The Lazy Genius Podcast - #430 - What’s Saving My Life

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

I love these episodes, and y’all do, too. If you’re new here, this is a question created awhile back by Barbara Brown Taylor, and it’s such a lovely way to be where you are, note what’s giving you joy, and mark the goodness of the season, no matter what’s happening. Here’s my list! I hope it inspires you to make your own.  Helpful Companion Links Order my new book The PLAN or ask your library to consider carrying a copy. The Red Collection antique store Rudd Farm B-Word Sauce The Lazy Genius Facebook Group (almost 50K members strong!) Teva Women’s Original Universal Slim Sandal in Tiger’s Eye Learn about The Playbooks here! 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

Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and sip. Play. Post. Taste. View and enjoy. Via rail.

Love the way. 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 430. What's saving my life right now? I love these episodes.

and y'all do too. We do these once a quarter. If you're new here and are not familiar with a question, it's a question created by Barbara Brown-Taylor. And it's just a really simple, lovely way to be where you are, to note what's giving you joy just to pay attention and mark the goodness of your season, whatever is happening around you. And I share my list once a quarter. So here's this quarter. I hope it inspires you to make your own. All right, the first thing that's saving my life right now is pool time. I never thought I would be a pool person, but I am totally a pool person. I love our little pool. It's like if a pool was a small town, and it is just a delightful place. But I also try and plan our trips to the pool with one of my nearest and dearest friends, and we just get to hang out, like almost every day. Sometimes we talk,

sometimes we read, sometimes both. Sometimes it's just too hot to not be in the water the whole time, and so we play games with our girls who are BFFs. It's just like solo key, and I love it. I also love that it's only during the summer. Having something special and also ordinary to enjoy and have it end and then get to look forward to it again. It's just such a beautiful thing. So being with my friend and our girls at the pool for a couple of hours almost every single day is definitely one of the biggest things saving my life right now. Another thing that's pool related. And one that I'm pretty sure I shared last summer in the same, what saving my life? episode is the pool shower, the pool shower. Pool showers are absolutely saving my life. So my daughter

Annie has the longest hair ever and she hates washing it because of course she does. But she doesn't seem to mind washing it in the pool shower after an afternoon of swimming. We have a shower bag for her where she has like travel bottles of shampoo. She's leave in conditioner because that's super simple. And then she'll just like pop in there sometimes with her friend and they both like rinse off the chlorine. They're in their swimsuits and they also wash their hair. So then when we come home, she just puts on her PJs and she's like clean and cozy for the rest of the day. And she has clean hair. Like no annoying bedtime routines that she hates during the school year because she always hates them during the school year. It is such a gift during the summer and I love it. I love pool showers.

Okay, that number three thing that's saving my life right now is the slow summer process that I've been going through of purging stuff from our house and also redecorating. So at the start of the summer, I made a list of projects that I hoped we would get done before going back to school. All three of my kids do a room purge and a deep clean every single summer. So those were on the list. But I also kind of do that for the whole house, like one room at a time. I kind of get on a tear. And I take the house room by room first pulling up the stuff we don't need anymore. That's always the first step, organizing what's left, and then making things pretty again. Well, this year was a big summer for our house purge.

We always have stuff. It's time to say goodbye to, like every summer. But this is the summer where my kids got rid of a lot of toys. Like, I think we're past the toy phase now. It's bittersweet for sure. But they're growing up. And because they're growing up, there's like also a lot less stuff in our house, which I desperately love.

Y'all, Annie even gave away her Barbie Dreamhouse. like are you kidding me and I don't know if you've ever had a Barbie dream house in a kid's bedroom before but getting rid of that thing it basically gave her another room it thing is so enormous she also got a new bed which was always the plan for the summer reorganized her furniture like because we got the new bed made things pretty and cozy and cozy and cozy and cozy and cozy and cozy and cozy and cozy and cozy and fantastic it is and then this is same thing happen in other parts of the house. When you essentialize or you get rid of what you don't need, you leave room for what really matters. And the whole house feels it. Typically, I am overwhelmed

by the messy state of my house by the end of June, but purging so many things and getting the home in a state of like relative calm where everything has a place. It has made the house a wonderful space to be in all summer long. I did not plan on doing that for the whole house all in June. It was going to be a full summer thing. But it ended up working out that way just because of timing. I think Annie had strep and we were home like one full week with nothing to do and nowhere to go. So I used most of that time to just like, well, let's just get rolling, do things in the house. And it is legit, saved my life. The Volkswagen Atlas is a 7C powerhouse that actually makes sense for real life. It's

cargo space for all your gear, the dogs, and even half of your rec league soccer team. And under the hood, a two-liter turbocharged TSI engine that hauls up to 5,000 pounds. The seven-seat Atlas. You deserve more space. Visit bw.ca to learn more. SUBW, German engineered for all. 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.

the work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, 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. Number four, which is related to the reorganization and the cozying of my house, is hanging art. So a few weeks ago, I went to a favorite local consignment store. It's a called The Red Collection for those of you who live in Greensboro. You very much know about it. And I found the most amazing painting.

It's an original oil painting of a seascape. It's kind of abstract. It's already framed and like the most beautiful, simple wooden frame. It was, I don't know, $60 or something insane. Like original art of this size by a working artist, which this guy is, because I looked them up, it will run upwards of $2,000 or $3,000 and should. It should. Artists who make a living painting, they spend hours and hours creating something incredible.

They should be compensated for that. The value is high, and so should the price be. So when I found this painting, I lost my mind. I lost my mind. I kept thinking it was a joke. It was like, what is this doing here? It was so beautiful. It was perfect in my house.

Like, I could not get over it. So I brought it home. I hung it over my couch in replacement of like a decent enough mass produced print that's been a placeholder for a long time. The living room was like, sigh, thank you. Thank you for this piece that we have been waiting for. So then I took the abstract print. I turned it on its side and I moved it to another spot in the house that needed like a bigger, brighter pop of color. That displaced another painting, which I thought might work well in our half bathroom. Okay, so here's how this goes. It was just an art displacement, but here's what it led to. I need to explain to you first the sore spot

that is my half bathroom real quick. I mean, technically it's perfectly fine. But it's never been great. There are tons of marks on the walls, tons of them, because one of my kids decided to do was math homework on the bathroom wall while I was on the toilet years and years ago. So there's like pencil holes. It's a whole thing.

It's a whole thing. So a lot of those have been covered by spackle, but that has not been sanded or painted yet. So there's like just white splotches all over the wall. There is, there's storage in that room, but it's like an old bedside table that I never even liked when we bought it 20 years ago. But the big issue with the bathroom, no matter where you are in the house and you're in view of that bathroom, the toilet is what you see first.

So like if you pass by the room, you see the toilet. It's like, you know, in the paintings, when the eyes like follow you wherever you move in a room, that's what I felt like the toilet was doing. It was just following me every time I looked at the bathroom. So for years, I felt like one of the primary pieces of visual decoration, which was accidental, was the sliver of that toilet from just about every angle of our small ranch house. It has always been a sore spot for me. And I've never found a solution.

I mean, we could keep the door closed, but like, I don't know. So when I was doing the art shuffle, I took one of the displaced paintings and I thought, huh, what if I hang a piece of art like over the toilet and maybe your eye will see the art before you see the toilet? And I tried that, but it really did just look weird. It wasn't enough. It looked like there was just a random painting over the toilet. So I shopped my house as the nestor says. That's Michael and Smith. She has lots of house rules. She has a whole book called House Rules. It has a hundred of them. And that's one. of them. Shop your house. Shop your house. And I found other vintage paintings and pieces of art that

were kind of similar vibes to the ones that I'd tried. I basically made a gallery wall over the toilet. And when I say it's amazing, it is amazing. It is amazing. Not only that on the same trip to Red Collection where I found that painting, I found this four drawer wooden dresser that I thought would be the perfect replacement for an old short, that old short bed. That old short side table that was in the bathroom, right? It was like new storage. It was going to be so pretty. Now, when I got the dresser home, though, I realized that it actually worked better as our holding area for our mail and our keys because the current one, which I also got a red collection, it was great, but it was a little short and the vibe of it actually fit better in the bathroom.

Like the vibes were better, the size was better. That day I had my mom help me move the furniture and hang the paintings for a couple of hours, when I say to you that I love my hallway bathroom now, I love my hallway bathroom now. It still has spackled holes that needs painting. It still needs a new light fixture, a few other things. But the main problem of that toilet being the house is a focal point. It has now been solved.

Now all you see is this really cool gallery wall of like vintage and vintage adjacent art. It's all of beautiful cities. It's like places. and then it has this old, cool-looking vintage dresser next to it. It's like you're peeking into a tiny art gallery. It makes me so enormously happy. Like, I love it. I love it.

I love it. Okay, the next thing that's saving my life, it's a two-fur. So it's steak for dinner and then leftover steak for lunch. If you've been listening for a while, you know that my children do not like the same foods. We have two meals. They get five out of five family votes, two. Everything else, at least one or two people don't really love. love it. That is math that is horrible. But I also don't mind it, you know, because like,

if someone's bummed, like it's okay. And sometimes that someone is me. Three out of five is what I go for. But it would be nice to get more five out of fives. Well, this summer, I was at the grocery store, which is a rare occurrence when I'm actually in the store. I spotted a package of like really good stakes on crazy sale. I had just gone to our local farm to Rudd Farm for you people who live around here. I'd gotten like corn on the cob, which usually goes over like marginally well with my kids. So I thought, huh, maybe I can, maybe I can grill steaks and we can have corn. I feel like the kids would like tolerate that. We, we don't do steak really ever. It was never part of our rhythm because of how expensive it is. But at summer, it was on sale and I'm trying to find more

flexible dinner options that can literally be cooked like right when we get home from the pool, right y'all when i say these children devoured the steak i cannot deal it was such a hit i still can't get over it it was such a hit that i declared at the table that it would be the summer of steak i decided once right then that every monday which is usually the day we go out to the farm to get produce i would rotate between simple grilled chicken and grilled steak and corn on the cob and whatever other vegetables we found steak is usually on sale somewhere so it's been pretty easy to find a good price Plus, it's still half the price if we all went out to some fast casual place. Like, feeding a family of five outside of the home is expensive.

And steak is better than most of what we would pay for anyway as far as like taste goes. So I have cooked steak several times this summer and I get better at it every time. Like, I've gotten pretty good at cooking steak. But then here's the second part. I get leftover steak. I usually cook three steaks for our family of five. I slice it up to serve it. and then there's usually one or two servings of the steak left.

Then here's what I do with it. I take napa cabbage, which I love. It lasts in the fridge a pretty long time. And I like slice it thin. I toss the cabbage with a little bit of soy sauce, a little bit more of rice, wine, vinegar. And then I add like a little salt, a lot of black pepper, chopped green onion and cilantro. I dice up a ripe avocado to go in there. And then the leftover steak.

You guys, it's the best steak salad known to actual mankind. Like, I could eat it every single day and never tire of it ever. It has been a lifeline lunch this summer. And I know that I can get two of those steak salad lunches out of one easy steak dinner. It is one of my favorite things saving my life by a mile. Okay. Next up is another food thing that's been saving my life this summer. It does have a grown-up word on it.

and we are a family-friendly show. So right now we're going to call it B-word sauce, and now we're going to just call it B-sauce. Okay, cool. So I find mine at Harris-Teater. I think Target carries it too. I'm not sure. But it is this dip made, oddly enough, of almonds.

It's both gluten-free and vegan, which is wild. I don't know how they get that last one, especially, because this stuff is so creamy. But it has become a go-to snack for me, and I'm eating so many more vegetables, because of it once or twice a week I cut up a red bell pepper and an English cucumber and then I just dip those puppies in the B sauce all week long. It is a great snack while I'm making lunch or dinner to stave off like the immediate hunger pains without resorting to the open chip bag that one of my

kids left out. Chips are amazing and I love chips and I eat chips. But if I eat chips first, especially kettle cooked salt and vinegar chips, your girl is a goner. I will eat the whole bag. and I'm old and fussy now, so I cannot digest that many chips in the same way that I used to. So this B sauce is so tasty. It's so good with cucumbers and wildly amazing with red bell peppers. And I don't even like red peppers. I don't even like them. I just cannot get over this stuff.

It has been like a summer MVP. Okay, another, I don't know what number we're on, but another new discovery this summer that's saving my life for my tivas. So I was doing some work in our lazy genius Facebook group, which is a private group of almost 50,000 lazy geniuses who are smart as a bunch of whips and also very kind to boot. And someone shared a brilliant post asking for everyone's favorite thing in a certain category. So she shared that her favorite sandal, which she herself learned about in like our Facebook group in another post, she shared that her sandal was the women's original universal slim

sandal from Tiva. They're a pricier sandal than you'd find at a random store. They're $60. But they checked all my sandal boxes. So I was like, maybe I'll give these a try. I've never been able to find a pair of sandals that I like. Y'all, these sandals are like my holy grail sandal forever. They are so comfortable.

They're lightweight. They're casual enough for like no shower days. But they're slim enough that if you want to look a little more put together, especially for me in the color tiger eye, which is like a lovely light brown, they work. They are super comfortable. They don't pinch. They're waterproof.

They're all the things. They are like the perfect casual summer sandal and I wear them literally every day. Okay, this next one is kind of random, but man, as it saved my life, it is a backscratcher by my bed. So Kaz was given a backscratcher. It's like a gag gift or something, a year or so ago. And it's actually come in hand. candy on occasion. We keep it in the living room in the same planter where I keep Annie's hairbrush and

comb for when we do her night braids. If you remember, we have hairbrushes in multiple rooms of the house. We also have scissors in multiple rooms of the house. Spending an extra $6 to have extras of something that I use often in many rooms, like that's just the delight of my life. Well, I like many women, love it when it's time to take my bra off at the end of the day. And my back is always itchy after. since I usually shed my bra as I'm getting into bed for the night, I always was itchy getting into bed. And I almost always will go to the bed before cause does because I like to read in silence and I go to bed earlier than he does. So one night, the itch was like so bad that I texted him. He was obviously still in the living room.

And I texted him. And I was like, hey, would you please bring me the backscratcher? Then I realized, I was like, dude, I need a backscratcher by my bed. and I order one right then and there. And now every night when I go to bed, I get to scratch my back. It is glorious. I cannot explain the joy that this practice brings me. Like, getting your back scratch is one of life's greatest pleasures.

And now I have an extra backscratcher where I need it most. It's the little things, y'all. So good. Okay, I've got two more. So the next one is bug spray in every bag. I am a mosquito magnet. I know that people say that. It's like, bugs love me, but I legit am.

Like, I will spray my legs and my arms in the bug spray that, like, could kill a man and still find three or four bites, like, on my neck and on my hands. It's like the mosquitoes, they run the gauntlet of repellent just to get to the tiny patches of my untouched skin. I hate it. And bugs are everywhere I go. I'm in humid, North Carolina. Like, they're at the pool. They're at the restaurant. They're at the park.

They're everywhere. That means I want to carry a bug spray everywhere. So I do. Just like I have scissors in everywhere. and a back scratcher by my bed, I have bug spray in every bag. It's in the poolback. It's in my purse. It's in the car. Bug spray can never be more than like a reach away. Recently, we went to celebrate a friend's birthday at a brewery and we ate outside. And I did not bring my purse, which means I did not have my bug spray. Never again. Bug spray goes everywhere. And then the final thing that's saving my life

right now as we start to close this summer is patience and kindness toward my reading life. So I had really high hopes for my reading this summer. I did read a lot still, but I found myself a little stuck sometimes or reading fewer physical books than I expected to, and y'all know I love physical books. I just had like a little bit of melancholy about my reading this summer. I talked to my reading twin Katie about it, and we both realized that sometimes we forget that summer is still busy. It's just a different kind. The amount of time that we both into participated, being able to sit by the pool and read, it was smaller than we thought. And then the snowball effect of not getting that experience day after day, it created a little

bit of frustration. Plus, at one point, the two books I was reading at the same time, it was a 24-hour audiobook and a 15-hour Kindle book. I didn't finish a book for two weeks, and it broke my brain. Now, that's obviously not a rule for everybody, nor does everyone need to care about reading as much as I do. But when reading is your favorite hobby and pastime, not reading in a way that you hoped, it can be a bit of a downer.

But thankfully, I didn't stay in that space for very long. I just named the frustration. I learned that I should not read two super long books at once. And I was kind about the season. Now, in the past, I would lash out a little, like even just internally, at my kids for not being more independent or at myself for picking the wrong books. Like it would just become a little, I don't know, a weird little push pull of blame. and that was not patient or kind or helped me enjoy reading anyway.

So I'm thankful for more ease around my reading even when it doesn't meet my expectations. Okay, so to recap the things saved my life right now, they are pool time, pull showers, purging our house and hanging our on the walls slash like finally solving the toilet visual problem, steak for dinner and leftover steak salad for lunch, B sauce, my tivas, the backscratcher by my bed, bug spray in every bag and patience and kindness toward my reading life. And that is what's saving my life right now. Of course, something that's always saving my life is the playbook. Right now, we are in the middle of August, which means I'm finishing up my summer playbook and moving into the fall playbook. So these little notebooks, they are excellent companions for whatever planner you already use. They help you narrow down your priorities, create task lists over the season so you're not overwhelmed with everything all at once. And they help you remember what you love about where you are.

They are small, but add a lot of fullness to your planning and to your life. You can order the fall playbook or all four seasons bundled for a discounted price. And doing it now means that you will have your fall playbook before September begins. And remember, these playbooks are labeled by months only and they're not dated. So no matter when you get a bundle, all four seasons will work, no matter what season you're currently in. So you can get yours at the lazy genius collective.com slash playbooks. All right, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week it's Ashley Bailey.

Ashley writes, I was in the path of Hurricane Helene. Luckily, no major damage to my house, but I was without power for seven days. I was able to salvage my refrigerated medicine and cheese, of course. When the power came back on, I had cleaned everything out of my fridge and freezer, and the thought of replacing everything was extremely overwhelming. but I heard Kendra in my head saying make the problem smaller. So I meal planned for this week only and I repurchase the items that I needed for this week only.

I don't have to replace everything at once, especially because that doesn't work in my budget. I just need to take it one week at a time. It was amazing to see how much the lazy genius has permeated my brain and when I start to stress out, I immediately find a way to make the problem smaller. Ashley, what a lovely message this is. First, what a great idea when you have to replace just about anything. Like get what you need for where you are. now and then you add as you go. So wise and good for your budget too. But I also love that you

remember to make the problem smaller. I will never ever stop stressing how small problems are so much easier to solve. And the solutions they last longer and they work better than trying to solve something big. Solve small problems, y'all. Eventually they eliminate big ones over time. So thank you for sharing this Ashley and congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. This podcast is part of the Odyssey family and the Office Ladies Network. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kinsey. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production.

Thanks y'all for listening, and until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra, and I'll see you next week. If 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.