Find More Joy and Peace in your Holiday Season with Jessica Eastman Stewart

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, a 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. Hello, and welcome to best of both worlds. This is Sarah Hardhunger and I am playing solo today. Laura is doing lots and lots of book promotion work for Tranquility by Tuesday, and since we have such an amazing guest today here to talk all about the holiday season, I told her I would handle this one on my own, so she will be back definitely next week. In fact, you will get both of us in the same space since we are going to be doing little live recording session together. So I promise we'll be back with much more Laura next week. In the meantime, I wanted to introduce our guests and our topic. We're gonna be talking all about having a less stressful holiday season. As you probably know if you're a regular listener to this podcast, Laura celebrates Christmas, we celebrate Hanukah, and both of us often have a lot of different types of challenges in terms of lots of family that wants to be visited. Josh and I often have to work for parts of the holidays. I actually don't have any call for this holiday season. My husband is covering a lot of New Year's actually, so there's always quite a bit of a juggle around just making sure we do fit in some fun and relaxation. And I'll admit in past years, sometimes, especially those days the kids have been off from school and I've had no childcare, have felt like a big slog that I had to get through. And let's not forget holiday season twenty twenty to twenty twenty one, our family got COVID smack in the middle of bit, back when COVID was like a fresh new thing, and that was kind of sad. So anyway, I have high homes for twenty twenty two. We have a really good mixed planned of travel and work free days and even some creative childcare solutions that I'll talk a little bit about when I get on the main part of this episode with Jessica. And I'm putting less pressure on myself this year. At the same time, I find that my kids are a little bit older, and some of the things that felt really really stressful in the young years, like when I had toddlers running around, feel a little bit more fun. So if you're still stuck in that season where even bringing a dish to a meal feels like insurmountable because how are you going to get that dish prepped before naptime and you know your kid's gonna want to wipe their nose and rub their hand in the dish or sorry, that's disgusting, but you get what I'm saying. Is really really challenging when they're little, and when there are multiple of them. It probably will get a little bit more fun in the years to come, or at least that's been my experience so far. So without me blathering on by myself for too long, I will go ahead and bring on Jessica. I hope you enjoy this holiday episode, all right. I am so excited to have Jessica Eastman Stewart on the show. I've been following her work for a while, actually discovered her when she became a member of our Patreon group, and then I took a deep dive a little bit further into what she does, and we decided, Laura and I that she would be the perfect person to talk about holiday planning and how to make your holidays perhaps feel a little bit more peaceful. Jessica runs Joyfully Managed Family and Jessica tell us a little bit about you. I live in Oakland, California. I have two little ones, they're six and eight. And I started my career as a classroom teacher. I then was a co founder of a nonprofit education advocacy organ I spent a little over a decade doing that, and these days I spend my time helping people who lead at home, you know, as parents, or lead at work, do that with more joy and ease, because I think we all need a little more joy and ease in our lives. I love it and remind me what is your kids' situation and how old? I meant, I know you have some little ones at home. How old are they currently? They are six and eight, so first grade and third grade this year, and it is it is the season that we're in. They're pretty fun at this age. And I'm one of my little ones is Cameron, so we have that connection. No way, one of my coworkers' sons is Cameron. We were just talking about how there's never like a rude or mean Cameron. Cameron's always a nice guy, so that is awesome. Yeah, all right, Well let's dive into holiday planning. This episode is airing in mid November, so probably some people are already thinking a little bit about this and hopefully we're not too late to make things a little easier for them. When may you start your holiday planning? How does that process work for you? It kind of depends on, you know, the holiday. We've got the traditional fall and winter holidays in our family. We are celebrating Halloween, Thanksgiving, we celebrate Christmas. A lot of our closest friends celebrate Hanukkah, so we are often kind of luckily included in some of those celebrations. So those are the big ones obviously. Then we have New Years as well, which isn't a humongous thing in our family, but those are the ones we celebrate. If we are traveling, which for us is typically around the Christmas holiday, if we're going to do it. We usually are thinking about that in August, for example, just to go ahead and decide where we're going. You know, are we going to visit my husband's family, Are we going to visit my family? And if so, trying to get the flights under control. That's when we're thinking about travel, But the rest of it is pretty far further out. I have started trying to have about a half a day every year in October where I do holiday gift shopping. And I don't get it all done in that day, but I love to kind of kick it off. I'm a gift giver at heart, and so the idea of spending like half a day with like either some tea or hot chocolate and like my laptop and like brainstorming all these gifts and starting to get them is just if there's nothing better for me, that's like the best way I could spend an afternoon. So that for me often happens in October, and that kind of kicks things off. And tell me, because we've gotten this question before on the podcast, do you have a specific process that you used to divide up holidays between your family and your partner's family. We don't really. I mean, if I looked, I could probably tell you that there was some sort of pattern that we had going on. It's so nice to stay home. So we have actually had my parents come out to us before, which was lovely. And another thing is that my mom just Christmas is like a big deal for her, and so we probably try to get to her a little more often, and then we often are visiting my in laws other times of the year when we also get to visit our nephews who live nearby. But it's actually a little bit easier that our families are so far away. We live in California, our families are in Mississippi and New Jersey, and so I know that if they were both a lot closer, like within driving distance, we would probably be doing the thing where we're like Christmas Eve over here and then driving many hours for Christmas Day over here, which actually sounds kind of fun but not relaxing at all, And so it's nice to actually not have that really be possible. Yeah, you're totally forced to pick because neither are near you. That totally makes sense. Well, why do holidays evoke stress in a lot of us? I mean, I know that for most of us when we were children, it certainly didn't feel stressful. Kind of happened all around us. Magical fun stuff, presence just kind of fell from the ceiling. Nothing seemed to cost anything. No one was bushing their tickets. Exactly In the people you've worked with and in your own experience, what do people find most stressful about this season? Honestly, I think most of the stress comes from doing too much, either doing too much because of other people's expectations or because of our own expectations. And we think that, you know, we have an idea in our mind of what it means to be a good parent, to create a magical holiday experience. We see this idea on Pinterest or this idea on Instagram, and we think we should do it because we saw it, and that can create so much stress. And I think we all fall into that. I mean, I do it all the time. So I think one of the things that I recommend for folks related to holidays is actually it takes sit down and take time to reflect on what is most important to you when it comes to the holidays and let other things either completely go away just absolutely drop them and say we're just not doing that at all this year, because it turns out nobody actually likes it that much. I thought that it was for me, but actually my family doesn't like it, and I don't really like it, and we're just going to completely not do it, or we're just going to do it in a much easier way. I think you could have the holiday party where you're like curating the playlist and sending out handwritten invitations or evites and like making all the foods yourself. Or you could just blind copy a bunch of people, find a Spotify playlist with the holiday name that's decent, and get basic food, like from a store, you know, and it would probably be just as fun but significantly less stressed. So I think that all of us can kind of figure out what am I trying to do at like an A plus grand Slam level, that I could just say it's okay to do this at a B plus level because I'll still get eighty percent of the benefit of it. Or what could we say, you know, for example, holiday cards. I love sending holiday cards. I think it is just an absolute, like highlight of my year. I actually think that's pretty unusual. Every time I talk to other people, they feel pretty stressed about it, you know, and they're like, oh my gosh, it feels like this thing they have to do. Well, I'm here to tell you you can just not do it. Like you're an adult, you get to decide. You could just not do it, or you could just do it for like the ten people in your family that you think would be disappointed if you didn't send them a holiday card. Or you could do it in a much easier way. You don't have to handwrite all those names, print out some labels. You could have one of those websites online, upload a spreadsheet, they'll just ship them for you. Finding ways to let ourselves off the hook completely or let ourselves do it in an easier way. I'm just here to get people permission if they need it, because I think that's where the stress comes from. I honestly think timing has so much to do with it as well. I think if Thanksgiving we're in February, and you know, holiday cards we're customarily sent in June, and then the winter holidays were in December, we wouldn't struggle so much. It has so much to do with the cadence, and it seems like sometimes every single weekend or evening in mid November to the end of December is just taken up by stuff, and that kind of takes away the fund because it's just an oversaturation. And it's so funny. When you were talking about the holiday cards, I was reminded that one of our close friends actually sends out Easter cards. I love it, and yeah, I mean, they're fairly religious, and I think it means a lot to them. And I love getting a random card in the spring because I definitely remember it more. It's not like coming with a whole bunch of other cards. And this year we're going to send out Thanksgiving cards actually because we have a new address and I want people to be able to have that if they're doing their own cards, and so I'll also be done with that before the mayhem of the season. So that's my answer to just spacing things that a little bit. I love that, and I think creating more space is a real opportunity that we have. We actually a handful of years ago sent our holiday cards in September to encourage our community to vote actually for the election, because it was an important election to us. And one of the side benefits was I was just thinking I'm going to be sending you know, this mailer out to hundreds of people. Let me do it in a way that I can speak to something that really matters to us. So we all dressed in red, white and blue for pictures and sent out like it's time to Save Democracy card or tis the season to save Democracy? I think is what we named it. One of the side benefits was just not having to do it in November or December. It was lovely, And I think another piece is that we can plan ahead on saying, Okay, you know what really matters to me is going to this tree lighting and doing this thing for you know, Thanksgiving and decorating the tree with Pajamason. You know, whatever your traditions are that you care about, putting those on the calendar. Things that matter to you and things that are just kind of you've got to do, you know, like the kids are in a play or something for the holidays, like you probably need to show up for that. So putting those things on the calendar and then building in some deliberate like you know, what we're not going to do is go anywhere on this Sunday, because the day before is this big day of like holiday things and we're just going to stay home and plan in rest. I think is one way to make it feel less overwhelming, because you're right, it can be every evening and then if you're not out and about doing something, you should be wrapping or purchasing or creating or baking or something. And then the other thing I wanted to talk about related, well, I want to hear your take on holiday stress as well. But one thing that has come up again and again is childcare because not all of us can get off an entire two week stretch that our school aged children are off from school, and then daycares are often closed for a stretch of time. I know my sister is already kind of frantically planning for this right now as we speak. She knows it's coming, but it's not always. You know, you have to be careful because if you plan too far ahead with the babysitter, then you can kind of like run into issues if they change jobs or move. If you're doing it months in advance. You know, my husband and I often have to work for part of it, and we try to tag team it and I'm working on, you know, as bestilaid plans listeners know I'm trying to launch my course, and so I'm like, I know, I'm going to be frantically putting together materials towards the end of de summer, really polishing them. They're mostly ready, and so I actually already booked the kids in camp for three days. We're taking a family trip the first week, and then the second week we're going to recover. And I'm like, you're going to camp for three days. So I find that very stressful, the complete loss of structure and often a loss of childcare. And then also, of course, most childcare providers want to be off during those times, which is completely understandable. So I usually make arrangements for those holiday times that do not involve on any because she goes to be with her family. Yeah, and we do the same as someone who has worked in education, and my husband has also worked in education. In the past, we often actually did have time off ourselves when our kids were off. And yet I still think folks in that situation deserve the permission to get child care during that time, because we all know that. I don't know this is true for me, I won't speak for anybody else, but once I became a parent weekends became harder than my day job, and having nineteen of those in a row over the two weeks off plus weekends is like a real year, like can we start work again? Please? Thank you? That would be great. And so finding childcare. We live in a place where there's often lots of camps that are available. I don't know, maybe lots is a little bit overstating it, but our kids have loved them. There's like a backyard camp that's run by a former teacher where they do artwork and love it. There's also a camp run by the local SPCA where each day they get to meet some of the animals that are in the shelter and pictures of them and learn about the shelter and they have just loved it. They're actually going back for the three days of the Thanksgiving break this year to animal camp and they're really excited about that. We're visiting my family in Mississippi, and I googled and found a camp for my kids while we're there. Because of the prices being so high this year for travel, we are going to end up in Mississippi like a long time before the Christmas holiday actually starts, an entire week and so we wanted them to have somewhere to go every day to have fun with other kids. And it'll be a short day and we'll still have all these hours before they go and after they come home in the early afternoon to spend with the grandparents. But it allows the grandparents, my parents to get some time just with me, which is also a rare and hard thing to find once I had kids, and the grandkids are always around and typically the focus of the attention, which is lovely, but also it's really nice to just get to be with them. That's my mom and dad. You know, I like to hang out with them when I'm not responsible for a six and eight year old, and neither are they. Childcare is really important, and I think giving permission for folks, even for the prep right. So if you just say, you know what, it is important to me to get holiday gifts, and I want to go shopping on this day, and I'm going to invest in childcare to make that a day that isn't so stressful and I can just really go knock it out, maybe look forward to it, Maybe get my favorite Starbucks strins while I'm driving around doing my shopping, and maybe go to a cafe with my laptop and do the online parts. And that could make it easier too, because you're not doing that in the midst of like needing to also make like lunch in the middle of that Saturday. So I think childcare can be a huge way to create more joy and ease. For sure. I love your camp on vacation idea, and I so agree with the fact that the first impressions some people might be like, oh God, your kids get off and you want to send them to camp. But remember what Jessica said, nineteen days. If you put them in a camp for three or four days and it's nine to two, think about how many hours they have with you versus without you, and then you'll be like, oh, okay, I deserve that break. And speaking of break, we are going to take a quick ad break and we will be right back with some more holiday fun discussion. All right, we are back, and so we talked about what makes things stressful. We talked about holiday childcare and planning. Jessica, what have you illuminated from your holiday to do list or I guess your holiday to don't list? I don't know. Yeah, I know, saying no is really important. This time of year. It's actually one of the specific tips. I have a guide for joyfully managed holiday seasons, and it's in there because you've got to figure out what not to do. And so for me, the what not to do has come from making the mistake of doing those things and realizing it was not meeting my needs. For example, last year, we had decided to give gifts to lots of our local friends, which I love giving gifts, so I get a lot of joy from that. But there was one day when I had plenty to do and I was driving all around the San Francisco Bay area delivering gifts to people's porches, and I actually like grabbed my phone and like held down the button and said, like, remind me next November first, to not give so many local gifts. It is a lot of work to deliver them. And that popped back up and I was like, good reminder, past, Jess, thank you for reminding me about that. So in the past, I've written down notes for myself in my calendar to just pay the three ninety nine for Amazon to wrap the gift if you're ordering it from them, you know, if you're ordering it and somebody can wrap it for you it's worth it, because we all know that wrapping can be totally overwhelming, especially if you're all doing it all at once. This year, we're in the midst of selling our home actually around this time of year, which is tough, and we love to go to the zoo. They have like a thing called glow Fari, and I know a lot of zoos do like light shows and it is lovely at our local Oakland Zoo. And so it's a tradition that I want to keep doing. But I this year realize, oh, it goes all the way till the end of January. Here, we don't need to do it in the middle of like the three weeks where we're trying to like literally move everything out of our house. So we're going to go in January when all of it's over and we are just going to be much more settled and have much less to do anyway, And so saying no or just moving things totally recommend or Another thing that I have cut out many years, not always is just baking a million cookies. Sometimes we don't do it at all, or sometimes we just make one type of cookie because I'm the kind of person who I can sometimes accidentally like commit to making six types so cookies and delivering it to thirty three different friends or something. You know what am I doing? And then you're like crying on the floor, like why did I say I was going to do this and buy like thirty three containers and I'm going to try to make all these things and ice them, and my kids are mad and I'm mad, and like we have six more dozens to go into the oven, Like what are we even doing? I don't do that anymore. I feel like I'm almost in this season where I can embrace some more complex holiday cooking endeavors. But right now I'm just grateful that, like for Thanksgiving, all I have to do is make three of the same kind of pie. Nice, and that's my entire job. Yeah, I make a signature key lime pie, which is really not a Thanksgiving pie, but it's a very good key lime pie. In the family has grown to expect it, and apparently the demand has expanded because I used to make one and then two and now I'm been requested to make three. But wow. So yeah, keeping it simple and quantity rather than different things, because you can always swap other people are making stuff, especially with the cook If you want a bunch of different cookies, that would be your cookie swap. Everyone can wake one kind and everyone can team up and pass them all back and forth. That's right, And then you don't need to get any sort of catering totally for that holiday gathering. Just make it, you know, a pot luck. Again, what are you doing at some like a plus level that you could say, you know what, how could we make this simpler but still make it about the things that matter most, right, like the gathering, the being together, the celebration, the joy. You know you can get that without being totally pinterest perfect. I personally say no, or at least I will say, I say, delegate to our family holiday gifts. These days, my husband has been willing to take it over, so that is like a very satisfying thing to just not put on my list at all. I will also say, depending on the dynamics of your family, listen, if you're listening to this podcast, there's a fairly good chance you have everything you need. And yes, given gifts can bring joy, but if you take it to an excessive love, it's just creating more stuff in the world just for the sake of creating stuff, So think about how you could perhaps like encourage some sort of charity exchange instead, or buy somebody like an animal off of the Heffer International Catalog, or you know, like be the creative or consumable gifts like do a really lovely fragrance of soap that you know they're going to use up, but just get the same thing for everyone, like most of us don't need more stuff, and sometimes having a discussion about that can take things off of your plate, both from a to do list standpoint, and then also financially, which we should talk about as well. Yes, I totally agree, I mean you said it all, and also not only just doing you know, charities or consumables or experiences those are great gifts. But also there's a world in which you actually just talk to your family and you say, can we just not do gifts at all? No gifts, we just spend time together And the rest of your family might actually love that idea. I mean maybe not, but what if they said yes? What if just some of them can say yes? You know what if you're like, well, me and my brother, I don't know, we could just stop giving each other gifts and we probably both be fine with that. Okay, let me check in. Is that good? Great? I'm excited to see you and have some key lime pie together. And I will not be bringing you any sort of travel coffee mug. And then with all kinds of staff or like people I work with, then it's just cash, which is also pretty easy from a logistics perspective, right, Yes, So that was what I wanted to also mention, do you have a specific way that you either budget for the holidays or advise others to budget for the holidays. I'll tell you what we do, which is that you know, we use you need a budget, and I actually have a category where I just add a certain amount every single month of the year, so that when I get to December, I have this little pot of money that I don't really feel bad about or nervous about, like just giving us gifts, and really it's for gifts. It's for like staff gifts, for our nanny's gift, for I don't know, random family kid gifts, et cetera. But it just it definitely takes the pressure off to have a dedicated like category. So I was wondering if you had any tips or anything that you typically advised people to do It's so funny because we do exactly the same. We use wineab We put in money every month and then at the end of the year we've got some money that is just available for spending for gifts. And the way that we built that budget is actually by because I love giving gifts so much, I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of ideas and did I buy this person something and how much was it? Because usually that's pretty easy to just enter and it has allowed me in the past to say, like, Okay, we're spending about this much, and it gives me a ballpark idea for what it's what we're going to spend. And for us, we're not just including gifts, but we also include the cost of cards and stamps for them and some other like you know, if we have any other big expenses like that. And for us, that helps us understand because the holidays are not they can be a big expense, but they're not an unexpected one like they happen every year, so we can plan for them. And so once we figure that out, that made it a lot easier so that we weren't still paying off the holidays in February or having to use a credit card, So that's how we use it. I think just setting limits is really key when you're saying this is about how much we want to spend on folks, leave some room for Oh my gosh, I just found the most amazing thing. It's the best gift I've ever found for this person they are going to. You know, sometimes you find that and you're just like, it's worth spending a little more. You know, we're going to do that because it's just so great. Leave some room for that, Leave some room for the unexpected, like white elephant party that you didn't know you were going to get invited to, And you know, that's how you can kind of leaving room. Setting some budgets is how you can make sure it doesn't get out of control, because it can be pretty stressful and certainly not joyful and easy when you're worried deeply about money. Totally makes sense as a teacher than cash, which is always a wonderful thing to give teachers because they deserve to be paid more anyway, and who doesn't like cash? What have been some of your favorite teacher like gifts, maybe given along with a gift card or cash. Yeah, I have given Scout bags and there's these really great, like, you know, bags you can take for the day or take to your classroom. And every teacher needs a good bag, right, So Scout bags have been really good. They even have some really good cooler bags that I'm planning to give this year. Hopefully none of the teachers of my own kids are listening to this episode, so that you know, you could. It's kind of like a little easy, soft sidey cooler to take around with you to like a picnic or something. We have often also used like a shutterfly to get personalized notepads with like the teacher's name, so at the top it I'll say like miss Cynthia, and it's like, you know, one hundred pages of beautiful piece of note stationary with their name on it. Or like a personalized drink like on Etsy, so you can, you know, get like a cup with a straw that's got you know, mister Munno's on it, you know, and then they can have that and it kind of looks nice. So those are a couple of my ideas this year I'm thinking about potentially with the bags, putting in some We have a really famous local ice cream shop and they sell jars of their chocolate fudge, and I was thinking about potentially doing like a little ice cream themed gift with like a little jarfudge. If all of this sounds stressful for anybody listening, I just want to give you permission to not do this at all. Just give them fifty bucks. It's still is fine. They'll be thrilled. But those are some of the If it gives you joy to think about giving these kind of gifts, then here's your permission to do that. And it's here's your permission to not do it at all. And trust me, having been a middle school teacher, none of the teachers are expecting your child to give them a gift. So don't worry. They will not notice if you don't give them anything. They will not be like, oh my gosh, Cameron's mom, that's weird. That is not going to happen. So you could also just skip that completely and take that off your list. But those are some of my favorite ideas. I love it well, we are down to our love of the week. I will give you a moment to collect yours, and I'll make mine a little bit wintry. So I recently went to Seattle and I was freezing, and I knew I would be freezing because I really don't have anything resembling a winter coat anymore other than this whole job from like pre twenty ten. It I just can't. So anyway, I bought myself a Patagonia down sweater. That thing is amazing. I looked so Seattle like, I looked around. I was like, everyone is wearing this, and it's also super warm and it packs really really small. Now, I don't think it would work like on its own We're going to Montana in the skiing snow like. I don't think it's going to be enough on its own for that. But for like a North Carolina winter day, or like a late fall New England day, or any day in Seattle really with something water prove over it. If it's raining, it is awesome. And it was so comfortable, and I love it awesome. I think mine I've been thinking about lately. We have a local service, and I know that these exist around the country where they will come every so often. We signed up for quarterly and they clean our trash bends for us. So they've basically repurposed a like a trash truck and so they lift them up and they like have sprayers that spray in there and get all the gunk out, and then they have dry you know, like sprays air so it all dries it. And then somebody comes around and like it does any little clean up with like a little rag, and then they spray something that smells good in there. And it is just like the best money I could imagine spending, because every three months we're like, ooh, that's getting kind of gross in there. We should do something about that. But when are you ever in the mood for that? It is such a fun little splurge to spend money on. So I really like that service. I hesitate to call it a treat, but it kind of sounds like a treat it is. It feels like a treat. Awesome. Well, Tesco has been so fun having you and talking all things holiday. Can you tell our listeners where they can find you and also about the little goodie you cooked up for them? Oh yeah, So I made a guide that I'm making it free for any folks who are listening to Best of Both Worlds, which is my favorite podcast. So fun to be here. You can find me on Instagram at joyfully Managed Family. You can find the Guide to Joyfully Managed Holiday Seasons on my website at www dot Jessica Eastmanstewart dot com slash freebies f R E E B I E S and you'll get it for free. It is eleven pages that gives you some tips on how to make your holiday season more joyful and easy, some advice overall, and even some planning pages to allow you to plan what matters to you and kind of get it on the calendar so you can use it digitally, you can print it out. I hope it is so helpful for this community, which I have gotten so much from over the years, so this is my way to give back. I love it, yes, especially the fillable part is super useful. Well, thank you so much and have a wonderful holiday you too. Bye. Everyone. Oh that was so much fun. I love chatting about all things holiday. It definitely does make me feel a little bit cozy and like I want to light a piny candle and fake something with cinnamon in it or something. So that was just really really fun to talk. Now, I do not want to answer a Q and A all on my own without Laura, because that just does not seem like it would be fair to get a one sided opinion on one of your dilemmas. So instead I will read a I don't want to say testimonial, but a happy story that a listener sent us in terms of how some advice we gave her in the past panned out. So the rest is going to be me reading in her voice what she wrote to us. Hello. I thought i'd follow up to let you all know how it turned out, and went full time in May, and it has made my life less stressful and allowed me to be more flexible during the work week with personal appointments, midday breaks, etc. It's amazing how much less rush you are when you have a whole extra day to get work done. I also got that promotion and a nice increase in August. Another big change that we made was to hire a twice weekly housekeeper. We've always had someone who comes every other week, which I know is pretty typical, but it just wasn't making a difference in our day to day chores. Our house would be squeaky clean for a few hours and I didn't have to clean toilets, and that was about it. One Sunday night, after spending two precious hours folding and putting away yet another pile of laundry and picking up. I decided that something needed to be done. I put an ad on care dot com and we found a wonderful person who comes for two to three hours every Monday and Thursday. I haven't polded or put away a single laundry item since she started, and the house vibe is just more peaceful and tidy, and I'm a person who needs that. It's allowed me to be more present with my kids, and I've been cooking real meals again. Just thought i'd share as it felt unnecessary and Bougie, let's be honest, those are her words to have someone twice a week on paper, but it's actually quite affordable and has made a huge difference. Thank you so much for letting us know. I love this update. It sounds like a very happy one. I will point out that it never seems unnecessary when a possibly female half of a partner is doing those tasks for their partner who's working in a one working parent household. And yet somehow we have thoughts that we think when it is a different person with two full time working parents. So I think that's super interesting and great fodder for us to think about and I'm so glad you found some more peace in your household with these changes. Keep the stories coming, keep the questions coming, Send us your holiday ideas and vibes and cheer, and we will be back next week on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoe box dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box 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.