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Kendra Adachi
This episode is sponsored by IXL Learning. My kids enjoy school, but it's tough when they hit a subject that confuses or frustrates them or they just don't really like. But when that subject has IXL assignments attached to it, they actually have fun with the learning process. IXL Learning is an online learning program for kids. It covers math, language arts, science and social studies. IXL is designed to help them understand and master topics in a fun way with positive feedback. Plus one subscription gets you everything. That's one site for all the kids in your home Pre K to 12th grade. Don't miss out. One in four students in the US are learning with IXL. IXL is used in 95 of the top 100 school districts in the US make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now and the Lazy Genius listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at IXL learning.com lazygenius visit ixllearning.com lazygenius to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. This episode is sponsored by Hedley and Bennett. Whether you're a pro chef cooking for 200 or just whipping something up delicious in your weeknight for two, one brand can uplevel your kitchen style and functionality and it's Hedley and Bennett. I've loved Hedley and Bennett for years. I own two different aprons, one that's a classic gray and another that's bright yellow. And these aprons are legit. It's like they infuse value and confidence into your cooking just by putting them on. Plus they last forever. And they just launched a suite of 11 absolutely gorgeous essential kitchen tools meticulously tested for real world use. Made from platinum grade silicone and stainless steel that's completely BPA and BPS free, these tools are non toxic and heat resistant and I love the color blocking on them. Ready to upgrade your kitchen? Take advantage of our Valentine's Day promo. Head over to hedleyandbennet.com and use code Vday20 at checkout for 2020. 20% off your order. That's V Day 20 for 20% off. Elevate your cooking experience with Hedley and Bennett today. 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 402 Office Hours. Y'all are super familiar with this episode by now, but just in Case, you're new here, I'm going to take some of your questions that you shared on Instagram and I'm going to lazy genius them. Now, I will say that anytime we do these episodes, the answers in the post are so good. Some of them I don't even answer here on the episode because y'all do such a great job of answering each other's questions in the comments. All with a tremendously compassionate Lazy Genius lens. So after you listen to this, don't hesitate to scroll through past office hours Instagram posts at the Lazy Genius, because they are quite excellent. Now, before I get into today's batch of questions, I want to share an observation. And this is true in my own life as well. So many of your challenges, so many of the things that are driving you crazy that you wrote in the comments are related to other people's behavior, which also means they're tied to your expectations of other people's behavior. Now, we are absolutely allowed to have those expectations. Nobody listening needs to be a doormat that just takes whatever everybody else is dishing out. And at the same time, I think it's helpful to note that daily life can be stressful because people are stressful. Living with people is hard. Parenting is hard. Marriage is hard. Working for a boss is hard. Friendship is hard. Anything involving people is at some point going to be hard, especially if it's new, if it's a new relationship or it's ongoing, which is kind of all of them. And that leads to stress because we, we want things in life to be easy and we keep trying to make them that way. If you have been trying to get your husband to put his coffee mug in the sink or the dishwasher rather than leaving it on the counter for seven years, every single time he does it, it's gonna make you more stressed out and will break your actual spirit. It's like dripping water changing the formation of rocks. These things can wear you down. And also, it helps me to remember that expecting ease in all of these relational areas in my life is a pretty big ask. People are people, and I want to have compassionate expectations of the people in my life, just like I hope they have compassionate expectations of me. It doesn't mean you shouldn't try or work through things like we're going to today, that I think if we can bring a more compassionate lens to our people, we invite a more compassionate lens towards ourselves and our frustration. It doesn't disappear, but it might lessen. Just a hair, you know, maybe, but we'll still answer Some questions. Also, we will do the questions that don't involve kids and parenting first and we'll save the kid ones in the end in case you just wanna skip through if you don't have kids. All right, here we go. First up is Mama Beard Teacher how to make budgeting fun. That's it. That's the comment. And it made me laugh because it sounds kind of like a cry for help. Budgeting is eating my soul. Please make it fun. Now, while I am a huge fan of making things fun, I am going to start with a little bit of kind Big sister truth. Not everything can be fun. Sometimes we just gotta do the thing. Which is super annoying. But I do believe it's worth saying. There is an expectation in the time management industry that if we plan the right way and we have the right resources, then every single thing we do is life giving and excellent and motivating and we don't hate it. It's like that Lou Holtz quote I put in my book in the plan. If you're bored with life, if you don't get up in the morning with a burning desire to do things, you don't have enough goals. That was spoken by a lauded hall of Fame football coach who probably was not in charge of anything administrative or caretaking in his home. Now, I don't know that for a fact, but Lou Holtz was born in 1937. Chances are he was not a trailblazer in bending gender roles or in promoting an equal distribution of labor in the home. When you are not worn down by the daily tasks of laundry and cooking and tending and budgeting and shopping for food and the things that continue to replenish themselves, it can be soul sucking. It's the opposite of a burning desire. Unless that desire is to burn it all down and go live in a van, which I have thought before. Now, I know this is a weird answer to a request to like, make budgeting fun, but I think it's super important to name that not everything is fun and that the people who have been telling us that things should be fun or can be fun if we just, like, try hard enough are men who don't do the replenishing tasks. They tend to have more energy and time to enjoy those harder tasks because they use some of their energy and time to work fulfilling jobs, eat lunch that someone else made for them, they play tennis after work, they just mow the grass on Saturday. Now that is a generalization. Obviously, I am not manhanding here. Y'all know I'm a Big fan of the gentlemen and that many of them are sharing the load more and more, which is amazing that we are still new to this, right? This is still a new arena. Division of labor in the home is a wildly new concept because men have spoken and taught from their own experiences of tasks being organized and time blocked and maybe even fun. So if you are struggling through something, the problem according to them is you. You just haven't figured it out yet. And I'm reminding us all that that is not true. You are not the problem. You live in a system that prizes optimization and leveling up and doing everything with excellence and that there's an expectation of enjoyment even at every turn. Your tasks are giving you life everywhere. That's just not the reality most of the time. So how to make budgeting fun? Well, maybe lower your expectations that it is fun. I think budgeting kind of sucks. It feels high stakes. It's stressful. You feel kind of like the bad guy if you're running the budget because you're essentially telling yourself and or your family what they can and cannot have or do, right? You're crunching the numbers at the grocery store, you're taking the time to go to multiple places, and you're creative with meal planning in order to work in meat and produce that are on sale. It's all very heavy. Budgeting isn't just a spreadsheet or putting numbers into an app. It's a series of decisions about how you're going to live. I can understand how that is not fun now. You can make it fun by, you know, playing good music or making a fun drink you love or doing it in a coffee shop with another friend who also is in charge of the budget and like body doubling the task together. Or you save a fun reward for when you're done. But ultimately, how might you make budgeting less overwhelming? What if that was the reframe instead of more fun? I think you can make budgeting less overwhelming, less pressure filled, less daunting. If you look at your budget for a small amount of time, you know, a month, a quarter, even a year compared to your life is pretty small, I guess, if you remember that now isn't forever. So you don't fall into a pit of despair over your situation. And if you name what matters, reframe your budgetary choices into what you're saving for rather than what you cannot spend. You're making choices for a reason in this season based on what matters to you. So remember that choice and celebrate that choice. Honor it with how you speak about it, look at it through the lens of whatever you're abundant in or what you're moving toward. That was such a long answer to such a short question. They won't all be like that. Okay, next up is Kristin Rohrig dusting the surfaces that aren't empty, like the mantel with picture frames and trinkets. What matters is things not being dusty when I look at them. All right, I've got three thoughts here. The first one is a little more obvious, but those, like Swiffer Duster things that are short, they're like on a stick, you know, they do a great job going in between and around those little things without having to really pick stuff up. So that's like the practical answer. You can use a specific tool that's meant for that kind of dusting. But the second two thoughts are a bit more like 10,000ft. If what matters is that you're not looking at dusty things, right? Or when you look at those things that they're not dusty, what does that actually mean for you? Because sometimes you are going to look at those things and they will be dusty, especially if you haven't dusted. So I would honestly explore, like, why a dusty mantle feels more important to tend to than, say, another part of the house. Is it because you look at it a lot? Right? Because the mantle's in. Maybe in the living room. It's a room you're in all of the time. And that leads me to my third observation, slash question. Maybe the mantle is something you see a lot, which means it's a holding ground for things that matter. Right? Pictures often matter, but does everything on the mantle matter enough to be on display there and therefore need to be dusted more often? It could be that you simplify the mantle, right? Leave fewer things. Leave fewer things there that. That matter to you, right? That feel less overwhelming to dust or to dust around. Put some of the things that don't matter as much in another location you don't see as often, or you don't feel as much of a need to dust. It's kind of like you have to choose. Do you care more about the visibility of the things on the mantle or the dust on the mantle? If you care more about dust, then you need to get rid of some stuff. If you care more about the stuff, then you're going to have to dust more often. If you're like, ew, I don't want to do either of those things, then you can just dust less and be okay with it. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace has been the online home of the Lazy Genius Collective since day one and for good reason. It's the all in one platform that helps creators and entrepreneurs not just stand out, but thrive online. Recently we launched a new product in our store and Squarespace made the whole process so simple. Thanks to their fluid engine, we could set up gorgeous, functional pages with ease. I am no tech wizard, but with Squarespace's drag and drop editor I do not have to be square. Squarespace also has flexible payment tools which means our customers can use everything from Apple pay to Afterpay. We want it to be easy for you to be a lazy genius and Squarespace makes that happen. Plus, their built in analytics are truly great offering information that's truly helpful right there. Clear as day, head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.com lazygenius to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This episode is sponsored by Daily Look. Finding my style is like a recent ish development. I do know what I like, but sometimes the temptation of buying what I see on the Internet and just hoping it works for me is too real. That's why I'm glad I found Daily Look. Daily look is the highest rated premium personal styling service for women, making it easier to elevate your style without copying someone else's. With Daily look, you get a dedicated stylist to curate a box of clothes that match you delivered right to your door, no fitting rooms needed. You get up to 12 premium pieces per box, keep what you love and return the rest with free shipping both ways. Since I had filled out a detailed style questionnaire and even sent a style Pinterest board to my stylist, so many pieces in my recent box were hits. Get started by taking your style quiz at DailyLook.com Elevate your style by signing up at DailyLook.com today. Take your style quiz at DailyLook.com and get 50% off your first styling fee when you use code LAZYGENIUS at checkout. This episode of the Lazy Genius Podcast is brought to you by Wild Grain. Y'all know I love baking, but I can't always bake everything I want to eat. Luckily, there's Wild Grain. Wild Grain takes the hassle out of baking since all items bake from frozen in 25 minutes or less with no mess or cleanup and they're shipped right to your door. My box landed on my doorstep last week and the delight I felt when I opened that thing. We had fresh pasta, sourdough, apple cider donuts, and more. My middle kid is obsessed with croissants so those have been such a fun breakfast for him with the same pull it from the freezer effort from me. Wild Grains boxes are fully customizable. In addition to their classic variety box, they recently launched a gluten free box and a plant based box that is 100% vegan. Are you ready to bring all your favorite carbs right to your doorstep For a limited time? Wild Grain is offering our listeners $30 off the first box, plus free croissants in every box. When you go to wildgrain.com Genius to start your subscription, that's wildgrain.com Genius or you can use promo code Genius at checkout. This episode is sponsored by Rosetta Stone. It's the New Year, and if learning a new language is on your Someday list, Rosetta Stone makes it easier and more enjoyable than ever. For over 30 years, Rosetta Stone has been the trusted name in language learning. With their immersive approach, you'll start thinking in your chosen language from day one. Whether it's Italian, Korean or Spanish. You'll progress naturally from words to sentences and their true accent. Speech recognition ensures you sound amazing while doing it. The app makes it easy to practice anywhere, whether I'm waiting for my coffee or winding down at night. It's all about flexibility, designed to keep you learning no matter how busy life gets. Start the new year off with a resolution you can reach today. LazyGenius listeners can take advantage of Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership. For 50% off, visit rosettastone.com lazygenius that's 50% off. Unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your Life. Redeem your 50% off@RosettaStone.com LazyGenius Today this next question had several amens in the comments. Bethany Morse wrote, maintaining a home while working full time. How? With like question mark, exclamation point, question mark. In other words, this feels impossible. Now, I have a couple of episodes that I will point you to. First, the first one is episode 333. Nope, 334 how to create a relaxing home routine. Which is hilarious because what home routine is relaxing? But I do share some language about the cycle of the home. Kind of like I was saying in the budgeting question earlier, so many of our tasks, they replenish themselves and that is exhausting. It's exhausting and we do need to feel more relaxed about it. Both practically and inside of ourselves. So episode 334 could be a good starting point. Another episode which leads to a tip really is episode 254, chores I do Every Day. I think that one of the most impactful things that we can do to maintain a home while working full time or part time or full time with kids or any of it is to choose like one to five chores you do every single day. The reason you do them is because they create more calm than other things. They're tasks that meet you in the season that you are in. They help support what matters to you, exactly where you are. If you're overwhelmed with maintaining a home while working full time, you're not going to figure it out all at the same time. It's not going to all happen right away. You're not going to suddenly have the magical routine and arrangement along with the required motivation and time to even get it done. That is a myth. It is a myth. Instead, look at what you'd like to do regularly, maybe even daily, and start with one of those things. Then slowly build on it. Make sure that you're paying attention to if you're choosing a daily chore because you think you should or because it would actually help. Some of you grew up in a home where like you had to make your bed in the morning or else it was almost like as necessary as brushing your teeth every day. So every day now as an adult that you leave your bedroom with an unmade bed or you walk into that bedroom to change after work to an unmade bed, you feel like a bad person. You feel like you left something massive undone which distracts you from the things you did do, from what's actually working, from what actually matters. So start very small doing one thing that matters to you. I know that's annoying advice because you want it all working. That the reason so many people are like me too to this comment is because this is challenging. Maintaining your home in the way that we think we're supposed to, while also living full lives and having jobs and all the things is challenging. So stop thinking that you're missing some magic piece of this homekeeping puzzle. You're not. Start small by listening to those two episodes if you want, and then with naming what chores do you already do every day? Celebrate that. Then maybe even notice if you're doing something every day that doesn't support what matters in the season you're in, and you could use that time for something that does be slow and kind. 0 to 60 is not going to solve anything that's the energy that's reserved for when people are coming over anyway. So just. You could also have people over more often. Okay, next is MJ norc. MJ says I Intend Capital. Intend. I intend to reserve a couple of work blocks for admin tasks. But when those times come, I'm either wiped out from the rest of the week or I've scrunched the time for other urgent tasks. I just want to say, like, bless the people who are naturally gifted at administrative tasks. I'm not one of those people either. It kind of takes an act of God for me to have natural motivation or a good attitude in doing them. That's probably why I had such a dire answer about the budgeting thing. I'm like, budgeting's not fun. I hate administrative tasks. I hate it. For me, part of it is there's just not a huge payoff. You know, they're often really cyclical, so they have to get done again. They'll have to be done again. They're not big enough to feel like they're doing much, but they're so necessary that not doing them spins everything off its axis. Also, the longer the list of admin tasks, the more overwhelming. At least for me, it's how I feel when I open a fresh puzzle box and I have to sort out all the edge pieces. It's like tedious work, but it's meant to create a better experience for other parts of the process. But I do have to power through it. I don't like it. Nobody likes to power through. Well, maybe some people do, but I don't. So the idea of blocking off a work block to handle the week's administrative tasks is a great idea, and it actually will work for some people. It sounds like for you, that the time block is too big. I wonder if instead of a huge block or two a week, or however long, if you plan to sit down and you start your day with one administrative task, just one, maybe that's more doable than all at once. It's kind of like the difference in people who do all their laundry at once versus people who do one load a day. We're all different, and different approaches work for different people, right? Like, batching is an amazing principle. We love it around here. It's one of the 13 lazy genius principles. But it doesn't work for every person and every situation. Maybe batching is just too much at once. So do one admin task at the start of your work before you run out of energy or before too many things catch on. Fire for you to tend to. Another idea that's a little similar is where you set a timer for a very short amount of time. I'm talking like five minutes, maybe 10 minutes. And you just get done whatever admin thinks you can in that time. Like turn off your phone and slack and whatever. Like put them on, do not disturb and just go for 10 minutes. I'm wondering if doing those admin tasks in smaller sips will help it go down easier. Okay, next is the most beautiful question from Kelsey Dameron. I would love ideas on how to make visiting my papaw easier. I've always tried to visit him about once a month since becoming an adult. He recently moved into assisted living and it's closer to where I live, which is great. But since it is out of the previous routine I had, I'm trying to figure out how this visit doesn't get pushed to the back burner. What matters is that I keep up the once a month visit with him and if I get to see him more, even better. This is so precious and such a beautiful example of naming what matters. Y'all know I love connection and relationships, so this is the best. Now obviously when we have a routine that ends, we struggle to find a new one. Not just because it's something new, which is hard, but because we have this tiny grief over the loss of something that worked that is an unnamed obstacle we should name more. We also tend to expect that whatever new choice we make is going to work just as well as the old one without any sort of on ramp or transition. We tend to have unnamed expectations that the new thing should work just as easily and as well as the old did. But don't forget that an old routine was built over time too. Right? We just forget it was because we're in it now and now is normalized. So be kind and at ease with yourself when you're trying to find new routines that work now for you specifically, Kelsey, I would start by asking if the regularity of the monthly visit is of the highest importance. Is it better for you and your grandpa to know it's always the third Thursday after work or something like that, right? If that is a priority, if the regularity of it is a priority, then look at your calendar and see if there is a repeatable time that matches your energy. Do you like going when you have an open day after, you know, like on a Saturday morning? Do you like having a visit with a natural end like you know you are? You have to be somewhere after, name those details and then see if there's a spot each month where you can just create a repeated calendar item. Now if that kind of regularity doesn't matter as much, I would just pull out your calendar, pick dates for the next three months, add another calendar item to choose the next three. Right. So it stays kind of in rhythm. And then just do that again. Just repeat that until maybe a natural routine surfaces as you notice what works best for you and your grandpa. Okay, now let's hit a few kid related questions. If you don't have kids and you want to skip to the end for the lazy genius of the week, hit it. And also, I think it can be helpful to hear how problems are solved, even if the problem isn't relevant to us. So you can choose your own adventure based on what matters to you today. All right, so first is Shannon Warford. My kid literally cannot wake up on his own in the morning. I've tried everything. End of comment. I have one of these. He gets up when I need him to sleep in, but is a cement block when I need him to get up. Drives me crazy. Now, I think that maybe now is not the time for like, specific hacks or tips because I don't know your kid or their age or their temperament or yours. But here's my thought on kids who need help with something like this consistently. I try and look at it as my job as their mom to show them how they might do something on their own later. But I don't necessarily require require it of them right away. So, for example, Annie and Ben, my two youngest, they need no help getting out of bed or getting ready in the morning. They get up and they get dressed and they brush their teeth without being asked and they pack their backpacks. It's pretty fantastic. Now, my oldest, Sam, is not quite like that. He never has been. He has adhd. He is not a morning person. And those two things together on school days make for a rather frustrating time for me as his mother and sometimes for him as a person with a mother who was growing increasingly frustrated with him. So I make it my job to be a human snooze button and gradually wake him up, reminding him of the trade offs if he doesn't get up at that time. I am teaching him the things to think about, but not making him think about them all at once every second single morning. Now you get to choose how you operate in your own house. But here's what it looks like in mine. Really, it's just a bunch of like reverse engineering. I know that Sam is not an urgent guy, and that if he feels rushed, he'll actually move slower because he's overwhelmed and he's overstimulated. And in the morning he's unmedicated, which is usually what helps him process through that. So I know that if he has to be ready to leave the house at 8:45, which is typical, it serves him best to be out of his room and dressed by 8am now, does he need 45 minutes to eat breakfast and brush his teeth and unload his rack of the dishwasher and pack his school stuff? Technically, no. But he does need that long to get those things done while moving at his own pace. Ben takes 15 minutes and he's done. That is not Sam's pace. So I wake Sam based on his pace, not on mine, not on his siblings. And even still, I don't wake him up at 8. I wake him up at 7:40. I turn off his white noise machine because we are a family who lives and dies by those things. I open his blinds, I gently rub his like precious teenage forehead and I say, morning, bud. You don't have to get out of bed yet. You got some time. But start waking up a little. And then I go back to the kitchen and I pack another lunch or I make my coffee or whatever. I then go back like 10 minutes later, like a human snooze button. And I say a little louder, morning, Sam. It's good for you to be up and dressed in the next 10 minutes so you're not rushed this morning, okay? And I'll kind of nod from under the covers and I notice if he's still pretty out of it. And I'll say something like, hey, can you start moving around a little? Like, move your body, don't get cozy back under the covers or you're never gonna get up. And then I'll finish by saying, the next time I come in, if you're not already up, you'll just have to get up, okay? And he'll nod and I'll leave. Now, I would say most mornings when I go back 10 minutes later, like right at 8, he's already up. He's already getting dressed, or he's even in the kitchen already. He's not rushed doing it because he really does have plenty of time and he knows it. He can move at a slower pace. But if he's still in bed, my next move at 8am is a slightly firmer, louder voice. Not necessarily angry, just louder that says, okay, Sam, you gotta get up now. I'm gonna turn on Your light. Okay, Would it help you if I went ahead and I got your pills ready? And he hides from the light, but it helps wake him up. And he nods about the pills and I say, okay, I'm gonna go get your pills, but you've gotta get up now, okay? It's like a progressive wake up call. Now, occasionally there are mornings when he's really slow and really combative and he doesn't get out of bed and it's hard to stay calm in those sit. But that's when I also communicate to him the trade off that he is choosing right. I'll be like, hey, remember Sam, you don't like to be rushed in the morning. You've said that before. So you're setting yourself up to be rushed, and I'm guessing that's a bummer of a way to start your day. Now, if you're okay being rushed this morning, I will keep you moving along. But you usually don't like me rushing you, so you pick what you can handle this morning. Now, I know this is all super detailed and not necessarily something that will work for everybody, but the general idea here is that I'm prioritizing what matters, which is that we are not rushed. That means getting up earlier. That means choosing to be Sam. Snooze button. I make that choice. And it works for us most mornings while, you know, longer because he doesn't technically need to be awake that early. He actually does get up. It is what matters. And so that's what we do, that he gets up. Now, I think when we have expectations that our kids do things a certain way, or like we do them, or like their siblings do them, or like just we think human beings are supposed to do them, we just get out of whack. Our expectations are faulty. And again, I'm not saying that it's like a ridiculous thing to expect your kid to wake up in the morning. Like, eventually Sam is going to go to college and he's gonna have to do this on his own. But I also think he's going to know that early morning classes are not his scene. He needs morning margin. He needs a longer Runway. He can't be like Ben, who when I open his door to wake him up, shoots up like a cannon and goes through his motions without me having to say a thing, and is ready to walk out the door, backpack on his back, in 15 minutes flat. I think that's the kid we all want, but it's not the kid we all have. And it makes our kids who aren't that way maybe not feel so great, but they're just different, right? We're all different. So I think starting by loosening your ideas of what ideal kid behavior is and then loosening the expectations that your kids are always going to meet them exactly the same way every day is going to help. Now listen, you don't have to agree with me on that, but if it's a perspective that you're like, oh, that's helpful, then use it. Okay, next is Nancy Bradley. Nancy says my kids 3 and 5 love to take the couch cushions off to play with them. Forts Floor is lava, a jungle gem. I love the kind of play they are doing together, but they don't put the couch cushions back without multiple reminders or consequences. When I'm tired at the end of the day, I just want to sit on my couch without putting all the cushions back first. I love the combination of practicality and encouraging creative play. You know, you want your kids to play, but you also want to sit on your couch. So how can both things be true? I'm actually going to share some specific ideas from Carissa, who basically gave a couple suggestions for house rules in the comments. And that would have been my broad answer. Create one or two house rules about couch cushions. So Carissa's were cushions always go back on the couch before dinner and no forts after dinner. Now, the downside to both of these is that some of you perhaps might feel like you're a bad mom, a bad parent for making the kids take down their fort. I feel that way all the time. Over winter break, Annie used all of our kitchen table chairs and most of our cozy couch blankets to make a fort in the middle of our main living area. Now, it didn't block anything except, like walking, but it prevented us from using our table and from getting warm with the blankets. It was also very visible, just like a big old blob in between the kitchen and the living room. And she loved it. Loved it. So I felt bad making her take it down and let her keep it up for like three days. I mean, it was Christmas break, whatever. I mean, we're eating in front of the TV anyway. But I also started to feel a little crazy and I needed some space back. I needed to sit down in my chairs. I needed a blanket. So I told her that she needed to take it down but that she could put it back up tomorrow morning. And that's what she did. So kids can rebuild things. They can take it down at the end of the day or at the end of the Time you need them to, if that's what matters to you. So house rules, whatever they might be, try them. Then. You're not constantly having to make the decision of when and where and how the forts come down. Okay, next is Lisa Weston. Kids getting toothpaste all over the bathroom counter. I just need to be able to set something down without the goo getting all over it. This. This is such a problem. I get so crazy about the toothpaste left in the sink. And kids, toothpaste is either bright blue or bright pink, and somehow it just gets everywhere. I think I feel like I made a reel ages ago where I showed all the places I found toothpaste. It is ridiculous. Now, there are those things that are like. They're like little toothpaste toppers that protect the cap. There are Clorox wipes you can have close by for kids to make part of their teeth brushing routine. Cleaning up the toothpaste, right? You can teach a kid to move their big clump of toothpaste all through their teeth first and then start actively brushing. Because when you stick your toothbrush in with a big clump of toothpaste and you just immediately start brushing in one spot, it leads to one big clump of toothpaste that just gets, like, spat out. Anyway, there are things you can do, but what we really want is for them to not be animals and just chill with the toothpaste everywhere. But y'all, it is everywhere. So many kids do this. So many kids. So rather than figuring out how to make it go away so that we're not annoyed by it, I think for me, I come to expect it. I expect that toothpaste is left behind. And we have little phrases like, no pink in the sink. For, like, pink toothpaste. Like, don't leave pink in the sink, Or I'll sing song, remind them. Like Mary Poppins. Like, make sure there's no toothpaste anywhere, or I'll make you clean it with your bare hands. Like, I kind of have to lower my expectations because my children, even Ben, like, the weirdly responsible one, leaves big old blobs of toothpaste in the sink and on the towels. What is happening? They're gonna do it, so I have to stop expecting them not to do it and instead encourage them to notice it's there and then to do something about it, which is annoying, but it's better than losing my mind every time I see a stripe of blue across a hand towel. Okay, two more Katie Britcher says play dates. I loathe them. Strong word, yes. But my 7 year old daughter loves them. How can I make them more manageable for my anxious, introverted self while also seeing my daughter for who she is and making sure she feels loved? I want to honor both of us. So this is so relatable. And there was a solid little conversation in the comments about this too. In fact, in that comment conversation, Katie, the original poster, realized that the thing she really hated about play dates was coordinating them. She can deal with the social part when necessary, but it's the Cord Nation that's a great example of how to make a problem even smaller. And sometimes that comes from talking about it and hearing other people give you feedback. So share your problems with your friends and almost certainly you'll find a way to make it even smaller and more solvable. So if the coordinating of the play dates is what is a bear, I think there are ways to make that a little easier. You can decide once on like a day of the week or a location or how long it goes. So like for you and your calendar, maybe Thursdays from 9 to 11:30 in the morning is your play day time. If no one is available that week, no play date that week unless someone else invites you to something. But you don't leave this like open ended play date life. You choose one window during the week and that's the window, right? Or some other repeatable choice. Another idea could be to use what our beloved Markela, a member of the lazy genius community for a long time, what she did with park playdates over a summer, she had a spreadsheet. It was like a set day that everybody went a set day and time. And in the spreadsheet she had like rotating parks on what day and then sent the spreadsheet to all the people. Then it was just like come if you can, but it was already planned and you could go or not go. I see this play date question and others like it. It's like one of those gear games, you know those preschool toys with like the plastic gears that you have to line up and then when one moves, they all move. You've got to get one gear in place, which makes it easier to put the others in their place. So if you start every week or every play date possibility with nothing in place, then you're building the machine from scratch, which is your least favorite part, Katie. So decide once somewhere you can maybe steal Markella's spreadsheet thing. But just decide once. Hopefully that'll help. Okay, last one. Little Loomis says, shoes blocking the closet door. We have a sliding closet door in the mudroom. On one half of the closet are my son and husband's shoes. The other half are all the bags and necessities for out of house life. It's a great system. The shoes which are stored on the floor of the closet are constantly spilling out, preventing me from fully closing the one side and fully opening the other. I've tried shoe putting away house rules, failed. Removing shoes works briefly until they pile up again and generally screaming about it. Shockingly, this doesn't work either. How do I keep large men shoes from spilling out all over the place? And in later comments, Loomis says that really her husband is more of the culprit than her son. This right here is an excellent example of something I get asked often, which is what do you do when what matters to you doesn't matter to someone else? Because this is a rather small thing and it's hopefully not mired in like much emotional baggage, I think this is a beautiful opportunity to communicate with your husband that this matters to you. You say without accusation or discouragement, something like, hey, I need your help with something. I am realizing it really matters to me that the closet door in the mudroom can close both ways without any effort. And as we know from past experiences, the shoes are a bit of an obstacle for that. I know it doesn't matter to you as much as it does to me. I know you love being able to just take your shoes off and I'm glad you have a place to do that. That it really matters a lot to me that the doors close. It's a place where I get frustrated often and I don't want to get frustrated. So will you help me figure something out? So you enter. You ask that person to enter in with you. Now you can do a box or a basket on that side of the closet to corral the shoes. Like, I think that's great, but every person listening to this episode is probably the resident problem solver in your home. You are the one who notices what's not working. You are the one who maintains most of the things. You are the one trying to get all the humans out the door. Not always, but often. Your husbands, if you have them, do not carry this in their brains or their lives. They just don't. And it's not fair for you to bear the problem solving burden all the time. So say what matters to your partner, if you have one, and especially if they are the culprit of the problem and ask them to solve it. Say this matters to me and I need you to take some initiative and help me with this. And if there's pushback, that's showing a place that needs work in your marriage or your partnership. Anyway, if your dude is going to be whiny about putting his shoes away, that's evidence of a bigger problem because you should matter more than his shoes. And if given the opportunity to name that for himself, I think he would agree. So that's our last question. That's the latest installment of Office Hours. What a vibe to go out on. Okay, before we celebrate the Lazy Genius of the Week, just a reminder that if you want to submit your own idea for being the Lazy Genius of the Week, you can email us at hello the lazygeniuscollective.com Latoya, our director of community, takes care of choosing those and is so thoughtful and what goes with what episode. And she would love your ideas. So if you have one, send it to latoya@hello the lazygenius.com and now for the Lazy Genius of the Week. This week it's Arden Flint. Arden writes once every year for me. It's usually in January. I buy all the birthday cards I know I need to send for my family and friends at one time. I write their addresses and put stamps on them. Then when their birthdays come up, I already have a card ready to fill out on the inside and send and I don't have to make an extra trip to the store. I have friends who do this. I bet a lot of you listening all do this. I'm not a huge birthday card person, so I have never done this with like the dating and the sending. But I do buy cards for like a certain number of people for for their birthdays that I just give them in person with their gift and I feel like I'm always on the lookout for those cards. Like I have a little box of like birthday cards that are not going to be used for probably two or three years because I have so many for certain people. So it is really fun to buy with more than one person in mind if you're already thinking that that I always love an example of batching something that matters to you, right? And if you're getting a birthday card from Arden, you can appreciate the thoughtfulness of how while she's making sure it happens. So thanks for sharing Arden, 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. 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.