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 July of twenty twenty four. We're going to be doing an all mail bag episode, and as we've done with some previous mail bag episodes, Sarah and I are actually sitting here right together, this time in my office in a suburb outside of Philadelphia.
So welcome to the Philadelphia Regions. Thank you so much. I love coming here.
And this time I was super excited to maybe get a break from the heat, and then I got none.
Yeah. So it is ninety four degrees today and very humid. I went outside this morning thinking I'd have a nice, pleasant cup of coffee with the cool era in the morning. And I was quickly dispused of that notion. It was like already eighty plus degrees and like ninety percent humidity, So I'm sorry.
What could I say?
It was no worse than I'm used to, so that's good. We went running this morning along the Schoogle, and I think a lot of the natives were unhappy, and we were like, this is business as usual.
Yes, this is nothing unusual for us.
A train for a marathon in this sort of weather, I guess. But yeah, you so you're visiting your parents as you often do for the Fourth of July and any sort of festivities you guys did while here.
So yes, this is our third consecutive visit during this time of year. The first though, where Josh came along with us. I think he was on call. The last two. We went to the zoo yesterday and that was pretty much it. We spent a lot of time hanging out with my knees. She's super cute, the age where she can really play with everyone. We just like destroyed all the toys in her face. I mean not destroyed. We made a mess in her basement.
It was great.
Yeah, mostly just kind of hanging out. Short trip, but fun.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, and currently our husbands are entertaining our children in my pool and hopefully that is going well.
There were I have to say, I had put away the water guns in.
The storage area, thinking maybe it was a lot of kids in the pool, maybe the water guns would have added to the chaos, and then they were immediately found. My kid went in to find something else and all of a sudden, out they came.
So here we are.
I think they're going to have a great time, and we are going to make this episode as long as we can.
Just getting avoiding the pool and all that is associated with it right now. I mean, it's a good day for the pool, but it's also also good day to not be in the pool.
So all right, So we're doing a mailbag. These are questions and send it and by listeners.
As always, if you have a question that you would like to send in, feel free to email it to me Laura and Laura Vanderkam dot com. You can post it on either of our blogs. We got some questions as well from our Patreon community, which we'd love to how people join, but we will go ahead and.
Dive right in.
So first question, how much time do you spend on the pod in a given week, and that means outlining, recording, coordinating with guests, your Patreon community, et cetera.
So, Sarah, what about you. It's hard to calculate.
If I had a time log, I could probably answer this more accurately, because it really does vary a lot from week to week. Some weeks are pretty heavy where we might spend I might spend a couple hours like drafting episodes, and then we're recording that same week, so we're spending a couple of hours recording. Then there's like the post recording kind of processing stuff, and then there's Patreon. So I'm gonna guess it maybe averages to two to
three hours per week. Yeah, probably with the Patreon probably about three.
Yeah, and some of the Patreon community time. It's more like, you know, you're just on an Internet forum and it's kind of fun to do. Like it's another social media type thing that's not as terrible as some social media and so as being a closed community, it's kind of more fun. So it's the sort of thing that I feel like I might be participating in any way, even if I weren't doing it as part of our podcast. So yeah, I'd say three hours is about it. I fun fact, I don't really break stuff out on my
time logs like categories of work. Sometimes I do, but it's not comprehensive, like I might just say what I was doing, but I have I tend not to really add it up by different categories. But yeah, an episode tends to take about an hour between recording and the sort of starting and ending stuff around it. The notes for an episode can take about an hour, but we trade off on those ads take some time. Patreon takes some time, but given that it's one episode a week, you know.
And then there's this sort of organic back and forth when we come across a good idea, like I'll just text Laura, ooh that seems cool, or we'll get a pitch on email and we kind of send that back and forth, and that's sort of just in the background a lot, but it's it's generally fun.
So yeah, I say, I'm not like adding up all the time I've spent texting with Era, and then like, you know what, I separate out what is me showing her my funny Fourth of July outfit versus what should we do about this guest? Yeah?
Yeah, and then ad recording is another. The ad recording's funny because that's probably one of the least flexible aspects of it, because sometimes you do have a more specific deadline, so that can be harder to plan around than some of the other stuff.
But we get it done. Yeah, we get it done.
And so then there's a follow up question of how best of both world is structured and how we decide who will do what tasks, what percent of the overall work. Has that changed over the years as Sarah's career has evolved. How do we split revenue? I mean the revenue is fifty to fifty. That's pretty straightforward answer. It's just pretty simple.
We split anything we make down the middle. We do have like kind of our own tasks that we generally do, like when we record afterwards, I like put the notes up and I put everything on this app that we use to communicate with our sound team. If it's a computery, I feel like I'm more doing it. If it's like business y, Laura's doing all of it.
And Laura does the blog post every week on her website and definitely does about two thirds of the Patreon. Although I keep trying to like I need to increase my Patreon. I'm working on it.
I love it.
I love doing it, and I tend to do it on Thursdays and then yeah, but you have so much to say, You're like Monday, Tuesday, and then sometimes there's something on Wednesday.
I'm like, wait, where is this all coming from? This font of discs? Points? Yeah.
Now, and as for who does what on different things, like with guests, it tends to be either who found the person who is interested in the topic, if somebody hasn't done one lately, so because sometimes that happens that somebody's done three in a row, and then we try to trade it off because we're trying to roughly keep it equal with that. Yeah, I would say it's more like who's interested in the topic or person.
I mean, not that the other person isn't interested.
If somebody's like, wait a minute, why did you interview that person?
Then I tend to take the doctors because it's like, oh, I think I'll be able to think of kind of backstage things to ask them that are fun, and I feel like you take more of the writers.
Yeah, I probably do more of those, but yeah, there's no rule to it. We're very flexible and back and forth on a lot of different things. All right, So this question is that this person is always impressed by the amount of writing and ideas that both of us produce weekly in the form of blogging, newsletters, podcast topics.
Both of us have two podcasts.
She says, I'd really be interested in you talking doing some sort of dive into how you manage to come up with your ideas and execute on them. So, Sarah, maybe you can talk through between blog best laid plans, like where's it coming from?
Yeah, I have no system. You have no system. Okay, that was our answer, all right.
No, I mean if I have an episode, do somehow. I generally am able to come up with something. Sometimes write when I need to. I mean I do write out when I'm going to say for both podcasts. So it's not like I'm talking off the coff into a mic and haven't prepared. But I will say there is something too knowing you are recording on a given day and need to come up with notes to make the ideas flow. I think that our listeners come up with
awesome ideas. So we're always getting things from the Patreon, from our blogs, from comments or I have some friends that tend to listen to the podcast, and we'll text me suggestions and I do so that two and sometimes we just text kind of back and forth. Plus when we go on vacation, like little not vacations, our little work trips, we tend to like brainstorm a whole bunch of things at once, and then we can kind of use that treasure trove for a little while.
Yeah, and we've definitely gotten better at it, I would say, as we're coming up on seven years of doing the podcast, like the first time, you know, when we started off, we'd be like, let's do an episode on childcare.
We're like, okay, we'll do an episode on childcare.
And then we realized, like a couple of years in, like that is not a topic that is like a bad Yeah, No, that's just like, I mean, it's a topic, but it's not an angle, like you need some sort of angle that makes it more interesting. Whereas like this, a couple of weeks ago, we did one that was like summer Challenges, and then there were like four b challenges, right, I mean, that's more of a podcast episode title. And so we've gotten better about thinking of what would truly
be a compelling podcast. I think in the course of seven years of doing this, the guests, a lot of people write to us and say they'd like to be on the show, and we're always happy to have those. I mean, we're definitely interested in real people. Again, if there's some sort of interesting, counterintuitive, offbeat angle to what you're talking about that is a particularly compelling story for us.
We always like that we.
Look ahead and see who has books coming out or a podcast that might want to do some sort of swap with us. Those are how we get those kind of guests, just looking forward with those And.
To be clear, we don't take every pitch be yet Lars like, they're always happy to I mean, we are always happy to.
Look at them.
And actually sometimes we'll see something and then later on think of, oh wait, what about that person, So that definitely happens, and then there are plenty of things that were like this is great, but we've had very similar things on it already, so we'll think of something else.
Yeah, I mean, And also just like reading a lot, like if you're walking around the universe and reading things or reading other blogs or reading people's posts on stuff, or seeing what people get excited about or what's a problem in your life. Those are all ideas, and I just keep lists. I keep running lists. That's how I, yeah,
come up with stuff like that other podcasts too. I definitely sometimes riff off of or something like One of the most potent things is if you disagree with something, yeah, and you find the passion coming out because somebody's saying something there like wait a second, I have my own take on that. Then that is a natural title and topic for your own podcast. I feel like I do that a lot on Best Laid Plans, maybe less on here, but sometimes we do that.
Sometimes we do that too.
But you organize everything and like in what format, well do you'll come out with I come out with a lot of content.
You come out with even more content, So best of both worlds.
I have a running spreadsheet that is the official schedule, and I try to have that done at least a couple weeks ahead of time, with different topics that I have come up with that I think would be an interesting angle. Same thing I mean with vander Hacks, I'm about a week and a half ahead. That's my substack newsletter.
You know.
I just brainstorm ideas when I am planning my upcoming week. I'm often sitting there writing ideas, and if I have more than five, then I can push stuff forward to the next week if I think they're all usable.
But I don't know.
I feel like ideas come they helped generate themselves. Like if you think of like I always need to be coming up with ideas, then you start coming up with more ideas because your brain is just in that mode. It's open that first spreadsheet you mentioned you meant before breakfast, right, Yes, I'm sorry. I was like, is there a secret, secret spreadsheet that I didn't tell sir about? There needs to be more of a slow spreadsheet for our upcoming episodes.
I do have a low sort of spreadsheet in Apple notes. I wouldn't totally call it a spreadsheet, but okay, I'm sorry I misspoke, but yes, the best of both worlds.
There should be one too. All right, Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and we'll be back with more of our mailbag. Well we are back.
We are talking all things mail bag here. We've got a lot of listener questions that came to us. So this next one, what travel destinations do you hope to visit? In the next one to two years. Well, so that's kind of an interesting quite one to two years because I bet one year is mostly set for you or.
Yeah, I think we should answer this question, but I think we should also answer longer term, and we should tell listeners how we like track these ideas.
Yes, I think that's a fun thing to talk about. All right, how about you next year?
Okay, next year? Actually, I haven't totally decided for next year. I think we're going to do some kind of ski trip, but maybe Pocono East Coast, which we haven't done something like that. The variable is we need to make sure there is really good ski instruction for Genevieve in particular, because without that, I don't think it would be that fun of a trip. And then we do want to do our first European family trip next summer, so we've
actually started talking about destinations. Josh is really big on Denmark fun, which I think would be yeah, really fun. And again, as always, we're like, where is it cool? Yeah, because we want to leave the heat. So I've also had the fun idea of maybe taking Iceland air so we can do like a prolonged lay over in Iceland and they do actually fly to Denmark. It looks like as well, so we'll see if that ends up being our summer and then you guys have a cruise, Well
this is summer twenty twenty five. Yeah, I'm getting way ahead, like cause it's that's a whole year. And yeah, we have a cruise in spring of twenty twenty five. Yeah, but that's just like a chill friend trip. That's like we're going nowhere. We're going to like Disney Islands.
Oh yeah, yeah, that's not that far for you guys. It's like it's like being in a boat down the school kill for us.
Like literally we leave out of Fort Lauderdale and then we go to like the two private islands, which are probably like a couple I mean, it's not it's more of an extended friend plateing with beaches, with beaches and.
A boat, a very big boat, guys. Next one to two.
Years, all right, so we are figuring out Christmas and spring break for the next year. It's possible there will be Hawaii and Costa Rica are the two destinations that are currently the front runners for those. There is a good chance that Jasper and I will be going to France in June of twenty twenty five, because that is a choir tour that we.
Will be going on together, So that would be fun. That is so fun. Yeah, I love that, Oh my gosh. Yeah.
But looking forward from that, we have a couple things that are on the list. I definitely want to go to Japan with Sam because that is something he has been interested in for a long time, and so I think we will do that before he leaves the house. I personally want to go to Germany and do a bach tour, go to Leipzig and the other places around there. Maybe I'd do that over I mean it might be,
you know, Europe's better in the spring and summer. But on the other hand, I want to do the Christmas markets.
Like It's sort of a long story, but we went to Germany in winter of two thousand and eight to sort of two thousand and nine, like around Christmas then, and I wanted to go to the Christmas markets, and we kept spending too long at places and not leaving in time into the markets would be closed, like when I when we got to the town where they would be, and so I wouldn't really get to go to them. So I would like to rectify that, and maybe that involves traveling by myself so that my plans can't get
derailed by people staying too long at other sites. You could spend hours.
I could spend hours at the Christmas and Christmas Martha.
It might be a trip by myself or maybe a friend who also likes these things. I probably will not be other members of my family, let me just put it that way.
Probably some good beer too, that's true. The beer.
Leave everyone else at the pub and I go do the Christmas markets.
That's awesome.
So yeah, yeah, those are a couple of ideas that I want to do. The National Parks in Utah.
Oh yeah, I've seen photos of those and they look amazing.
They look amazed.
The rock formations that are just wild, and you.
Can hit a couple, like if you were there for like two weeks, I think you could hit several of them if you timed it right and got your reservations done. You'd probably have to plan this like a year out in order to make that work, But if you wanted to do that as a trip, then you could totally do that. So that's on my list as well.
We also going further out from one year definitely want to do Hawaii for our twentieth wedding anniversary, this time with kids, but we did go there on our honeymoon, so it's kind of meaningful to plan on going back.
Yeah, excellent, Well those are that's a lot of places. I guess we got to get ordergotized on office.
So how do you track this? Do you have any.
Well, the problem is, I mean it's hard to look out more than twelve months. I tried to have a general sense of what we're the different vacations over the next twelve months because we tend to only travel when the kids are off school, and so if I wind up traveling somewhere cool for work or whatever, that's kind of a bonus. But the family vacations, it's Christmas spring break. I mean, you could do February that we get a fairly long President's Day, but it's not like a full
week or anything. It's just it's like four days. So we have done stuff. But I don't know if we're going to try to do that again because it's challenging. But so Christmas spring break, try to maybe do two things in the summer that tends to be how it goes.
One thing that I am learning now is that certain kids' activities and sports are shockingly strict about when they prefer you travel and when they not. There is language in our new gymnastics team that is like, you may not travel more than three consecutive days from this month to this month. So and I remember friends with older kids telling me this and me being like, whatever, I'll just ignore it.
And then you're like, oh, it's hard.
Because if you've committed to something, then you don't want to be especially if it's a kind of team thing, because then it's like, oh, I the one messing everybody up, or for soccer where they have tournaments, et cetera. So I actually am finding it much more fun to travel as the kids have gotten older and a little bit more complicated.
Yeah, yeah, no, that's true.
Although again, like Christmas tends to be good because you know, most people aren't going to make you do stuff on Christmas. But then again, the problem is is when everyone else is traveling. I mean, this is always the issue. It's yes we can travel over Christmas, and yes we can travel the week before Easter, but that is when literally everyone else is also traveling.
So I'm pretty resigned to that piece. I will say I've had some Christmas trips that were like shockingly chill, like going skiing over Christmas. It was jolly, it was lovely, and it wasn't terribly crowded.
Well, sometimes it's weird, you know.
Sometimes it's like things you think would be crowded aren't so we I mean, this is like a not a big trip. But on the fourth of July, we decided to do a family bike trip at Valley Forge, right because there's a loop there with the bike trails, and I was sort of thinking, I don't know that this is a good idea, Like if Valley Forge is gonna be crowded at any day, like I think the fourth of July, like Valley Forge National Park, we're gonna go see.
Where George Washington.
Like if you're thinking, oh, where can we go on the fourth, that like seems to be a place that people might go.
And yet it really wasn't that bad. Honestly, was not that bad at all.
I mean it was a little crowded around the visitors like Visitors Center, but once you got about half a mile away from that, I guess nobody walks further than half a mile.
We're just like not that many people, So it was pretty cool. I think that everyone is down the shore. Yeah, maybe everyone's down the shore.
That's been my arms every time we come. I'm kind of like, it's not too busy right now. I'm like, oh, they're all in New Jersey.
Yeah.
Well, it's funny that you say down the shore because we found everyone goes south to Cape May and Avalon and Ocean City and that's we go straight east.
So the store, you go east. You can't stay down there. And I guess I wouldn't be down the shore, would it. Philadelphians always say down the shore.
I know, but we're not going down You're right like you're going up to Yeah, slightly up and do east.
So so funny. All right, moving on from that one.
All right, So, Sarah, this person is wondering recommendations or tips for making your in office days count. And you have some experience with this because obviously you know your work. Some days you're in the office and other days you're doing something completely different.
Yeah, other days I'm like, consider myself like completely separate from the office. I think it's just very important to cultivate those relationships while you are there, make sure you do the lunch and say yes to be in person meeting and stop by somebody's colleague's office and ask how they're doing. Like it's the time to do that, softer piece, because when you're at home, like that's not going to
come very naturally. I mean avoiding going to meetings in person whenever you can, even if there's an option, even if it involves like walking to another building, depending on what you do, can be worthwhile.
You mean going to them, Yeah, going to them.
That's how you said avoiding No, No, like going going to them, going to them physically and not zooming.
Yes, don't zoom when you're in person.
Yes, now, I think and even sort of having in mind that your days in the office are social, because I think sometimes people still have it here. They're like, oh, well, I need to get my work done, so shit chatting with a colleague is separate. But it's like no, no, when you're at your home office, you can do your stuff like then you can put your nose to the grindstone, do all your individual deliverables, all that your days in
the office. Ideally you are not showing up just to call and email people in other places like that makes no sense, and I'm sorry if your employer is making
you go in to do that like that. There are very strict guidelines on when you have to go in, but if you have some flexibility with definitely thinking of those in office days as more social, like make sure that you are booked for lunch, make sure that you're planning on meeting somebody for coffee, or at least have an idea of who you might ask, so that you're making the most of those in person connections.
If there's anything that needs brainstorming, in person is so much better. For some reason, I feel like it's so much easier to play off of other people's ideas when you are together.
Hence why we talked about earlier.
Laura and I like to like plan out our season when we can actually see each other and talk face to face. So think of your in office days as like idea generating connections.
Yes, exactly.
So another career related question, this person says, I may be going back to part time contract work shortly after a break from work. Any tips or tricks on how to start well in a new role, but also word off burnout from the beginning. So yeah, I think the thing with part time work and certainly what you've discovered, Sarah, I mean, you really want to be clear on your boundaries.
Yes, extremely clear, and those boundaries include time and scope. So it's like I work these days and I'm responsible for these activities because I do think you know, one of the things we warn against with part time is you just become very vulnerable to doing a full.
Time job and getting part time pay.
And that is not going to be a recipe for avoiding furnout since that's what you're looking to do. So being very clear about those things, even having them, I don't necessarily know, if you know, it depends on the culture, et cetera, whether that would be appropriate to put in writing to somebody else, but at least put him in them writing to yourself, so you have an idea of
what your goals are. And if there's some way of chatting with whoever hired you to make sure, like, oh, we're all in agreement about X, Y and Z, then that will be very helpful. And if you can get them to put that in writing, probably even more so. And the fact that you're a contract employee, this might be realistic because they hired you to do a specific thing. They didn't hire you to be a piece of the corporate machine. They're hiring you to do that thing that
you're expert in. With that said, since you chose to take this position, make sure what you are spending your time doing are those super valuable things. Then I'm sure they're excited about you bringing to the company. And if you find yourself being asked to do things that are not things you love to do, not are things that are your valuable skills, then you may want to be careful about that and try to address them explaining that hey, you're here to do XYZ.
And you're not going to be able to accommodate AP and C.
Yeah, and this person maybe it may have an hourly rate associated with that, in which case I think that's actually a very fair way to compensate people in this kind of work, because then you're tracking your hours and if they are asking you to do more than the scope of what you agreed to do, then guess what you're getting paid more and then you can decide if that's worth it a long term with this gig, but that would be great, and if it's not that, then maybe try to keep track of that on your own
so there's some record of how much you are actually working. I think it'd be very good to bill your time, even if you don't officially bill your time on that, but also make sure that you are doing cool stuff outside of work. I think one of the best ways to ward off burnout is to have a cool life. I mean, we draw energy from meaningful things. And the opposite of burnout isn't like it's engagement, right, Like, it's
being engaged in your life. And so that's great if your work feels engaging and wonderful, but if this is also just a way to make some money, which is totally cool, make sure you've got some other cool stuff going on in your life as well, whether that's joining the softball team, playing pickleball every Thursday with a picklebar partner, or whatever it is. But just that you have other cool stuff going on in your life in the hours that aren't work will also help ward off burnout.
Yes, because you are choosing to be part time at a cost right like you could have been full time, So make sure you're making those hours worthwhile. That doesn't mean not to rest, it doesn't mean not to pack in every little thing, but again, I like that. Make sure you're and things that feel really fun and worthwhile to you.
All right, Next question, this person says, I am headed back to work soon after having twins, who are her last kids? Having had twins, she has four children ages five and under. She says she lives in a part of the world where many mothers either go part time or stay home with young kids, so she knows she is going to be a serious exception I guess at her workplace and in her general community.
She is bracing herself for that somewhat.
Looted question that she will probably get people saying, oh, well, you know they're only young once, or some male colleagues saying things like, yeah, my wife didn't go back to work after we had ex kid because child care costs more than what she made. What is a good way of answering those comments. She is especially worried if they might come from some of her supervisors who say things like, oh, well, this is such a special time, just enjoy it. Why
are you in a rush for a promotion? Oh my goodness, Sarah, what do.
You think about this one?
Oh? I feel so bad for anyone that has to face that, But I know it is a reality in some cases. I mean, I think emphasizing that you really enjoy your work and you're happy to be there. I mean, if I had a supervisor say that, I'd be like, I am enjoying it, and I'm also enjoying being here.
This project is really fun.
I don't know this, this is super super carb, but I think I would emphasize how much I was happy to be back.
Yeah, and you don't have to answer the question that is asked. We've been on the receiving end of this as people who are interviewing other people that it is entirely possible to pivot to say, oh, that's such an interesting question, and that's such an issue, and like, have you considered this.
When you say something that is totally.
Different from what they ask, right, And when you're interviewing someone this is really really annoying. But if you are just making polite conversation, which presumably is what everyone is doing, then you have to I think you just pivot and be like, oh, yeah, the kids are amazing.
There's someonet of a did you see their picture? Oh, they're so cute, and this is a great project. Can I tell you my ideas for this right, It just like move on right, like move on from it.
I actually think the barrage of kid pictures might be a perfect way to do it because it would do two things. A Like, they're never they're gonna learn because they're not gonna really want to see the barrage with
good pictures most likely. And number two, if you show them the pictures from the weekend where you're like, look, this is us at the pool and this is us at the blae it's like, oh wait, okay, I guess they are spending a good amount of time together and maybe it would pin the back of their brain that's like, maybe she doesn't want to do that every single day Monday through Friday. I mean, I guess it depends on
your line, I know, but I would also. I mean, this is something you might want to think about long term. If you truly are getting sort of paternalistic kind of things from your supervisor about why are you in a rush for a promotion, which is a nicer way of saying working moms don't.
Get promoted around here, I.
Think you might want to be putting some feelers out for other managers you might want to be working with. Let's just put it that way, and that sucks, but it may be the case. All Right, we're gonna take another quick ad break and we'll be back. Well, we are back talking all things mail bag and we are Sarah, you moved away from the question. I we're here, live together. Sorrys in charge of the notes, and all of a sudden the notes disappeared, and I'm like.
Thinking about adding another question, but we'll see if it gets I think we're good by the way. I think listeners should know that a little ping popped up with like clearly was like pictures of videos of our children, our children, I mean daredevil stunts off of the diving board. But we haven't heard any screams, no no been.
No spas.
So yeah, well, well, just if it dings again, there's nothing I can do about it.
I don't know how to turn it on.
I mean, obviously do not disturb somewhere on here, but we have to be on the internet, so I gotta figure that out anyway. Okay, last question, is there a next step once kids are bigger beyond nanny age for either of you that you have considered? So, Sarah, I mean at the point where kids can be home by themselves. I mean, maybe your oldest is even driving, Like, what do you think that would would look like?
Yeah, I mean we I guess just a review. We do currently have a full time nanny who doesn't really work full time hours most weeks. Some weeks she comes close if there's a really loaded activity schedule or days off from school or things like that, but a lot of other weeks we don't really need anybody in the morning currently most days. Next year is going to be a very weird year because we have one kid at one school, two kids at another school, and I think
that's going to weed to increase complexity. That's going to be get definitely important to have full time coverage, But I do wonder about some kind of shift after that, particularly if we end up putting all three kids in the same school again, then there may be other options.
I would personally love to have our same nanny. I just wonder if there may be a point when we do something a little bit different with the hours, if we can find an arrangement that everybody that works for everybody, Because she.
Does a lot of household stuff for you, right, like, yeah, that she cooks, she does laundry, she cleans, up.
Correct, she cooks, she cleans, she does a lot of that stuff. Well not clean, it's not like heavy duty cleans, but there's definitely plenty of household stuff. However, my kids are getting to the point where they can help with some of that. It's less of that complete and utter chaos that we had when the kids were little.
I don't know.
I do think about it wouldn't be for next year, but like whether there might be a slightly different arrangement that would make sense a year and a half from now.
Yeah, I mean, we still have young kids too, and it's as the kids get older, you wind up needing help with the driving a lot. And I think people wind up not having full time care often too soon.
Like they they're like, oh, well the kids are in school, but you're only in school from like nine to three, and it's one hundred and eighty days a year, whereas a work here is like two hundred and forty days, and kids get sick and kids, you know, there's random half days and you might travel for work, in which case like that doesn't really work if both of you are out of town and somebody needs to be around because there's a random half day or whatever, and you
can create a really complex schedule, but it also is very helpful to have another person who is available for that. So just cautioning people not to give up the coverage too soon, I think we've seen a lot of people transition to more of a like household manager role that somebody can do a lot of the things. Like you know, if you're going to do that bathroom renova, maybe you
don't want to manage it. That would be something that somebody could take on or organize the house, get rid of all the stuff, the baby clothes that need to go, or repair the mailbox that got knocked over, or you know, make dinner, do laundry, whatever. So lots of different things that could still be done, and that's often helpful to not have to have either you or your partner do it if you're both working more than full time hours.
Do you think you guys will make any kind of shift at any point.
I mean, you know, I do I think we'll need full time coverage when Henry is like fourteen, No, and he's the only kid at home. But on the other hand, he wouldn't be able to stay home by himself, so for like overnight night yeah, so, I mean, you'd still need to figure something out for that, but we'll see how long Michael's doing what he does or you know.
I can't picture our youngest ones home. Well I think about that a lot, actually, because I'm like, oh, right, Genevieve entering high school will be an only child at home, assuming everybody follows the conventional path to college, and that is kind of wild. It's also like, I don't know, you have to be careful with that math because then you realize like, it isn't that far away, which is.
Why we're enjoying it a lot now, right, Lots lots of fun with the kids, lots of adventures, I mean definitely. I mean with that last question, I think they're only young ones, yes, and we are enjoying all of it while still doing our full time job, so there's no contradiction there whatsoever.
That's the whole message of best of both worlds one hundred percent.
Yes, All right, Well, this has been our mailbag episode. We are sitting here in my home office outside Philadelphia, where Sarah has joined me and our kids are hopefully still in the pool, but we will be back next week with more on making work in 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.