We're taking this during the Olympics, which are on, and I love that I can DVR things and then forward through the commercials. Oh my goodness, the Olympics would be completely unwatchable without that ability. There are so many breaks. There's so many of these little like set pieces on some athlete who I'm sure is fascinating, but it's like, I'd rather watch the athlete do what here she does best, And like, why do we demand that these people also sound profound in media interviews? I mean they're not like, like, isn't it enough that they can, you know, lose that incredible speak or do the snowboarding things or ski you know whatever. They don't need to also have this like heartfelt talk with Katie correct, Like I don't want to watch that, so I'm forwarding through all this. I was like, wow, you know, we didn't used to have that ability, and so it's it's much much better, much better. That is awesome. My love of the week, to go with yours, is that you know, back in the day, when you watch the TV show you like, watch it, then you have to wait a week for it to come out. But I think we should just take a moment and appreciate the ability to binge watch in today's world. So my love of the week is being able to watch, you know, an episode a day, or three episodes in a row, because really, that is well in a row. Isn't something that was available to us just several years ago, and you don't really think about that, And I will throw out that currently Josh and I basically if we're both home watching an episode of This Is Us every night, and if it's just me, I'm watching an episode of Crazy as Girlfriend, which has taken a really sinister, crazy, crazy turn in season three if you watch that show. But yeah, they're both so much more fun when when you're sort of with those characters every night over a period of time. So binge watching, yeah, I mean, my kids cannot even comprehend the idea that we used to be able to watch Wizard of Oz like once a year. You know, and only in a certain day when it was aired, and that if you had to go to the bathroom, you timed it during the commercials. This is tied down to what was on what was then, you know. And sometimes when we go to a hotel room or something, they're like, well, I want to watch doc NX stuffans now, Like you don't get to just watch doctor stuffans on this TV. Like maybe if I've got my computer, I can find you know, on the internet somewhere, but like the TV doesn't work like that. And this just blows their little minds. All right, So, speaking of changes, we'll go to the Q. Yeah. Here, I'll go ahead and read it. Ok that sounds great. This is an interesting one. Okay. So this is from a woman who is expecting her first baby who is a frequent traveler. She says, my husband and I are expecting our first is to lie and I was just promoted. Yay. My new role requires travel across the country once every eight weeks or so. Right now, that is no problem because it's just us. But we are both nervous about how we will look, how that will look once we have a baby. Do you have any tips about making this work? For us without causing any resentment in our marriage or guilt on my part. Before Laura answers it, I just want to say, awesome thinking about these things before the baby's even born, because a lot of people don't. Okay, go ahead, yes, no, well that's I mean. I always love getting questions from our podcast listeners. We're just so people who are just so profoundly thoughtful about their lives and intentional and it's amazing. But sometimes we can overthink issues. And I would definitely put this one in the category of not a problem, right, Like, one week out of every eight weeks is just not that much. I would not freak herself out over it. I would definitely not put her, you know, be in the mindset of, like I need to freeze enough meals for the week for my husband ahead of time, as if he was incapable of feeding himself and a child, which is what some people do with their their business travel. I mean, you know, he's a parent, going to be a parent too, and he will be able to deal with the kid while you are traveling, just as you would deal with the kid while he was traveling. The only practical aspect of this is if her husband also travels in ways that he can't always predict or if he has unpredictable hours, then they will need some additional childcare for the times when she is traveling, either a sitter who can cover kind of those post daycare hours or someone who can stay overnight if that's necessary. But if he does have some control over his schedule, then maybe he can try to avoid traveling on those weeks, so they could trade off or you know, and she can also if she's worried about resentment, which again I think once every eight weeks, if that causes resentment, that's probably a deeper Yeah, I mean that's six times a year. It's not that much. It's not that much at all. And you know, she could consciously give him a little bit more me time on the weekend before and the weekend after that she's going to be gone, Like she'll say, Okay, I'll take the baby for a while so you can go to the gym, or if you want to go out with your buddies, why don't I just hang out with a kid tonight so you can go do that. Like that would be a wonderful thing, a wonderful gesture. If she would like to do it, but I also just don't. It's only if we couldn't think that like mothers should never travel, that this would be in any way an issue. Yeah, I was. I was just out with a friend actually, who goes internationally now every few weeks. She's had a lot of career changes and this is so done a lot of travel, but I think this is the most travel intense her job has gotten. And she actually feels like it's harder now compared to when they are babies, because they like they need her emotionally more and they kind of focus on her leaving and act out, you know, So for her it's actually been harder with school age kids compared to toddlers. The one thing, since I am currently in that phase and thinking about it, is the only to me rough patch with a baby. Really, The only would be the breastfeeding aspect, because you will have to if you choose to breastfeed, and maybe you know this will be one where you can defer travel until you're maybe nine months postpartum or something like that, so that it's not that much of an issue and you pump a few times and you're good to go, or maybe you're done breastfeeding by then, or maybe you choose not to. But to me that that would be the only stressful part. But keep in mind that it's such a short period of time. So if you have to travel six times a year or every eight weeks, maybe you just again, maybe you kind of push that out as long as possible to make it less of an issue. Yeah, I mean, we're just pump. I mean, you know you could, you could do that, but yeah, so I was just thinking about it. She took like a three month maternity leave and she travels every two months. Yeah, she could push the first one out. Probably they would let her, you know, push that out at least two months in the beginning, so five six months would be the first time she'd actually be traveling, and then it wouldn't be again until like seven eight months. So she's really only gone for like one week in the kids first seven eight months of life. Yes, yes, exactly, exactly push it out. I will say. I don't ever say just pump. I'd be like, nope, not just pump, because I don't have to do it. Especially twenty four hour pumping is very hard and it's not always so easy to maintain your supply. Not everybody can do it, so I would, but that's also yeah, okay if and that's totally okay. But that's why I don't think you can say just pump, because it's like for a lot of people, it's not just pump supplement. I mean, you know, supplement with certainly the kids getting solid food by five six months. Yeah, I would probably started supplementing with formula at least by seven eight months, a bottle a day or so. So in that case, you know, the no, that's a good point. You don't need to be making eight million ounces usually by the time your baby is past you know, six seven months, so it is it might be much more doable by that point. I forgot to mention, and I wanted to because this this this person made me think about the fact that my father traveled a ton when I was growing up. Like I mean, my visions of him in his work life, for him getting home with his suitcase usually midweek, I feel like he traveled a lot, like Sunday through Wednesday or something like that. And honestly, some of my happiest memories hi Dad are of him unpacking his suitcase and like talking to him about his trip and where he went and usually getting some little, you know, tiny toy from wherever he had gone. So you know, maybe it's also as your kids get older, it could be there could be a positive aspect to it too. You could use your frequent flyer miles to take them somewhere really cool. Yes, yes, that's always a good a good thing too, so they may see some upsides of it. Yeah, I mean I would say I I would find it hard to believe that, like a man would send us this question. Yes, you know, like I travel once every eight weeks. How can I avoid resentment and guilt? Like, I just don't think that we would get that question from a guy whose job involved travel, And so I think it's pretty much the same. Like, you know, you cover for each other when you're gone, and if this is a job you love doing, then I don't see that there's a problem at all. Totally agree. So our assessment is what Laura said, not a problem, not a problem. All right. Well, this has been the best of both worlds Episode thirty. We've mostly been talking decluttering. Tune in next week for more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.