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 late February of twenty twenty four. We are going to be talking about planning your summer now. Now.
I imagine that many people hearing this are being like, wait, Laura, Sarah, this is late February, or perhaps you are listening to this later in the week and it is early March. Why are we talking summer now? Well, we will, of course talk about summer during summer too, It's always a favorite topic of ours. But now is actually a really good time to think through your summer for a few reasons.
I mean, one, you can view this time holistically, like looking at the whole map of the summer and sort of balancing the different things you might want to spend your time doing, whether that's vacations or days off when people don't have anything, sort of staycations, the camps your kids might be in. What weeks for that, so you can view the whole time holistically, kind of setting your budget for the summer if that's something you want to do.
But you're also more likely to get things you want if you think about this three to six months ahead of time in terms of both vacation bookings, days off at work, camp sessions, and something that matters for a lot of people listening to this podcast, you are less likely to wind up with gaps in childcare, which of course is a major stressor for a lot of people who have younger school age kids, you know, five to time ten years old school and maybe after care is
your primary childcare and all of a sudden that's gone for this summer and maybe the options don't completely cover it. So we would definitely want to talk about that, and you know, encourage you, if you haven't thought about your summer yet, to block out some time in the next week or two to give it a thought. Yes, first, in a non logistical thing. Sarah, what are you most looking forward to this summer?
I am most looking forward to our family trip, which we try to do something every year. We're only doing like a maybe week in a day a length trip this summer, so no big two week extravaganza like we enjoyed last summer. But we are planning to hit New England, which should hopefully have better weather than we have down in Florida. So super excited about that. We're going to go to New Hampshire where I spent a lot of summers as a kid. That sounds like really like fancy,
but it wasn't at all like my grandparents. I guess they would run a house and my parents would take advantage of the free condo room and we would squeeze in and we'd be like sleeping on the porch and it was lovely. There was lots of loons and lakes, little creeks and things, and so I'm excited to give
my kids that experience. And then I think partly inspired by you, Laura, and also shout out to Kay again, who has been like we're gonna have to have her on again because we mentioned her a lot, but I got her vacation itinerary and I'm definitely gonna do mean because it definitely seems like a Katie National Park is a place not to be missed. So I hope this episode gets all of you in the mood to plan, because I have to say this has hit me at a time and I'm like, ugh, I have to do this,
and it doesn't feel seasonal or fun right now. But maybe by listening to us chat about it, it will get you more excited to just go ahead and pull the trigger on some of these things for the summer, because it is true, as we'll discuss, that some of this stuff can become a little bit trickier the longer you wait. So we're hoping to inspire you today.
Yeah, I love a Katie. Katie is amazing. If anyone hasn't gone, you should go. I have gone like four times now because it's park you can get to in a two hour flight from as opposed to heading out to Yosemite, which is a bit of a more of an excursion, but it's very beautiful. Definitely check it out. I love going sort of end of summer because far north Maine it's starting to be fall and so it's like this bonus fall even though it's still your summer vacation.
So anyway, put that out there for anyone whose kids start school in September, you might want to look into the last week of summer in Acadia. But anyway, Yeah, it's going to be a fun summer for us, I think. I'm I'm looking forward to partly being able to use like our yard, so we have a pool, but longtime listeners know this was a historic house that we had to do a gut renovation of and a historic pool is just old, like there's nothing redeeming about it being
an old pool, I guess. So a lot of things were just kind of broken, and we got it working at the end of our first summer here in twenty twenty two, and then other things broke for twenty twenty three and those needed to be fixed. But I am excited that hopefully this summer everything should be in working order with the amount of work we have put into it, so we'll be able to actually use it and it is not so historic perhaps anymore, it's like more actually working.
So yeah, I'm looking forward to that this summer, and especially as we get toward kind of the end of summer and it gets cooler, there's a hot tub attached to it, so that'll be a fun thing to go into and you know, extend the season a little bit as well. So, Sarah, what does your summer planning timeline look like? Like? When do you start thinking about the next summer?
Yeah, so I start thinking about it when I'm doing my annual planning. I'm often starting to at least think through like big ideas like are the kids going to go to sleep away camp? Or what is our family trip going to be. I've talked before about how I like having kind of some long term travel ideas on hand that are not necessarily set in stone, but at
least kind of ideas of what's coming. And there was definitely a part of Planning twenty twenty four, either the live or the recorded versions, where we talked about like kind of picking up your big kind of anchor vacations for the year and thinking through that. And so that is when I actually started like finalizing, like, oh, what do I what I kind of think we want to do vacation wise for the summer.
So that's when it starts.
But I would say the concrete pieces coming into place is about Now, it obviously depends on the trip. We went on an Alaska cruise last summer.
That had been.
Really much longer process because a, I mean we actually needed to like save for it because this was a higher budget vacation than we typically take, and I wanted to spread that pain out over a little bit of time, so I would like make my little cruise payments in my savings buckets, et cetera. So that was even longer. But I would say, unless it's something super special or super big, now is when I'm thinking about getting some of the details nailed down in terms of the specific
dates and the lodging. I also tend to do, like some time type of scheduling the moment I get my call schedule, because that is when I kind of know my availability for the entire next year. So that came out last August, and that's when I kind of thought, Okay, I think we're probably gonna end up traveling in early August. And it turns out I think that's going to be true. So yeah, it's kind of a long protracted process. And then of course the closer we get to these things,
the more specific we get. I find that lodging from a travel planning perspective tends to be the thing that needs to be nailed down the earliest, particularly with more than two kids. I really feel like there's just such a difference when you're searching for a hotel room. You can have a family of four and like the world is just wide open to you. Obviously I could purchase two hotel rooms, but that doubles the price on anything,
so I'd rather not do that. I'd rather get some kind of a house or some kind of a family type suite, and they're just not as easy to come by. So that needs to be kind of a six months out kind of thing for us most of the time.
And when does Josh need to book off his stays?
That's actually really interesting he doesn't, meaning despite how I wished it was done, they don't feel like they're able to set call and then plan their lives around the call. They do it the other way around. And to his credit, thus far, we've been able to work it out. He was like, just plan the trip and I will make sure that I'm off. And that worked for our two week trip, and it should work for our one week
trip this summer. And it is tricky because there's only three guys in his group, so as he points out, when one of them goes away, and they're all, ah, men, I'm not they are guys. And when one of them goes away, then the other two are left holding down the fort, which means they're on half the time, which is a lot. But they all have families and it's important for all of them to get away, so they do this for each other.
Yeah, well that's good. Hopefully two of them don't choose the same weight because then that's awkward. Yeah, so for us, it's yeah, it's a rolling thing. There are multiple different points when things need to be sort of booked. Our particular beach house that we have rented each summer for the past several years, I need to tell the agent that we want the same weeks basically when we're there.
They booked the next summer at the end of that summer, so I just confirm with her, like, roll over the deposit, We'll take the same weeks. So that's set in early, and then some of the camps have earlier deadlines than others, at least if you want to get the more affordable rates.
We're sending Alex to a new overnight camp for two weeks this summer, and they actually had if you put the deposit down before September thirtieth, it was significantly cheaper, and so I was like, well, it's sort of to the degree that, like, if I lost the deposit, it was still going to be cheaper than the amount different, you know, So I'm like, let me just go for it. And I'm sure that's why they calculated that way to
get people to lock it in. And then we had a few others that opened over November, and again you get preferable rates if you sort sign up before January first, and if I truly think my kids are going to do these again, I try to get it locked in, which means that the camp spreadsheet was created in the fall,
but it was not mostly filled in until later. We're still working on some of the weeks and figuring out what weeks are going to be left open, and for Sam in particular, I'm glad that there are several weeks left open because he wants to do an online summer school option and so he needs to have the space available to do it. Jasper has been figuring out what he wants to do, and so obviously I can't really
fill it in for him. He needs to figure out what he would like to do with his summer, and so that's a different process and that may happen more around now, and that's fine. I mean, obviously some camps obviously could still be open, or if he wants to work somewhere, then that would happen closer to the summer. So it's a rolling timeline for us. But I do think that now is the time where I'm really sort of locking it in, because that's three to six months ahead.
You still have a lot of options. So yeah, that's why we're looking at it for that.
There's definitely a regional aspect to like when all the camp emails come and like I guess where I live, Like every camp and program decided it was going to be like early February, like everyone was going to send
their stuff at once, which is super interesting. But being aware of that rhythm and being kind of ready to watch for it and take action and have discussed with your kids kind of their preferences so that you can act when they come in can be really helpful rather than kind of being surprised by it and then having to wait and negotiate with your kids and then having fewer options later down the road.
Yeah, So if you're starting to think about this now, one of the first steps you can do is some brainstorming on your own, with your partner, with your kids, with extended family, anyone else that you might be spending significant time with over the summer. What would you like your summer to look like? I mean, what would make it a good summer. What are some things that you've been hoping to do, and that can be day to day little adventures. It could be camps the kids are
interested in. It can be trips you want to take. It can be family members you would like to see. Just sort of a general sense of what would make
it a good summer, and then the logistics. Sarah and I both create a camp spreadsheet, or it's not so much a camp spreadshet, it's a summer spreadsheet, and for us it has the weeks of summer down the left hand side, so starting when the kids are getting out of school, and Henry gets out a little bit earlier than the others, so I have to make it a slightly more extended and then the names of the kids
across the top, and if you want. You can add your name and your partner's name as well, if you want to sort of block out what you guys are doing over the summer. If there's weeks you're off in particular or travel, you might want to put that in and write down what everyone is doing and those various weeks of summer. And the reason to do this is, I mean, you could just see very quickly. The whole point of a spreadsheet is that it organizes a lot
of information in one spot quickly. So in this case, the spreadsheet is not being used for adding things up or creating categories with numbers and getting a pie chart out of it. It is just that you can see who is where when. So you are welcome to have four kids in four different camps at a particular week, but you can see if it's going to be problematic, right like, if they're in four entirely different places different times, that's going to be some driving issues and you might
want to think about that ahead of time. But then you could also say, well, maybe I don't do that, maybe I do. You know, the weeks where two kids are away at overnight camp, that's when it's okay for the other kids. To have slightly different schedules because it won't be as challenging because there's only two of them. Or maybe we'll block off for everyone the week of
July fourth. We don't have any plans for it, but if we're all off, then maybe we could do like a beach trip or a trip to an amusement park. And it just makes it a little bit more or obvious when you should leave everyone free versus being okay with booking things.
Yes, yeah, I was actually thinking about this, so I do mine in Apple Notes. But the advantage of using something like Excel or Google Sheets is you could actually add a little financial column after each kid, and then you could keep track of the cost if you wanted to see how things were adding up, or see if one kid was getting spent on exorbitantly compared to the others,
or something like that. So that came to me as I made mine, although I don't think Apple Notes allows you to kind of add things the way Google Sheets or Excel does, So what works for now?
Yeah, we were just discussing before we started recording this how expensive some camps wind up being. I mean, this is again, I mean, among the reasons to start planning earlier is that you might be able to comparison shop. You know, if there's three dance camps in your community and your child is not the top ballerina ever that requires specialized things, you know, you might be able to look and see who has slightly cheaper rates and be
more likely to have that available to you. If you are moving ahead, and I'll just a shout out, we have found if you are looking for cheap camp options, vacation Bible schools are going to be usually about the cheapest ones around. Probably if you are not of that religious persuasion, you might not find it the best thing. But if you are sort of one Protestant denomination, you
probably don't care. If your child goes to a Methodist camp and then a Presbyterian camp, and they're probably welcome to have them, and they tend to be very cheap, so throw that out there as an option.
Yeah, and that could even be like alternated with a more expensive camp, so you're bringing down the average cost at least.
Yeah, they have fun, they do cool things. Ours the older children actually go volunteer somewhere each day, so that's kind of a cool experience for them to have.
That's really nice.
All right, Well, we're going to take a brief break and then we're going to come back to talk a little bit more about childcare for the summer. Well, we are back talking about why you should plan your summer now, various things to look at. Just going to throw in that if you do have the spreadsheet going, you can
see if things are balanced for any individual kid. If one kid has a lot and one has almost nothing, you can sort of nudge the kid who has almost nothing to think about what they would like to do for the summer. You can ask other parents for ideas, you know, the parents of that kid's friends, because maybe they might be motivated to do something for a week if a best friend is going for it as well.
And then one other question to ask I mentioned you could put yourself on the spreadsheet, what does summer look like for you? What are you looking forward to? Because a few months lead time gives you some space to
figure this out. And maybe it's a quick trip with your partner, or maybe you're going to meet friends somewhere, or maybe it's that you block out a few days on your work schedule ahead of time so you can go do little adventures for yourself as part of the self care that we talked about in our previous episode. So a few months lead time gives you a chance
to think that through. And particularly if there is a week where say you've got three kids and two of them are away at overnight camp and you only have one, there might be more options for you to either do one on one time with that kid, or to have some more time for yourself, or a time with your partner, or time that you can get together with friends. So worth thinking about that as well.
Yes, I will say for my thinking through my summer, the thing that I always have to remember is how disgusting our weather is and how that will get me down. I'm serious, Like it's better for me to go in being like this is my season of like summer hooge h y whatever, however I try to pronounce it, yes, because it is not a time to frolic in the out of doors. It is a time in many days to just kind of like hunker down and listen to
the thunderstorms. And if I can think of activities or just like things to kind of bring out that kind of cozy feeling which seems so backwards, but like I guess I've instead of fighting it to like just reach that place of acceptance, but try to find ways to almost like enjoy it, like like the book Wintering, but for summer in Florida and probably a lot of other southern states as well, or like Arizona. So I do think some thinking ahead about how I'm going to handle that is warranted.
Yeah, you could borrow somebody else's Winter fun list and put it as your summer fun list.
And seriously, except for the parts about like hot beverages and.
So you don't want any more hot beverages, there will be no hot beverages all summer long. It's iced coffee. Only one thing we really want people to think about. And again, a good reason to think about this now is that a lot of working parents wind up with some sort of gap in childcare and this can surprise people, and then they wind up with sort of stop gap solutions. And we stress on this podcast a lot that school
is not really childcare, it's partial childcare. But this is the point when you come into summer where you realize that for a lot of states, school is one hundred and eighty days. Your working year is probably somewhere between two hundred forty and two hundred and fifty days if you are working full time. So that is a significant gap in the number of days. And obviously there are a lot of childcare programs out there because there are
plenty of working parents who experience this every summer. But and this is your reminder to sign up if you haven't, but they may not run the whole summer, they may not have the hours that you're working. So remember, if you're signing your kid up for a day camp that runs from nine to three thirty and you work from eight to five, you've got to figure something out here or that it does start until say June. I don't
remember what the starts of the week. I let's say like June twenty one, and your school gets out on June twelfth, right or around here. A lot of stuff tends to end by kind of mid to late August, and our schools don't start till after Labor Day. So there are these bridge weeks which you might be able to take them off and use those as your vacation weeks.
That would be good planning ahead if you're going to do that, But if you don't, for instance, have that many vacation days or that many vacation days between you and your partner, You're probably going to need some other solution. And the further ahead you know this is happening, the more options you will have. I mean, the summer is one of the reasons you guys still have a full time nanny even though everyone's in school. Correct.
Yes, In fact, I would say in some ways she's more important from like a driving perspective, because exactly what you said, a lot of camps start at nine o'clock. I am already seeing my first patient at eight thirty. That does not work. And so even though during the school year we don't need anyone in the morning, it's very likely that several weeks in the summer we will
actually need more morning childcare. On the upside, there are fewer evening activities because they'd all get readed out anyway, so it'll just kind of shift to like more normal hours. But it's absolutely not a time of year when I'm like, oh, I don't have a need for childcare. If anything, it's more.
Yeah, yeah, it's much more. And so there are various options. Obviously, some camps have before and aftercare, which you can look into although I found you know, it's still a pricey kind of options. Well, if the camp is pricey, that's going to be pricey too. You might look into having a summer sitter, so whether that person's going to be full time or maybe they just work from two thirty
to six thirty every day. But again, the further ahead you're kind of looking or at least trying to think about it, the more options you may have, and you'll get a caregiver who's thinking about their summer ahead of time to time, and there might be some upsides to that. Looking into college students, for instance, people who are going to be home for this summer. If you have families that you know that one of their children have been off at school and are returning, that might be a
good option to look into. If those people are looking for summer employment, part time employment or either full time employment, or somebody who is going off to college in the fall and might be interested in earning a little bit of money before they do, so that could be a good option too, because you might also be able to
see about shifting your hours. If you are thinking about this again enough ahead of time that you might be able to make the case at your place of employment that maybe you normally start eight thirty, but in the summer, perhaps you could start at nine, and that would allow you to do a camp drop off and get there, and then you would only have to pay for the aftercare or hiring a cent or to pick your kids up at camp and keep them for the afternoon until
you or you and your partner can both get home from work. So again, the further ahead you do that, the more you might be able to make that case or change the work schedule to make that be possible.
Well, I'm more excited about planning summer than I was before we started recording this episode, So I feel like we have at least inspired me, so hopefully've inspired some listeners as well.
I know I was just thinking through I'm like, Okay, I've got to nudge a certain child to do something, a fil out an application that's going to have to happen. What else do I need to do? I haven't really thought though much about Henry some of his camps. I mean, he'd be doing more like half day camp type things, and I'm sure some are more competitive, but I also feel like it doesn't matter as much. I mean, for little kids. It's all kind of like they're gonna go,
They're gonna play. Yep, we'll sing some songs that can't be sack.
Choosing the camps I find has been getting exponentially harder every year, the more specific my kid's interests are, the more they may have certain friends they want to be with or not, because it really did used to be very kind of simple and like there would be some really obvious options and they just be like, okay, And now it's definitely it's just more complicated, and that's okay.
I mean, I guess it's great that they have so many cool things to choose from, and that these specialty camps exist at every single location and price point that one could imagine.
It can be a wee bit overwhelming. I mean, that's a the satisficer thing comes in and I am happy to have that because I'm like, if you like this camp last year, you'll probably like it again this year.
So how about you just choose a class you know you're going to like, and then we'll go with it and it might not be perfect, but then there are other fun things happening in the summer, like going to the beach ure you know, having a week where we're not in camp and people can go to an amusement park or do something else like that, So you know, I think it'll be a good time. The kids are also just happy to have the summer off.
So yes, yes, they're happy not to be in school no matter, no matter what they're doing. I'll also say, like the people who have their kids in sleep away where they automatically kind of are excited to go back and see the same people every year. That must be so awesome. So you guys are lucky if.
You've figured that out, you've unlocked that next level of the summer planning. Well, let's move on to the question that we have for the week. So Sarah, you want to read this one? Sure?
So this one comes from I'm going to call her s and she writes that she is thinking about buying a house in the next year she and her husband, and one of their big areas of anxiety about making this change is how to manage the new burden of household maintenance and repairs. She says they hear a lot from homeowner friends that something is always breaking.
You did talk about your pool.
Today, Laura, so there you go. Needs cleaning or repair requires a carpenter, et cetera. And how do you, as two people who are very protective and thoughtful about how you use your time, how do you manage this? What are your thoughts on this? How do you deal with the inevitable but unexpected appliance breaking or roof repair? And is there aspects of this that can be easily outsourced, like having a great go to handyman.
So Laura, yeah, yes, it turns out that houses can be a lot of work. I think, as with anything, people's experiences are going to be mixed, and you can make some smart moves to minimize some of the bigger headaches. I mean one, as potential home buyers here, make sure you do a thorough inspection before you buy the house.
I mean I heard in some of the sort of hot markets people were like waving the inspection just I would say, don't even buy in that market then, like, just don't buy the house because there's always something that's wrong.
Just these buildings are complicated things that have HVAC systems and plumbing and electricity and so something is going to be off and you want to go in with your eyes open, so you know, kind of the time and dollar amountated with what you're going to have to fix as opposed to having it all be a complete surprise.
Buying new construction obviously is one way to somewhat minimize the number of things that are going to break immediately, because hopefully, if you have a reputable builder, they are not going to build things that are going to immediately break. And I'll throw out here the idea of buying a smaller house just because the less stuff there is, the
less stuff that will break. You know, we're talking to somebody recently who had a huge storm and had a number of windows had a problem with leaking, and the more windows that were the more windows that had to be replaced, right, So the bigger the house, Like, various people had different experiences with this. If you have like three windows on that side of your house versus thirteen windows on that side, you're going to have a different bill for how much is going to be the storm
damage from this particular thing. So anyway, you might want to know that we certainly did a thorough inspection. That's one of the reasons we did like gut renovation of this, and we knew that going in you can have a couple of contractors that you call all the time. Certainly by this point in our process, we have a few that we really like, and so whenever something goes wrong
we call them. We also have our house manager. I mean, one of the reasons we wound up doing this situation is we have somebody for a couple hours a week who can do household related stuff, not all of its contractor related, but when we are doing some sort of bigger contractor project, she can manage that right She's getting the bids, she's talking through it with them, and so it's less of something that's pulling my husband and me
away from work. And I realized that is not something that a lot of people would do, but in our particular case it made sense. I would say that you can also I'm not sure how handy you or your husband are, but that might be a skill that is worth developing, not only so you can do simple fixes yourself or with the help of YouTube, or at least recognize when something is simple or when it's complicated and
you need to call a professional repair person. So having that level of expertise, and some people were lucky and they grew up with it. My husband, for whatever. I mean, he and his dad like fixed stuff and like so he has a whole sense of the h FAC system and what he can see when something's going wrong and when something you know, when you need to call somebody or with that, but neither you or your husband had that.
You might want to educate yourself. There's probably a fair number of books and YouTube videos you could watch for like the most common household repairs and get yourself to that level and you'll have a little bit more confidence with it.
Yeah, and this stuff always stresses me out. It's like, by least this did my answer, he just stresses you out, Sarah a little. I mean, this is why I loved renting. I loved it not being my problem. And this is also why this is a piece of our household management that my husband does most of.
And I think that's fair.
There's a lot that I do most of, and so if I'm going to to get totally stressed out and overwhelmed by it, then that's a great thing to just have vertical ownership and have basically on his plate. I mean, for example, I do all the tax stuff that is like its own huge headache. It doesn't stress it stresses
me out, but not to this degree. And if something breaks, like I'm texting him, I'm like, I need your help because partly because he does have that sense, partly because unfortunately, I've found that my interactions with service people tend to be extremely sexist. Yeah, and I don't really want to get like swindled, and he I think he's less likely to be taken advantage of, which again I recognize, like not everybody who's gonna have that, like male partner who
speaks hardware ease. But if someone does in the house then or even if it's like a friend to right, a neighbor, absolutely and who knows, you know, you could sort of swap something else like Okay, you help them with you drive their kids to whatever, and they help you when stuff breaks. So I will say, like educate yourself or find someone decent at this to lean on, and if it's really not your thing, keep things simple.
So you mentioned the size of the house, but I also feel like the overall fanciness of the house matters as well as well as like how much in disrepair is it? So for us, both houses we bought were in this interesting sweet spot for us, which is like not totally new and fancy, because then we couldn't afford it comfortably and we don't like to spend a ton of money on housing. But also like not falling apart because we don't feel like it, Like we don't want
to deal with doing a bunch of stuff. So that's kind of what we bought, like houses that have been renovated like ten to fifteen years ago. So is everything updated, No, but is everything falling apart? Not really, so you may want to want to think about that. And also like we toured a house actually it's like across the street, and it was beautiful. Slightly bigger than our house square
footage wise, but not not a big difference. But it had so many do hickeys, Like they were like in this remote does this, and then this the pool lights and we were.
Like, oh my god, and when that remote breaks, you won't be able to use anything. It'll be great.
Some of this stuff was even already broken. I'm like, I do not want to deal with this, like house that someone tried to make into like superhouse like ten years ago, and like it was just and instead we picked a house that was just like simpler, and I think that has actually served us pretty well. And my
final point is to satisfice if it stresses you out. Like, yeah, certain things are important, like you need safe electricity and stuff like that, but like you know, let's say a thing falls off your bathroom wall and you only have one towel hook like that can go for a while. Yeah,
you don't have to do everything all at once. Now, if they all end up falling off, as me or may not be the case in our house, then it becomes more of an issue, but then it's more efficient because you can get them all fixed it once.
Yeah, that's true, that's true. I think also from a time perspective, this is one of those things where again, the amount of time you devote to something is not going to be set, and there are certain things that could expand to fill all the available space. I mean, you could decide to renovate the whole house and have it fill all your time, or you could decide to
do all the things for it. But you also don't have to do that, and it might help to decide that on any given weekend you're going to carve out a certain amount of time for home maintenance or repair or cleaning or whatever else you intend to do. But it's like, Okay, we have this two hour block for all things home related. If it doesn't happen during that time, it wasn't that important. Or I'm going to assign myself this task for the weekend, you know, of like finding
this specialist light bulb somewhere and installing it. You know that that's gonna be that thing for this weekend. But I'm not going to tackle all the other things, right because i want to enjoy my weekend. I'm carving out this amount of time and the rest of the time, I am not going to think about it. I'm not going to be doing that all the time. I'm only going to be doing during this window. So I think that's a way you can kind of keep it under control.
Now.
Obviously, if you're like, you know, hot water heater breaks and there's water all over your basement, you're gonna have to spend more time on it, but that you'd be dealing with all of it if you were renting too. I mean, your landlord would be responsible for it, but you'd still be the one with water all over your room. So that's things can happen either way.
By the way, if you do have an emergency and you need someone. My favorite way of finding people is the community What's Up group? I mean sometimes communities are on Facebook or whatever, but I'm super glad that exists because anytime I've been like I need an h back, then you know, I can ask people to you know, respond privately, and they can tell me like their actual experience with XYZ company. And if your neighbors had a
good experience, you probably will too. So crowdsourcing for service people has been like a game changer for me, and that might have been harder to do before the age of having a community what's Up group or Facebook.
Yeah, well, hey, social media for the win. There. So our love of the week, I'm going to go with potted plants. I have been putting some in my office in my bedroom, and they can be fake. You know, fake is like the best of both worlds. They look pretty realistic these days, but then they don't require actual maintenance. I mean you have to dust them, I guess at some point, but you still get the greenery that you don't have to take care of it. But you can
have real plants too. There are several that aren't pretty easy. I mean, you have like succulentser like some ones that are like known for being very minimal in terms of care, like you water them like once a month or something, but having a little greenery in your relaxing spaces makes them feel more Like humans love greenery. It's one of those things. So if you want to feel a little bit more fulfilled as you're in your bedroom or in your office, put a plant in.
I should put one in my closet where I record. I think fake would be best, but it might add something. My love of the week is totally not as natural, So I enjoy this Alpha h Liquid gold Rose Limited Edition.
It's like, what is it?
I think it's like an alpha yid. Yeah, it's alphahydroxy acid products. So I don't use it every day.
Or this is a face care thing.
This is not like a face care.
I'm holding it up for what is it? Is it food? Is it a home repair project? This is a cosmetic product.
And what I love about it is when I put it on, it feels like it just totally I reifies my skin and like I see stuff on the pad and I'm like, wow, it must be like really getting everything out and I feel like I wake up the next day in my skin is like noticeably a little brighter. So alpha h liquid gold alpha hydroxy acid.
You heard it here, first heard it here first? All right? Was that in the Allure Beauty box? Or how did you get this product?
I think the first time I used it was from the Allure Meati box. You got it?
There you go? We were't how both subscribe to it? To fun little way to get trial cosmetic products. All right, Well this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking all things summer, how to plan your summer now and why you should be thinking about summer three to six months ahead of time, just so you can view
the whole summer holistically. Get the best vacation spots, book your hotel rooms, make sure you get camps that you want, and also make sure that you don't have any gaps in childcare that you aren't aware of, so that summer is a much less stressful experience as a working parent. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.
Thanks 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.