Hi. I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.
And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer and course creator. 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 episode is airing in mid October of twenty twenty four. We are going to be talking some Fall favorites, which is an episode topic we have done before. But fall is a great time and it's a good time to
revisit some of our favorite things. We're using, products we enjoy, shows or technology, and all the things that are making life great right now. It's kind of a all love of the week episode. If we have time, we plan to get to a section on energy management, though if we turn out to be a bit more loquacious than planned, I guess that we'll have to wait for another week, but at least on the docket to discuss energy as well today. So, Sarah, are you feeling the fall vibes right now?
I mean, weather wise no, but life wise yes, because I'm just ready to move on from summer, and therefore anything that gives me like a hint of the feeling of fall, even if it doesn't actually feel like fall, is making me happy. It also means we're like on the way to winter, which is lovely. And so yeah, I'm like extra fall this year. I think I got to respond the episode idea.
Yeah, I haven't really pulled out my sweaters yet. I will wear the fleece at night. The sweaters seems like possibly I didn't clean all my sweaters very well when I put them in the drawer last year, so I'm sort of discovering that now as I was looking through them the other day. So that'll be a bit of a project maybe coming up. But yeah, you know, it's it's nice to have a little chill in the air in the morning.
We definitely have.
I mean, well, when this air is mid October, it's gonna be peak fall. We're recording it a little bit ahead of time, and we've got a lot of golden color everywhere, which I always love to look at so beautiful time of year around here, and then of course it becomes a lot less beautiful and I want to head the Florida So it's fair. Sounds fair? Yeah, yeah.
I used to do this thing when I wore winter clothing where I would like do a bulk dry cleaner drop off, like right around now, and then everything was like fresh for the new season. So maybe your drawers can just be all dealt with it once.
Yeah, yeah, No, it's on the list next week.
Make a note to myself.
I have all these things, these projects, and then I kind of forget them if the time isn't right for me to write them down. But maybe I'll try to remember that one for later.
But yeah, so Fall favorites, we're gonna start with the personal care and cosmetics category. So, Sarah, what are you using right now that is sparking a fire in your life?
Yeah, and by the way, the items we're talking about, just to clarify, they're not all fall related items because I'm like, what I'm about to talk to has nothing to do with fall. It's just of the moment of right now. So on my list, I just want to give a shout out and none of these are sponsored to Toms of Main toothpaste, because I'm an old person who cannot deal with the like spicy, artificially sweet taste of like Colgate or crust anymore.
Like I cannot.
There goes potential sponsorships, I guess, but I love like the Toms of Main spearmint or peppermint, so enjoying that. Other bathroom products that I'm going to give a shout out to are Li Lavos shower gel in the basil scent, Oh my gosh, so luxurious.
It's so nice.
Every time I smell it makes me happy. And actual shaving cream I put on the list. Now, I haven't bought shaving cream for many years, but one of my kids was like, I want shaving cream and I was like, okay, so I bought it. Then I decided it was sitting there, I might as well try it, and like, shaving is quite nice with actual shaving cream versus just shower gel or soap, and I will probably buy it again. Who knew?
Huh. I'm not sure I even use shower gel or soap. It just kind of use the razor. Maybe I'm missing out on something and just I it's like seems like an extra step.
Wait really though, Yeah, do you get like okay? Interesting? Maybe we have very different skin.
I feel like I would just be covered in red bumps if I pull that, But maybe you have more resilient dirm.
That could be. We find out new things all the time.
Well, it's so funny because once shower habits are obviously very personal in private, like nobody else is involved in them, and so you'd never know you're doing something completely wrong, like her, Is there a better way? Have I been shampoo my hair in the wrong manner for forty plus years now? It is entirely possible, and I will probably never find out, And you, dear listener, will never find out if you're doing it the wrong way either.
So there we go.
Well, so I actually need to get some scented shower gel. I had lovely grapefruit scented product.
It wasn't.
One of the upsides of citrus scented products is I feel like they could be pretty cheap, but they are okay, Like the sweet needs to be like higher end in order not to be terrible, but like citrus sense for whatever can be done on a cheaper basis and still be okay. So I had this grapefruit scented shower stuff like just from CVS and or no, I guess from Amazon.
As it turned out, and it was great, and then I ran out, and then we had this episode that we're recording, and I went onto Amazon and lo and behold. I had apparently ordered it on October seventeen, twenty twenty two, so I re upped on that. I apparently did not need to subscribe on Save on that because I wasn't using very much of it. I do want to give a shout out to Thrive, who is a sponsor, but
I have really been enjoying their mascara. I wear it every day, and their lipstick crans and eyebrightener, and then I use Ilia foundation and concealer and the Ilia multi stick for cheeks, so a mix of those. And I will also do a shout out to wearing makeup every single day. I just decided that's what I'm going to do in life, and that's what I'm doing.
I feel like I pretty much do that, except then I kind of like the rare like not wearing makeup day, like it's a break, but it's like an intentional choice, not a It was like I was just too lazy.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
All right, clothing, what are you wearing these days?
Sarah?
I am super into the wide leg jeans and wide leg pants. Still I don't actually have that many pairs, but I feel like this is I'm about to expand my repertoire as although I just have seen a lot of cool barrel leg options in different catalogs and makers like I love made while and Ayr and they both have these really cute barrel like jeans, so I might
try that as well. Those are just like they're like really kind of loose, but then they like almost have like a taper to that anyway, you have to see them. But yeah, just like in all the wide leg stuff, and the Alice in Trouser for Marine Layer is on my short list because they have these really cute and
they're elastic ways, so they're super super comfortable. And then I will say my other style thing is like I just wear sneakers to work now because I generally wear scrubs and I have these on cloud sneakers that were they actually were bought to be I think hiking shoes for Annabel when we were in Seattle, but then she didn't really like them, so and we have the same shoe size, so I took them over and they make
me like an inch taller and they're so comfortable. So who knew sneakers could offer that much benefit.
It's like all in one.
You get your heel and your sneaker in one shoe together. That's great. Yeah. So I kind of have my uniform that I wore all summer, and I guess we'll wear into fall until it's so cold that I can't.
But I wear my Share flats.
There's sort of a nudish color, but they're Swedes, so I can't really wear them if it's raining. But I wear those, and I wear my Nick and Zoe cropped jeans with a slight frey at the hem. I now have four pairs of those in blue and one in cream, so I basically can just wear them every day if desired, And in the summer I wear a sort of nicer tank or sleeveless shirt with them, and then in the winter I haven't quite figured out what I'll be wearing
with them. I guess not into winter but fall. Stay tuned on the sweaters.
I mean, I've seen some slightly cropped pants kind of working with boots, so I don't know, you may want to look into that. Then you can carry them into winter.
Yeah, I guess I could carry them into winter. And I don't know.
They might look a little funny, but we'll find out. You might. I can't picture, but yeah. Anyway, all right, let's go to food items, Sarah, seasonal or not.
It is sort of seasonal because actually, okay, so my first food item is frozen samosas because they kind of like bridge the line between snack and meal pretty well, and my kids like them, so they're perfect, Like Annabelle has gymnastics from like five fifteen to eight forty five, which is really long, and also like during dinner, so they're the perfect thing to grab beforehand because it's like substantial enough, but you could scale it up or down
easily because they're like little individual triangles and you can put them in the toaster oven. And they're sort of a fall item because Trader Joe's during the fall makes a pumpkin addition. Those are a little bit spicy, but they're delicious, the pumpkin samosas from Trader Joe's. And just I want to say, like it's October This is Trader Joe's time to shine, in my opinion, because like everything's pumpkin.
A lot of the pumpkin stuff is good. It's super fun. Random stuff is pumpkins. Some of it's bad.
It's fun to.
Try it either way. So I love that. And then my.
Perfect fall Starbucks order, which I've discussed on my blog a few times, but I don't think I put it the podcast, an oat milk cappuccino and a warmed pumpkin bread. I do not like pumpkin spice lattes, but I figured out that, like I can get my pumpkin fixed, we have pumpkin bread and eat it with a non sweet coffee drink and it's just perfect.
Out of curiosity, why are you doing oat milk?
I like it? Okay, I was like, I got it because there's butter in the pumpkin bread.
So I'm not.
Oh, I'm not.
I have no problem with dairy, although I think straight milk sometimes does a little bit of a number on me.
So one time I was like, oh, let me try oat milk, and I.
Just really like the taste of it, like it's a little bit like nutty and almost like a little bit like has more death or something than the regular. So that's my order. Grande oat milk cappuccino, lovely.
I like it. I'm gonna do a shout out for rotisserie chickens, which maybe other folks here grew up with getting rotisserie chickens from the grocery store, but this is never something we did. But it turns out that they have these chickens, these rotisserie chickens in most grocery store and I've just been getting one on Monday or whatever from the store, and then it becomes the basis of
my lunches through a lot of the week. I just pull off some chicken, heat it up, have it with fruit or you know, if we've got leftover rice or whatever from the night before, and yeah, it just is tasty and simple and pretty cheap as a lunch basis. I can get like two or three lunches out of it easy. And then sometimes I use the chicken for other things, like we're doing a chicken based pasta sauce
Monday night that can work as well. Also shout out to apples, the fall fruit of choice, although October is getting a little bit late for picking it. Although a lot of farms will still do their apple picking in October. I learned many years ago that my favorite kinds of apples actually ripen more in early to mid September. So in early to mid September we went to our life orchard to go picking it. It was a bit of one of these family activities that inspired some whining because it
was not necessarily how it was supposed to go. Like I was hot, the apples were ridiculously overpriced, like what we paid for.
Then we wound up with like three pecks of them.
Anyway, so we've been eating a lot of apples, have a lot of apple sauce. But you know, I still like apples. Apples are yummy, and apples straight from the tree have a certain special something to them. I haven't had any apples straight from the tree, but I love apples with cinnamon on them. That's such a fall flavors.
Yeah.
Where apple pie. Yeah, apple pies are great. We tend to make one of those each weekends, and now we've found enough apples to continue doing that for many a time. All right, Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with a few more of our fall favorites. Well, we are back the first part of this episode. We're discussing some of our fall favorites, things that we are enjoying right now in our life. Not all fall related, though a few have been. There
was pumpkin bread involved in apples. So, Sarah, household goods, you suggested this as a category. I didn't know that we were. We had favorite household Goods, but let me know what are yours?
I don't know.
Household Goods is what we name one of our budget categories, and you need a budget, so maybe that's why I came.
Up with it, but one of them.
I don't even feel like I've mastered it yet, but I'm like, this is my life goal and I'm trying and I'm improving, which is to always stay one ahead of the printer cartridges because they always run out, and they always run out just when you want to print something. And if you whenever you run out, like immediately order your next round of them.
I guess you.
Only downside is that if your printer breaks and it's your last printer cartridge ever and you didn't know that, then find you have one extra printer cartridge that you've bought that you don't need, but that doesn't happen all that often, and so I believe it's staying one the printer cartridges. Having extra dish towels has also been surprisingly I don't know. We would like always use them all up and be like, well now we have to use
paper towels. And then Josh was like, I ordered dish towels and I'm like, oh right, you can.
You can buy more.
You're really all fancy, and I think he ordered them from like Creating Bar, Pottery Bar. You could have themed dish towels for each other, just like minimalists and gray but they're nice and they like absorb stuff, and you know, we could get even more dish towels. So having enough dish towels and then also on the towel train, because apparently I'm on it. The Uccino Waffle Twist towels and robe. They're not like super fancy, like they're at Macy's or wherever.
I don't think they have it a met target, but like any other sort of mid level department store, they just look so nice like they have a they look more luxurious than they actually cost, and they drive really quickly, so if you live in a mildew prone climate as we do, then they will benefit you in that manner.
Awesome. Well, I'm not sure if this is a household good. I don't know if I would put the which BUDG category I would put this in. But I'm really into fall flowers these days. So fall flowers has been a new discovery for me. I always thought of flowers as being a spring thing, and there are obviously a great many flowers that bloom in the spring, but there are also a reasonable number of flowers that, as their evolutionary strategy, have decided to bloom in the fall, and many reasons
one might do that as a flower. I mean, it's maybe different pickings. The pollinators aren't there for the spring flowers. You've got more opportunity to shine in the fall or something like that. But they're really cool looking, especially against the changing trees and vines and stuff like that, because it's just the colors of fall are so distinct versus
like the colors of spring. So in spring you get a lot of these pinks and stuff like that, but the fall, you know the bright blue asters, for instance, and you know lots of zenias and mums and all that.
Then you see that again.
It's the red and orange and yellow of the trees, and it's just a sort of otherworldly sort of look. And I in fact probably like it better than the spring because the spring flowers you only get the mist of green behind them. In terms of the trees, right, like the generally the flowering trees and stuff come out before the leaves. That's their their strategy, so you only have the flowers with a tiny mist of green, whereas in the fall you've got all the colors of the
trees and the bright colors of the flowers. So we've been decorating with lots of fall flowers around here, and makes me happy every time I see them.
I love it. I think it's definitely a household good.
I mean it's like a descoor item, and it's an experience and I like the seasonality to it. So that's super cool, excellent all right. Items for tweens and older children. All right, Cameron requested Pasca paint and I was like, these are annoyingly expensive, and also they have acrylic paint in them, which means you get them on stuff they're not coming off. But I order them anyway, and they have made him so happy, and like the other kids are using them and they're they're really fun to use.
So basically, I mean, it's like a marker, but what comes out is basically paint, but there's the tip is nice and fine, so you can have a lot of control. So he's been making a lot of like comic book looking stuff and because it's like paint, it's like very very opaque, not like a regular marker.
So yeah, super into it.
Oh and you can draw on them like on black paper too and it would show up as paint, so super cool. And then crunch Labs, which was a Best Slide Planned sponsor, but we were using them. That was one of the ones where like they asked and I was like yes because I'm already a customer, a very happy customer, and we use them before and use them since.
But that's Mark Rober's like activity box where you basically get to like do little mini engineering projects and building and they're just super popular at our house and generally I wish they took even longer, like I feel they take about like an hour, but it's like a fun hour to hear the progress on that and then see it when it's complete because they'll make stuff like we had one that was a ping pong type ball that was floating in the air, was thrilling everyone.
Exactly. Yeah, we get the crunch slabs box too. That Alex is the one who likes doing those, and I guess I was realized this is so gender stereotypical. Then Ruthie and I split the Allure beauty box. That that's something. Although split wasn't quite how it happened last month, she wanted most of the stuff, so that's good. I mean, I can buy my own cosmetics, so I'm happy that she's fighting stuff she likes in there. I'm going to go shout out to baking projects as an activity. So
here about the apple pie. That is certainly something that kids can probably put together pretty easily, because you know, just buy a frozen pie crust and cut up apples, mix them with cinnamon and sugar and you're pretty much good. Put that in the oven. But especially when older kids are doing baking projects, you usually get a good result. You don't necessarily have to be doing.
It with them.
So it's like, uh, the baking fairy stopped by this is awesome. So I'm a huge fan of that.
Yep, also very fall because there's so many faulty things you can bake.
How about for younger kids, yes, yes, younger kids.
Well, this year is the first year that every year there's like a classroom what's up chat for every class At least it has been like that around here, but this year they made a separate one for like social stuff only so that the teachers don't see that one. You can use it for birthday party invites, playd eight invites, whatever, and that's been great because parents will just be like, I'm headed here if anybody wants to come, and it's just nice to have like an automatic forum for that
kind of thing. I will also add that trips to the bookstore, just as an activity, can be great for any age kid, including younger kids that just want to look at picture books. You just want to get out of the house and you are encouraging them to read, so pick one book out.
Great, it could be a fun activity.
And then finally, this one isn't as fun, but if you have younger kids that are needing to learn like the basic edition facts and stuff, we like the program reflex Math. We've now had all three of our kids use it in some fashion and it seems to work. Is it the most fun thing ever for them?
No?
But it's not like torture either, so all to win.
So mine's going to be slightly fall themed in the sense that Lemony Snicket books, but not the series of unfortunate events that's a that's kind of for older kids. But he has written a lot of picture books as well, and they all have slightly of a spooky theme to them. I find they've got this kind of fall vibe to them,
even if they aren't necessarily foolish. We've for years owned a copy of the Dark, which is about how Laslow is afraid of the dark, and then the Dark comes to visit Laslow in Laslow's room, and the whole thing is sort of spooky sounding, like you are not you know, you may be afraid of the dark, but the dark is not afraid of you. And it goes on from there.
There's also he wrote one sets we've been reading with Henry called The Stick and the Bad Mood, and it's how a stick gets used in multiple ways and a bad mood gets passed around from various different characters. If you read it, don't send me hate mail. There's slightly. There's a little inappropriate part in it, but Henry doesn't understand that that is, so we will just decide that Lemony Snicket put that in for whatever reason. But there's
other ones, like there's about the Ghostfish. There's one about a swarm of bees that we've been reading, you know, so those are all kind of fun. I'm always on the look out for picture books that can be read more than once, like that the kid isn't bored with them, or they're not too preachy, and he's definitely not preachy all so that's a win. And I will also do a shout out for the picture book Fletcher and the
Falling Leaves. Now, Fletcher is a whole series of books that are seasonally appropriate, like there's Fletcher in the Snowflake Christmas or something, There's Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms. But we have found that Fletcher and the Falling Leaves is the best one, and that is very fall themed, so you might want to check that out.
Awesome, I'm gonna have to request that one. We love the dark.
I don't think I've read the other Lemony Snickets, but it's funny you said read more than once, because I don't know, Like we seem to have a lot of books, and I know all of them, like so clearly we read pretty much all of them more than ones, whether or not they deserve that or not. It's just seems to happen, probably because I feel like my kids have always been like not satisfied with just one book at bedtime. And there's a lot of nights in a year, so
that's easily like a thousand books a year. And I don't we have a lot of books, but not a thousand books, so lots of repeats in except when we go to the library, which should have also been on this list because the library is awesome.
But yeah, yeah, we've been getting piles of books from the library lately. To add it in, we'll do one more before the break. Sarah, what's a work related thing that you are loving?
Hi? Yes, well, it's sort of a not work related thing, which is that I have a PTO spreadsheet that works really well now automatically, like it calculates the number of days I accrue and then if I use a day,
I will put it in there. I got that from my friend K of Grateful k fame, and I think I talked about an unvestlaid plans already, so this may not be news to some of you, but it was easy to set up, and it just like it's a great way to see your time off as like a bank type of a thing, and you can make adjustments and see how like taking a shorter winter break would
give you more days in the spring or whatever. So you'd have to configure that for however, your workplace gives you paid time off if you do have a specific number of days off, but kind of into it.
Yeah, Well, Vanderkamming has a generous PTO policy, although it's not really PTO. If I don't work, I'm not earning money necessarily, so it's unpaid too unpaid PTO, Yeah, exactly. But I will say with that, the freedom to try new things is a big upside an employee perk over here at vandercam Inc. Because, Yeah, I've just started a couple new things. I launched an interview series at my other podcast before Breakfast. I've had Sarah on as a guest, and that was really fun to be able to just
try something new in a podcast. I've been doing the same way for five and a half years. I also just started adding one video post a week over at Vanderhacks, which is my substack newsletter. I was just playing around on there and I was like, wait, there's this video post function and it records right like in the thing, and I'm like, okay, well let's try it out and see what this does. So I'm going to start doing one of those a week. So yeah, freedom to try
new stuff. Big upside of self employment. Paid vacation time not so much. All right, We're going to take one more quick ad break and we will be back.
Well, we are back.
We've been doing our fall favorites of various different categories. We're going to go to throw one more in before we switch the subject. I guess my ad break was slightly mistimed as it turned out. So, Sarah Media, what are you liking right now? Super late to this party.
But if you're looking for a show that is not using too much brain power and has a lot of eye candy, then you might want to check out Emily in Paris. They just released the second half of the fourth season, and each season only has ten episodes, so it's not like a million episodes. But I've been going through some stressful stuff. Hopefully by the time this episode
airs it's going to all be great. But this has been such a wonderful balm for me, and it's just so bingeable and on a cozy weekend when your kids are playing video games, propping up in bed and enjoying a few episodes of this has been so much fun.
So highly recommend awesome.
Yeah, I haven't been watching much TV lately, so don't really have anything to contribute there, but that's fine. I'm sure there's a lot of great shows out there. People can let me know what they are and maybe I'll watch them at some point. Our next part, we wanted to talk a little bit about energy management, which was inspired by a great question that we got over at our Patreon community. If you are listening to this and are wondering you haven't heard us talk about it, you
probably have ad nausea. But we have an excellent Patreon community where if you are interested in discussing more about issues of work and life and parenting and career advice and how to combine all these things, we have a very very helpful forum where people share all kinds of things. We often have long discussion threads. I mean We've gotten like eighty comments on posts talking about things, so please
consider joining us there. But anyway, we had a question posted to us there from a community member who said, I see both of you, and she's talking to Sarah and me here. Are pretty physically active, have multiple kids, demanding job, podcasts and other responsibilities, and I never see you complain about a lack of energy. The other day I did strength training and my body was sore. My
energy was low for the next couple of days. My husband is traveling and I am exhausted doing solo parenting with one toddler who goes to daycare eight to nine hours a day. What hacks do you have in your life, starting from sleep or caffeine or supplements or protein or mental health or anything else that helps you to have the energy to have a full life. So, Sarah, I mean, clearly we're both one hundred percent bubbly all the time, right.
Absolutely, No, I was just thinking about how like, what of a miss misinterpretation of the situation here.
Anyone who follows me on Strava knows there are days that I'm like, well, that felt like garbage, So not.
Feeling amazing all the time.
I do think at this phase in my life, I have a good amount of energy. I'm not sure that was totally true during the toddler phase, and I definitely don't think it was true when I was like pumping and had a toddler, because I just want to say, like, you are in a phase of life that can.
Feel super super hard.
Like it's that physical parenting, that following your kid around, parenting that like, oh my god, if I don't you know, watch you every second, you are going to hurt yourself or eat something poisonous or like god knows what, Like that is so so hard and so for you to be tired. I just want to validate that just might be normal and expected and there is a reason. I mean, listen, more power to you if you run marathons when you
have little kids. But like, there's a reason I'm doing it now, and I didn't do it when my kids were like one and three. And I mean, I could have made that choice, but I really, honestly at the time didn't have the energy for it. So I think that you are also looking at us in like a slightly different phase than you are in right now, so the comparison might be hard. I also want to say, like from an exercise standpoint, there is a degree of
getting used to things. So I'm going to fast forward, like two years ago is when I started running like a lot more seriously, and I remember I would do like an eight mile run and be like, oh, I am wiped, I'm done, like.
The rest of the day like wow, I have a headache.
And now I do that length run like almost every day, like that is like an average, Like I did it today and I feel completely fine because my body has completely adjusted to that. On the corollary, I have sucked at strength training recently, and when I did lift waste last week, I was super sore and dragging for a couple days after. So there may be something too. Okay, you just started a new workout. It won't always feel
as hard as it feels right now. Of course, you could always keep escalating it, but you.
Also don't have to.
You could get to the point where you could do your thirty minute strength workout, pick a level of weights that keeps you at a maintenance level of strength, and just like stick with that, like you don't always have to be leveling up. And then my last as a physician part is like make sure you do get checked for medical causes of fatigue, because there are many. They
might find nothing and that's okay, but it's worth looking for. Like, do you have anemia that can make you tired and is not that uncommon after pregnancy and all that stuff. Get your thyroid checked. Check for vitamin B twelve can cause indirectly anemia and can cause fatigue. Not super common, but you could be be twelve deficient, but just making sure to check those basics. I feel like anemia is like the unsung like it's just so common and it's
pretty fixable. I mean, iron efficiency can be fixable, So just looking for that kind of stuff could be a good idea.
Yeah, a lot of women who recently had children or breastfeeding others may have medical issues that are increasing fatigue, aside from the fact that you are taking care of a toddler, which is not known for boosting anyone's energy levels. So yeah, just to I mean total recognition that parenting a toddler is exhausting and doing it on your own as you were during the week when this letter came in is doubly exhausting. So just shout out recognize what
you are going through. I am certainly not constantly bubbly at all. I think Sarah and I if we come across that way, it's because we're on high energy mode when we are recording, because this is going out into the universe. But if you saw us on an average moment, that might not necessarily be the case. But to whatever degree, I've seen people manage their energy, I mean a few things. Figuring out how much sleep you need and doing what
you can to prioritize that is so important. And I understand it is very, very hard with a toddler because they might be waking up overnight, or they might be waking up at unpredictable times in the morning, or you might be having bedtime battles at night. So usually what this winds up looking like is going to bed earlier
then you might have chosen to do otherwise. And it's hard because again that it's your me time, right if you're solo parenting a toddler, your me time is after your toddler goes to bed, So you might not want to go to bed because you want to get more of your mea time. But I believe you can have your mee time and your sleep, So make sure you are going to bed at the number of hours at least of sleep you need before the average time when your toddler is getting up in the morning, so that
you have an adequate amount of sleep. Make sure you are getting space for the me time. My guest here is that because you've been solo parenting and you're working, you have the mindset like, well, oh, my kids in daycare all day, I can't take time away from my toddler because I'm working all day. But if your husband is traveling a lot, like the default here is that you guys would be doing fifty to fifty in the evening. And if he is not there and you have help,
the help is outsourcing him. It is not outsourcing you. You're there, right, So get a setter one night a week. Do something that is fun for you. Sounds like strength. May not be that, but you know it could be something else. Sake, you go meet up with a couple of friends who either also have a sitter or kids who don't have kids, I mean friends who don't have kids. It could be that you go to a bookstore and
hang out. It could be that you go to a concert, you go to a museum, with evening hours, you join a choir. I don't know what you do, but like, do something that is for you on that night, and I think that you'll find that that will give you more energy for the rest of life when you have that space for your own stuff, because we draw energy from meaningful things.
I like that one the best.
Find stuff that's fun for you, and remember that this is a season that you will eventually come out of and they'll be things you miss and then they'll be things that you're happy about. Like maybe you have a little bit more energy. Yeah, exactly.
So we thought we'd throw in one more bonus question, because why not. So this one came in from somebody who had been reading my books and had read the story which I've told great many times. If you ever watched my Ted talk, it's kind of one of the centerpieces of it of a lady whose basement flooded, And of course the gist of the story is that she wound up spending seven hours dealing with this flooded basement over the course of her week.
But if we'd sort of decided.
At the beginning of the week, like, oh, can you find seven hours for anything else? Basically in her life. I don't know, training for a marathon like Sarah's doing. I think most of us would have had a hard time to find seven hours. But when she had to find seven hours because there's water all over her basement,
she found seven hours. But anyway, this listener writes in and said that story made me wonder what are the most common big derailers of mom's time, Like the things that are going to suddenly consume seven hours of your week? Do you have any tips to better prepare for that kind of thing? So, Sarah, what's your thought? Oh, this is interesting time disappearing.
I feel like I read this question differently, but that okay, now it makes a lot more sense to me. I mean, for me, the most common is a kid being sick, which has become somewhat less derailing as a ca are a bit older, because being sick does that mean I
have to completely be one on one with them? But a kid being sick is the biggest one, and I feel like having a plan for that, whether it's discussing with your partner, like you know how you're going to take turns if that is needed, versus in your childcare provider whether they're comfortable helping out with that when they can't that kind of a thing, So that that's probably
the number one. But then also that interruption of yourself that tends to happen or you get sucked into some drama online and then all of a sudden, that's where your brain is for the rest of the day. So I think we have to be careful not to derail ourselves with that kind of distraction as well.
Yeah, I mean, I life does happen. I mean the morning that we're recording this, I was dealing with buses coming late and all that that necessitated that change the morning routine. And then work starts later then we meant it to start, and all those things like that. But I think one thing that we can have the power to stop a little bit more easily is running around doing one task after another, like so filling any time
that isn't already spoken for. Like obviously, if you have a reservation to go on a balloon ride at four o'clock, you're gonna go on your balloon ride at four o'clock. But let's say you are just around the house on a Saturday at four o'clock, what are you doing? I think if you observe. What many moms are doing is they are running around sort of inefficiently doing one task after another. Like you see a sock on the floor, so you pick it up and go put it upstairs.
But as you're putting it away, you see that there's a cup upstairs that needs to go down to the dishwasher, and you bring it down, but then there's a pot in the sink, and you're like.
Why is there a pot in the sink? I guess I'll just wash it.
And as you push away, you realize you are out of paper towels, and like, okay, well let's go see let's go find the paper towels, and then you're there. You like, you know, all sorts of time can disappear into this, and you're not even really efficiently doing housework.
It's not like you said, okay.
I need to clean the house for two hours. Like you're just running around doing like one thing after another.
So I think to decide just to not do that, Like you can choose a time where you're gonna run around and reset the house if you want, like say, okay, fifteen minutes after dinner tonight, we're all going to go around and reset the house or whatever it is, but just decide, like to actively say, this is a time I'm relaxing, Like if it is possible in your life, like you're not chasing a eighteen month old child around, but if you are four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon
and you're home and there's nothing you have to be doing, just to say, Okay, I'm going to relax for now. Now is my time that I'm reading a magazine, or now is the time that I am going to sit on my camera, or now is the time that I'm going to do some project. But make sure that you are doing something intentionally instead of just filling times with random tasks that maybe could be done but probably didn't actually have to be done right that minute.
That's why I put stuff like watch Emily in Paris in my planner on a Sunday. It's like, I sign myself, I have to do this now. But ye, reactive versus proactive housekeeping. I was kind of hearing in there, which is interesting, but uh, yeah, block off that time, just take it, knock off the time and take it well. So this has been kind of an all love of the week episode, right, So yeah, I guess we don't need more Loves of the week.
We don't need more loves of the week and this you've had plenty. But we will 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.