Harmony Smith on Pursuing FI, Lawyer Life, and Homesteading

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah hart Unger.

00:00:10
Speaker 2: 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.

00:00:17
Speaker 1: 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. In this episode, I'm going to be interviewing Harmony Smith, which is the blogging name of a lawyer who lives in Western New York and has a fascinating blog called Creating My Kaleidoscope. Really looking forward to hearing from her. One of the things that she's been writing about over the past many years is the pursuit of financial independence, and particularly how one might do this when you have a large family, because she has five children and various other things that you want to do in life, so we're you know, a lot of the financial independs. We've talked about this on the Passive podcasts, Sarah. I mean it has this element of being like the bro, right, the bro who works in computer science in some way and is like thirty five and wants to be done working at thirty nine. But that means he can't like get married, or have a family or do anything else because it's got to be that he's retired at that point. So it's a little bit off putting for some of us, I know for you as well. Yeah, it is.

00:01:35
Speaker 2: Always interesting when someone is going on about saving like ninety percent of their salary, but you realize that they're living alone in a studio apartment and it's like, well, yeah, your expenses are going to be very, very different than mine. If I added up the things I'm only spending on myself, I could I could save a lot too, But that's.

00:01:52
Speaker 1: That's not the scenario I've chosen.

00:01:54
Speaker 2: So there's often like kind of a lot of unspoken stuff around the ability to join up movement that like are kind of brushed under but are probably incredibly significant, like whether you choose to have a family.

00:02:06
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but you know, life isn't only about how much money you can save, given that you don't take any of it with you. One might wonder what the reason is to, you know, decide, well, I want to work as few years as possible, but I'm going to not use my resources as part of building relationships with other people. It seems a bit misguided, but in some ways these aren't always either or, and certainly, you know, Harmony's going to talk a little bit about that as well. I also think her story is interested because she's come from a position where her family had a significant amount of debt and that they were also trying to pay that off in the process. So what does it look like to try to completely change your financial situation and all that. And she's been very open over the years, which is you know, one reason that she does a blog under her own name, So we we sometimes have to be a little bit more more guarded, although less you you're I think a little bit more authentic sometimes than I am.

00:03:02
Speaker 2: I'm pretty authentic.

00:03:03
Speaker 1: But I did.

00:03:06
Speaker 2: The other day Annabelle like very casually left me a comment, like I just go to my comments and read them and it's like, oh, I use those pens too, but I smudged it, like I actually read the comment first and then saw who wrote it and was like, oh, my god, that's my daughter. So knowing that my children are regular blog readers. But then I reflected on that, and I'm like, honestly, everything in there they know. If I'm sharing some emotional struggle, it's probably not a secret like that in the house when that mommy is upset about something exactly. I just think I had to be careful to share my story and not be sharing other people's stories inadvertently, and I think I've gotten good at towing that line.

00:03:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely an evolving thing as your kids get older, because you know, it's whatever, you write a funny story about what your two year old did, you don't think about it so much. Although at this point the two year old is now, you know, a teenager, and the two year old the former two year old may not be so thrilled to have that existing in the inner at archive, which is something I've been thinking about lately. But I'm definitely, you know, I ask kid permission for like Instagram posting with pictures. I also just tend not to write that much about my older kids anymore, which and some of them feels, I don't know, it's hard, because like I love seeing their lives develop and I think it's so fascinating what they're doing, and there's some great topics that come up with it, but it is their life and not mine.

00:04:28
Speaker 2: Well, if you want it for the memory aspect, then that would be you know, a reason behind like a five year journal or something that was going to be private that you could then look back on.

00:04:36
Speaker 1: And look back on and see it from there and not share it with the universe. Well, that is definitely true, so something to consider for all of us as we deal with older kids. But anyway, very excited to hear what Harmony has to say about her life working as a lawyer, raising five kids, having a homestead of sorts in western New York. So let's hear from her. Sarah and I are delighted to welcome her, Harmony Smith, to the podcast. So Harmony, could you please introduce yourself to our listeners.

00:05:06
Speaker 3: Hi, Lauren, thanks for having me. Well, I'm a mother of five who has been working as a full time attorney for about fourteen years now. But I, on the other hand, have also been attempting to homestead as much as possible, crochet and hopefully reach financial semi independence in the next couple of years.

00:05:28
Speaker 1: Very exciting. How old are your kids?

00:05:30
Speaker 3: My kids are thirteen, eight, six, six, and eleven is my daughter?

00:05:38
Speaker 1: Excellent? We miss turned the middle there somehow.

00:05:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the boys are spread out and then I have the one girl who's eleven.

00:05:45
Speaker 1: We got you exactly, and twins for the youngest too. Correct.

00:05:49
Speaker 3: Yes, we had meant to have one more, but of course that's how things work, right. Yeah.

00:05:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're going for four and you hit five. That's exactly the way life goes sometimes. And so I found you in when I was writing a lot about you know, financial related topics, and because your family was focusing on like getting out of debt and things like that, so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your family's story with all that.

00:06:17
Speaker 3: It started the creating Michaleidoscope blog back in twenty fourteen. We only had a couple of kids. At that point. I really wasn't happy being an attorney, and I had seen a lot online about fire and all of these younger individuals who were working a ton, saving up all their money and then retiring in like their thirties, and that sounded good to me. But we had a lot of debt, you know, we weren't smart with our money, and I still had law school loans and mortgages and lots of credit cards too. So the blog was born out of this journey to destroy our debt and reach more freedom. When it came to what we had to do for work and bringing an income.

00:07:06
Speaker 1: And so what were you doing to make that happen.

00:07:09
Speaker 3: Well, we didn't just go make a budget or something like that. We didn't cut out the lattes. We made it a mission. We got really serious about it. We cut all discretionary spending. I mean I went three years without buying any new clothes at all. Yeah, we didn't mess around. We paid off as much as we could. And then we also did side hustles. I wrote some things online. I did the little survey things. My husband did some things like Instacart and things like that to increase our income while we decreased our spending.

00:07:47
Speaker 1: And what was it about the fire idea that was so appealing to you? I mean you said you weren't entirely happy with your professional life at the moment.

00:07:55
Speaker 3: Freedom. Yeah, it was really about being able to pursue other passions and have time with the kids. At that time, I was working in a downtown law firm with a long commute. I was gone many hours every day, and I mean if I was on trial. I remember one trial where I had to stay overnight at a trial that was a couple hours away from our home, and I didn't see my kids for a whole week. It was horrible.

00:08:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you wanted the freedom to sort of work in a different way.

00:08:26
Speaker 3: Yes, And hopefully I won't have to be an attorney forever. Am not like those other ones that strive for the corner office where they're going to work until they're gray and old. That is not something that I desire.

00:08:41
Speaker 1: But you guys are pursuing this path, you know, so you're doing side hustles, you're cutting out all discretionary spending. You decide to have a fourth kid, wind up with five. I imagine that was a little bit of a bump in the road on all this.

00:08:54
Speaker 3: It was. It was because we were very specific about our child goals. We planned things. We planned things so that it was going to be going from two in daycare to two in daycare. But then when you added the twins, it would have been three in daycare. And my husband, who was working in construction, at the time, his wages didn't cover three in daycare?

00:09:20
Speaker 1: So what did you wind up doing with that then?

00:09:23
Speaker 3: So he ended up being a stay at home dad and taking on the responsibility of three young boys while I was, you know, the breadwinner because I mean my salary was more than his.

00:09:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so what did that wind up looking like for your family then? I mean, we've had a lot of discussions on this podcast of how things change when people are and more of a female breadwinner home. I mean, was was that challenging for you guys at all?

00:09:48
Speaker 3: It was, and it led me to finding the job that I have right now. I was back from maternity leave with the twins for a week and it was clear that it wouldn't be sustainable because I was just gone along and he was having the big kids come home from school while taking care of bottles and trying to make dinner. And that led me to search for something different, which I now have a remote attorney job that I'm extremely thankful for. But in terms of the day today, since he has had taken on that stay at home dad role, he assumed a lot of the domestic responsibilities. Even today, he does the grocery shopping he cooks dinner most nights. He does a lot of the kid's laundry and stuff like that.

00:10:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I mean, what does I mean, Because you're still working full time, But how does it change things to be in a remote full time position versus an in person position. I wonder if you can just talk a little bit about how that makes your life more possible.

00:10:46
Speaker 3: Yes, it used to be. Well the commute. First of all, I get back an hour and a half to two hours every day not having to commute to an office. As far as my day in the life goes, I have so much flexibility. There are court appearances that I sometimes have to go to, but they're really limited. Especially since COVID, a lot of the judges are preferring to do things via virtual conferences. But as far as how my date goes, I might have a virtual conference and then the rest of the day I have just things to review, letters, to write reports, motions, things like that. Where my work is on the computer. And as long as I bill my hours for the day, my eight hours, that's what it is. As long as I bill my eight hours for the day, it doesn't matter so much when it's done, so I can take a break and go check on the chickens. I can go to the garden. I could take a walk if I want, and almost every day I get the kids off of the bus.

00:11:47
Speaker 1: Excellent, excellent. And so let's talk about this concept of financial semi independence or whatever you were talking about, because you know, you were seeing the fire people and many of them were younger. We're maybe not having families, and so you obviously have this different situation. I mean, what does this semi retirement mean and what is it going to look like?

00:12:10
Speaker 3: Whereas the fire people just don't do anything to bring in income, they have this big store of savings that they live off of. Financial semi independence for me will be where we reach a point that all of our debt is paid off, including mortgages. Because our credit cards have been paid off. It's been years. Thankfully we did achieve that the school loans are gone, but we still have mortgages right now, and we have three properties that we own right now. Our first two homes we kept as rental properties and now we're living in our new homestead. So financial independence, semi independence for me will be when all of the debt is paid off and that will open up a lot of freedom as not having these obligations to pay anything, because when you take out the mortgage and the credit cards and those types of things, the cost of living is not that much. And especially again we're trying to grow a garden and live frugally and have food to eat here. When you add in all of those things, cost of living goes down a lot. So for me, I would like to reach a point where I no longer have to work full time as an attorney. Either I can drop down to part time or retire completely from that, and then we bring in income to fund our frugal lifestyle between the rental properties and other types of side hustles that are more focused on our passions and things that we enjoy, like for me, crochet and writing things like that.

00:13:46
Speaker 1: Well, as I'm looking at you, I mean, our listeners are listening to you, but you and I can see each other through our software. I see a lot of yarn behind your head, So tell me about that.

00:13:56
Speaker 3: Yes, I love crochet. It is a passion of mine. I started when my third was a baby and I wanted to get them a crochet blanket. I just really liked them, and we had been gifted too for the younger two, but no one gave us one.

00:14:14
Speaker 1: For the third, So people don't give your baby presents for the third. It's just you know, they're like not.

00:14:18
Speaker 3: Again, exactly exactly, So you can't really buy those at Walmart. I looked on Etsy and I was surprised at how expensive they were. So the type of person I am, I thought, can I do this myself? I went on YouTube, I watched some videos I taught myself and I just love it. And I have made lots of things for family and friends, and now I have expanded into doing craft fairs. This year I did three Kraft fares and it was so much fun. I had a great time, and I hoped to expand my crochet business. I guess we're into.

00:14:54
Speaker 1: Actually does it make money to sell blankets at craft fars? I mean I have no idea.

00:14:59
Speaker 3: Well, it's fun. I blankets, because that's what I started with, are my favorite thing to make. But no one buys the blankets at Kraft fairs. I think everyone has an antwer or grandma that crochets that will make the baby a blanket, except for me. With my third the thing that has been selling has been little stuffed animals. I found that people just love those. So yes, I have a lot of yarn behind me, and the one row is all this really thick yarn that I make little stuffed animals, and the ones that the kids don't steal I take to the craft fair with me, and they've been doing really well.

00:15:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure how long mine would last if they were inventory. I have a kid who's really into squish mellows, so I suspect they'd be all all gone. Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and we come back, we'll be hearing more about Harmony's various adventures. So I am back with the blogger known as Harmony Smith, who in her life is an attorney and is also doing various craft fair kind of selling of crocheted small animals. So, Harmony, when I interviewed you for Off the Clock many years ago, you had kind of a five year plan that you were getting out of debt, moving toward achieving some sort of financial semi independence as we call it. Did that timeline wind up working? And you also said you were going to reward yourself with a big trip with the kids. So let's talk a little bit about the trip that you did wind up taking too things.

00:16:37
Speaker 3: They're always aspirational, aren't they. Absolutely it did not work out. I mean, we did make it the hunt of progress. We paid off all of the debt except mortgages, and we're doing so much better financially. Honestly, that plan back then didn't really account for a homestead. When we lived back in our previous home, we had lots of little gardens, and our passion for that grew over time that we wanted to expand to a property where we could have a huge garden and chickens and bees eventually and all sorts of other things. So the timeline was, as I said, aspirational. One of the things that I had originally said was when we turned forty, we would take a long road trip all over America with the kids. What happened is we jumped the gun a little bit with that because of various reasons. But my sister lives in California, and we planned a road trip, a one month road trip in California to visit her, but to also see all of the national parks and so in February twenty twenty, right before the pandemic, I took off three weeks from work and I spread it over a month and we rented an RV and traveled all over California, having a really epic adventure and a good test run. I will say, for if if we ever could handle a full America journey, well what.

00:18:04
Speaker 1: Was it like? I mean, you got seven of you in an RV, so do tell.

00:18:09
Speaker 3: It was an adventure. It was not a vacation. There was ups and downs, but it was amazing. We saw so much and I got a lot of questions back then about taking the kids out of school for that much time. I will say the school, they didn't really have any way to object to it. I remember the principal said, I don't really want you to take the kids out for that long, but I can't stop you. So we didn't go to any amusement parks. We went to educational places. We went to liberate tarpits, We made them keep a journal, we brought some work with us, and there was the one week of vacation in February, so that was one of the reasons we picked that month. My only regret about that trip is that pandemic happened right after and then they missed more school. But otherwise it was. It was amazing.

00:19:03
Speaker 1: And in terms of you just all sleep in the RV, I mean there was space for everyone to do that.

00:19:08
Speaker 3: Well, the twins were a little smaller back then, but we all fit. They took turns. The older two took turns with the bunk bed above the driver's seat, and then the other couch and kitchen table pull out to make little beds for the rest of them.

00:19:26
Speaker 1: And you and your spouse stayed together after this experience.

00:19:30
Speaker 3: Fairly not now, we survived, We survived it was. We enjoyed it too. We've always been ones that enjoy hiking on a trail more than going someplace.

00:19:44
Speaker 1: So let's talk about your homestead then, because yes, I mean you're obviously into nature, into being outside and things like that. So one of the things that did kind of stretch out the plan for financial semi independence is purchasing a home instead, So talk about what went into that. And here you're living in sort of a normal house and then you say, hey, let's getting into the farming business. So maybe you can talk a little bit about that decision.

00:20:11
Speaker 3: So we were very much in a suburb before, with a quarter of an acre of land and three bedrooms. Now the pandemic pushed us to our limits. Like the adventure in an RV with five kids is one thing. Being stuck in a house with five kids, and all of those schedules of signing into classes in my work too, it stretched us pretty thin. We decided we needed a bigger house, Honestly, I think somewhere along that part of the journey, and it's been very affirming to move out to the country where we just seem to fit in better. Honestly, back in our old house, we had all of these little mini gardens in our yard, and people thought we were pretty strange for that. Here we've got a giant garden. Also, the families eyes. Back in our old house, people oh five kids. Five kids, that's crazy. Here, they tell us, Oh, so and so has got eight. It's not a big deal out here. We just seem to fit in better. And we're kind of in a place where I didn't think we'd end up. But the reason we're here is because of the property. I love antiques, I love old houses, and we found in eighteen eighty eight Victorian. It's got the wrap around porch and so much more room for the kids, and the property is sixteen acres. A lot of it is woods, so we can go hiking, even in our own property now. And there's a creek that's just this running water that the kids play in all summer and keeps them entertained. And a big old barn where my daughter hopes to put a horse someday, but we'll see about that.

00:21:48
Speaker 1: But with it being an eighteen eighties Victorian, has it needed a lot of work.

00:21:53
Speaker 3: Yes, it's a good thing. My husband is handy. He's already run in, that's true. Yeah, we've already run in to a couple things. And like the it's got these cool old skeleton key locks. And there's this neat mudroom off the back of the house, which with five kids is amazing. They can put all their shoes and coming in out of there. The skeleton lock on that door has broken, so the mudroom has been off limits for a little bit because we haven't gotten around to fixing it yet.

00:22:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, so lots of things to fix like that, But generally the house is not terribly falling apart or No, it was.

00:22:30
Speaker 3: Well taken care of by the previous There haven't even been that many owners. It's funny when you look at that abstract since the eighteen eighty eight building of it.

00:22:39
Speaker 1: So you bought it during the pandemic, then no.

00:22:42
Speaker 3: We bought it last August, okay, right before the twins started kindergarten, so it was perfect because they started in the new school district, in kindergarten.

00:22:53
Speaker 1: In kindergarten, that's awesome. And so I'm curious what your career evolution is looking like now you know how you're envisioning it for the next few years, and maybe also what your husband is now that the kids are all in school.

00:23:06
Speaker 3: I'll touch on him first. Once we moved out of the old house, he went back and fixed it up. The house looks so much different. I wish it would have looked like that when we lived there. Put in all new windows and floors and painted everything because he is very handy. And now we have renters in there paying us a decent rent for that property, our first house that we still own. A friend lives there, and so next up for my husband will go to that property and fix that one up to be rented to someone else for a little bit better a rate. As for me, it's funny I went and found this remote attorney position back in twenty seventeen, after the twins were born, and when I took this position out of desperation, honestly to find something for my wheelhouse of experience, but remote. It was very difficult, but I thought I was walking away from the partner path and I was fine with that. I didn't really care. And then last year I got promoted to partner. It's just funny. I didn't even ask for that or expect it, but it was nice to be recognized. That. Being said, I've been doing this for fourteen years, I don't enjoy it. It's very stressful. That should be no surprise. I work in a personal injury defense so I'm fighting with personal injury lawyers all day and it's not a passion. I don't find fulfillment in my work anymore. Over the next couple of years, depending on how we can do financially, it will either be full time, retiring from law and just pursuing my passions, or trying to find a part time position, either with this firm or with someone else.

00:24:51
Speaker 1: Excellent, sounds good. Well, let's talk about a day to day sort of life. I mean, you know, here on the homestead with five kids. An average weekday look like for you guys.

00:25:03
Speaker 3: My husband is great in that he in many things, but he wakes up every morning to let the chickens out. So I appreciate that because I'm not really a morning person. So and the chickens love him. He's like a chicken whisper. They follow him around. So he lets them out and we get the kids to school. In our school district. It's funny all five of them take the same bus even though they're headed to different schools. So it's really cute all the little five little ducks walking across the road and taking the bus together. And then my husband will usually I mean unless he's here working on something, painting the barn or fixing something, he will usually head off to his dad. He helps his dad a lot with stuff because he's getting up there in age or working on one of the rental properties. My day to day is very different. If I'm not going to court, I probably have some type of conference I have to sign in for, write reports, make some phone calls. But as I said before, my day is very flexible so that if I need to take something care of something around here, I can do that. The kids get home, I usually take a break when they get home and ask them out their day and get snacks and listen to issues, breakup fights. That's try to get them outside to play outside. And then throughout the evening I'll sign back on here and there to finish up my hours for the day.

00:26:24
Speaker 1: Gotcha. What time does the day sort of end for your family?

00:26:28
Speaker 3: Is nine o'clock?

00:26:29
Speaker 1: Gotcha?

00:26:30
Speaker 3: So they're in bed at hopefully nine o'clock, not always. I am a night owl. I have always been a night owl, so I'm usually up till probably midnight. I stay up pretty late and hopefully fitting in a little crochet before.

00:26:45
Speaker 1: A crochet time in there. Yeah, making a few of stuffed animals.

00:26:49
Speaker 3: Yes, I call it my anti anxiety medication because it's just very repetitive. It's almost like meditation. And I try to listen to audio books while I crochet.

00:26:58
Speaker 1: Excellent. And so one of the things we were talking about earlier, which Sarah, my co host, has a podcast called Best Laid Plans where they look at all sorts of planners. But we're to talk about a planner on this podcast because Harmony has been designing one. So why didn't you talk a little bit about you know what this little passion project of yours too, and like how you plan as well, because I think people might be really interested in hearing like what planning looks like for you.

00:27:27
Speaker 3: Rely on my written planner. I've tried to use apps before, but just having something you can scribble something down real quick has been so helpful in keeping everything organized. My planner is the one that the family uses. When my husband wants to schedule a doctor's appointment, he's looking at my planner because one of the things that keeps our expenses down right now is we only have two vehicles. We have a car and then we have our bus. Yes, we have a small school bus which we use to kret all the kids around and I am like an airline stewardess walking up and down the aisle out juice boxes and sticks. We love our bus, it's great, but if I'm going to be driving up to an hour two hours away for court, I do not want to drive that bus. And it does use more gas it's more expensive to drive. So it's very important that we have our schedules coordinated for use of the vehicle. I write everything down in the planner from kids activities, doctor's appointments, and all of my court appearances. I found that the planner that I carry everywhere and I use multiple times every day didn't have all the things that I wanted in a planner. So I actually took some time to create my own planner with everything that I want, and I since I put all of the work into it, I did put it up for sale on Amazon, so it is available if anyone else was interested in it. But I will say that it kind of combines a planner with a bullet journal. Every week, there's a space to put down my priorities, from finances to family health, in even entertainment. It also has inspirational quotes for every week, quarterly reviews to jot down some reflective thoughts over the past few months, and even really functional things like a time off planner for keeping track of vacation days and sick days.

00:29:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, now that's something you don't necessarily see in a lot of planners. I don't know if they assume people know how many days off and when they are and all that, but yeah, that sounds like it would be incredibly useful. What name does it have on Amazon? If somebody is going to go looking for.

00:29:35
Speaker 3: It, It's just called My kaleidoscope planner.

00:29:38
Speaker 1: Okay, excellent, excellent, So Harmony, we always end our episodes with a love of the week, and I can talk a little bit about mine first so that you can then do yours. But mine was actually inspired by reading your blog, which is creating my kaleidoscope. And you talked about the various things you were foraging on your homestead, and one of them was that you were making your own maple syrup. And I was you know, maple syrup is like the best thing. I mean, real maple syrup, not the fake stuff. You know, you got to get real maple syrup. But having that on pancakes is just it can make any morning feel like vacation. So maybe you can talk a little bit about your maple syrup and then you can share your love of the week too.

00:30:24
Speaker 3: Oh I love the maple syrup. That was something I was really excited about doing. As soon as I found the maple trees. What I did because I can't tell the difference between the trees once the leaves come off. I marked the maple trees when they still had leaves on, because you do the syrup in February. It was such a learning experience. I had to do multiple batches before I got my groove on how to make it, and now I'm really looking forward to the trees are marked again. I'd marked more trees that we're gonna make even more this year. It turns out so good and I can't wait for some more fresh maple syrup. My love of the week has got to be Iron Flame that came out on Tuesday, and I have been devouring it. As I said, it's my favorite thing to do right now is crochet while listening to audiobooks, because it's a little tricky to read a book while crochet.

00:31:15
Speaker 1: True, you only have so many hands.

00:31:18
Speaker 3: Exactly, but I'm really really enjoying that book.

00:31:22
Speaker 1: Awesome well, Harmony, thank you so much for joining us. Our listeners can find you at creating my Kaleidoscope. Correct.

00:31:29
Speaker 3: That is correct, and thank you for having.

00:31:31
Speaker 1: Me Awesome Well, that was fascinating. I always love hearing from listeners about their lives, how they are building their careers, raising their families, doing all the other great stuff they are doing. So this question this week comes from a listener who has three kids and a full time job in local government that requires her to be in the office every day from eight to four thirty with a thirty minute lunch, and she asks how do you handle all the minutia and small to dos of daily life? It seems like there are constantly people to coordinate with for kids, teach your emails that should be read, game schedules to add to the calendar, meals to plan, groceries to order, along with things like household and clothing items. She is feeling super overwhelmed with it all, so could we share some strategies for how to handle that?

00:32:24
Speaker 3: So?

00:32:24
Speaker 1: I think you read the question more about the overwhelmed part, and then I had thoughts about the logistics of when you have a non flexible, not in the office job doing home tasks. So why don't you start, Sarah.

00:32:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I think both are interesting angles to attack this issue from.

00:32:41
Speaker 1: I do.

00:32:42
Speaker 2: For me, find that knowing that I'm going to go through all of my emails makes it a reliable place I can shove the various inputs without them stressing about losing them. For me, that does require a dedication to clearing the whole thing out every once in a while. That's not true for everyone. Laura stays on top of her email without actually having the physical in box zero, so your mileage may vary.

00:33:01
Speaker 1: On that one.

00:33:03
Speaker 2: I also do a lot of when I get a little ping from a teacher or I check what's up and see that there's something tied to a specific date, I try to only touch it once and just immediately write it in my planner again, because I am reliably a planner user, Like, I'm not going to just put it on a sticky note that like God knows where it's going to go, but I know I'm going to always take a look at my weekly spread. That is a way of ensuring that I don't forget it, but I don't have to go back and think about it again. And I know some people love digital tools, but I got to say, like, if you have your planner with you and a pen, it is so quick and easy to just write something down on a specific square and know that you're going to see it, and in my experience, even quicker than some of the digital tools that are out there. If it is a one and done, tiny little task that comes at me. Like again, let's say, on my lunch break, I'm scrolling the What's Up chat of what's going on with my kids? Classrooms and they say, hey, you need to order this book for the this actually happened yesterday. I just like ordered it right down and air like instead of putting it on my list to do if it's something very very fast. And I know there's all kinds of discussion about the two minute rule, and Laura and I remain skeptical because sometimes jobs that look like they're two minutes are longer. But every once in a while you come off of something like buy a book from Amazon using this link that you're like, no, that really is a thirty second task, Like I can just do it.

00:34:14
Speaker 1: So I try to.

00:34:14
Speaker 2: Get those done and then just building various routines because a lot of the things you mentioned on here, like groceries and meals, like if you know that you always handle those things on a Friday night or on a Sunday, then there's less like questioning every week like, ah, what's the plan for that, because you kind of know when you're going to do it. So those are my like overwhelm tips, and then Laura has some logistical tips.

00:34:34
Speaker 1: Well it just you mentioned there it was like on your lunch break, because right you're seeing patients all day, it's not like you're ordering the Amazon book while you're like seeing a patient. I mean, there are jobs where you literally cannot do other things while you are doing that. Now, you know, those of us who are in more you know, well, I don't know, how do you call it fluid, Let's call it working environment. Obviously, you could order that Amazon book while you're on a zoom call with someone and probably no one's the wiser unless you, you know, accidentally your screen. But you know, obviously there are a great many jobs where that is not the case. You're seeing patients, you're driving a bus, you're working in a grocery store, you're like out directing traffic. You know, there's clearly you cannot do these home tasks while you are doing those things. And so I looked at this question more as if you have that sort of job right like, when you are working, there is no possibility to do personal tasks and you have set hours in a set place, when do you do them? And that is a very good question. I mean, Sarah just said on her lunch break she was doing some of them, and obviously you can do that, but you know, you only get thirty minutes for lunch, and you actually have to eat, you might not want to devote the entire thirty minutes every single day to doing that sort of thing. So for this particular lady, given that she has hours that are eight to four thirty, I would suggest that actually a couple days a week you view four thirty to five as you're processing time. This is when you tackle personal tasks that require you to do something. But then this is conveniently also still during business hours. Right that your set hours in your workplace are not actually all the way up till five, So you get thirty minutes that you are not on the clock that you could then use as long as you figure out the rest of your life to make that possible. So figure out that your childcare ends after that, as opposed to trying to scoot out right at four thirty. Now, again, you may not be able to use your office for this because it places have rules about using things even you're on your own device in the network where you're there. But maybe there's someplace else you can go, like just take your phone and go sit in your car and process all these stuff. If your office is near a coffee shop or a library or something else where you can go do these things that might be an option as well. But if you just consciously view four thirty to five as worktime, but it's personal work time, and then I think you will start to trust that you will get through most of these things during that time and start feeling a lot less overwhelmed. You're like, Okay, here's my list. You know, maybe you jot these things down on a paper list through the day as they occur to you. I'm guessing you're not seeing personal email during this time. Maybe you take a quick look at it during your lunch break and write down any tasks on that piece of paper, and then four point thirty to five you tackle them. You do this four days a week, you're gonna start feeling a lot less overwhelmed because two hours a week of personal administrative work is actually a fair amount.

00:37:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think so much of the so much of the feeling of an ease comes not from a volume problem but from a like nebulous stuff is everywhere kind of a problem, and.

00:37:43
Speaker 1: So this kind of tackles both of those.

00:37:45
Speaker 2: You're corralling it as it happens, but you have a dedicated time to get it done, so you're not stressed about it all the other times, and.

00:37:52
Speaker 1: You know, if somebody else has different work hours, maybe you sort it out from a different time. I mean maybe for you, it's your kids and go to daycare at eight and you have to be in the office right there at nine, but you've got twenty minutes or something in between. You know, there may be different points, and not everyone needs to do all these things during business hours. I would just try to, you know, suggest you have some overlap during business hours because it's always going to be something. So maybe it is that one or two days a week you do use part of your lunch break and then you know the other tasks you plan on doing from eight to eight thirty or four thirty to five or whatever it is that's outside your contracted hours. All right, Well, this has been fun listening to Harmony Smith talk about the pursuit of financial semi independence and getting out of debt and homesteading and all those great topics. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening.

00:38:49
Speaker 2: You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can.

00:38:56
Speaker 1: 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.