March 26, 2024 • 37 mins
Today's episode features a fresh crop of mailbag questions! Topics include:
- split shift childcare
- handling the daily household chores with young kids
- different formats for kid activities
- how has work / productivity changed since COVID
- thoughts on digital calendar frames
- retirement plans?
- dealing with kids that have disparate sleep needs
- how to handle the tension between wanting to stay up with teens and having your own morning routine
- the next 5 years of BOBW!
Thank you to all for submitting questions - keep them coming! You can always find contact info on our websites, theshubox.com and lauravanderkam.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
and course creator. We are two working parents who love
our careers and our families.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun,
from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
This episode, we believe is airing toward late March of
twenty twenty four. Sarah and I are recording a live
episode together here in Naples, Florida, where we've gathered to
talk future planning for best of both worlds and have
a little fun at the same time time. So this
is an episode where we're going to be answering questions
(01:05):
that listeners sent in readers of our various blogs. So
just quick reminder for people, Sarah, how can they reach us?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, so, you can find my website at the shoebox
dot com t H E. S hubox dot com. You
can always leave a comment there and of course, if
you're a Patreon number, then you can always reach us
that way as well.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, or leave it for me on Instagram, I'm at
el vandercam, or my blog Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Lots of ways you can reach out to us. So
we will go ahead and dive right in.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
So this first question is from somebody who has a
very common dilemma as children start getting into school age.
She says, I need a split shift childcare, as in
somebody to cover the morning and the afternoon with like
activity coverage because she and her husband both.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Need to be at work before school starts.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
And then the kids need running around in the afternoon,
and so what should she do for childcare?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends how late in
the afternoon, because truthfully, this could potentially just be someone's
full time job, like if you need someone from let's say,
I mean there is overtime that you'd be paying as well,
but it isn't totally unreasonable to hire someone for fifty
or fifty five hours per week, or maybe perhaps there's
one day that you don't need as long. But if
(02:24):
we're talking really like into the evening, like your kids
have activities at seven or eight pm. Then yet you're
not going to be able to have the same person
also cover the morning. So I mean my thought is
to either have two part time people or to see
if there's any way you could find kind of a
unicorn employee, maybe a college student or something like that
(02:45):
that might be willing to actually especially they live very
close by, to do the morning and then do their
own things so they're not on your time, and then
come back and then work some hours in the afternoon.
I recognize that may not be easy to find for
every one.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, I mean, this is obviously why a lot of
people who have school age kids wind up doing before
care and after care if that's something that your school
winds up offering. I mean, the challenge with that, obviously
is that aftercare means not doing the activities that are
not located at school, and so you know, if you
need someone to drive around to that that's going to
be challenging. You might still be able to do beforecare
(03:21):
at school and then hire a part time person for
doing afternoon activities. That could be an option depending on
the ages of the kids. I mean when people first
encounter this, because kids are like in preschool age, and like,
do I still need a full time person if my
kid is going to pre school from nine to noon?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
And generally the.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Answer is yes if your hours are not particularly flexible,
or you and your partner both travel, and you kind
of just have to get your head around the idea
that you are then paying for hours that the person
is not actively caring for your kids. And I know
that that is obviously not an easy mindset. I mean,
(04:05):
you know, sometimes it's financially not going to work. But
for people where there are options, just getting around that
little mental block can go a long way. And I
see this mental block all the time. I mean, people
who can work from home and have young kids will
sometimes go to incredible links to avoid paying for nap
(04:26):
time coverage.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Right, Like it's saying, could I have.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Somebody come from eight to one and leave right and
then I have the nap or so you know, it's good,
like they don't want to pay for time when the
person is not actively carried. But it's just you got
to get your head around this idea that yes, you're
gonna wind up paying for time that the person is
not actively working. But if you need the coverage, I
mean if both of you are on a train into
(04:49):
the city forty five minutes away at seven point thirty
and your kids have school from nine to two, Yeah,
you just can't not have that, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Either it's two peopleeople, or it's one person who wants
the time to do something else during the day, or
you wind up.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Paying for all of it.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
OH pair should be okayer, just because obviously not everybody
wants to have someone in their home, but we've had
so many guests have great luck with OH pairs, and
they can work this very type of flexible schedule because
they are physically located where you are. So for them
to dive in and work and care for the kids
for a couple of hours and then be off duty
while the kids are in school and then put in
(05:29):
more hours when they get back is actually kind of
like what they're there for.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, So that tends to be a great solution for
people who are in this situation. And then you know
the person is there too, right. So again, if the
two of you are both commuting to a city forty
five minutes away or something, and you have a need
to rise during the day, then you could start the
clock for an O pair again or something like that.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Anyway, it's it's a solution that a lot of people
do wind up choosing in that situation. It's not for everyone,
but it might be slightly more affordable if you have
the space.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
All right, should we go to our next question, Let's
do it. This one comes from a listener who says,
I'm drowning in chores. I have a cleaner every two weeks,
but it's the daily pickup and home maintenance stuff like laundry, dishes,
et cetera that I am struggling with. So how can
I find this less daunting?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah, well, this is the thing, you know that people
need to Another realization people have is that a cleaning
service makes your house cleaner if they come every two
weeks or so, but it may not actually save you
a ton of time. Yes, you don't have to do
then the major stuff, like you know, vacuuming all the
(06:44):
spaces that you wouldn't have done as frequently, or maybe
cleaning some lesser used bathrooms or something like that, But
that's not what the bulk of time spent on housework is.
The bulk of time is those sort of daily choices
like doing the dishes, cleaning up the kitchen. You know,
those things are harder to outsource unless you have someone
(07:08):
there very frequently, So that is an option.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
You know, you could hire.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
A part time housekeeper, even a small number of hours
a week if you found somebody who was willing to
do I don't know, nine hours a week, come three
days for three hours. That is three days that you
wouldn't have to be doing most of those things. And
obviously that person could keep the house quite clean, would
be doing the daily dishes and kitchen clean up on
(07:37):
that day, and could do all the laundry, and so
that would pretty minimize a lot of the other stuff
you had to do. But there are other options too.
If that's not going to.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Happen, yeah, I mean certainly making a really concerted effort
to look at what your standards actually are and maybe
see if there are things you can cut out or
worry about less or like maybe decide something like I
will tidy the kids rooms once a week and like
the rest of the time, if it looks like a
volcano of clothing and toys erupted in there, like that's okay. Also,
(08:08):
having fewer things definitely makes it easier to pick up,
although I'm preaching to myself about that because that can
be a losing battle with multiple kids that get things
that don't necessarily want to let go of, so I
understand that's not always easy either. Another thing could be
if you have a partner having a discussion about chores
and not in a general way, but maybe suggesting that
(08:29):
there could be vertical ownership of a couple of things,
Like if laundry is always stressing you out and you're
basically doing everything else, maybe that would be something that like,
if they appreciate that you're doing everything else, maybe they
could just do all the laundry or all the dishes
or whatever it is. Like, I think that maybe bringing
up and bringing to light kind of like Evrodsky's task cards,
(08:52):
Like we had her on as a guest and she
has an interesting approach to this, but kind of bringing
into light what is being done and if it's really
disproportionately falling on one party, figuring out if maybe the
other party can vertically own some of these things to
share the load a little bit more equally.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, there's actually a slight tie in with the previous question.
In that if you are paying somebody for childcare and
there are hours when they are not actively with your children,
then obviously this person could take on a lot of
the chores that you would have been doing. But you know,
if people are in a situation where their kids are
in day care, for instance, they've got the fortnightly cleaner,
(09:27):
that's yes, you're still going to have a ton of
daily chores to deal with, and so either figuring out
how to reduce them as much as possible, ignore them
to the degree that you can. I mean, simpler meals,
one pot meals, so there's not as many dishes, kids
re wearing their pajamas, you know, anything you can do.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
To make it be a little bit lower of a burden.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
All right.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Our next question comes from a listener who's got some
younger kids, and she's asking what format for little kid activities?
Is there anything you do virtual instrument lessons for example, tutoring, sports,
et cetera. What do you do outside of the house,
what do you do in the home? And what anything
still come through a screen?
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, well we do, I mean for older kids though,
we've done virtual tutoring. So that's actually a really cool
breakthrough In the past few years, as you zoom and
virtual conferencing, all that has become more of an option
because you can then match up with a tutor who
has availability and expertise in the subject.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Even if they are nowhere near you.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
And again for older children that you may not be
quite up on your calculus and need help with that
or whatever. They're taking a foreign language that you don't speak,
this can be great. Jasper's actually got a Spanish tutor
currently who lives in South America and so obviously she
speaks Spanish perfectly because she's from there and she can help.
(10:55):
She's also a teacher, so she can help him, and
that has been a really great thing that, you know,
helping with conversation partnership and all that.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
I will say, little kids and zoom.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Is really really hard. I would be very careful about that.
Just from Sarah, both of our experiences with having young
kids trying to learn virtually during the pandemic, it was
not very effective.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Learn in big quotes.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I learned in big quotes more like hiding under a
chair and refusing to yeah yeah, refusing to come over
to zoom. But music lessons could be great to have
somebody come to your house again, especially if you have
a bigger instrument like a piano that you have won there,
or if your child's going to play the cello or
something like that. Not having to deal with portable aspects
of anything is good. Although a piano studio would have
(11:44):
a piano, But we have done that for music lessons
for again kids who are probably you know, I haven't
started them till the kids are more like first or
second grade. But have somebody come to your house to
teach music lessons has been good in that that's one
less place to drive.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yes, I can see that we actually don't. We do.
We have one kid in music lessons, and we do
go to a studio in Parks. I was having trouble
finding someone.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
That could come to our house.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
But I will say one benefit of the studio if
you do live in a very open plan home and
have multiple children. I think about, like whether she'd actually
be able to concentrate with someone in our house, and
I'm not sure it would have worked out all that well.
It'd be different if we could put her in a
separate room. But if it's a piano, you don't really
have a lot of.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
People can't move it it is where it is.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yes, So yeah, we don't really do anything virtual. We've
done a couple of like, yeah, we did do some
like reading tutoring virtually back in the day, but that
was more pandemic specific. Mostly we do things out in
the open. And I will say, the number one thing
that will kind of help me decide on saying yes
to an activity and not is like, is it pretty close? Yeah,
(12:52):
because obviously if your kid has some specific passion that
is only available far away. I can think of a
blogger whose son is super into diving, and I know
she has to bend and we'd backwards to make that
work for him, but there probably isn't any diving right
near her. But barring that, man, it is great that
I can get to the gymnastics place in like nine minutes.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, when in doubt, go with the closer one.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I think that's one of our operating principles here at
the best of both worlds, that the less time spent
in the car the better. I'll just throw out that
I'm doing strength training virtually. I meet with a trainer virtually.
That's something that I hadn't really thought of as being
an option, but it turns out that it is that
the person can sort of be on an iPad er
phone and see you can move the phone or iPad
(13:38):
around and they could see your home gem.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
And yeah, it's been great.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
There you go. So better for adults and for kids.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Better for adults and kids.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
All right, Well, I'm going to ask this one because
it's for you. Okay, question for the mailbag for Laura.
Have you ever thought about updating your books?
Speaker 4 (13:53):
In particular?
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Do you think anything has materially changed since COVID.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, it's funny how we have these questions. A lot
of them come back to sort of COVID things.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Some things have changed.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So the proportion of knowledge workers who are doing some
of their work at home has risen a ton. And
I'm sure people have just seen this in their own lives,
Like if your friend gets a new job, you're not
surprised to hear that it's largely virtual, right, Like You're
not like, oh that's crazy, You're like, oh, yeah, sure,
(14:26):
she found a remote job. Or just people who would
have been going into the office five days a week
or even you know, four because they'd been in the
company forever and so they were allowed to work from
home on Fridays. Now it's more like going into the
office two or three days a week, and nobody bats
an eye at that.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
That's more the expectation.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
So I think that's cool because that technology has been
around for about two decades, but it has been not
you because culture is hard to change, right, culture is
hard to change. That said, a day still has twenty
four hours. A week still has one hundred and sixty
(15:12):
eight hours. People are not more put upon now than
they were in the past. And this is just one
of my things that personal pet paves about time. Everyone
always believes that they have it rougher than anyone else
in history. And so I'd look at magazines from the
nineteen fifties where people will be complaining about how busy
(15:33):
they are with everything going on. There's no way they
could possibly be busier. And then, you know, I started
writing about time in the early two thousands, and people
definitely thought they were busier than the nineteen fifties then
because of all this other stuff going on. Now we
have two career couples and the internet and then email
and then and then of course you know, now people say, oh,
you started writing about a time and what two thousand
(15:54):
and five, two thousand and six, and like things must
have been different then we're so much busier now. It's like, no,
we are not. But we are not busier now. You know,
if you look at stuff like the American Time You survey,
people are sleeping more statistically significantly amount more than over
the past few decades. That's partly it's just an aging population,
like you know, as people get a little bit older,
(16:15):
that number might go up.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah, but I thought people with their phone in their
face at like midnight would have like that surprises me that.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
People are saying that's great. Well, you know, it's not
always good. It could be good, it could be other things.
There's smaller families, for instance, people spend fewer years in
the intense childcare stage.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
So it's just.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
People like to believe they've been busier than ever before,
but fundamentally we are not. And so when you get
your head around that, I think it's a little bit more.
You know, it brings more possibilities. So you say, if
I have a story that I'm busier now and people
are busier than they ever been, then we don't think
about how we want to spend our time. Whereas if
(17:00):
if you acknowledge that most of us have some amount
of discretionary time we did before COVID we do now,
then we start thinking about what we'd like to do
with it, and that just opens up all sorts of
more possibilities.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
I love that as we're speaking and we are in
the same room, I pointed the book I'm reading when
you said that, like, we're not more put upon now
because I'm reading The Covenant of Water, and like, yeah,
let me just say that, like my life and our
lives and probably most of you listening to this is
like probably a lot easier than most of the people
I'm reading about in this book.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Yes, leave it.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Absolutely all right, Well, let's take a quick ad break
and we'll be back with more from our mail bag.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
All right, we are back.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Sarah and I are talking here live in the same
room in Naples, Florida. So if this sounds a little different,
we apologize. It's not our recording studios. But we're enjoying
sitting next to each other. So please bear with us
on this, Sarah. So this question is for you. Thoughts
on the new large digital calendar frames hearth being one
(18:11):
that a lot of people have purchased, but maybe you
can describe for people who don't get the Instagram ads
for these sorts of things. What are we talking about
large digital calendar frames and what would be the upside
of having one of these?
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, so Skylight is another common brand. That one was
kind of like an earlier I think prototype and actually
a one time best of both worlds sponsor their photo frame,
not their calendar frame anyway.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Hearth is a newer one.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
What we're talking about is kind of a large whiteboard
size digital frame that links with an app so that
you can display let's say, a shared Google calendar for
the family. It's formatted so you can maybe put like
the shopping list, you can put all kinds of like
family dashboard. You can put your day schedule, you can
put your morning routine and have kids check it off
by like clicking it on the screen, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
I think they're really cool.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
It's so funny because sometimes I feel like people assume
that since I like paper, I don't want new tools
or something, But I actually have my eye on the hearth.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
And think it would be fun.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
The only thing about it is that I do think
one thing that would make it more useful is if
everybody is using the same digital calendar type tools, and
my kids are not currently at the point where they're
doing that, nor do I really want them doing that yet.
I can see when we get more into like the
if everybody's in middle school in high school and my
kids are actually using Google Calendar so that they could
(19:28):
actually like interface with this regularly, I think it could
be really useful.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
I also think.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
If you have a partner that's excited about this, that
might be a helpful way to help them see what
the family's mental load looks like on any given week,
maybe have some more participation in that Tetris calendar management.
I mean, this may be a little bit optimistic. I'd
love to hear if this has worked for some couples,
but hey, we use a whiteboard in my house basically
(19:53):
for this purpose and it does work. But I can
see the esthetic of having it be digital, as well
as the ability for people to kind of add to
it and change things on it from outside of the home.
So I'm excited that this is a thing because it
actually brings a problem which I don't feel like was
talked about enough, just kind of like the day to
(20:14):
day management of family into like, hey, we need a
professional type tool for this, Like this is a real
challenge that everyone can participate in.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
So I think in general it's great.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Yeah, I mean my family, we're still very low tech.
I create the family schedule in word more or less
and then just print it up like each day. It
says what each person is doing, and then I print
it up and we make changes on.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
It with pen. It sits on the kitchen counter and
that works. It works.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Yeah, but different people like different things. I'm not very
technologically advanced, So there you go. All right, So question
Sarah this one. I'll you can start on this one,
and then I'll tay, what do you imagine your retirement
will be like? And what do you want for those years?
And I guess when do you think it will be?
Would be a follow up to that.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
I don't think that much about this because I do
feel like I envision my future more like ten years,
kind of the largest horizon that I think about regularly.
And I'm currently forty three, almost forty four, and I
do not think I will be retired at fifty four.
So I don't have a clear timeline, in part because
(21:22):
I guess there's there are a lot of unknowns here.
I don't know how my energy is going to be at,
you know, in my sixties. I don't know what it's
going to be like to be working and then not
have the child kind of care centric stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
And I know you still.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Are involved in your children's lives even when they're older,
but it's going to be a different level and different type.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
So I think it's a little bit hard to plan
for that.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
I will say I do have like lovely visions of
having more time for travel and just my Josh and
I having like really enjoying some time together, but it's
hard to know what role work will play in that.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
I guess I'm.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Hopeful that my career will continue to eve and I'll
be doing like more interesting and different things.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
It won't always stay the same clinically.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
I mean, I think I'll always do some level of that,
but it's sort of the other piece that could go
in a lot of different directions, and I'm open to
like what happens. I don't have a very specific time frame, however,
I will say we still do save for retirement as
if a day will come when we will not be earning,
because it would be nice to be able to just
pursue work without worrying about how much is going to
(22:26):
be brought in or not brought in at a certain point.
And so I am not saying, oh, I'm not going
to retire so I just spend every penny I have,
because that would not be good.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Now there's a different you know, people talk about the
fire movement, which is financial independence retire early, but to
be honest, financial independence and retiring early are two totally
different things, and lumping them to gather is based on
a mindset that work is something you don't.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Want to do.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
And I think you know, Sarah and I are both
fortunate in that the vast majority of the aspect for
our careers are things we actively do, want to do
and enjoy and have fully chosen and shaped in a
lot of ways to be what we want to be doing.
So I think pursuing financial independence is incredibly smart and
(23:16):
everyone should be doing that as much as possible. Retiring early, yeah,
So the fire bloggers who are like, I retired at
age thirty, and I'm like, and you're writing books and
podcasting and blogging and having courses, which is exactly the
work that we do. So you just changed careers with savings,
(23:37):
which we've evolved our careers with savings too. Maybe we
should start selling courses on that, Sarah. Anyway, what I'm
getting out to this, I don't envision myself retiring in
the sense that I write because I like to write,
and I wrote as a child, I've written as a student.
I would write whether I was getting paid for it,
I would write, you know whatever. It just is what
I do as part of my identity. So I don't
(23:59):
envision that changing until I, like, truly cannot do it anymore. Now,
maybe the various other forms of how I work could evolve,
you know, certainly when my kids aren't around.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
I think having a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Flexibility to go different places and things like that might
be fun. But I don't envision retirement is something incredibly
different than what I'm currently doing, because there's it's not
like a yeah, I don't know, I don't have a
target age.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
No, And I'll just add that I am very far
from financial independence. I mean, I guess I would say,
let me caveat that. I guess if we had a
drastic change in lifestyle, we could be financially independent. But
at the current lifestyle. We are far from that, and
there's trade offs there too, because there's experiences I want
to have with my kids that do cost money that
(24:52):
if I want to have them, I have to spend
that money, which means it's going to take longer to
get to that financial independence piece. So that balance is
always to pay attention to. But both sides are important,
absolutely all right.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
So how do you handle kids needing different amounts of sleep?
And I guess that this could play out in lots
of different ways. You have two kids who are relatively
the same age, but like one of them is more
of a sleeper than the other. Maybe you've got a
night owl kid or or something. Or it could also
be that you have kids of very different ages. And
let's say you're dealing with, you know, an older kid,
(25:28):
like a school age kid, and you also have a baby,
and you're trying to like set a schedule around two
kids of different ages. So how does this work in life?
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Well, I'm living this reality right now because I do
notice that tweens and kids who are approaching tweenhoods seem
to have different patterns where there really are driven to
stay up later.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
They don't quote get.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Cranky like little kids do late, and then we're likely
to sleep in on weekends. And then overall for me,
I feel like need less fewer hours in general. And
then I have a six year old who absolutely it
does not do well when she stays up late, and
when she has a couple of nights in a row
of compromise sleep, you really do notice it kind of
behaviorally with the amount of patience she has. Yeah, so
(26:13):
I have been very specific about a very hard deadline
bedtime for her on every night that we can do it.
There are some nights where activities just make it almost impossible.
But if I can get the like five to six
nights a week where it's like we are starting to
read at seven thirty so that she can go to
bed by eight to eight fifteen, I really have to
(26:35):
like set a timer and actually pay attention to that,
because again with the bigger kids, like they're off doing stuff,
they want help with homework, do whatever. But unfortunately, if
someone doesn't prioritize putting her to bed.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Like, we all pay for it multiple days later.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
So that's kind of how I'm working on it, or
kind of how I've approached it. Do I always have
success in this No, but the weeks that it works,
it does feel better.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Yeah, I mean, with having a huge spread of ages
for my kids, we just sort of accepted that Henry
probably has a different sleep profile than a lot of
four year olds would have, and fortunately it seems to
be okay.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Like he does not wake up at the crack.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Of dawn regardless of when he's gone to bed, So
if he's falling asleep around ten o'clock at night, which
is when the other kids are also going to sleep,
the good news is he doesn't really have to wake
up until eight fifteen, eight twenty in the morning to
get to school at nine, and so it winds up
being okay like it actually because he doesn't get up
(27:36):
until then, he gets the ten hours of sleep or
whatever it is, with occasional naps in the afternoon.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
But even then, he's never been.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Able to have like a dedicated nap in the crib
kind of time like post COVID. I mean, now that
we're back into things going on, just it's too much
going on in the household, and so he's probably had
a lot of naps in the car in his life,
but that's been the way it is, and I think
(28:05):
you have to acknowledge that kids also might have different
sleep needs than you'd want.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Them to have.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
And I always feel bad for people whose parents have
decided that because you are ex age, you will have
to go to bed at eight. Like we're talking kids
who are like ten or older, and it's like they're
sitting there, not falling asleep with the lights out. I mean,
I understand that parents want to have their own time,
but it's like, maybe we could just let them read
(28:30):
for a while, I don't know, and just check on
them in another thirty forty minutes.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
And I don't know.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
People are who they are, and it's kind of hard
to force your sleep desires on somebody else.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
So just something to keep in mind totally.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
And yeah, when we put Genevieve to bed, she's clearly tired.
We're not dealing with that situation. And it never even
occurred to me not to let your kid read if
they wanted to stay up and read. So for us,
that's kind of like the default. I actually I want
them to do more of that than it's currently happening.
A lot of times, it's more like, oh, but there's
a duke game on, and then I worry about like
blue light and like keeping them up and whatever, and
(29:11):
I don't know, maybe I should just not stress too much.
The big kids actually do not seem terribly sleep deprived,
so that's good.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Yeah, well, I think my older kids may be slightly
sleep deprive, but that's more that the school begins so
incredibly early, and then they really aren't tired at night either.
I mean, there really is their circadian rhythm thing with teens.
And the good news is our school district is switching
next year to later start times for high school, so
good for that.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
That is exciting.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
All right, So this quite well, I guess it's for
both of us here.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
So this person writes that early mornings are important to
making my day's work, but as my kids are getting older,
they don't go to bed early anymore. So this is
kind of related to the earlier question. It seems like
they often want to chat or hang out or need
things in that post nine o'clock hour. It makes it
hard to just turn in. I realized I could just
close the door, but you know, again, we're talking with
(30:05):
teen kids. You realize they're not going to be there
that many more years. Sometimes you do want to be
available for them if they do want to chat with you,
any tips on older kids and later bedtimes and how
to balance being there for them but also trying to
get to bed at a decent time yourself.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I think I would take this directly from Laura Vandercam
and say three times a week.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Is a habit, meaning you do not have.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
To have a routine that is exactly the same from
day to day. I know there is some sleep gurus
who kind of say you're supposed to have the same
bedtime and same week of time every day, but maybe
that's in like an idealized world. I think we have
to also adapt these things to like the worlds we
live in. So I get up really early to run
(30:46):
many days per week, but I don't want to go
to bed every single night at like nine pm nine thirty.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
So there's usually going to be two, maybe three.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
Nights a week that I'm up a little bit later,
and usually I try to pick days where I'm more
flexible the next day. I think this might just have
to be about being like, some days can be for
you and some days can be more for them, and
there might be some nights that you're like, I'm going
to close the door and go to bed because I'm tired,
but like tomorrow, let's chat. Like it just doesn't have
to be all or nothing, So that would be that
(31:16):
would be my thought.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, you might also think about having a short version
and a long version of your morning routine. And you know,
on the night where your kids are totally ignoring you
and you go to bed on time, you could do
the long version in the morning, but you could make
that decision the night before, right, Like you could decide
that you have enough sort of control and autonomy in
your life that you will decide the night before is
(31:37):
tomorrow a long version or a short version?
Speaker 1 (31:40):
And that's a function of what time you go to
bed that night.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
You know, I think that the kids themselves, regardless of
what we just said, like, they don't need to have
access to you all night long. I mean, they do
probably need to go to sleep too. So I know
in our household you said, I mean you said the
post nine o'clock hour, and that's not that late. Our
lights out time in our house is ten, And yes,
people often are wanting to chat between nine and ten,
(32:06):
but if lights out is ten and I go to
bed at ten, if you need what seven seven and
a half hours of sleep, you could be up five
to five thirty A guessing that's still early enough to
get a morning routine in for some people.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
So you know, I happen to know this person. I
don't think that's quite early enough for this person. But yeah,
it doesn't mean you couldn't hang out till nine thirty
and get but five yeah, four forty five and get
like you know, over seven hours.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yeah, that's true. That's true.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
So maybe sort of push that nine to nine thirty
is when we talk. Nine thirty to ten is more
when mommy needs to sleep, and you can also kind
of you know, round earlier, I guess is the idea.
One of the things I often tell people with who
are trying to get out of their offices on time
is the problem is they're trying to leave and then
(32:51):
they go talk to everyone, and that's when people bring
stuff up like oh, yeah, we needed to talk about.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
This, and then you're like trying to get out the door.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
It's like, well, there's nothing you from going around and
talking to everyone at like two o'clock in the afternoon.
Right then, when people spring stuff on you or want
to have conversations you have space to do that before
five o'clock, so you might start like visiting your kid
at eight thirty and say like, hey, how's it going.
Maybe that's when they decide they want to start talking,
and you know, you can get some of it out
(33:20):
of the way a little bit earlier and move that
all earlier into the night.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Sounds good, all right.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Our last question today, and I thought this was such
a fun question, it is, what does the next five
years of Best of Both Worlds look like?
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (33:34):
My goodness, well, who knew?
Speaker 2 (33:37):
And we I mean one of our previous episodes or
one that's running around this is we look at the
idea of beginnings at endings, and people don't ever think
about endings when they start stuff. And so it's certainly
like when we started Best of Both Worlds in twenty seventeen,
I don't know that we had any idea of what
the future would look like.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
I mean, certainly we didn't.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Say like, we're going to try this for a year
and see how it goes, or that we're going to
try it for ten years how it goes, or you know,
anything like that. Obviously, the universe continues, and there will
be a Tuesday morning where there's no best in both worlds.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
But hopefully not for a while.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
So I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
We just planned to keep cranking these out and having
fun chatting and talking about things that matter to our listeners,
and technology and what people consume tends to evolve a lot.
I know that a lot of podcasts are having some
video component to them, which we have not been tempted
to do yet. But if that is what everyone does,
(34:32):
I suppose we'll have to look into it at some point.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
I would then have to make over my closet recording studio.
This is really not aesthetic at all. I mean, I
think one thing that has increased in our podcast recently
has been just the sense of community, and part of
that is growing the Patreon, but like we're having conversations
like with our listeners and that feels pretty magical. And
(34:55):
now we're even doing a live event together. I mean,
Laura was there last year, so it was also together,
but this time we're officially doing it together. So I
don't know, I could see that aspect of it growing.
I mean, we were fantasizing like, hey, like this event's
gonna just blow up and then we can like do
a few events per year and like support women and
you know, help them get through the tougher years and
(35:16):
give them a space to be together. So I don't know,
I could see little like branch offs of this. I
hope the podcast itself continues, but yeah, who knows, like
what different formats could look like.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
Yeah, maybe we'll be like a Netflix.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Show that's true with the home edit for life balance.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
I don't know that would be something awesome. Well, so
I guess we should do Love of the Week.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Right, Sure, you're gonna have to go first, because you
just sprung that one on me.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Well, don't do it every week like we like three
hundred and fifty of these episodes.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Why is this a surprise? True?
Speaker 4 (35:49):
True? Okay, but you're still going I'm.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Still going first. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
It's kind of nice to be in a hotel and
not be putting anyone to bed.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I would say my Love.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Of the Week is a case having the night off
from bedtime. Bedtime can be sweet, bedtime can also feel
like it drags on forever sometimes and at a time
of day when many of us would like to be done.
But yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
All right, I'm going to go on theme sort of
for that, And I will say using Strava or word
of mouth to find good running routes in other areas
and specifically looking for that before you leave so you
kind of know where to go, because it can be
daunting when you go somewhere and you're just kind of plunked.
But if you have a target and then you can
kind of just put that in your maps app and
(36:35):
you won't get lost and you can run somewhere nice.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
Yeah, that is my love of the week.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Yes Sarah did some good runs on the beach here
in Naples, and I at least got to walk to
the beach and enjoy.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
That yesterday and it was fun.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Anyway, This has been the best of both worlds. We're
recording Live Together here in Naples. We will be back
next week with more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoebox dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram,
and you.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join
us next time for more on making work and life
work together.
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
and course creator. We are two working parents who love
our careers and our families.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun,
from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
This episode, we believe is airing toward late March of
twenty twenty four. Sarah and I are recording a live
episode together here in Naples, Florida, where we've gathered to
talk future planning for best of both worlds and have
a little fun at the same time time. So this
is an episode where we're going to be answering questions
(01:05):
that listeners sent in readers of our various blogs. So
just quick reminder for people, Sarah, how can they reach us?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, so, you can find my website at the shoebox
dot com t H E. S hubox dot com. You
can always leave a comment there and of course, if
you're a Patreon number, then you can always reach us
that way as well.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, or leave it for me on Instagram, I'm at
el vandercam, or my blog Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Lots of ways you can reach out to us. So
we will go ahead and dive right in.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
So this first question is from somebody who has a
very common dilemma as children start getting into school age.
She says, I need a split shift childcare, as in
somebody to cover the morning and the afternoon with like
activity coverage because she and her husband both.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Need to be at work before school starts.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
And then the kids need running around in the afternoon,
and so what should she do for childcare?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends how late in
the afternoon, because truthfully, this could potentially just be someone's
full time job, like if you need someone from let's say,
I mean there is overtime that you'd be paying as well,
but it isn't totally unreasonable to hire someone for fifty
or fifty five hours per week, or maybe perhaps there's
one day that you don't need as long. But if
(02:24):
we're talking really like into the evening, like your kids
have activities at seven or eight pm. Then yet you're
not going to be able to have the same person
also cover the morning. So I mean my thought is
to either have two part time people or to see
if there's any way you could find kind of a
unicorn employee, maybe a college student or something like that
(02:45):
that might be willing to actually especially they live very
close by, to do the morning and then do their
own things so they're not on your time, and then
come back and then work some hours in the afternoon.
I recognize that may not be easy to find for
every one.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, I mean, this is obviously why a lot of
people who have school age kids wind up doing before
care and after care if that's something that your school
winds up offering. I mean, the challenge with that, obviously
is that aftercare means not doing the activities that are
not located at school, and so you know, if you
need someone to drive around to that that's going to
be challenging. You might still be able to do beforecare
(03:21):
at school and then hire a part time person for
doing afternoon activities. That could be an option depending on
the ages of the kids. I mean when people first
encounter this, because kids are like in preschool age, and like,
do I still need a full time person if my
kid is going to pre school from nine to noon?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
And generally the.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Answer is yes if your hours are not particularly flexible,
or you and your partner both travel, and you kind
of just have to get your head around the idea
that you are then paying for hours that the person
is not actively caring for your kids. And I know
that that is obviously not an easy mindset. I mean,
(04:05):
you know, sometimes it's financially not going to work. But
for people where there are options, just getting around that
little mental block can go a long way. And I
see this mental block all the time. I mean, people
who can work from home and have young kids will
sometimes go to incredible links to avoid paying for nap
(04:26):
time coverage.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Right, Like it's saying, could I have.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Somebody come from eight to one and leave right and
then I have the nap or so you know, it's good,
like they don't want to pay for time when the
person is not actively carried. But it's just you got
to get your head around this idea that yes, you're
gonna wind up paying for time that the person is
not actively working. But if you need the coverage, I
mean if both of you are on a train into
(04:49):
the city forty five minutes away at seven point thirty
and your kids have school from nine to two, Yeah,
you just can't not have that, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Either it's two peopleeople, or it's one person who wants
the time to do something else during the day, or
you wind up.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Paying for all of it.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
OH pair should be okayer, just because obviously not everybody
wants to have someone in their home, but we've had
so many guests have great luck with OH pairs, and
they can work this very type of flexible schedule because
they are physically located where you are. So for them
to dive in and work and care for the kids
for a couple of hours and then be off duty
while the kids are in school and then put in
(05:29):
more hours when they get back is actually kind of
like what they're there for.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, So that tends to be a great solution for
people who are in this situation. And then you know
the person is there too, right. So again, if the
two of you are both commuting to a city forty
five minutes away or something, and you have a need
to rise during the day, then you could start the
clock for an O pair again or something like that.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Anyway, it's it's a solution that a lot of people
do wind up choosing in that situation. It's not for everyone,
but it might be slightly more affordable if you have
the space.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
All right, should we go to our next question, Let's
do it. This one comes from a listener who says,
I'm drowning in chores. I have a cleaner every two weeks,
but it's the daily pickup and home maintenance stuff like laundry, dishes,
et cetera that I am struggling with. So how can
I find this less daunting?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah, well, this is the thing, you know that people
need to Another realization people have is that a cleaning
service makes your house cleaner if they come every two
weeks or so, but it may not actually save you
a ton of time. Yes, you don't have to do
then the major stuff, like you know, vacuuming all the
(06:44):
spaces that you wouldn't have done as frequently, or maybe
cleaning some lesser used bathrooms or something like that, But
that's not what the bulk of time spent on housework is.
The bulk of time is those sort of daily choices
like doing the dishes, cleaning up the kitchen. You know,
those things are harder to outsource unless you have someone
(07:08):
there very frequently, So that is an option.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
You know, you could hire.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
A part time housekeeper, even a small number of hours
a week if you found somebody who was willing to
do I don't know, nine hours a week, come three
days for three hours. That is three days that you
wouldn't have to be doing most of those things. And
obviously that person could keep the house quite clean, would
be doing the daily dishes and kitchen clean up on
(07:37):
that day, and could do all the laundry, and so
that would pretty minimize a lot of the other stuff
you had to do. But there are other options too.
If that's not going to.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Happen, yeah, I mean certainly making a really concerted effort
to look at what your standards actually are and maybe
see if there are things you can cut out or
worry about less or like maybe decide something like I
will tidy the kids rooms once a week and like
the rest of the time, if it looks like a
volcano of clothing and toys erupted in there, like that's okay. Also,
(08:08):
having fewer things definitely makes it easier to pick up,
although I'm preaching to myself about that because that can
be a losing battle with multiple kids that get things
that don't necessarily want to let go of, so I
understand that's not always easy either. Another thing could be
if you have a partner having a discussion about chores
and not in a general way, but maybe suggesting that
(08:29):
there could be vertical ownership of a couple of things,
Like if laundry is always stressing you out and you're
basically doing everything else, maybe that would be something that like,
if they appreciate that you're doing everything else, maybe they
could just do all the laundry or all the dishes
or whatever it is. Like, I think that maybe bringing
up and bringing to light kind of like Evrodsky's task cards,
(08:52):
Like we had her on as a guest and she
has an interesting approach to this, but kind of bringing
into light what is being done and if it's really
disproportionately falling on one party, figuring out if maybe the
other party can vertically own some of these things to
share the load a little bit more equally.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, there's actually a slight tie in with the previous question.
In that if you are paying somebody for childcare and
there are hours when they are not actively with your children,
then obviously this person could take on a lot of
the chores that you would have been doing. But you know,
if people are in a situation where their kids are
in day care, for instance, they've got the fortnightly cleaner,
(09:27):
that's yes, you're still going to have a ton of
daily chores to deal with, and so either figuring out
how to reduce them as much as possible, ignore them
to the degree that you can. I mean, simpler meals,
one pot meals, so there's not as many dishes, kids
re wearing their pajamas, you know, anything you can do.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
To make it be a little bit lower of a burden.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
All right.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Our next question comes from a listener who's got some
younger kids, and she's asking what format for little kid activities?
Is there anything you do virtual instrument lessons for example, tutoring, sports,
et cetera. What do you do outside of the house,
what do you do in the home? And what anything
still come through a screen?
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, well we do, I mean for older kids though,
we've done virtual tutoring. So that's actually a really cool
breakthrough In the past few years, as you zoom and
virtual conferencing, all that has become more of an option
because you can then match up with a tutor who
has availability and expertise in the subject.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Even if they are nowhere near you.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
And again for older children that you may not be
quite up on your calculus and need help with that
or whatever. They're taking a foreign language that you don't speak,
this can be great. Jasper's actually got a Spanish tutor
currently who lives in South America and so obviously she
speaks Spanish perfectly because she's from there and she can help.
(10:55):
She's also a teacher, so she can help him, and
that has been a really great thing that, you know,
helping with conversation partnership and all that.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
I will say, little kids and zoom.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Is really really hard. I would be very careful about that.
Just from Sarah, both of our experiences with having young
kids trying to learn virtually during the pandemic, it was
not very effective.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Learn in big quotes.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I learned in big quotes more like hiding under a
chair and refusing to yeah yeah, refusing to come over
to zoom. But music lessons could be great to have
somebody come to your house again, especially if you have
a bigger instrument like a piano that you have won there,
or if your child's going to play the cello or
something like that. Not having to deal with portable aspects
of anything is good. Although a piano studio would have
(11:44):
a piano, But we have done that for music lessons
for again kids who are probably you know, I haven't
started them till the kids are more like first or
second grade. But have somebody come to your house to
teach music lessons has been good in that that's one
less place to drive.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yes, I can see that we actually don't. We do.
We have one kid in music lessons, and we do
go to a studio in Parks. I was having trouble
finding someone.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
That could come to our house.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
But I will say one benefit of the studio if
you do live in a very open plan home and
have multiple children. I think about, like whether she'd actually
be able to concentrate with someone in our house, and
I'm not sure it would have worked out all that well.
It'd be different if we could put her in a
separate room. But if it's a piano, you don't really
have a lot of.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
People can't move it it is where it is.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yes, So yeah, we don't really do anything virtual. We've
done a couple of like, yeah, we did do some
like reading tutoring virtually back in the day, but that
was more pandemic specific. Mostly we do things out in
the open. And I will say, the number one thing
that will kind of help me decide on saying yes
to an activity and not is like, is it pretty close? Yeah,
(12:52):
because obviously if your kid has some specific passion that
is only available far away. I can think of a
blogger whose son is super into diving, and I know
she has to bend and we'd backwards to make that
work for him, but there probably isn't any diving right
near her. But barring that, man, it is great that
I can get to the gymnastics place in like nine minutes.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, when in doubt, go with the closer one.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I think that's one of our operating principles here at
the best of both worlds, that the less time spent
in the car the better. I'll just throw out that
I'm doing strength training virtually. I meet with a trainer virtually.
That's something that I hadn't really thought of as being
an option, but it turns out that it is that
the person can sort of be on an iPad er
phone and see you can move the phone or iPad
(13:38):
around and they could see your home gem.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
And yeah, it's been great.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
There you go. So better for adults and for kids.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Better for adults and kids.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
All right, Well, I'm going to ask this one because
it's for you. Okay, question for the mailbag for Laura.
Have you ever thought about updating your books?
Speaker 4 (13:53):
In particular?
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Do you think anything has materially changed since COVID.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, it's funny how we have these questions. A lot
of them come back to sort of COVID things.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Some things have changed.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So the proportion of knowledge workers who are doing some
of their work at home has risen a ton. And
I'm sure people have just seen this in their own lives,
Like if your friend gets a new job, you're not
surprised to hear that it's largely virtual, right, Like You're
not like, oh that's crazy, You're like, oh, yeah, sure,
(14:26):
she found a remote job. Or just people who would
have been going into the office five days a week
or even you know, four because they'd been in the
company forever and so they were allowed to work from
home on Fridays. Now it's more like going into the
office two or three days a week, and nobody bats
an eye at that.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
That's more the expectation.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
So I think that's cool because that technology has been
around for about two decades, but it has been not
you because culture is hard to change, right, culture is
hard to change. That said, a day still has twenty
four hours. A week still has one hundred and sixty
(15:12):
eight hours. People are not more put upon now than
they were in the past. And this is just one
of my things that personal pet paves about time. Everyone
always believes that they have it rougher than anyone else
in history. And so I'd look at magazines from the
nineteen fifties where people will be complaining about how busy
(15:33):
they are with everything going on. There's no way they
could possibly be busier. And then, you know, I started
writing about time in the early two thousands, and people
definitely thought they were busier than the nineteen fifties then
because of all this other stuff going on. Now we
have two career couples and the internet and then email
and then and then of course you know, now people say, oh,
you started writing about a time and what two thousand
(15:54):
and five, two thousand and six, and like things must
have been different then we're so much busier now. It's like, no,
we are not. But we are not busier now. You know,
if you look at stuff like the American Time You survey,
people are sleeping more statistically significantly amount more than over
the past few decades. That's partly it's just an aging population,
like you know, as people get a little bit older,
(16:15):
that number might go up.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah, but I thought people with their phone in their
face at like midnight would have like that surprises me that.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
People are saying that's great. Well, you know, it's not
always good. It could be good, it could be other things.
There's smaller families, for instance, people spend fewer years in
the intense childcare stage.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
So it's just.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
People like to believe they've been busier than ever before,
but fundamentally we are not. And so when you get
your head around that, I think it's a little bit more.
You know, it brings more possibilities. So you say, if
I have a story that I'm busier now and people
are busier than they ever been, then we don't think
about how we want to spend our time. Whereas if
(17:00):
if you acknowledge that most of us have some amount
of discretionary time we did before COVID we do now,
then we start thinking about what we'd like to do
with it, and that just opens up all sorts of
more possibilities.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
I love that as we're speaking and we are in
the same room, I pointed the book I'm reading when
you said that, like, we're not more put upon now
because I'm reading The Covenant of Water, and like, yeah,
let me just say that, like my life and our
lives and probably most of you listening to this is
like probably a lot easier than most of the people
I'm reading about in this book.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Yes, leave it.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Absolutely all right, Well, let's take a quick ad break
and we'll be back with more from our mail bag.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
All right, we are back.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Sarah and I are talking here live in the same
room in Naples, Florida. So if this sounds a little different,
we apologize. It's not our recording studios. But we're enjoying
sitting next to each other. So please bear with us
on this, Sarah. So this question is for you. Thoughts
on the new large digital calendar frames hearth being one
(18:11):
that a lot of people have purchased, but maybe you
can describe for people who don't get the Instagram ads
for these sorts of things. What are we talking about
large digital calendar frames and what would be the upside
of having one of these?
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, so Skylight is another common brand. That one was
kind of like an earlier I think prototype and actually
a one time best of both worlds sponsor their photo frame,
not their calendar frame anyway.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Hearth is a newer one.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
What we're talking about is kind of a large whiteboard
size digital frame that links with an app so that
you can display let's say, a shared Google calendar for
the family. It's formatted so you can maybe put like
the shopping list, you can put all kinds of like
family dashboard. You can put your day schedule, you can
put your morning routine and have kids check it off
by like clicking it on the screen, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
I think they're really cool.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
It's so funny because sometimes I feel like people assume
that since I like paper, I don't want new tools
or something, But I actually have my eye on the hearth.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
And think it would be fun.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
The only thing about it is that I do think
one thing that would make it more useful is if
everybody is using the same digital calendar type tools, and
my kids are not currently at the point where they're
doing that, nor do I really want them doing that yet.
I can see when we get more into like the
if everybody's in middle school in high school and my
kids are actually using Google Calendar so that they could
(19:28):
actually like interface with this regularly, I think it could
be really useful.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
I also think.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
If you have a partner that's excited about this, that
might be a helpful way to help them see what
the family's mental load looks like on any given week,
maybe have some more participation in that Tetris calendar management.
I mean, this may be a little bit optimistic. I'd
love to hear if this has worked for some couples,
but hey, we use a whiteboard in my house basically
(19:53):
for this purpose and it does work. But I can
see the esthetic of having it be digital, as well
as the ability for people to kind of add to
it and change things on it from outside of the home.
So I'm excited that this is a thing because it
actually brings a problem which I don't feel like was
talked about enough, just kind of like the day to
(20:14):
day management of family into like, hey, we need a
professional type tool for this, Like this is a real
challenge that everyone can participate in.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
So I think in general it's great.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Yeah, I mean my family, we're still very low tech.
I create the family schedule in word more or less
and then just print it up like each day. It
says what each person is doing, and then I print
it up and we make changes on.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
It with pen. It sits on the kitchen counter and
that works. It works.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Yeah, but different people like different things. I'm not very
technologically advanced, So there you go. All right, So question
Sarah this one. I'll you can start on this one,
and then I'll tay, what do you imagine your retirement
will be like? And what do you want for those years?
And I guess when do you think it will be?
Would be a follow up to that.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
I don't think that much about this because I do
feel like I envision my future more like ten years,
kind of the largest horizon that I think about regularly.
And I'm currently forty three, almost forty four, and I
do not think I will be retired at fifty four.
So I don't have a clear timeline, in part because
(21:22):
I guess there's there are a lot of unknowns here.
I don't know how my energy is going to be at,
you know, in my sixties. I don't know what it's
going to be like to be working and then not
have the child kind of care centric stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
And I know you still.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Are involved in your children's lives even when they're older,
but it's going to be a different level and different type.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
So I think it's a little bit hard to plan
for that.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
I will say I do have like lovely visions of
having more time for travel and just my Josh and
I having like really enjoying some time together, but it's
hard to know what role work will play in that.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
I guess I'm.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Hopeful that my career will continue to eve and I'll
be doing like more interesting and different things.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
It won't always stay the same clinically.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
I mean, I think I'll always do some level of that,
but it's sort of the other piece that could go
in a lot of different directions, and I'm open to
like what happens. I don't have a very specific time frame, however,
I will say we still do save for retirement as
if a day will come when we will not be earning,
because it would be nice to be able to just
pursue work without worrying about how much is going to
(22:26):
be brought in or not brought in at a certain point.
And so I am not saying, oh, I'm not going
to retire so I just spend every penny I have,
because that would not be good.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Now there's a different you know, people talk about the
fire movement, which is financial independence retire early, but to
be honest, financial independence and retiring early are two totally
different things, and lumping them to gather is based on
a mindset that work is something you don't.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Want to do.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
And I think you know, Sarah and I are both
fortunate in that the vast majority of the aspect for
our careers are things we actively do, want to do
and enjoy and have fully chosen and shaped in a
lot of ways to be what we want to be doing.
So I think pursuing financial independence is incredibly smart and
(23:16):
everyone should be doing that as much as possible. Retiring early, yeah,
So the fire bloggers who are like, I retired at
age thirty, and I'm like, and you're writing books and
podcasting and blogging and having courses, which is exactly the
work that we do. So you just changed careers with savings,
(23:37):
which we've evolved our careers with savings too. Maybe we
should start selling courses on that, Sarah. Anyway, what I'm
getting out to this, I don't envision myself retiring in
the sense that I write because I like to write,
and I wrote as a child, I've written as a student.
I would write whether I was getting paid for it,
I would write, you know whatever. It just is what
I do as part of my identity. So I don't
(23:59):
envision that changing until I, like, truly cannot do it anymore. Now,
maybe the various other forms of how I work could evolve,
you know, certainly when my kids aren't around.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
I think having a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Flexibility to go different places and things like that might
be fun. But I don't envision retirement is something incredibly
different than what I'm currently doing, because there's it's not
like a yeah, I don't know, I don't have a
target age.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
No, And I'll just add that I am very far
from financial independence. I mean, I guess I would say,
let me caveat that. I guess if we had a
drastic change in lifestyle, we could be financially independent. But
at the current lifestyle. We are far from that, and
there's trade offs there too, because there's experiences I want
to have with my kids that do cost money that
(24:52):
if I want to have them, I have to spend
that money, which means it's going to take longer to
get to that financial independence piece. So that balance is
always to pay attention to. But both sides are important,
absolutely all right.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
So how do you handle kids needing different amounts of sleep?
And I guess that this could play out in lots
of different ways. You have two kids who are relatively
the same age, but like one of them is more
of a sleeper than the other. Maybe you've got a
night owl kid or or something. Or it could also
be that you have kids of very different ages. And
let's say you're dealing with, you know, an older kid,
(25:28):
like a school age kid, and you also have a baby,
and you're trying to like set a schedule around two
kids of different ages. So how does this work in life?
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Well, I'm living this reality right now because I do
notice that tweens and kids who are approaching tweenhoods seem
to have different patterns where there really are driven to
stay up later.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
They don't quote get.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Cranky like little kids do late, and then we're likely
to sleep in on weekends. And then overall for me,
I feel like need less fewer hours in general. And
then I have a six year old who absolutely it
does not do well when she stays up late, and
when she has a couple of nights in a row
of compromise sleep, you really do notice it kind of
behaviorally with the amount of patience she has. Yeah, so
(26:13):
I have been very specific about a very hard deadline
bedtime for her on every night that we can do it.
There are some nights where activities just make it almost impossible.
But if I can get the like five to six
nights a week where it's like we are starting to
read at seven thirty so that she can go to
bed by eight to eight fifteen, I really have to
(26:35):
like set a timer and actually pay attention to that,
because again with the bigger kids, like they're off doing stuff,
they want help with homework, do whatever. But unfortunately, if
someone doesn't prioritize putting her to bed.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Like, we all pay for it multiple days later.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
So that's kind of how I'm working on it, or
kind of how I've approached it. Do I always have
success in this No, but the weeks that it works,
it does feel better.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Yeah, I mean, with having a huge spread of ages
for my kids, we just sort of accepted that Henry
probably has a different sleep profile than a lot of
four year olds would have, and fortunately it seems to
be okay.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Like he does not wake up at the crack.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Of dawn regardless of when he's gone to bed, So
if he's falling asleep around ten o'clock at night, which
is when the other kids are also going to sleep,
the good news is he doesn't really have to wake
up until eight fifteen, eight twenty in the morning to
get to school at nine, and so it winds up
being okay like it actually because he doesn't get up
(27:36):
until then, he gets the ten hours of sleep or
whatever it is, with occasional naps in the afternoon.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
But even then, he's never been.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Able to have like a dedicated nap in the crib
kind of time like post COVID. I mean, now that
we're back into things going on, just it's too much
going on in the household, and so he's probably had
a lot of naps in the car in his life,
but that's been the way it is, and I think
(28:05):
you have to acknowledge that kids also might have different
sleep needs than you'd want.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Them to have.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
And I always feel bad for people whose parents have
decided that because you are ex age, you will have
to go to bed at eight. Like we're talking kids
who are like ten or older, and it's like they're
sitting there, not falling asleep with the lights out. I mean,
I understand that parents want to have their own time,
but it's like, maybe we could just let them read
(28:30):
for a while, I don't know, and just check on
them in another thirty forty minutes.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
And I don't know.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
People are who they are, and it's kind of hard
to force your sleep desires on somebody else.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
So just something to keep in mind totally.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
And yeah, when we put Genevieve to bed, she's clearly tired.
We're not dealing with that situation. And it never even
occurred to me not to let your kid read if
they wanted to stay up and read. So for us,
that's kind of like the default. I actually I want
them to do more of that than it's currently happening.
A lot of times, it's more like, oh, but there's
a duke game on, and then I worry about like
blue light and like keeping them up and whatever, and
(29:11):
I don't know, maybe I should just not stress too much.
The big kids actually do not seem terribly sleep deprived,
so that's good.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Yeah, well, I think my older kids may be slightly
sleep deprive, but that's more that the school begins so
incredibly early, and then they really aren't tired at night either.
I mean, there really is their circadian rhythm thing with teens.
And the good news is our school district is switching
next year to later start times for high school, so
good for that.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
That is exciting.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
All right, So this quite well, I guess it's for
both of us here.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
So this person writes that early mornings are important to
making my day's work, but as my kids are getting older,
they don't go to bed early anymore. So this is
kind of related to the earlier question. It seems like
they often want to chat or hang out or need
things in that post nine o'clock hour. It makes it
hard to just turn in. I realized I could just
close the door, but you know, again, we're talking with
(30:05):
teen kids. You realize they're not going to be there
that many more years. Sometimes you do want to be
available for them if they do want to chat with you,
any tips on older kids and later bedtimes and how
to balance being there for them but also trying to
get to bed at a decent time yourself.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I think I would take this directly from Laura Vandercam
and say three times a week.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Is a habit, meaning you do not have.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
To have a routine that is exactly the same from
day to day. I know there is some sleep gurus
who kind of say you're supposed to have the same
bedtime and same week of time every day, but maybe
that's in like an idealized world. I think we have
to also adapt these things to like the worlds we
live in. So I get up really early to run
(30:46):
many days per week, but I don't want to go
to bed every single night at like nine pm nine thirty.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
So there's usually going to be two, maybe three.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
Nights a week that I'm up a little bit later,
and usually I try to pick days where I'm more
flexible the next day. I think this might just have
to be about being like, some days can be for
you and some days can be more for them, and
there might be some nights that you're like, I'm going
to close the door and go to bed because I'm tired,
but like tomorrow, let's chat. Like it just doesn't have
to be all or nothing, So that would be that
(31:16):
would be my thought.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, you might also think about having a short version
and a long version of your morning routine. And you know,
on the night where your kids are totally ignoring you
and you go to bed on time, you could do
the long version in the morning, but you could make
that decision the night before, right, Like you could decide
that you have enough sort of control and autonomy in
your life that you will decide the night before is
(31:37):
tomorrow a long version or a short version?
Speaker 1 (31:40):
And that's a function of what time you go to
bed that night.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
You know, I think that the kids themselves, regardless of
what we just said, like, they don't need to have
access to you all night long. I mean, they do
probably need to go to sleep too. So I know
in our household you said, I mean you said the
post nine o'clock hour, and that's not that late. Our
lights out time in our house is ten, And yes,
people often are wanting to chat between nine and ten,
(32:06):
but if lights out is ten and I go to
bed at ten, if you need what seven seven and
a half hours of sleep, you could be up five
to five thirty A guessing that's still early enough to
get a morning routine in for some people.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
So you know, I happen to know this person. I
don't think that's quite early enough for this person. But yeah,
it doesn't mean you couldn't hang out till nine thirty
and get but five yeah, four forty five and get
like you know, over seven hours.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yeah, that's true. That's true.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
So maybe sort of push that nine to nine thirty
is when we talk. Nine thirty to ten is more
when mommy needs to sleep, and you can also kind
of you know, round earlier, I guess is the idea.
One of the things I often tell people with who
are trying to get out of their offices on time
is the problem is they're trying to leave and then
(32:51):
they go talk to everyone, and that's when people bring
stuff up like oh, yeah, we needed to talk about.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
This, and then you're like trying to get out the door.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
It's like, well, there's nothing you from going around and
talking to everyone at like two o'clock in the afternoon.
Right then, when people spring stuff on you or want
to have conversations you have space to do that before
five o'clock, so you might start like visiting your kid
at eight thirty and say like, hey, how's it going.
Maybe that's when they decide they want to start talking,
and you know, you can get some of it out
(33:20):
of the way a little bit earlier and move that
all earlier into the night.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Sounds good, all right.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Our last question today, and I thought this was such
a fun question, it is, what does the next five
years of Best of Both Worlds look like?
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (33:34):
My goodness, well, who knew?
Speaker 2 (33:37):
And we I mean one of our previous episodes or
one that's running around this is we look at the
idea of beginnings at endings, and people don't ever think
about endings when they start stuff. And so it's certainly
like when we started Best of Both Worlds in twenty seventeen,
I don't know that we had any idea of what
the future would look like.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
I mean, certainly we didn't.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Say like, we're going to try this for a year
and see how it goes, or that we're going to
try it for ten years how it goes, or you know,
anything like that. Obviously, the universe continues, and there will
be a Tuesday morning where there's no best in both worlds.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
But hopefully not for a while.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
So I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
We just planned to keep cranking these out and having
fun chatting and talking about things that matter to our listeners,
and technology and what people consume tends to evolve a lot.
I know that a lot of podcasts are having some
video component to them, which we have not been tempted
to do yet. But if that is what everyone does,
(34:32):
I suppose we'll have to look into it at some point.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
I would then have to make over my closet recording studio.
This is really not aesthetic at all. I mean, I
think one thing that has increased in our podcast recently
has been just the sense of community, and part of
that is growing the Patreon, but like we're having conversations
like with our listeners and that feels pretty magical. And
(34:55):
now we're even doing a live event together. I mean,
Laura was there last year, so it was also together,
but this time we're officially doing it together. So I
don't know, I could see that aspect of it growing.
I mean, we were fantasizing like, hey, like this event's
gonna just blow up and then we can like do
a few events per year and like support women and
you know, help them get through the tougher years and
(35:16):
give them a space to be together. So I don't know,
I could see little like branch offs of this. I
hope the podcast itself continues, but yeah, who knows, like
what different formats could look like.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
Yeah, maybe we'll be like a Netflix.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Show that's true with the home edit for life balance.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
I don't know that would be something awesome. Well, so
I guess we should do Love of the Week.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Right, Sure, you're gonna have to go first, because you
just sprung that one on me.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Well, don't do it every week like we like three
hundred and fifty of these episodes.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Why is this a surprise? True?
Speaker 4 (35:49):
True? Okay, but you're still going I'm.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Still going first. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
It's kind of nice to be in a hotel and
not be putting anyone to bed.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I would say my Love.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Of the Week is a case having the night off
from bedtime. Bedtime can be sweet, bedtime can also feel
like it drags on forever sometimes and at a time
of day when many of us would like to be done.
But yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
All right, I'm going to go on theme sort of
for that, And I will say using Strava or word
of mouth to find good running routes in other areas
and specifically looking for that before you leave so you
kind of know where to go, because it can be
daunting when you go somewhere and you're just kind of plunked.
But if you have a target and then you can
kind of just put that in your maps app and
(36:35):
you won't get lost and you can run somewhere nice.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
Yeah, that is my love of the week.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Yes Sarah did some good runs on the beach here
in Naples, and I at least got to walk to
the beach and enjoy.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
That yesterday and it was fun.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Anyway, This has been the best of both worlds. We're
recording Live Together here in Naples. We will be back
next week with more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoebox dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram,
and you.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join
us next time for more on making work and life
work together.
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