Listener Hacks.

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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 one hundred and thirty three, which is first airing in late February. We are going to be covering listener life hacks this week. We got a lot of awesome life hacks sent in through our Instagram account. You guys certainly know how to make life more efficient and better, so we're looking forward to sharing those in this episode. We wanted to remind you how you can get in touch with us if you do have tips or questions things you want to share. It's funny there. I think some people assume there was a team or something. Yeah, somebody wrote on Instagram something like I didn't want to bomb their personal accounts, So is there a way to contact the podcast? And I was like, uh, yeah, I'm on the Instagram, so I do run the Instagram and Laura and I respond to blog to emails from my personal emails all the time. So we are absolutely welcome that and we do not as yet have a team. We do have people helping us mix the sound, but there's no like media or publicity handlers at this juncture. Yeah. Now that only strikes me. It's funny. I get some emails into my website account sometimes that through the contact form, people like, well, you know, could you to Laura's team. I'm like, that's the tea. The team is me. I'm reading it. So yes, that's nice to have people feel like you're bigger than you are. So yeah, you feel free to email us you reach through We have them email addresses on our websites, the shoebox dot com and Laura vandercam dot com reach out through through Instagram. Certainly, people that I know their names through comments or emails I follow, So yeah, I would love to get suggestions from you. I was thinking about how we were both like, I feel like there was a time when people. A lot of people blog daily and now almost nobody does, and both of us seem to really enjoy it. I don't know it's close to daily every single day, but I guess I'm a little bit behind. I've been doing more like three times a week in these this past few weeks. Okay, by multiple posts a week back up, You've been on a roll. I I get to check every morning. I'm like pumping at six am. I'm like, let's see what Sarah's posted. There's no shortage of things to talk about, and for some reason, there's nothing I'd rather do while I'm drinking my first coffee than write a blog post. So that's what happened, and so the world benefits from that. So if you're not reading Sarah's blog, you definitely should. The shoebox thhe sa to you box and Laura is Laura Vanderkam doctor, apparently not cool enough to think of a handle. No, it's better to have your name, And I've thought about it, but hard hunger is like a mouthful, so I'm hesitant. Who knows, we'll see My long term strategy will be. Sarah posted this week. When we're recording this in late January on our Instagram account, the Best of Both Worlds Podcasts Instagram account, asking for your life hacks, and you responded, So we're just gonna go ahead and dive right into some of them. Yeah, I feel free to share ones that you have. If you like these, or if any of these didn't work for you, please please let us know that too. And we did sort them into categories so that we won't be, you know, jumping around from buying baby shoes to I don't know, we could jump around. We can jump around too, all right. Well, the first theme that things seem to fall into, we're kids clothing. A lot of people had some great ideas in this realm. So many of you like to buy all the same color socks for your kids. I feel like I haven't done this because I kind of like buying random looking socks. But I get what you're saying, because sorting them is kind of annoying. Well, but then, so each kid would have their own color, is that what you're saying, Well, that would be an idea too, But I think the idea if everyone has the same color, it's hard to how do you sort it by size? Like if I'm wondering this probably would work. Like if you had like a four and six year old, they could wear the same they all write the same, soa who cares, right, that would be amazing. But you're right, I love that variation. If you have five children, for example, and they have different sizes, each kid gets their signature soack color, Yeah, you only match that and then you know where it goes, or even if it's if it's white with like uh, some of the Hanes, for instance, I've noticed the lettering is in different colors. So for a long time, is it Jasper only had the Hanes with the blue lettering and Sam had the Hanes with the green lettering. If you're having to look closely enough to look for the letters, I feel like that almost defeats the purpose. Then you might as well have different petters. But you can also have your children, your older children sort their own socks. Like that's my hack, not not, that's actually a great hack. So there you go. I actually started. I kicked this whole thing off. Maybe that's why there's a lot of kids clothing ones. But the fact that my thing for Genev even particular, is like I'll buy two pairs of shoes at once, and I'll skip the half size, like who needs half sizes? Right, But I'll buy like a size seven and a size eight sandal because this is Florida, and like she's gonna need sandals year round, so it's not like I'm gonna risk that she won't be the right size, especially if I find like a decent coupon or sale at Zappos. Just it's just like such a nice comforting feeling, Like if she's growing out of it, you'd be like, ooh, well, we already have the next one. Because feet are only going to grow. It's an inevitability until a certain point. But we haven't gotten there yet. Yeah, now they can grow up for a long time. I'm curious about finding the shoe sales. It's just that when she needs new shoes, you're on and then looking to see what's on sale, or yeah, like she needs your shoes recently, And I actually I like Sappos because they will deliver in one day. So we had a cold snap and our and he's like, I lost one of her sneakers, so we need shoes for her, and I'm like, well, Zappo's will deliver by tomorrow, so we can beat the cold snap and it Actually they also have a great return policy. So and this is not a sponsor, but anyway, so but sometimes they have good sales and or if you just know that like they're gonna you're gonna need it, like you might as well just buy two it once. Or I've gotten like twenty percent off coupons that will apply to the whole order. So there you go, buy three by size six, seven and eight or whatever. It doesn't work obviously if your kids are going to change their mind about yeah, or if or if it's seasonal. I mean that's the problem if we live in a place with four distinct seasons, Like you don't know for sure if they're gonna be wearing the size thirteen in summer or in the next winter. So but but there's some shoes that they might wear you around, like dress shoes for instance. I like this next one that we got from a listener. It says, for items that don't get a lot of wear, like snow pants, buy unisex colors so they can be handed down or make sure your son's okay with pink and purple. That's the other the other option there, I mean, most most that was my side note only because like snow is such a rarity that I don't think Cameron would actually, he'd be so distracted by the fact that we were like in snow. But I agree, like, get a neutral, easy color, then you know that every gender is gonna wear it. Nobody's gonna complain. How can you really hate pants that are just gray or something. Yeah, well, Alex is worn pink mittens. It's totally totally fine. He can. I refuse to view it as a girl color. Michael has some pink shirts. Yeah, but what I would say is that a simple color and a neutral sort of so it's not gonna be a cartoon character that one child is gonna hate and refuse to wear. So we have been buying snow boots in sort of pretty much most sizes or within a number of a size, going down from adult size to baby. And the upside of that is that the kids sort of move in sequence up through them. And so now Alex is wearing the boots that Ruth was wearing a year or two ago. Ruth is wearing the boots Sam was wearing. Sam is wearing one's jests was wearing. I do have to buy either new ones for him, though for a while he was wearing my boots. But I don't get new snow boots everywhere because my feetal gross, So eventually we had to start buying bigger boots for him. Oh my god, the oldest kid is so lucky all the new stuff. Although I've found like you're probably also tougher with the oldest kid on other things, like you know, no, we do not eat crackers for breakfast and kid them before the sure eat what do you want? Did you eat? That's great, that's a good point. So it balances out. It balances out. So yes, buy those in simple colors like black or I don't know, navy blue or something that everyone will wear and pass them on down. I like the suggestion to keep a basket in your kid's closet to cull as you realize the clothes are too small or I did too destroyed, because sometimes I'll get to something and be like, okay, this is kidding, that's just a trash can. Yeah, you know, donate that. But it's amazing the impulse to just put something back in the drawer, as if maybe later it will look the whole better to you or something. I mean, I am fully guilty of that. Yeah. Yeah. Another with that i'd add in terms of bins for clothing is if you have a house where the laundry room is on one story. So if you have more than one story in your house and the laundry is going to be on one story of it, put a hamper on the other story. So that way if people are rather than just tossing their socks on the ground, which they may anyway, but there's at least a little bit easier for them to get it in a hamper, if that is a thing. If you have a two story house, yes, and I didn't include this in this category, but we keep a set of the kids clothes downstairs, like probably like a full week's worth. They're just shoved in bins because it helps us get out. We have a tight timeline in the morning, and for some reason, getting dressed when they're tired and they don't want to go to school is like pulling teeth. So to at least remove the step of having to go upstairs and get it, like everything they need is down here, very very helpful. Love that one, all right. So our next realm, I would say, is the meal groceries and shopping category. I feel like you have a lot of thoughts on that category. Well, I do. We have a listener question related to this topic, is you know, for a different episode, not for this one. But the key thing is you want to make sure you're The point of a hack is to make life easier and simpler and ideally take less time. So if your hack does not do that, you should possibly rethink this hack. And so my beef is that a lot of meal planning winds up making prep and stuff means you take more time to do it, and you may eat better and you may save money, and those may be goods in their own right, and so then you should know that that's what you're doing it for as opposed to saving time. However, I will say grocery delivery is beautiful, a beautiful thing, and that was I mean everybody, and actually the happy medium between grocery delivery and doing it yourself. The curb side pickup people are big on that because there's actually a lot less fees associated with it, and really the pain point isn't driving there and bringing your stuff home. It's going through all the aisles and checking out and having your kids all over the place. And I'm asking for stuff, And especially if I think this hack would work. If you pick a place on your way home from work, for example, and you have it ready, then you actually, you know, costs you nothing and probably won't really cost much in the way of time anyway, because my one downside of the delivery is, oh my god, I've done it a couple of times. Number One, stuff is always missing that I know the store has a Number Two, they use so much unnecessary packaging that's disposable, and I get so mad. I'm like, when I drive to the grocery store, I don't need a thermost sensitive like bubble wrap on every item, Like why did this person? And I guess it's probably for like liability reasons. We're in Florida, it's hot, but no, it's crazy. I get mad, So I have a feeling I would probably be happier trying pick up. So we haven't been doing grocery delivery lately, partly because you know, our nanny has been able to go while Alex was in preschool, but of course now that we have the baby, that time has like disappeared, and so we're looking into grocery delivery services. So we'll have to report back on that. Another heck people have is to have a generic grocery list for items that you regularly buy. And I really like this idea, so you can print it up and cross off and add as needed. But that keeps you from and if you are shopping from a list like every time, being like we buy milk every time, Well, of course you do, so we don't have to keep writing it every time, and you can cross off the things with that. I say, if you shop at warehouse clubs. One thing that I have found helpful in terms of inventory management is not just to have a buy list, but have a do not buy list, because we have wound up with say, six cans of cooking spray, because whoever has gone to the shopping the the Costco, Sam's Club, whatever, Bjay's has decided that, oh we often buy this product, let's put it in the cart, but we never used it up from the last time that we I think we had like four bags of cornstarch. Is it weird? Accumulates like so weird? Well, because if you're just walking like, oh, yeah, we use that, I should just get it while I'm here, and then you wind up with a lot of a product that takes a while to know and that's smart, or even having like a notes app for you on your phone, those kind of like staples. I don't know that you have that, Like you get a recipe and you're like, oh, do we have that or not? Like if you kind of note, you could do it once and then you'd have it. Yeah, you have all this stuff, don't buy it. Don't buy it. I like that, do not buy So cooking a double batch. Maybe we've talked a lot about doing leftovers here, that's always a great thing. Another person says, have a list of what's in your freezer and this this is helpful if you have it, say on the front of your freezer or next to your freezer, because you can then work through what is in your freezer as opposed to going to the store and be like, do we have hamburger meat? Well, yes, now you know you have hamburger meat without you having to hunt through. And I think this person keeps it in her notes on her phone so that you know, if she's at work and she's like, do I need to pick up dinner? Oh wait, no, I can see what's in my freezer. Yeah, it's on my notes app that's here's a slightly more hackish one, and I love this the cleanup hack for the dishwasher, separating utensils and categories in the dishwasher. So if you put the forks in the front, the spoons in the middle, and the knives in the back of your utensil part of your dishwasher, well, then you can just pull them out very easily when you are emptying the dishwasher. And this might make it slightly easier for say a young child to empty the dishwasher that you know they can sort it, but they might get distracted if it takes too long. So this is a way to make it a little bit quicker. A money saving rather than a time saving tip that someone left was if you're online shopping and leave stuff in your cart and then close it, a lot of times they'll email you a coupon the next day or two to complete your I've had this happen with apps in particular. I'll like, think about getting an app, and then I'll like, eh, no, never mind, and I close it and then I'll get an email They're like, actually, we'll give you that up for thirty dollars instead of sixty or something because I guess to them, it doesn't cost them any you know, it's like they're not going to lose money even if I bought it for one dollar. Let's put it that way. So their advantage wildly freaky. I would say that the information is like, how do they know what's in my card? How do they have my But it is what it is. Everybody it is they know. And that thing is going to follow you around the internet and all the ads you see online for the next three days. So wait for the coupon. It's coming. And with that, we are going to take our moment break for our sponsors and we'll be right back. Hey, listeners, we know you're busy, but is there something that's interfering with your happiness or is preventing you from achieving your goals? Better help Online counseling is there for you. 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But it's that idea of like, can I move something to a different time? Yeah, it's more it's adding flexibility. It's something that felt rigid. And again I want to say, like that doesn't mean you should make meals for the week on Sunday. It doesn't mean that you need to make people's lunches every night, because I think that time is valuable too. But you might think about like ordering groceries during a five minute wait between conference calls, for instance, Like you couldn't go to the grocery store then, But you've moved this thing that would have taken maybe leisure time later in the day to a time that you would have just wasted waiting for this person to call you. So that's that's time bending and that that can be helpful. All right, enough, Well, I enjoy the tip to listen to audiobooks while you're doing things. I mean that's kind of like, yeah, but it's true. Yeah, chores when you're doing boring stuff. But I do that all the time, mostly with podcasts, and it is true. It's like an obvious one, but you know, it's like a little treat. You know, it turns something incredibly boring into something fun. So don't forget that. That's an option. I like this one of keeping floss in your car's glove compartment. So if you find yourself saying I never have time to flyss, well, I don't know if you're sitting in your car somewhere where you do have time. Maybe you're waiting to pick up your kids, and you don't mind if the neighbors walk by your part car and see you flossing. But it could be time that you could do for that. And I hope nobody flosses while they're actively move while they're driving. Yes, no, maybe if you're stopped in traffic, can be can just imagine being hunked because you're like busy, so excuse me flossing. I can't go with the light turn and grain, so hey, you do you, you do you, But when I will say, I'm like fitting in this personal maintenance during other times is doing squats or crunches during small bits of time that you might have. So if you again, while waiting for a call to start, Like the reason I'm hyping on this is because I've had people track their time recently, where you can waste all kinds of time. I'm waiting for a conference call to start, like everyone's on, you're waiting for the last person who has to be on in order to start. Or you're dialed in early and other people are late, or you are somebody was supposed to call you, and so you're waiting for that call, but they call it four minutes after the hour. Versus that time, you could use this time and you're not going to do much deep work during that, but you could do crunches or you know, if you have think push ups. Pushes chups are like I mean, how long can you do push ups for? Anyway? Right? Yeah, so you two sets of ten push ups and it takes you what two minutes? Then like, wow, you've done two sets of ten push ups today. That's like that's like all I can do. So there you go, Yeah, And the other day while I was waiting for something to print, here's another one. If you're waiting for something to print and it's like a multi page document, you've got time there. And I'm always just like sitting there staring at the printer as if this is going to help the pages come out faster. And so the other day I was like, oh, get my kettlebells and then start doing a little lifts while I'm waiting for this thirty page document to print. And so you know, there you go, it's it's time. You can you can use for something like that. I like it and I think you know today our default is, well, let me just jump onto Instagram during that time, But the truth is that you're more likely to end up bleeding that over into the next ten minute block or whatever, compared to doing push ups. You're probably going to promptly resume whatever you were waiting for if you were doing something painful but productive, painful, I can, I can I go back to the food like that? Then listening to our listeners, great hacks. I have a couple that I wanted to share with this. Yeah, breakfasts. So there are many people in my house who need to eat breakfast every morning. And one thing we've started doing is having boiled eggs made ready to go so you can buy them. You can buy peeled boiled eggs in a lot of stores. That's a convenience item that is available, and so this can be the basis of a very quick breakfast. You know, get if you have lots of kids, get a Force Life's toast or instead of a two slice right there, there's something or I don't know, maybe they sell eight slices, but so I, you know, put four slices of toast in, pull out eggs, boiled eggs, and then you just you know, have pre cut fruit and it's like assembly line. Boiled eggs, gun toast, cut up fruit hits most of the major food groups. There, it's breakfast, it's done. It's almost instantaneous. Big fan. So that's that's my personal life hack. I think we alternated our house between bagels that I toast all at once and then top all at once and put on plates with fruit and then or cereal. Do you have a toaster oven or do you have a toaster oven, so I can put four items in there at the same time, providing breakfast for everyone. In one go. We've had a lot of people right in that this is actually one of their life things, their love of the week, as it were, as a toaster oven, because they beat up pretty quickly. Apparently this is actually very funny because literally today Josh was like, I think we need a new toaster oven, and he said, I want to rebuy the exact same one. I think we got it for our wedding in two thousand and six, and like, if it lasted fourteen years, that's why you should buy another one. Yeah, I mean that's that's we'll reward them for all those years of service without any issues. Although I'm like, it still works, why do we need on the one? But that's okay. Yeah, so toaster oven, I guess that's a hack. I never realized it, but yeah, it's great for heating up pizza. There's like no preheating time, and it's true you can prepare toasted things for numerous children in one go, one go. A quick laundry hack from someone here, so her time bending was that she loads the washing machine the night before with the clothes and detergent. When wakes up, hits power on it. But I think the key understanding here is if you don't want to spend your weekend doing laundry, for instance, you know one thing you can do is do some little bits during the week for instance. And often people are doing it at night, which is maybe time that you wish to relax. But if all you have to do is get its, manage the timing of it, that time in the morning could in fact be time that you run something. So consider consider that that that is a time that could work. Yeah, definitely. I like this person that hits power on the washing machine and the coffee maker at the same time. It's like two hands. I don't know, are they next to each other the Probably not simultaneously, but I think I think around the same time. So you're right thinking about unconventional times to do your laundry. All right, Yeah, some kid hacks. I like the balloons excellent purse toy to entertain a toddler, not this idea. Yeah, balloons in your purse is because they're really they don't take up any room, don't there for fun? Oh, we're totally doing number two, which is cut little boy's hair like twice a year. We used to take Cameron more often. He kind of had this like buzz cut. But we've kind of stopped. We're like, let's see what his hair actually looks like. And it's true, you can get away with a lot of growth if you cut it pretty short. So he's currently sporting the longest hair he's ever had, which is not very long. So don't like imagine he's not it doesn't have long hair. But yeah, it's it's it's time saving. Another listener writes in, to never put batteries in any toy that makes sound, and if your kids don't know what makes sound, then they're not going to find out. If the kids are little enough, I think this could work. You can also just take batteries out of anything you find incredibly annoying and then you don't have to listen to it, and you don't have to replace it. You don't have to replace it. Another listener writes in to take the little junk toys you receive and put them in the diaper bag for play on the go. There certainly can be toys that are maybe for the car or for you know, sitting in a restaurant, and if you lose it, it's fine because you didn't pay anything for it. It's you know, something you'd be willing to toss in the trash on the way out anyway, So that could be great for those sort of you know, bring your own happy meal toy to a different restaurant, but especially like you mentioned, like birthday parties. You know, you get that little bag of crap basically, and then if it gets in your house, it's just crap and ends up getting cleaned up and thrown the garbage. But if you save that for on the go use and it might actually serve a purpose and then easily disposed of, yeah, there you go. Another listener writes in that you can make three lunches three days at a time with good containers and they don't get gross. So that could be similarly to the breakfast sort of modular outlet. You know, if you have cut up fruit that you can put in different containers, some sets of pretzels, you know, cheese stick have that lined up in the fridge and then you can just shove it into a box and they were bag and out they go and the door in the morning. So that can work it too, a modular approach. Modular all right, travel, So this one relates to our last episode. Last week. We had Matt and Joel on our show If all went according to plan, and they talked about how their kids are all the same age and how they're going to take vacations together, while someone suggested that exact same thing, so share an Airbnb with friends the same age kid, especially preschool and above, which saves money and the kids entertain each other. And I like this actually because maybe you could then splourage on kind of like a big ski shealet or something like that, being anial and it would be kind of like a fun adventure. And it's very true that like a lot of times, like two six year olds are way easier than one six year old, for example, because they will entertain each other. Yeah, it's like your own little kids club. So that can that can be good. And having multiple adults is also just good in general because people could in fact take an hour while other people run to the grocery store or something, Whereas it's a little harder when it's just say you and your spouse trading off, because then it's it's it's not as fun, it's not fun, not as fun the go bag. Well, this is probably good for emergency preparedness too, that it's smart to have a bag with a change of clothes for family members. You know, if you're traveling and you normally check bags, which I don't, but if you are the sort of person who checks bags, you want to make sure that your carry on bag that you are not trying to be so light on the plane that you don't have an extra pair of clothes and anything you would need in the first twenty four hours, so medications and medications especially, you don't want to be trying to track that down on it. Don't want to check that out all right, general, I think we can include sort of our checklists for everything. Well, we like checklists, but if there's something you're going to do again in the future, make a list of what you are doing and that way you can follow it the next time. Save so much mental energy. They have so much mental energy. So for instance, if you throw a dinner party and you have a menu, you could use that menu again in the future. If your guests liked what you had, you know, probably it won't be the exact same guess the next time, so you could, you know, just make the checklist of what you did and then you can pull it out and do it again the next time. That you you have an occasion or a packing list or like the holiday prep list. If you have like a bunch of things you like to always do for Christmas, that mental energy of like thinking about what they are, it's actually not negligible. So save that list. Yeah, Always make your next appointment while you're at your appointment. This was This was something that I sort of appreciated with, you know, the prenatal visits. The you know, they start coming fast and furious at some point in there, but you're always in there making the next appointment for the next time, whereas for stuff that's further spread apart, you might not do that. And that it probably explains why I went, like, you know, four years without going to my doctor because they had to have to call and make an appointment and then it's going to be like months from now, because it's you know, I love it when doctor's offices have the schedules like a million years in advance, although then you are subject to getting that phone call where they're like, oh, the doctor's actually taking vacation. Yeah yeah, but still, you know, even if it works eighty percent of the time, well, I think definitely you should. I mean, as a doctor's office. You should have availability for schedules at the recommended interval that people should be coming back for this thing. So if you are a dentist, for instance, you should definitely have six months out that you are booking because so people can book. Or a pediatric under chronologists. Okay, I am actually like my men. I drive my managers crazy because I cannot stand when I don't have that interval already open and my patients have to call back because I know they get annoyed. They get annoyed. Yeah, no, that's wasted time. Like I was in the office, I could have done this with the scheduler there and if you've recommended coming back in whatever months, then yeah, yes, so agree. I like the I love the last one. Have the kids close in age. I have four months four year old twins and a three year old singleton. They're fifteen point five months apart, so many efficiencies, fewer years of childcare, more years at the same school, and built in playmates. Well yeah, that's I mean one idea. I mean there's something to be said. They have as many kids as I have and a fifteen month age range. That's amazing. Yeah, so that means that she was pregnant when she had like six months twins, A little bit nutty muddy. Oh, yes, yes she was, So we will just put that there without comment. They have triplets, I mean no, no, no, don't all right, well, I think we should move to our Q and A because this is also somewhat about it. I have a whole lot of hacks, So thank you all so much for submitting those, because those were ninety eight percent your hacks with a little bit of our commentary. But you have very smart things and it's fun to share your ideas with the rest of you, So thank you. So this listener writes, in vacation planning, how do you plan so far in advance? Well, this is just because Sarah and I are freaks. But anyway, is it set in stone when you plan it or are things more vague ideas and then the details are ironed out later. How many vacation days is optimal to save for sick kids and last minute invitations? Also interested in vacation budgeting, what is a normal amount Ooh, that's a weighted question of take home pay to spend on travel and such. I had to include this question because I had been it was so random. The question came in, I think, like yesterday and the day before I had been googling, like, what is a normal amount to spend on travel? Google? Those is Google? Now, I don't know. I was like second guessing our travel budget basically because it's not low. I think, as you know, last year we barely traveled at all because I just was like done with it. But now that I feel very hopeful. Oh my gosh. I hope I'm not wrong, but I feel hopeful that it's going to be a little better. Like Genevieve is so much more verbal. I think she would sit and watch a movie on the plane for at least part of the time. I think she's more likely to sleep through the night on vacation. Again, if I am wrong, oh my god, this year is going to be rough. But anyway, we plan a lot more trips and I was just wondering whether it was overkilled. And I guess I'll answer that part first. I didn't find any specific one answer. People doesn't know, no, and neither do the blogs, and you know, everyone has a different opinion. But the things that I saw ranged from like on the low and they said three percent of gross pay or one thing said, well, you know, thirty percent of your expenses are variable, so it doesn't matter as long as it fits within that thirty percent, to another one which said, like, you know, between five to ten percent of take home pay is normal. But I came to my own conclusion that probably is not a right number. But the question is are you meeting your saving schoals? If you can check that off and is if it's a priority for you, then it can probably be whatever you want. There's no there's no right answer if you are already meeting your savings goals. So when I did my calculation, I actually did plant. I I calculated it's about like four percent of our gross pay, which probably means five percent because when you estimate vacation costs are always probably more. And so I felt actually better about it. But here's the thing. I mean, you guys you posted on your blog. If so, I feel like this is probably public information out that I could share that you guys are renting a place that is seven percent of your income. Yes, so we're not spending on our housing, you're not spending on your pausing. So having made that decision versus a lot of people going north of you, know, twenty twenty five five percent. Yeah, that is eighteen percent. You can play around with. You can do whatever you want with. You can save some of it, and you can use some of it for travel. I mean, I think if you want to, given the low percentage of your income spent on housing, you could literally spend the same amount on housing as travel. And yeah, we really could. And I felt better about that, and I think I think, I actually, like really, the first question is like our our savings goals met? If our savings goals are met, then you know what, like whatever, it's fine, because it's just it's just a question of you know, making sure that everything else kind of fits in there. So I'm giving you reader or listener permission to also, you know, give yourself if that's something that you prioritize. It can be something that you know has a significant portion of your budget. Now, I think that you know, yes, Laura and I are planners, but I think that for most people it is somewhat beneficial to do barely far out vacation planning, mostly because especially if your family is they're just you. I've been in the situation where I'm trying to book something two or three months out and there's just much less choice, And I would much rather be faced with, say, looking at you know, a number of airbnbs, versus being like, well, there's only two, so I guess we're just gonna do this one. This was much less of an issue. If I'm just booking travel for Josh and me, I don't feel as strongly in that case. I really just care about, Okay, well, my work schedule is very planned out and they want me to give a lot of notice, so I feel like I have to block out the time. But the rest of the details don't matter unless there's something very specific I want to do. But for the family traveling, I don't worry about booking the airfare. I don't worry about booking the rentals. I worry about booking the lodging, just because stuff just seems to fill up. Well, it also depends how, yeah, how big your family is. Four people can probably go almost anywhere. Three people definitely can. If you're buying eight plane tickets and you want them together, you need to get on that, that's true, or fly Southwest and then upgrade and then yeah, yeah, exactly. I would also say that there are some upsides to planning the whole the year kind of holistically, because if you are going to take more than one trip and you have different factions of your family who enjoy different things, this means that you're not pitting each vacation against each other. So you're not saying, well, well, some people like to ski and some people like to go to the beach, and so you know, and some people like to go to a big city, and what are we going to do for spring break? And like everyone's arguing about that. If you have decided that, okay, spring break is the beach, and maybe we're going to go on a you know, urban trip in the summer and take a few days to ski over the next winter break, well then you know that everyone's going to get what they want. And so then people can be a little bit more open to doing other things and other vacations without feeling like, oh, this is my vacation, I'm not getting to do what I want to do and feeling unhappy about that. Yeah, it helps you provide some balance to that vacation schedule and long term budgeting then too. I mean, because it's true looking at your annual amount, like how do you know if you if you don't think about your other trips, Like, how do you know if you've wig overspent on spring break and now you know you can't do what you want to do in the summer winter, You know, you just I think by having at least an idea of what you want to do, even if you don't know exactly, like putting a number on it. No, it definitely helped me from a peace of mind perspective to kind of add up an estimate of our year's trips. That's actually a really nice point. And otherwise it's very hard to calculate any kind of percentage or any kind of to know what you're saving for. And a lot of people do save for that kind of very expense by saying, Okay, I'm going to put x amount into my vacation fund. But unless you know kind of what you're doing for the year, then how do you know how much to put in that fund? So that's another reason as for how much PTO you leave for kid kid emergencies and stuff. What's your what's your cushions? Yeah, so I'm I mean every institution is different. We are lucky and that ours rolls over. I think if you have more than like three or four weeks. It doesn't roll over. But I've never had that much of a cushion, so it's a non issue. So I try to spend all of the PCO that I earn in a year, but I have a buffer, so meaning like I think I have like one hundred hours in there right now. So if I earn, you know, twenty five day, I'm just making up numbers. I don't really remember twenty five days of PTO in the year. Then I might spend twenty five days thinking, well, those ten days are there for emergencies. Now, of course you have to have built up that buffer, but a lot of times, if you've been somewhere for a number of time, you'll find that naturally you just use a little bit less than you've earned, and then you can feel kind of comfortable spending at steady state. All right, sounds good? All right, Love of the Week. Well, you guys, hear my voice today, and we're actually recording a couple of episodes today, so I apologize. I'm not going to sound very pretty on any of them because I had this illness like a month ago. So if you guys remember I was hacking my way thy episod say that we had the horseness on another episode and now we have really same illness, but now I have it a month later, so that sucks. That is not the love of the week. That's not the level. But last night, both Chenevieve and I slept all night, which is the first time in days because she has the same thing. So one or the other of us or both have been up coughing or a lot of times she'll make me up, wake me up from her coughing, and then I find myself coughing. And last night was our first night of peace. So yeay, that is the true love of the week. Yes, that is true. Well, I am enjoying my my long stretch of sleep. You know, our listeners know about my my night nurse service of a few nights a week, and we had it last night. And I've decided that I am okay with pumping that first feeding. Pump it before I go to bed, so it's really nice. I sleep from you know, ten fifteen before fifteen ten to four thirty. Ooh, lovely. So that's been one of my splurges, but one I am happy about. So leap is our lovely is our love of really all right, well, this has been best at both worlds. We've been doing life hacks and talking about vacation plans. 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.