Life Management Systems. Ep 82

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician 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 eighty two. We're going to be talking about our household systems today, sort of how we make things work. This is based on some comments and some questions people have left on Sarah and my blogs and our Instagram page for Best of Both Worlds, a survey we did last fall. You know, people are always interested in figuring out ways to make their lives work better, and so while we can't claim to have figured it out, which would be awesome if we had, but we haven't. But there are a couple of things that you know work for us as we're managing our households that we wanted to share and hopefully people will pick up some tips, and we'd love to hear from you as well. So if you have a great household management tip, a system that works for you and your family, please let us know, because we are always interested in doing things better. Yeah. I feel like it would be fun kind of to do a maybe a part two with the listener participation next time. Oh yeah, no, I mean people's best hacks. That would be a great one. So yeah, please send those in. We'll try to put together an episode on that. Although what isn't it Sorry, go ahead, Sarah, as I said, But in the meantime, and before we dive into that, you are, you know, life updates kind of in the thick of it book wise, right yeah, yeah, no, So we're This is airing about two weeks before my book, Juliette School of Possibilities launches on March twelfth, And so if you've been listening to this podcast and thinking, hey, wouldn't it be great to have more of Laura, you can pre order Juliett. I woul really appreciate it if you do it. I actually have a pre order incentive going for people who are willing to buy the book before it actually comes out. You can just go to my website, Laura vandercam dot com and go to the Juliette School of Possibilities page. You can order it through any of your favorite retailers there, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indie Bound one eight hundred CEO, read a lot of the other major retailers, and then just fill out the form with your email address and I'll send you a ebook. It's called Laura's Little Book of Life Hacks one hundred and thirteen ideas for winning at work and at home. And it's got just a lot of my favorite tips. And this podcast episode is about our systems, and you know, a couple of those are a version of them are in there, but there's a lot of other ones too. These are just things that make my life run more smoothly, or people have told me over the years make their lives run smoothly. And so I sort of figure, you know, I know a lot of people. It's like a fable. I'm kind of asking people to take a bit of a leap of faith to read something productivity related that is in fact a novella. But if you're like, I'm not sure, if I'm into that or not. You could pre order and then get this free book of life hacks and get the prescriptive stuff that you like more, and you're just getting two books for the price of one. So well, I got to say, you know the way, there are many nonfiction books out there, and there are more and more on productivity. But I think it's kind of cool that now we have a different kind of format that people can read those types of things in. So I think the fact that it's a novella is not going to scare people. I think it's going to make people more likely to want to dive in because it's so different, let's hope. So but yeah, thank you very much for that. I know a lot of people have written me that they have pre ordered, and I really so appreciate that people are willing to, you know, express their support for it and are excited about the book. So yeah, thank you very much for that. So Sarah, life updates for you? What's going on for you? Well, you kind of know. So we were trying to schedule time for Josh to be on the podcast, and that is coming up. People like, don't worry, we're gonna have our first male guest and it is going to be Josh, so, and we thought about, we thought about Sunday night, and then we were just too tired, and then it just it just made me think, and I remarked to him on our date night on Saturday night, like we're in this phase of busyness with work and kids right now where if we're not super super intentional about making time with each other, we're not seeing each other very much. And I think maybe I thought that was going to be better once he started the new job, but he's actually really busy from the outset, so he's been getting home pretty late and trying to really keep up with his paperwork, maybe a little bit better than he did previously. And I have been in this nice routine of going to bed fairly early and getting up early because honestly, I'm pretty useless after nine pm anyway. But that means if he gets home at nine thirty and I'm going to bed at nine thirty, sadly there's not a lot, not a lot of a couple time going on in the younger household. No. Yeah, So I'm trying to be more intentional about it, and whether that means, you know, figuring out one week night that we both do try to overlap better and making sure we do our weekend date nights. I think definitely something I want to make sure we're working on because that's important. Yeah, of course it is. Yeah, No, we have not, you know, been stellar about that ourselves, although we have slightly more overlap in terms of when we see each other. But we're actually when we're recording this in mid February, we're about to celebrate sixteen years since we first met. Very exciting, and you know, we don't have any particular plans. We're actually taking off for Disney today the day we're recording this. Oh how romantic Disney with like four children in our hotel room is how we'll be celebrating the anniversary of meeting, as well as our anniversary of getting engaged, our anniversary like Valentine's dates, it's really we're hitting all the big dates with many, many children in the room. But hopefully we'll do something fun for our fifteenth wedding anniversary this summer. We have a goal to take a trip somewhere but short and somewhere that doesn't involve like my husband's work. I'm kind of I know, it's the free ticket, but still I like, I do feel like I feel like every five years you kind of need to do something big, so you actually do Yeah, all right, Well, so going into our main segment, I mean, figuring out when date nights are going to happen is certainly one of our systems. And one thing we did is have childcare regularly on Friday nights. That are our childcare, I mean just that we have for the work day on Friday, like extends theoretically to eight pm, and if we're not doing anything, we'll send her home. But if we're, you know, going to do something, we could go for an early dinner or we've gone to a museum that had evening hours. So that's a nice way to sort of build it in. And that works well for you. Because your husband's hours he's to winding down the week, then that would not work for us because Friday night tends to be one of my husband's latest work nights as he's trying to wrap stuff up for the weekends. But I do like that we do Saturday nights, and I do book them well in advance, so I look at our cause schedules and as soon as I have those, I basically reserve our one extremely reliable and trustworthy babysitter that we have, and I send it to her and kind of therefore and then make reservations kind of around that. Yeah, all right, so let's talk about your bag system. I've been reading about this on your blog, and I'm so intrigued by this idea of multiple bags, because I'm quite sure I would lose my wallet and my keys if I attempted to move purses at any point. So what do you have going on with this? Well, first of all, let's remember that I still have a baby who uses diapers, so I Am not going to be carrying around diapers and wipes in my work bags, so there's no way of using just one bag for everything. My work bag is also a fairly structured looking, professional looking bag that I don't necessarily want to lug around to birthday parties, you know, outdoor things. So my new ritual and I always kind of did this, but I never did it fully there, and I kind of maybe it was a little bit inspired by Marie Condo, who suggests that you dump out the contents of your bag every single night. Now I do not do that at all, But what I do is on Saturday morning, I basically take my diaper backpack. I use a like a backpack for the kids stuff, and I just feel like it's so much easier to sling something on your back than lug around on your hip. So and I just make sure does it have diapers? Does it have too many diapers? I don't want to carry around twelve diapers. I really only need to do I have a fresh pack of wipes that's not dry? Do I have sunscreen? Do I have bugspread? Do I have some kind of emergency food? Have I gotten rid of all the extraneous crap from the week before, like random receipts that were stuffed in there? Do I have my sunglasses? And then I do switch my wallet over and my car key's over, and I know that I have to just stick my phone in there before I go out the door. And then I'm like readily stocked. And it is hard enough getting out of the house with three children, so I don't want to add the inertia of not having a bag that is ready to go. So I do that every Saturday morning, and then Sunday night, when I'm thinking about, okay, I have to go back to work in order to avoid realizing that my wallet was still in the diaper bag, I purposefully put it back into my work bag and kind of take that time to clear out the work bag and get rid of receipts and sundry random crap. Now I also have two other bags that sometimes come into the rotation if I'm going out with the kids, but I don't need a full on diaper bag. But that means like if I'm going to a birthday party with like just Annibal and Cameron, for example, I have sort of a casual weekend bag that all I have to do is throw my wallet in there and I'm ready to go. And then I have a tiny little bag that I use for date nights that really just has space for my phone and credit cards and that kind of stuff. Sometimes I don't even really need that because I just let Josh be in charge of everything. But if I feel like being responsible, or you know, if I might get carded, wishful thing, wishful thing, I know, I keep oping. Like I was sitting at a table next to two young ladies at a bar the other day and the way definitely carded both of them, and then she's just like, yeah, what do you want? And I'm like, what, God, is it that obvious? Like, oh man, I hear I hear you? I yeah, well, oh well, I mean I guess I'm forty. There's no getting they're dumb. They're they're not very smart because they know that they should know that the way to get a big tip is to card all people who look like they really don't need to be carted anymore. Oh yeah, exactly exactly. Anyway, So that's my bag system. So you don't have a bag system I don't have. I'm I'm also looking at you. Unit's that you're now going to keep bouncy house socks in your diaper bag because hell yeah, I've been burned too many times. It's like the same, And I mean the good news is like, now I have a lot of socks that I've bought for three dollars each and they're actually not typically terrible socks. In fact, this one place has these ones with little sticky things on the bottom. My mom. I have quite a collection now, and I kind of like them because the kids can run around in them inside and not fall. But I'm kind of tired of buying them, so yeah, yeah, and inflated sock prices at the bouncy house when you haven't brought your own that comes out, you know, I do. I often carry a pair of socks in my bag of hard for me because my winter you know, I like to wear like these slip on shoes and it's winter here, and so what I'm kind of worried is that, like I don't know, my car is going to break down, and then I don't have socks like you know, so I would I would put on the socks if I needed them. But yeah, the kids mostly have socks, like they're not, you know, wearing I mean, they're wearing sneakers, and so they generally have the socks. But yeah, no, not needing diapers anymore is great, although I will say I always just put a diaper and a small travel thing of wipes in my purse, like and so I've never really had a diaper bag. I guess I just decided I didn't, you know, I wasn't buying expensive enough daily bags that I was worried about having a diaper wipes in them. And then, like I said, my brain is not able to be sure that I put my wallet and keys in a different bag if I have a different bag. So I think the only way, the only way is to like make a true ritual out so like it's not but it's like, Okay, it's Sunday night. What are my my work prep stuff includes X? Yeah? Yeah, so now we just have one bag now. And possibly this is why my bags get so beat up is because I use them for everything. I mean, they're they're not only my day to day bag, like the bag for with kids. It's also you know, my carry on for planes. So yeah, it's it goes, goes everywhere. Well that seems quite streamlined. Actually, yeah, talk to me about this mythical thing called the mud room. Yeah, well you know, I mean, you guys have mud, but you don't, you know, have as much of the paraphernalia that's associated with dealing with the mud. You know, we have winter gear, you have we have five sets of boots, so mine and the kids, I don't know. My husband keeps his somewhere else, but that's his deal. And coats and hats and mittens, and then of course the stuff like backpacks and sports equipment and so I know I've I've mentioned this probably ten zillion times on this podcast. But the mudroom has been key. And so if you're looking for a house, like look for one that has a space by the garage or wherever you're going to come in most frequently that has space for this stuff, or you can install it right if there's an entry way, you can install like a bench, and then hooks probably you know the number of hooks that correspond with the number of family members you have. We also put bins in there, so each child has a bin of stuff for like their mittens. You know, if they're ever like where is my you know, that's the first place to look, like their bin is where to look for that thing that they're about to yell, where is my whatever? And it works, you know pretty well, Like so that's where the backpacks stay. And then so things like homework can only be in the backpack in the mudroom or actively being done, like there's there's no other place that can go, because then you know it's lost, it's gone, it's uh, you know, it's mixed up with another child. It's mixed up with another child, and then we'll never find it again. And you know, I'm not saying we don't lose stuff. We lose stuff all the time. I mean, we just had this sort of tragic situation for a couple of days that my nine year old's special stuff puppy was gone, and I you know, it was right after the house got cleaned, and so it's just like, well, did they put it somewhere? Did they like find it and put it with another pile of stuffed animals instead of on his bed, And so we were hunting through everything, and then finally I found it under his mattress last night, like it had just been between the mattress and the bed frame, stuffed in there somewhere. So that was, you know, a great cause of rejoicing. But you know, if you've got six family members, losing stuff is just going to eat time left and right. You just can't do it. So, I mean, as much as possibly try to avoid that, I know, some people swear by those little like things that you know, on your key, you can make a thing that makes noise and you can find it with your phone. We haven't got Tile, I believe is one of the brands of them, but I'm sure there are multiple copycats. We have not gotten into that, but I am with you in that, like everything, having a place is very helpful. We struggled initially after we moved because we hadn't really identified one. And then we do have a closet, a front closet in this house, which is a novelty, so it's like almost halfway to a mud room, and we just designated one bin that like that's where the keys go. And as soon as we did that, it got a million times better. Yea, because you just knew you're getting home plunk the end sunglasses, et cetera. Yeah, the landing strip as you called it, right, Yeah, that's it exactly well, and we you know, we have a little bin that's in the pantry that where we have an extra set of keys for all the cars to generally avoid the issue. And when our nanny comes here, she just then parks her car in the garage so we don't have to move around it because obviously I wouldn't want to, you know, have her keys or anything. But then, but yeah, when we had our kitchen renovated, and so all these systems were just like messed up, right, we had to figure out a new one, Like where do the keys go when that spot is gone? Where do the membership cards for like in our library cards go when that place is gone. And it was interesting to think about those systems when the systems are no longer there. The mail, like, where does the mail go when the mail spot is gone? Very very important if you want your bills to get paid and all that good stuff. All right, what else is on our list? We have a bunch of food related items which we've kind of gone into before, but school lunches, so we dipper on this one, which I think is good. It's healthy to have a little little discord on our podcast. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, I you know, I'm whether it's not even about saving time because I probably wouldn't be the one packing the lunches anyway. It's just it's very convenient that I just load money on the kid's card and then they can go find something they like. You know, they can get a hot lunch, which is definitely great because I don't know, there's there's been a couple of studies finding that really most of the thermoss don't actually work, like they don't keep the food at a hot temperature. That's not you know, going to have the bacterial growth and everything, or the cold food, and the kids don't have access to a fridge or microwave obvious, like you would as a as an adult with an office. So you know, I like that they can get a hot lunch and we have rules like what they're allowed to take, and I can look at it. So if I saw that they were having you know, six bags of Dorito's, which I don't think our lunch ladies would let them do anyway, but like, you know, if they somehow got past the system, they could be called on it. And that's actually really cool. I don't think we have that option to like stock exactly what they're getting. Yeah, well, so, I mean you can't see exactly, but you well, what it is is the unit of like you can see if they get the reimbursable approach and then if they get extra stuff on top of that. The reimversible lunch is whatever the entree option is for the day, So I don't know what that is, but it's whatever the you know, district nutritionists has designed for the day. But then it's the extras, like are they getting you know, five ice sandwiches? Then I can see. Yeah, I also wonder if your lunches are better than ours, because I I don't know, there may not be nationwide standards. Maybe there were, well I thought there were. I mean that was the whole Michelle Obama thing. I mean some of it's been watered down since because some of it didn't make sense, right, Like you couldn't have ten servings of bread, like ten pieces of bread a week, but then you can't have a sandwich every day, Like it's just oh yeah, it doesn't work. But they I mean, you know, it's gotten better in many places from the like Sloppy Joe's and meatloafs surprise of like when we were going to school, and so given that my kids like it, like I feel like it would be introducing a problem where there isn't one. Like I've sort of said, you know, they can make it, or you know, we can have somebody else make it. But you know, so far, so good. No, that's great with us, And maybe I would make a different decision if the burden fell more on me. But I do make the lunches for Monday because it's too hectic. But otherwise our nanny just usually throws leftovers in like kind of the night before and so it's already or a sandwich or something, and we do pack ice packs. I have not gotten complaints about you know, eating like cold pizza. Yet maybe they're coming. I don't know, it could be coming. It's like, wait, the school has hot pizza and here I have my cold pizza. What's going on? And we get we get around the complaints by you know, we let them pick out snacks that they like, so I think they feel like, Okay, at least I'm getting something out of this situation. If that kid gets to pick out chips and the cfeteria, I picked out my fruit snacks that I got it Trader Joe's or whatever, it is exactly all right. Let's talk about homework, because I know that we hear about this a lot from listeners too, so which you actually are dealing with us despite your oldest child being not yet seven. Yeah, well, yeah, they had homework in kindergarten. They actually have less homework at the new school than the old school, but they still actually significantly less homework, so I should probably complain less. But there does I mean, there's still some significant parent involvement required. And I don't want to necessarily go into lots of details about my children's academic stuff because I don't want them to be mad at me. Later, but I will say I don't feel like I can just be like it's your problem, because number one, I think that the teacher would complain, and number two, I feel like she needs a little bit of guidance at this point. And maybe part of that is just transitioning schools. If you had one teacher that really trained you well in some things and not others, and any other kids maybe were you know, yelled at and I yelled at, but taught very firmly about capital letters and periods all year and you weren't and you need to catch up, then maybe you might need a little bit more attention. So well, it's interesting with that. I mean, so I switched schools a reasonable amount when I was growing up, and so I missed the whole thing of cursive. So we my dad did a visiting professorship in California in the fall when I was in third grade, and so we went out there and that class learned cursive in the spring. So I was there in the fall, and my third grade class back in Raleig where we lived, so when we came back for the spring, they had done it in the fall, so I completely miss But I got to say honestly. So I taught it to myself, and I think my cursive is way better than most people's because it wasn't forced on me. I was just like, I'm going to learn this. I'm going to figure it out. So I'm going to learning my my little loops and stuff, and you know, so there's something to be said for catching up because you want to and figuring it out to see that's totally cool. Well, you have much more homework experience than I do because your kids are much older and you've had many years to hone your techniques. My technique so well, But I think the key thing is that it's not my techniques. This is one of those things where I generally my philosophy is is that the homework is for them, and I know that's your philosophy too. It's just you know, you're going through a bit of a transition with this. But like I already did sixth grade, Like I'm cool, I don't I don't need to do this stuff again. And so if I need to help a lot, it means there's something that's inappropriate for their grade level or level of whatever. And then we've got a different and that you know, may need to be addressed in a different way. And also just because you know kids like anyone, it's it's easy to be lazy about stuff, like you're coming to me, like, mom, what's six times eight? Like, well, why are you asking me this? Like are you not capable of like counting it out or like figuring out jaw picture, Yeah, jaw picture. Like I don't need to tell you what six times eight is. If you can't remember, go figure it out, like I mean, if you were truly stumped, like you've been working on something for a while, then come talk to me. But you know, probably not. So my two elementary school kids have weekly assignments and it is so interesting to see their personality differences. So Ruth does it the day it is a signed like she comes home, she she's at the kitchen table getting through it. Uh, you know, it's it's done without anyone asking. Sam has it's due Friday, and he's usually is a two night thing because there's one thing that has to be done twice, like two nights. So he will never do it before Wednesday. I mean, it's it's Wednesday and Thursday and then and then it's done. And you know he he doesn't really care too much about it. I think he feels like it's you know, I don't know, But so that's them. Jasper has more homework, obviously in sixth grade, it's starting to get a little bit more serious, but they actually have an end of the day homeroom kind of thing, so he can do the vast majority of it in the thirty five minutes he has for his home room at the end of the day. That's impressible. Yeah, so it's not that he has none, but if he has like forty five minutes a night, then thirty five of it's done in school and then he's just got ten minutes to deal with. And so he's been pretty good about that. And I kind of want to leave it up to them because, like, you know, I'm the kind of person who, like Ruth, would do it the first day, but it doesn't have to be done the first day. And you know, if you want to do it differently, that's kind of your choice. It is your choice, and it's about them learning to manage their workload. My only critique is that I often hear advice like this on podcasts, but then it's always like and this is not how do I put this, then it's always like, oh and somehow they're getting straight a's, and so my way works. So I guess my only caveat is might be what if your nine year old just stopped doing his homework and then could you be so hands off? Or if he did like the world's worst job and his teacher was like, yeah, he's clearly spending five minutes, and I want more, because sometimes I feel like homework tips it's like the people who don't have issues with it are and now I'm sort of seeing both sides already so incredibly young that I begin to wonder. I would say, like, again, you know, we've talked about the kid privacy issues. Not everyone is doing fantastically and everything. You know, it's I think there's a minimum bar that has definitely been cleared, but you know, it's it's not hundreds on everything all ye, And I think I think that's great to hear. And you know what, you have enough kids that you can have some anonymous antony well and outside. I mean, I think, you know, and I'm may change when we get to high school, when I think it more matters, because I think there's the whole college application process, which is I mean, a whole lot less forgiving than when we were in school. And I mean I say this as someone who got a C in high school on something and got into Princeton, and I just don't think that would happen now. I feel like that would be a lot harder for that to pull off. So, you know, I think there might be more serious talks about but sort of what I view elementary school in middle school as about then is they're learning to do that and hopefully coming to the realization themselves of what they need to do. Like I feel, if I'm just sort of gauging kid personalities, if I'm pushing too hard, it backfires completely, And no, I could totally see that, and maybe giving them room to struggle a little bit will actually teach them from some valuable lessons that might come in hand you when the stakes are high. I think that's yeah, I think that's valuable. So, yeah, if we learned to manage your time in sixth seventh eighth grade, as it's suddenly harder than by ninth grade, you've got a bit more of that in place and you can make it work, hopefully. So all right, clothes, let's talk about clothes. How do you keep your children clothed and shod I don't think that was on my list. Well, I don't do that much. Yeah, I just kind of I'm pretty freestyle about it. When it seems like somebody's clothes are getting pretty ready, then I tend to buy more. Oh, what we do in the morning, so our new things that we pick, we do pick the kids close out the night before because the new school starts earlier, and we're in this big rush. And actually I've gone a step further and I put the clothes downstairs. There's not even that barrier of having to go up because their rooms are upstairs, but like everything to get ready is downstairs, and so they're like brushing their teeth downstairs. Yes, yeah, yeah, yep, there's a downstairs bathroom that's big enough. When we realized, you know what, we got to remove all barriers and the worst was like it'd be seven twenty seven and they still need to go back up. So it was like, no, move everything downstairs next to the door. Whatever helps to like lessen the friction on the way out the door makes our lives better. So then they just is there like a bin where they put their pajamas or something that they're changing downstairs, Like how I hate to wind up back over. The laundry room is downstairs, so it's actually a pretty natural even if they throw their clothes on the floor right next to the laundry room, that's closer than if it's in their hamper upstairs. So okay, there you go. But no, the downstairs closed has been a game changer. That's interesting. Yeah, and then so put toothbrushes and toothpaste in a like downstairs powder room, they can they can get real interesting. Yeah, what about you and what closed systems were you talking about? Were you talking more about like keeping the right sizes? Yeah? Yeah, So I mean obviously you know I have I have three boys, and so they've the hand me down system is fairly developed. So the key question is whether the oldest has clothes that fit him, and then when those have been outgrown, they go into a box that generally goes in a rather big closet that is in the room where Sam and Alex's stuff is, which Sam, poor Sam, He's theoretically that's the room he's supposed to sleep in, but Alex is still like waking up at five am and like will wake up and like punch Sam. So Sam's still in the room with Jasper. It's just you know, anyways, but his clothes are with Alex, so he that they're all in that closet. We've just got boxes of boys clothes like labeled six five, four T and so now we're going through the four T with Alex. This is stuff that has been put away from both Jasper and Sam and you know, again three active boys. Like some of it has to be prematurely retired. There's no way that everything makes it, no no way that everything in the knees and like you know, permanent paint marks and yeah, exactly. So so stuff has been retired, thrown away. And it's not like they never get new clothes. I mean, because they do. But but then our first thing is always like, okay, well here's a whole box of size youth, medium shirts or any of these of interest to you, and they can shop there. And then if you know, we need more stuff because they want something related to like Minecraft or the Philadelphia Eagles or whatever, then that's like you know, birthday gifts and stuff like that. So plus things like formal stuff. You know that stuff barely gets worn and it is more expensive, so it definitely makes sense to save it. Although I feel like we've still not managed to have a good system for like little boys dress shoes. I know, I have various sizes of little boys dress shoes, but I feel like they've been lost somewhere because they get worn once and then stuff somewhere and I so, like I said, the system is not perfect. But it's kind of fun too, because I've seen like the same shirt on three boys and you know, and then like, oh look, I remember when they wore that, And then you know, Ruth being the only girl, like most of her stuff is then either new or hand me downs from some older girl cousins that she's gone through. You know, I think I enjoy shopping for kids clothes too much for to ever really need a system because of anything, I usually have a surplus. But did you put anything away from Annibal? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I put like my favorite stuff absolutely, and actually some of it I gave away to friends and then I ended up getting it back, which was great because you know, we didn't always plan on Jenavie. Yeah, we'll getting dressed though in the morning. I so their bedrooms are upstairs, but in our school starts late enough, I guess that there seems to be enough time to go up and get dressed. And for whatever reason, this just has not been a huge source of resistance or anything for us. So the kids go up and they choose their clothes. Not that I mean the four year old has help getting dressed, but he can choose his own shirts. He is in the closet. There's a low rack and there's all his shirts on that, so he can go and choose a shirt based on that stuff. But yeah, No, they choose their outfits. And I guess my feeling about clothes outfits, it's I control what comes into the house, and then once it's in the house, it's it's their choice what they want to wear, and it's it's kind of fun to see the outfits that come together. I mean, Ruth has oh yeah, ez, miss like I keep reading in fashion magazines that the mixed pattern thing is in so clearly she's just more with it than I am, Like, WHOA, that's a b's way out of it, But that's that's awesome. Annabell is the same way. She will lay her like pattern leggings and then long socks over the leggings and like some random mini ski it's like, but I agree, if I control the pieces that are there, the end product usually turns out okay, even if it's a little nuts, I'm fine with it. Yeah. Yeah, And I again of the big kids, like two of three brush their teeth without being asked and one must one must be asked constantly. So that's just again, you know, if if you set the goal as they do it without being asked. Unfortunately, that bar may never be cleared and who knows what will come of that. But uh, you know, it's well speaking of the morning rush, and I think that actually, like our routine change so much, and that's why we have a morning rush because it used to be much more leisurely because we were leaving at like eight ten, and now we have to leave it like seven thirty of the kids, so it's a big different difference. Is I think we were going to both quickly do our morning routine right? Sure? Yeah. So my current one is kind of I get up like four forty five, which is because I've kind of got work backwards and figured out exactly how much time I need to make things not be insane. And it turns out to see that ridiculously early. But you're going to bed at nine thirty, bet at like nine thirty exactly, so it's not ridiculous. It's like seven point two five hours then. And sometimes like if I stay up later, it's not one hundred percent of the time. And if I'm off on a day, I might not get up that early. But it's just sort of my like default weekday time unless I've something else going on. And then I already have my coffee ready, which is amazing, like yes, like it makes it yelp, and so it's yeah, like I put I put everything, you know, the night before, like that's you know, it takes two minutes and it pays off such dividends because I love but just you don't even have to press anything in the morning, like it's timer's automatic. It's not a timer. It's not a timer. Yeah, So I come get my freshly brewed coffee, and then usually I will like quickly check email and put out any fires. Usually there's not fires in my email, but you know, I just want to see what's there. I can't deal with they'll like not checking it all because and I'll just wonder what's in there and then usually I read a block post or do podcast prep or sometimes if like I have a pressing work, presentation or project, I'll do that, or like for when we're doing residency interviews, I use that time to cram my applicants of the day, and then I usually try to start working out by like five forty five or five fifty, and then I'm done at like six twenty six thirty, and then I can quickly sneak in a shower kind of prep the kid's breakfast a little bit, and then Genevieve, thankfully has been waking up a little bit better lately, around six thirty six forty and I feed her and then the big kids and I usually have to get the big kids up and I'm like, get out of bed it right around seven. Again, their clothes are already downstairs, so there's very little like friction. It's like, okay, come on down. They come down. They usually complain about whatever breakfast I put on the table, but then they like what is bread? Oh, it's like what they like, Like it's like their cereal that they like, or it's like their yogurts and bagel and cream cheese or fruit. I do actually want to throw some more things into rotation, like sometimes I do eggs and they like that. And I do think if I occasionally whip up like a fruit smoothie, they probably would think that was like amazing. Actually, so I'm trying to I'm going to work on diversifying a little bit. But no, I don't like try to give them like kale and sweet potatoes. It's like what it's like a cinnamon Mary's and bagel with cream cheese, and like a kid's yogurt and banana, like nothing crazy, but they still often will complain or it is like Cameron's, like I wanted the orange cups, but anyway, we survived breakfast. And then I have been alternating and taking Cameron and Annabelle, and I think I mentioned on a prior podcast that Annabell's school now has this massive carpool line. So the time dividend I thought I would be getting was getting eaten by that. And then some people suggested like walking instead, and I've sort of split the difference because if you walk all the way it would take forever. But there's a playground that is sort of halfway there that avoids the entire lines we park there. I walk with her. It takes like ten twelve minutes, and she always like it's like a nice time and the weather's really nice this time of year. Sorry Northerners. And then I walk back to the car, so I've gotten like extra steps and a little fresh air and yeah, I like it. And the days I drop off Cameron and it's super quick because his school is like just right on the way to work. Yeah, yeah, that's good that you've made that work. Then with that, no, our mornings are start a little later for me because I don't know, I've been having a really hard time going to bed before midnight. It's I don't know what's going on. But anyway, I set my alarm for around six forty five, maybe six fifty two if it's been a later this night. But that's like the latest I can go. I wake up and I shower, I wait, go downstairs, make coffee. I haven't figured out any time or systems. I don't think our coffee maker has a time, or maybe I need to get one. I wake Jasper up around seven fifteen, So basically seven fifteen to eight o'clock is sort of a rolling breakfast phenomenon in my house. You know that as people come down, they get breakfast and and you know, it's nothing again elaborate. We sometimes we'll make pancakes or waffles if we feel like we have a little extra time, but it's often you know, it's bagels or cereal or toast. That's impressive. The only waffles I've ever whipped up on a weekday or toaster waffles. Yeah, it tends not to happen unless somebody's gotten up early to do it, because it takes a long time. It's like a thirty forty minute process. By the time you're done, and the you know, eggs. My husband and I usually eat eggs, so if he's home, we usually both have that sort of seven fifteen to eight o'clock, getting all the kids in and talking with them, sitting at the table, so jazz breads first. Then he goes up and gets dressed the kids. I should add they bathe now on a schedule of Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights. We just instituted that as like the three days it would happen, so that you know, it's not constantly because tonight about that, I don't know, did you have a bath last night? I guess you don't need one. You need shower. I don't know, though Jasper is old enough that he now showers of his own volition every day. That was an interesting thing when that happened. Well, it probably coincided nicely with the need to shower every day. Yeah, I know. I think when you have the trouble is when they don't coincide, and like you're trying to convince somebody who could in fact shower daily that they should. But no, he definitely got ahead of that to curve in terms of when he needed to start doing that. They I mean four year old, well old, he is off and up at like five thirty and we just put him in front of YouTube for an hour until everyone else is moving, and that seems to be fine. So the Jasper we do the carpool for middle school seven fifty. Either we're driving, our neighbors are driving. Get the middle two kids on the bus at twenty five, we start shoes on. It usually comes eight thirty two, but it could come as late as eight thirty five, or nanny takes the four year old to preschool at nine. It's really like three minutes from our house. So my workday starts at eight thirty five pretty much precisely every day, and I have this gap of eight ten to eight fifteen that I could use for something like if I'm coming back from the middle school, run it's like eight ten, and then eight twenty five is when the bus thing starts, so it's fifteen minutes. I can't use it. Well. I usually just like answer an email or like do one administrative task, and I need to figure out if there's something awesome I should do with it. But at the moment, no, you could run your mile run my I guess I could, yeah, but I usually want to run more than that, so it's yeah, it's usually not the time I have. And if I need to run in the morning, I'll get up earlier, so I'll set my alarm for six ten or something and then run then. But yeah, no, it's they're pretty good about getting themselves ready. We you know, eight twenty five, I'm yelling at them to come get their shoes, and they do and then you know, shoes, coat, backpack, out the door. So pretty good. Oh my gosh, we're already forty minutes in. We have many more. Maybe we need to divide this into two halves. Yeah, well, I think we've hit a lot of the main half stuff. I would say the laundry. You know, we're really struggling with like getting the kids to put their stuff in the hamper. Again, some of the kids are good at it, some of it it's just never there. It'll be next to the hamper, Like why, like was what was the last foot problem that you couldn't like, you know, move it from next to the hamper on the floor to in the hamper. But the kid's laundry gets done about twice a week. Either my husband or I does our own launch. You know, we do the two of our laundry on the weekend. That's usually one one load. There's either one to two loads of sheets or towels per week. I struggle to understand like that. I know there are people write me about there's like ten loads of laundry per week in their household, and I still haven't figured out what that all is. I don't know. I'm very spoiled. I'm very spoiled. Our Nannita's all over our laundry, and I don't know she might do tell leuch, she does like a load a day, and you know the trade off is like we're totally fine with her putting everything in together. Like you know, if you're having all your laundry done for you, you're not going to be picked about it. You can do it yourself. So she may do well, no, but she doesn't work on the weekend. So I guess that, yeah, maybe five loades a week, not seven, maybe six because maybe one extra sheets? Yeah no, but but five, you know five, we probably hit five, but I mean it's ten would be I don't stand, but I don't know. Maybe some people like excessively wash their sheets, like every few days. We definitely don't quite the life. If you have clean sheets daily, it's like living in a hotel or some and not even there because they don't do it anymore. If you're staying well yeah, well not very environmentally friendly. I mean to come on, I yeah, one, oh, bedtime, let's just quick do bedtime and then call it quits here. Yes, yeah. The so for your tends to go down between seven fifteen to seven forty five during the week, and our nanny does this probably like four nights a week, you know, Monday through Thursday, and then I do usually the other three nights or you know, four nights if he has not gone down between seven and fifteen and seven forty five because I'm not going to keep her there past that. The Ruth gets her stories between Somewhere between eight thirty and eight forty five is when we start. We're done by nine, and she's in bed. The boys are supposed to be in their room reading at nine o'clock. They're very creative about getting out of this, but the theory is that they're supposed to be in their rooms reading at nine with lights out at ten, and then I can use that time to read or to you know, work or whatever. If they're in their rooms, but they come out, I don't know, And it's kind of Jasper wants to come talk to me. A lot of times they wants to come have his talk, and it's kind of cute, and I sort of don't want to completely cut that off, as it's a good time for him to communicate with that that's when they want to talk, and they want to talk at it turn out the lights at ten for them. But I am definitely the bedtime parent, which while I'm not one hundred percent thrilled about, I also know that it just doesn't My husband is a total pushover on bedtime and so I'll be He's like, yeah, I'll put Alex to bed, and then you know, it's like an hour later, there's still like stories, Okay, we have some parallel. It's like it comes from a very good place. Like he wants to spend I mean on a general week, I don't. I'm usually doing bedtime most of the time because he's just not home yet. I mean maybe one day he'll come home at like seven thirty, but a lot of times it's later than that. So even I thought the new job might be different, but apparently maybe it's just well I think, you know, new jobs don't change who the person is. So it turns out that you do not become a drastically different person when you start a new job or the job description. It may just be. And the truth is I would much rather have stay late and finish all of his notes then tell me on Saturday that he needs to spend six hours doing notes, because so in order to protect our weekends that when we're not working, I'd rather him stay late. So anyway, I'm generally the weaknight bedtime parent, but on the times that he is there, or like if I'm sick and he happens to be home. Oh, they'll be up real late because it's like Daddy Special at that time, and it's just he does. Yeah, he's not going to be strict about it, and that's okay, but no, our routine is pretty is pretty straightforward. Right now. I basically put Genevieve to bed around seven, seven fifteen, I still nurture to sleep, and then usually I tell the kids they have to clean up, and then once they're done cleaning up, they can watch a TV show while I'm putting her to bed. And they've been pretty good about that, and they kind of know under penalty of you know, strict punishment if I ever get downstairs and they didn't clean up and they're watching TV. Oh, but so they're yeah, so they're pretty good about it. And then at length and then often I eat dinner in that little window while they're finishing a show after I've put Genevieve to bed, because I don't want to wait till like nine to eat because I'm dying. So then at like seven forty five, their show is done and then we just like hang out and we usually start the book reading process at around eight fifteen, and then I'd say they're in bed by eight thirty to eight forty five. And since they share a room, it's very streamlined. It's like both at once and we read the same book and lately. Actually, last night was really cute because now that Anabel can read, she'll like play a part in the book, so you know, she'll she was like a Meani Badillia last night night. Dramatic reading great, right, Yeah, I find myself practicing. I've been reading the Magic Tree House books with Ruth, and you know, we go through a chapter a night, and I've you know, working on my dramatic delivery. I try to do you know, I figure it helps with voiceover stuff, I hear you. I kind of try to make it as good of a performance as I can because it makes it more interesting and I feel like it holds their interest better. So yeah, all right, well we got to get into this a longer episode anyway. Yeah, and get done with this episode, all right? Do you want me to read this real quick? All right? So? Yeah, her Q and A from a listener who has an eight month old and is wondering about a side hustle. So she recently started a new full time job after years as a freelancer. She's the mom of an eight year eight month old. She says, I was hoping to find time for occasional freelancing on the side, maybe even start a long dreamed of novel, mostly for personal fulfillment, which is good because I don't think you should ever write a novel thinking you're going to get rich off of it, but that's a sideline anyway. However, I'm finding it's almost impossible to carve out the time and energy. Mornings before work aren't an option because my baby is an extremely earsy early riser. Evenings don't work because they don't have much energy left after getting the baby to bed and cleaning up from dinner, and I really just want to spend that time relaxing with my husband. Saturdays we try to avoid chores and work and focus on family time because they're Jewish, so they're observing the Sabbath, and Sundays then are the big chores housework day because they haven't done it on Saturday, so me taking writing time that day means a bigger share of housework and child minding for my husband, which she says doesn't feel fair. Is there something I'm missing or should I just give up on doing writing projects on the side until my kid is older? Well, what do you think? Well, part of me just wants to say, like, and I just wanted to use this phrase. Maybe slow your role, lady, because you're only eight months into this and you've got lots and lots of time, and everything's going to change about your baby. You know, you say they are an early riser now, but you never know in two weeks they are not. Pattern may shift and they will not be an early riser. So to some extent, I think you have a little bit of time to just see how things unfold, rather than necessarily making you know a tight plan right away. But that said, if you're feeling a super burning passion, one way to do that might be to extend your work day a couple of days a week, so you either leave super early. I don't know whether there's nursing that needs to be done in the early mornings, because you don't mention that, but if not, then you could be gone and then your husband could deal with the mornings. Maybe two week days out of the five, and that seems like a reasonable exchange. If that sounds good or fun to you, then go for it, and if not, then maybe just think of about the fact that this novel might be easier to fit into your life in even just a few months, when the baby's sleeping better, or when the nursing patterns change or naps consolidate or whatever. I do feel like, you know, when I was starting fresh into motherhood, everything felt very permanent. But now that I recognize how quickly things change and how just ephemeral some of these phases are, I think that you may just want to give yourself some space to see how things evolve. Yeah, I mean, certainly, if you're starting a new job and you hadn't been doing a full time job in the past, and you also have added a baby into a mix, it definitely would make sense that your time would feel more constrained for you know, projects that are about personal passion as much as anything else. But again, I mean, if you want to do it, you can totally do it. You can find the time, so you can either acknowledge that it's not a priority for you right now, which is totally cool, or you can say it is. I can't find twenty hours a week, but I bet I could find four, right So if that's your goal, like, yeah, you could find four or so maybe as as Sarah said, like two mornings a week your husband takes the early morning shift. As you said, that was your best time to sort of have the energy leave and go to a coffee shop for an hour to write, or go to library for an hour to write and then go to work. If you've got to a library with early hours, definitely get out of the house because if you're there, it's easy to become like the default parent and they're like, oh, well, you know, hey, where's his socks? You know, and then you're like I'm writing, Like, get away, I'm trying to write, Like no, so go somewhere else and write. So coffee shop or a restaurant like a diner, library, or your office if it's quiet, if you can get away with that, and then on the weekends, I feel like this you know, all or nothing mindset is not really serving you. I mean, I obviously keeping the Sabbath is a different thing like that, there are rules you can't work on it, so that's not going to be an option. But if Sunday is your chores, like you're not spending sixteen hours on chores, I hope like you're wake for sixteen hours, Like, that's not there's time for books. So maybe you could reach an agreement with your husband that each of you gets two hours to do your own thing. I love that. Yeah, Like, and that still leaves you know, if you guys both then also devote like two hours to chores and you know, you do a family activity, like you've still gotten a fair amount of time and spent since you're spending all Saturday together as a family as well, Like it's it's not like you've lacked family time on the on the weekend. So yeah, like you get two hours on Sunday to write, sort of coordinate that with him. Each of you gets your time, So then you've done, you know, two hours during the week two hours on Sunday. And it may feel a little frustrating if you really are getting into things like to only have sort of four hours. But I've also found that when I get really into a writing project, I start magically finding more time. Like then you that's when you start like, oh, well I could go take a thirty minute lunch break, or I could write on my novel, or you know, maybe I do feel energy to do this at night for forty five minutes, even though I'm tired because I'm so into my characters. So I think, you know, it's it's really more about getting started and sort of building in this space to do something that's important to you, and then over time they'll start to have its own momentum. Interesting, that's very similar parallel what happens when you have like a really good book going you know that you're reading. So I guess I'd never thought of it in terms of creating one in the same thing. All right, real quick Love of the Week Sarah. Yeah, well, I thought this was a nationwide chain, so I'm a little disappointed that it's not, because I'm like, this is not applied to tons of our listeners. But if you are in Florida, we discovered this place called Bowlet b O l A Y. And you know, maybe there are some national equivalents. You'll have to tell me, but it's like bowls and custom bowls, and they have like all these like healthy bases like kale and quenwab, but then also rice and some more kid friendly things and then you get to pick your veggies and you pick your sauce. And it was really fantastic and the kids even liked it, although I'm not sure like avocado and rice is the world's most balanced my choice avocado and rice, I'd be thrilled. So just okay, So there you go. You're avocado rice and gluten free cookies because that's the kind of cookies they had. But I almost wonder if they're not really gluten free because they were because they were good. Yes, it turns out gluten is often important and bake goods. So whatever they were using, I mean it was convincing because they were they were really good. So I've actually been my love of the week. This goes right in and I'm making my own avocado toast, not really that few. I cut up onions, and your red onions, if I have them, were just regular onions. If it don't, put a little lemon in it and salt and put it on a piece of interesting bread. If I have interesting bread, and that that's my lunch. So it sounds amazing, all right, Well, this is one upeteat everyone born. This has been an epic episode, Episode fifty two. We've been talking about our various home management systems. We'll be back next week with 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.