The Lazy Genius Podcast - #389 - Office Hours

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

It’s that time again where I answer your questions on the podcast, helping you Lazy Genius life’s regular ol’ problems. Even though a lot of these questions have kids in their description, they’re all pretty universal no matter your living situation. Let’s jump in! Helpful Companion Links Order my new book The PLAN or ask your library to consider carrying a copy once it releases in October. How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis Breezy Instrumental playlist Jamie B. Golden’s skincare routines for every energy level Sign up for the Latest Lazy Listens email. Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius Kitchen or The Lazy Genius Way! (Affiliate links) Download a transcript of this episode. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, you're listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi, and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 389. It's office hours time. It's that time where I answer your questions on the podcast, helping you lazy genius life's irregular old problems. Usually, I separate the parenting-related questions from the non-parenting-related ones,

but today, even though a lot of these questions have kids in their description, they're all pretty universal, no matter your living situation. So there is no kid division today. All right, y'all, let's jump in. First step is Katie Suvagen. Sorry, Katie, I pronounce that incorrectly. I'm certain. Katie writes, recurrent cleaning of the house. I blink and suddenly it's been too long since I vacuumed or changed the sheets or scrubbed down the bathrooms. I've tried apps to track it, but then I just forget about them. I put tasks on a calendar or to-do list, and then they get pushed back because of more urgent pressing stuff. Then it all piles up and I end up doing a day-long cleaning marathon that leaves me exhausted.

I need to figure out something that works better. This is quite real, Katie. We've all either had this experience or currently having it right now. One thing I will caution you against doing is figuring out a cleaning routine for every single thing, especially all at once. And maybe that's part of your challenge thus far. When we build a system too big, it often doesn't work because we either can't incorporate it easily into our lives,

we forget about it, the timing doesn't align with our needs, or any number of things that come from the system being too big. So for you, I would encourage you to name what matters and then start small. Of all the care tasks, that's a term from Casey Davis, which I love so much instead of chores, of all the care tasks on your list, or of the rooms in your house, which singular care task or room will make everything else about the house feel a little calmer, not cleaner, calmer. And it could be what makes the house feel calmer, but also what makes you feel calmer. So find the most important care task or room and start small

there. Put that singular task on your list or a single task. Or a assign it to a day. It's much easier to wipe down the sinks on Tuesday if you're not also feeling the pressure of washing sheets on Wednesday and mopping all the floors on Thursday and doing all the laundry on Friday. That's a care task pile on when you don't already have a rhythm that works for you. So start small. If you're already doing marathon cleaning days as needs arise, you're not going to end up in any worse place by starting small than you do by starting big. And this way, you're using the time and energy you have available to tend to what matters most. Once that feels like it's settled into a rhythm, that thing that matters the most to you, that would lead to the most calmness,

and that could take months, mind you, then ask the question again and start small with something else. I know it's not the most exciting answer, but it's definitely an answer that works in the long run. All right. Next is Carrie McHugh. Carrie, writes, how to make dinner, bath, and bedtime happen in the 90 minutes between arrival home from daycare with overtired 11-month-old and an overstimulated new kindergartener, while my partner also transitions to a new fully in-person role and needs a beat to rest, to reset before parenting mayhem sets in. Again, this is a universal scenario, even if kids are not involved. There is something about the evening hours after work where everything feels urgent.

Everything has to happen in a short window. and the window makes you feel desperate and rushed and not restful at all. So my suggestion is to go in the right order. The right order is name what matters, calm the crazy, and then trust yourself with what comes next. Now my guess is that what matters most on both a relational and logistical level is keeping the kids from like spinning out on the drive home and walking into the house. That transition time is right.

on top of the actual bedtime routine, right? Plus, they could be hungry if you're also trying to fit in dinner, which you send your question. So we often exclude ourselves from creative solutions because we think that we should do things in a normative way. You know, dinner, bath, and bed. That's a reasonable order, right? But what if you went in a different order or you stack things in a new way because that would actually call them the crazy, calm the chaos? So some ideas. You could pack dinner along with lunch or just some extra snacks and you could ask the daycare workers to feed your kids right before pickup. You could bring food with you. You could bring something like a yummy smoothie in their favorite colorful cups that's like always waiting for them when they get in the car.

And that's their dinner. And if anyone is still hungry after bath, you can tend to that then when they're like calm and cozy and clean and cute. Speaking of bath, if hangariness has been tended to like on the drive home or at daycare. care, I would honestly go straight to the bath. Put on my breezy instrumental playlist. That thing is magic. Run the bath water. Like when you get home, like right when you walk in the door, run the bath water while you're getting everyone undressed and telling them that you're happy to see them and you let them wind down in a bath. Like wind down during that transition time, which is frankly what you would probably like to be doing too. Wouldn't we all just love to come

home and get in the bathtub. So name what matters, calm the crazy, like the hunger or the transition or whatever it might be, and then trust yourself with whatever solution you think might work. Try it. And if it does work, keep doing it. If it doesn't, adjust a little and try again. Now, with your partner's involvement, maybe the default is that you take the first half and then they take the second with like a handoff, you know, being at the during bath time or something. It's like everyone is in the bathroom drying off sweet little tiny bodies and being together in that snuggly way without the urgency of rushing to bed because you also tried to sit down for a quick dinner before the bath. It's a lot. It is so much to fit in.

Some seasons require adjustment and creativity and doing something differently than you think is normal. In fact, that's kind of the baseline of most seasons. But we don't talk about how normalized that needs to become. You got to get creative. It's not always going to be exactly the way you expect it to be. Name what matters, calm the crazy, and then trust yourself with whatever creative solution you think might work. Next is NP Memories. Every electronic device we own constantly seems to need charging. Somehow, the charging cables are never where we need them to be, and no one can seem to take ownership of charging their own devices. The other day, my son's iPad died in the middle of his virtual drum lesson after I'd reminded him

100 times that morning to charge it. Yet another very relatable challenge. Kids are not. Two thoughts. One, plug it in even if it doesn't need it. Like live in that excessive fully charged era. Two, and this is the real one. If one of the problems is that the cables never seem to be where you need them,

it means that people are unplugging the cables and moving them to somewhere else. At least that's what I'm presuming. You can make this harder for your kids. to do that by like plugging a power strip into an outlet, plugging all the chargers into that power strip, but do all of that in an outlet that is super hard to get to, like behind the couch or something. Make the access to the charging part of the cable easily accessible,

but not the plug itself. And maybe the cables will stay put. That's what we do. Our rhythm is we plug literally everything in before we go to bed, like even if the thing doesn't need it. We're a charge it while you sleep family. And cause, my husband is the captain of that task, literally like sometimes following kids around until they stop what they're doing and plug in their school laptop or whatever. It's kind of funny.

But for real, just make the chargers hard to move. Aw, isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. join me for cities of awe a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Next up is K. Robertson 84. How to Lazy Genius Weekends, when you're too busy working parents, have kids in sports, want to be social, have a church service to attend, and have chores to do,

plus the occasional event. And your husband wants time for his hobby and you'd like time to rest and recover. I try to name what matters, but social time and rest and chores and kids activities all matter. I want to start my Monday rested, but I also need the house tidied and meals prepped and groceries ordered so the rest of the week goes well. This is my life, Kay Robertson, I understand you, I understand you, and I will share what helps me. So for a long time, I dreaded the busy weekends because I just didn't see where rest would exist. And that made me detached from the things I was doing that we actually enjoyed, you know, church, the sports, the kids sports, hanging out with friends, all that stuff. I think what happens with a weekend is we want the feeling of an empty, restful,

super chill weekend with the life of one that's usually full. Like our weekends are full. And that discrepancy, it leaves us wanting. It leaves us discontent. So instead of figuring out how to fit it all in, here's what I suggest. Try to prioritize two pockets of rest. One on Saturday, one on Sunday. It could be at any time on any day. But for us, for me, it's Saturday morning and Sunday evening. So Saturday morning, our kids, they still wake up pretty early, even though I have two teenagers. I mean, they need to get the memo, please. But they wake up and they can get whatever breakfast they want and they can watch their screens. We call it Calvin Saturday from Calvin and Hobbs, because that's what Calvin would do. And that's what they called it and it's adorable. Now, that means that I, like, Kaz and I might sleep in.

I might get to read. I drink coffee slowly without worrying about getting anywhere for a bit. Like that little pocket of time, sometimes it's just an hour, sometimes it's longer. But that is a priority. Like Saturday morning, I know I'm going to be able to rest on Saturday morning. I don't have to get up and rush right away. Now, the same is true for Sunday nights. I figured this part out a while ago. I would rather be more. active from Saturday late morning through Sunday late afternoon and have Saturday morning and Sunday evening restful and free, kind of like weekend bookends. I would rather do that than try and force a fully restful weekend into a busy two days. It's like I sacrificed both the rest

and the preparation by not actively choosing space for either one. Does that make sense? Like I was obsessed with like, I want to rest, but I need to do. And then I wouldn't do things as joyfully or as efficiently or like know what really matter. Like it just robbed energy from both. So even though when I get home from church on Sundays, I just want to lay there like all afternoon, I usually don't. I lay there a little.

I usually take a 17 minute nap after I ate lunch. But it matters to me more to have a Sunday evening, especially on nights when we have community group or I even host community group so that when all of that is done, so am I. So am I. So I'd rather spend the time earlier getting those essential weekly prep things done so that I can have those two rest times. And they're kind of blocked off. And I don't really expect a whole lot of that like chill weekend rest time within those bookends. If I get it, that's great. But that's not the expectation. The expectation is everything in the middle of that is probably fairly active. One other quick thought about that, which this is all over the place in the plan, by the way,

is this idea that we think we need to see everything at once, that we need to have everything prepared and be so hardcore ready for an upcoming week in order for it to work. I know that's ideal, but ideal is not always available to us. So learning to be content with the most essential weekly prep thing done and leaving the other things to be tended to later in the week by you or someone else in the family. It's never a bad call. It doesn't mean that you can't have a lot prepared. But if you lean really, really heavily on that preparation, what it does, it takes your energy

away from noticing and adjusting, which we need to do an equal measure to compassionally manage our time. So relax the preparation energy just a little and trust that the adjustment and the noticing energies will show up a bit more. Next is Catherine Ann 27. I think almost every person in this episode has a name that starts with Kay. Catherine says, how to clean the kitchen after breakfast when we're running out the door to get to work in school. Three words, you guys, three words. Dirty dishes. If you cannot clean up all of the breakfast dishes, then don't. Instead, put them all in one spot on the counter or in the sink. Consolidate the mess. And then later, later,

you can consolidate the rest of the cleaning up of all of it. Having dishes scattered around makes everything feel messy and it leaves you feeling behind. So having those exact same dishes stacked on top of each other or even just crammed together in one small spot on the counter, it does a wonder for your perspective on the whole thing. And also don't forget that you don't have to make breakfast every day or have the kind of breakfast that necessitates a lot of dishes. You can if that matters the most to you, but think about adjusting your breakfast choices. even just one or two days a week and seeing if a simpler food choice makes for an easier cleanup. But dirty dishes.

All right. Next is Thomas and Carrie. And Carrie is with a K. This is hilarious. What to pack for on-the-go dinners with kids other than ham sandwiches, which feels like all we've eaten since June. All right. The idea here, this could be applied to work lunches or family dinners or anything. But essentially, what do you do when you need a specific kind of meal but you feel like you're in a rut with what you have?

That's really what Carrie is asking. Our tendency is to think we need a whole new list of recipes and ideas. We scour cookbooks and Pinterest and figure out this new meal prep plan. No, that's too big. If you make ham sandwiches, change it to ham wraps or rose beef sandwiches. You don't have to reinvent the wheel or come up with a ton of new ideas. Adjust one thing that works into a new thing and try it. Or you can come up with something completely new, but you just need one thing. You don't need the perfect to-go dinner idea. You just need one that's not ham sandwiches. Next is Katie Trave. It's another K.

Christmas gifts. Everyone asks what to get my kids, and it feels like another chore for me to come up with ideas to give them, as well as my own gifting ideas for the kids and extended family. Okay, I'm sharing this one because I want you to hear this. Katie is exactly right. When someone asks you what to get someone in your family for Christmas or a birthday or anything. It's giving you another chore of something to come up with. So I'm going to,

I'm going to offer a couple of thoughts here. First, if you are the asker of this question, which I often am, I texted a friend last night. Her daughter's birthday is this week. And Annie had a birthday idea, a gift idea. And so I texted her. I was like, hey, Sarah. Annie wants to get Evelyn this thing. Can we get it for her? And she was like, oh, I just actually got that for her. which means Annie was on track, which was fun. So here's what I did. And here's the question that I want you to offer. Rather than asking, what should I get so-and-so?

Ask, is there anything that you know so-and-so really wants that you're not able to get them already? That's a completely different question. And it actually meets both people's needs, right? Now, if you're the person being asked for ideas, I'll want to get a kid for Christmas or a birthday or any holiday, you do not have to answer in the way that is expected. You can say he doesn't want anything in particular this year, so you just get something that you think he'll like. Or you could offer a favorite store, you know,

and say that a gift card is fun or like a shopping if it's a grandparent. You know, be like, well, they love the store. Why don't you just take them shopping in that store? Or you can just say, I don't know, but feel free to ask him. Moms often bear the brunt of these kinds of thinking tasks, and you don't have to. just say no or ask him or get whatever makes you think of him you can kindly deflect that chore from your mental load speaking of gifts Jennifer Jennifer Manbergh

writes I'd like to gift more experiences for Christmas but my girls five and ten love opening gifts who doesn't while I know I could gift them items for the experiences that is an additional cost I'd like to avoid how do I manage deciding what matters when it very very varies between me and them. How do I find the balance? Oh, the elusive balance. Let's avoid that word here. Let's just name what you'd like to try this year. It doesn't have to be perfectly balanced and it doesn't have to be forever. Now, I have two suggestions. If the experience is still to come, okay, wrap up the ticket or the playbill or a printed out picture from the website inside a big box with like their favorite snack or something and just call it good.

Okay? It's like, this is what we're doing. How exciting. Let's look forward to it. If the experience has already happened and you still want them to open something, even though they've already kind of gotten their gift, wrap up like a framed photo from that day along with maybe a favorite snack because personal snacks are cheap and so fun. And then just call it good. I will also say, I might have shared this before in an episode, but I learned this from Ingrid Fettel Lee's book, Joyful, one of the, like, core components of joy is abundance. I have gotten kids, like my kids and my kids' friends. Like all, if their favorite chip is salt and vinegar chip, we get every brand of salt and

vinegar chip and put it in a big box. A family friend of ours, she loves the dried mango at Trader Joe's. And so I got her like 10 packs of dried mango. There is something, and it is like always the best. gift. So the abundance of snacks or the abundance of something that you already use is a really, really lovely way to kind of spice up the gift giving of something that's already happened. Okay. Next is C.E. Boone. And I really love this question. I'd love to lazy genius how to add quiet space to my life. I teach and have three kids, two, five, and six, and everything is so

out all the time. Okay, this is the part I want us to all pay attention to. I realized that when I get overwhelmed, I just stop communicating. Texts don't get a response. I don't reply to emails. Evites are left on red. And it's because my brain needs some extra quiet before it can process and formulate responses. Did y'all catch that? C.E. Boone is noticing what certain choices do in her body and then consequently to her choices. When we notice that kind of thing, especially when we name, like, oh, wait, that's actually something that doesn't matter to me. We can more easily and clearly decide on a solution. Now, for me, this feels like a prime spot for a house rule. A house rule is something that keeps these kinds of dominoes from falling to a place of despair, right? You have a

loud life and without quiet, the domino's tip to getting overwhelmed, to freezing in the face of tasks at home, to just stopping altogether, right? So let's try to head that off with a house rule. What if when you get home, or even on the drive home from school with your kids or whatever, you say it's our, you can name it, like it's our quiet heart time. You know, you have tiny kids and tiny kids love cute things. Or make it an animal or something they like. I don't know. It's sleepy sheep time. It's a cat in a window time. Whatever. I don't know. But build in a few minutes of quiet before you shift from work to momming and be kind to yourself in those few moments. Breathe deep, let your brain reset, and then enter into the evening with a little more calm.

I would also encourage you to do this again before you go to sleep or sometime after your kids are in bed. Even if you love to unwind watching a couple episodes of a show with your partner or something, have a house rule that after the kids go to bed, you want 15 minutes of a silent house to feel like a person. like build it in. Prioritize those tiny moments and they will build up into something more significant for you. And also, great job noticing. Next is J-Pan-15. The mail. It is just everywhere. Usually on the kitchen counter when someone is trying to make dinner. We tried having a designated spot to put the mail, but it just gets filled up with older stuff that's not dealt with. And I also feel like we are not in the habit of checking the mail spot. So we miss things that someone else has put

So the mail gets put on the counter, so we see it, but then it piles up. My husband very much needs a visual reminder of what came in the mail, and I very much want it out of commonly used spaces. Help. Okay. First small solution here is to put a basket or a tray on that common space that is for this week's mail. Don't make it the day's mail because that's too often to keep up with.

This is for this week's mail. See what happens if you start taking the mail, like taking care of it, week by week. Don't necessarily start by cleaning out the big mail area right now or creating a whole new system. Simply put a container, a basket or a tray, where you're already dropping the mail off in a visible place on the counter. Somehow that container is more visually acceptable than a pile of mail. The nestor, she calls these home bases. There's something about a tray or a basket. It just makes clutter feel different. So that's all you do. Keep doing the exact same. thing where you're dumping the mail in a visible place on the counter, but instead make it land

in a pretty catch place. Then once a week or over a range of days, it doesn't have to be like on the same day because sometimes that can be a little restrictive. So you can be like somewhere between Thursday and Sunday, you and your husband go through that week's mail. Or if it matters more to him, he goes through it because it sounds like he's the one who needs to see it. But cleanliness matters to you. So this is a place where you guys have to talk about where what matters isn't matching. So if it matters a lot to him, but also you matter a lot to him, then he needs to go through the mail once a week. It doesn't have to be on the same day. It doesn't have to be at the exact same time. But maybe it's that range, somewhere between Thursday and Saturday. Okay. And then maybe the first few weeks of this

where you're dealing with just that week's mail, it'll create a little momentum and cleaning out the big mail area that currently exist. But eventually, this rhythm might work for you. And if it doesn't, that's okay. Notice what does work about it and then adjust it a little. Most rhythms require a good bit of adjustment to stick. Next is Elisa Joy Watts. My face. Not kidding. Short and sweet. I like it. Okay, I'm assuming by my face you mean skincare. I would say go get Jamie B. Golden's skincare cheat sheet. She and Caroline Hyrins are the most, they're the smartest skincare people for me. But your face, could mean a lot of things. What are you trying to do? Is there a texture thing you don't like? Do you wish

you looked more glowy than you do? Are you wanting to tend to wrinkles more thoughtfully if that matters to you? Like what is the thing that matters? This is the true for anything where it's it's really big. You got to make it smaller, okay? And as with anything, don't build it too big. If you don't wash your face every night, how dare you? How dare you? Expect yourself to start a seven-step skincare regimen. No, ma'am. Start small. I think washing your face at night, wearing sunscreen during the day, and then like filling in your brows with a pencil on days you need to look awake is a tremendous place to start. Next is Ms. Witt. How to shift back and forth between different rhythms. My husband travels for work

and it seems like he leaves and it takes a couple days to shift everything into a groove with just me and the kids. And about the time we get there, he comes back. About the time we get there, he comes back and it feels like starting all over again. Okay. I have a couple of couple of friends who are married to firemen or to husbands who travel regularly. And this is such a real thing. The thing I have noticed to be the most effective in these situations that might help is that you actually have two rhythms. You have a solo parenting rhythm and you have a partner parenting rhythm. If you try and expect the same vibes from yourself or your partner or even your kids, when the rhythms are definitely different, you're setting yourself up to feel like you're always behind.

So instead, embrace this season of life that you have two different rhythms and you don't need to fill the pressure to cram one and to the other. If we were having a conversation, Ms. Witt, I would have so many follow-up questions, but that's my simplest answer for now. I would also say it might be nice to sort of mark the beginnings and endings with some sort of almost like opening and closing ceremony, you know, just like a little thing that goes, okay, Dad's gone or dad's back or it's, I don't know, you could name it whatever you need to name it, but just kind of marking the transition verbally and with a moment could also help. All right. Last one is from geals. Gilles, which is really similar to the last one.

My husband travels for work every week. I work full time and we have a one-year-old. How do I lazy genius getting help when I don't feel like we need someone to come every week, but just on the busy weeks? and I don't want to outsource more child care just because they're adulting tasks that drive me crazy. All right, two things. Two different rhythms again. Consider what it would look like to have two different rhythms depending on if your husband is around or not.

So that's the first thing. The second thing is actually to see, this is very practical, see if there's like a tween kid or even a responsible eight or nine year old to just play with your kid while you do the adulting tasks like in your house. My daughter Annie is about to start doing this with some neighbors of ours. She loves being with little kids. And while she definitely is not old enough to be like a real babysitter and be left alone, the girl can entertain a toddler. And if you pay her five bucks at the end of an hour or two,

she thinks it's the greatest thing in all the world. She's like the richest kid there is. So consider if there's like a kid of a friend of yours. And the kid alone or the kid and their parent can come over when you need to adult and do adult things, but you don't want to outsource the child care. That feels sort of like a compromise. That might be an interesting solution for you. Okay, great questions this month, y'all.

Thanks for sharing them. And we'll be back in another three months or so with another office hours episode. Before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week it's Anne Brady. Anne writes, I often get migraines during seasons of stress. And when they're bad, all I want to do is lay in bed. It feels overwhelming to get up and get Tylenol or a little snack or other things I know might help me feel better. And I lie there wishing someone would just bring it all to me.

So I found an extra pencil case, an old extra pencil case, and put together a little sick kit with stuff I know I'll want when I feel awful. Many bags of pretzels, the only food that won't make me feel worse. Mints, ginger chews, peppermint, peppermint, and I stuck the whole thing in my nightstand. Next time I feel crummy, I won't have to track down the meds or hope we have pretzels left in the cupboard. It'll all be waiting for me right where I need it. Thanks for the inspiration to give my future self a helping hand. Holy moly, it's such a great idea. It reminds me of the lazy genius of the week from months and months ago. It was a mom who had to, like,

it was either nurse her baby in the middle of the night, or maybe it was like a baby who wouldn't sleep without being held. I can't remember. But essentially, she would get frustrated at having her own routine interrupted by the baby. And also, she never had what she needed. She was kind of stuck holding the baby. So she started doing her nighttime stuff way before dinner even started. So she was like, you know, her face was washed and all the things.

She was in her PJs or whatever. And then she had her own little kit, the bedside. I think it was like earbuds and a little snack or something. But so that when those moments of a crying baby came, she was ready, you know? It's such a great idea for a lot of scenarios. So thank you so much for sharing Anne and congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kinsey. The Lazy Genius podcast is enthusiastically part of the Office Ladies Network. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. Thanks y'all for listening.

Until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week. You ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it?

I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.