In this week’s episode of the podcast, we are so excited to share our first episode featuring Lacey’s husband, Joe. We discuss the challenges and successes of managing their home, especially with Lacey’s onset of chronic illness. Joe has stepped up in a massive way taking on many tasks, but there are still places that are causing strain for the household. We dive into all the details of the home and get a clear view of the challenges faced.
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Transcript
Welcome to no shame in the home game, the podcast that cares about how your home feels, not how it looks. I'm Lacey. You're going to be hearing from me a lot in this episode. and my co host Sarah,
Sara:Hi, Lacey. It's so good to see you.
Lacey:it's good to see you too. Today is a, it is an interesting episode because it is the first episode where we meet my husband, Joe, who is our third participant.
Sara:And for the listeners, I am a huge Joe fan from the middle. I have a hashtag. We want more Joe. it was, I got to say, I had to wear a lot of hats in this episode. I had my fangirl hat on because I got to meet Joe for the first time. And then watching Joe and Lacey interact is honestly a reality show in and of itself. So I had just like the observer hat on, and then I kept trying to switch on to my, like, why I'm here talking about home stuff. I had to keep switching my hats and I would catch myself. Just watching instead of being a part of it.
Lacey:I was talking to my mom the other day, explaining that, Joe's doing this week, and let's be honest, yes, Joe is our participant, but it's me. I'm the participant too. This way, it's not just my thoughts and we have another person, but it's also good because You're getting a couple's perspective, that's not something we've had in with our other participants. We're only talking to one part of the couple. So with this, it does add like this layer. And I said something to my mom and my mom was like, yeah, you're in Joe's relationship is unique. And she, she meant it in a good way. I do like to joke with her that when she thinks, doesn't like something, she doesn't want to say anything bad. So she uses words like unique or interesting, but I do, it is funny, having to edit my own episode with my own husband to go back and listen and I'm like, Oh man, okay. This is. Unique. But I do think that couples will very much see themselves in some of these different things of like, yeah, that's kind of how it works here, too.
Sara:and it's, it is a great perspective, because managing a home can look like a variety of things. You can be all by yourself, you can be with others. It could be a single parent, it can be two parents, Like you can have a part time kid, you can have an older relative in the house and who is doing the majority of the management can vary wildly. And as we learned in your episode, it shifted a lot from what it looked like a year ago to now. And so there are just, there's no one way that this looks like. And so I like that we brought in a different perspective.
Lacey:Yeah. The other thing that I, really like about home CEO and this idea is that It is, helping you build a system. It is not a system given to you. And that was something that I know, I've tried some other things in the past and it hasn't gone great because it hasn't really worked for me and Joe because Joe, even before I got sick, was very involved in our home management always trying his best and trying to figure out like where he can fit in because, as. Sarah well knows, if I see something, I do it, I don't, or unless it's physical, because then I can't do it, but I'm a doer, and so sometimes that's a big part of our, give and take. And I think you'll hear that in today's episode. let's jump right in and you all can meet Joe. Today. We have a very special participant who is joining us. we're doing the first episode with my husband, Joe. Hi, Joe.
Joe:Hello.
Sara:I'm over here, fangirling. Cause I listened to the middle I started hashtag more Joe in the middle Listening to episodes of YouTube always brightens my day in the best possible way.
Lacey:I think that we have fun chemistry, but Joe does not believe me.
Joe:I didn't say that.
Lacey:Okay. All right. Joe's the contrarian in our relationship, as you can tell.
Sara:I was going to say, it's actually better if he doesn't believe in the magic, because that's what makes it more magical. The second he believes in it, it would boom.
Joe:Even if I did, I have to disagree because that's how podcasts work, right? There's always got to be a dissenting voice.
Lacey:As far as, Joe being our participant, it is our household. So Lacey and Joe's household. but we brought Joe in. So that one, it's not just me talking all the time, but two, we have a lot of unique circumstances in our house recently with my illness and Joe has picked up a lot of the weight. And so this kind of shift over the past six months has been a lot for us. And we are. Still trying to figure it out. yeah,
Joe:that is all correct.
Lacey:Yeah, so we need some help
Sara:I want to start off by right sizing expectations when you said we're still figuring it out. I'm like, Oh, yeah, you'll still be figuring it out every day for the rest of your lives. there's no, there is actually no like end mark, especially when you have little ones in the house, because every time you think you have a good system going, they change their sleeping cycles, what they want to eat, right? Something will change. but yeah, if we could find at least a basic scaffolding to support your new situation to move forward. So you're not reinventing the wheel every single day. It sounds like that would be helpful too.
Joe:yes
Sara:First I just want to say thank you for being so willing to share what's Your journey and what's going on inside your house. Everybody always wants to know what's happening behind the doors of everyone else's house. I appreciate you being willing to share what's going on. In order to ground this we asked all of our participants, and I've already asked Laci these questions in our intro episode. Joe, I would love to know, do you have any rules from your childhood home that are memorable, i. e. Funny or quirky or unusual, something that stands out.
Joe:the rules
Lacey:rules are Joe is well acquainted with the deviled egg story.
Joe:Oh, yes.
Lacey:so like ways that your house ran that you thought were universal, that weren't that kind of thing.
Joe:not much, really. I guess there's one that kind of came up in the beginning of us living together, which was at my house. Certain things were stored under the kitchen sink. And that, cause everyone's got that space under their sink where they store stuff. And it's a tall space. It's a decently tall space. It depends on the house, obviously. But, we always stored, among other things, of course, the vegetable oil was just always under the sink. And so that's where I just always put it. And when I've been over to other people's houses who are friends of mine, it's there as well. And so I assumed that this was a widespread thing, and Lace pointed out to me that it is not. It's not. I've never seen vegetable oil under a sink anywhere else. I think it also has to do with the space that your house has. and my parents did not have a pantry. That's on that the same floor is the kitchen. They had something in the basement and so it was just easier to put it there than anywhere else. it's one of those things where you do it for ease and convenience, but then you come to believe oh, this is just where it goes. This is how it is supposed to be when in reality it was more of, like I said, something for the ease of use as opposed to having to run down to the basement every time you need to use the vegetable oil.
Lacey:I, like I said, I was like, I have literally never seen the vegetable oil underneath the sink.
Sara:I love that because these are the unspoken rules that you carry over when you leave your home of origin, when you start living with roommates, when you get married, right? These are these unspoken rules that sometimes cause tension because it's this assumption of. No, that's where you keep it, but I'm instantly picturing everyone in Joe's neighborhood growing up having the same cabinet installation and cabinet maker,
Lacey:mean, his parents have a beautiful 1920s Tudor. and there are a lot of older homes in the city of Cincinnati, which is, where our house is old. Yeah. Our house is older. Even older than theirs. When you think about it, I'm like, okay, maybe it does make sense that he would see this beyond his household. If his friends also lived in older houses, whereas I grew up in newer houses most of my life. So
Sara:You come from the tall cabinet people, it's like your clan, like Joe comes from small cabinet people and you come from tall
Lacey:tall.
Sara:people.
Lacey:Cabinets are tall. People are tall.
Sara:So are there any, Joe, are there any non negotiables in your home that are important to you? Are there things like you'll let go of? 10 different things, but there's one thing at the end of the day that you will fight for
Joe:I would say probably, cleaning the kitchen every night. I basically clean the kitchen every single night, do the dishes, try to clean off as much stuff off the counter as I can, make sure everything's basically washed and cleaned, because as soon as you let that build up, it becomes a task that you're never gonna want to tackle, and if you do it every night, it just stays easy. So there have been maybe a few rare nights where I don't touch it at all, but usually that's when it's like there's almost nothing that needs to be done and I'm like, you know what, it's just a few plates to put away or something like that. I'll do
Lacey:it. You weren't always like that, though. we started having kids. You really?
Joe:Yeah, that's true. But You have to have kids, so
Sara:I want to move on, Jo. Do you have a favorite home task, or a least favorite home task?
Joe:I guess. I mean, I would say in terms of what I mind the least, I wouldn't say favorite because I don't necessarily love doing like house stuff, but I don't mind the dishes at all. But again, I do them every single night. So I think at a certain point, you just it becomes almost like mechanical or rote and I don't really think about it. Probably dishes where I'm just like, just do it, get it done. I know this doesn't really count, but I do love grocery shopping and that does count. Okay. Okay.
Sara:does count.
Joe:Okay, yeah, I love grocery shopping, I enjoy it. But I also take a really long time to do it, so I'm not necessarily the best person for it if you're trying to, get done in a hurry, unless I'm going to Aldi, which is usually a pretty quick trip, cause it's not like a gigantic store you have to deal with. Plus But you still Aldi it up. I still Aldi it up, but Which is like going
Lacey:down the street. it's,
Joe:it's going off list. It's, you get what's on the list, and then you get some extra stuff. Yeah.
Sara:So do you make the grocery list or do you and Lacey make it together? Who makes that
Joe:I probably, I would say I do most of the grocery stuff, but we both contribute to the list sometimes. Yeah,
Lacey:so we have a system. That I think works out really well as we have a list app that we share on the phone that we both have access to and we've set it up so that our Amazon ALX EA. I don't want her to interrupt us. you can shout to her. Hey, add this to the grocery list and it'll add it automatically to that list. Highly recommend. Yeah. It works really well for us. So like when you use the last of something, you can just shout, Hey, add this to the grocery list. And you don't have to keep that in your mind anymore.
Joe:Then when you're putting the, cuz we've basically just been doing click list lately because grocery pickup. Yeah, sorry, Kroger. The Kroger pickup basically, because they do it for free for, yeah. Right now still. And it's. and it's very fast. It's tough with two kids, to be able to go to the grocery store by myself to get everything that we need. And so I find it easier to just do a pickup order that I can either pick up on the way home from getting the kids. Or maybe leave work a little early, pick up the groceries, bring them home, put them away, and then go pick up the kids, so it's just a lot more convenient, and fast that way, plus you can look through the list that you're putting together and decide exactly how much you want to spend, what you're willing to get, whereas in the store, you're like Just throwing stuff in the cart. You don't really think about the total, but when you're doing it in the app, you can watch it go up. And so you can really look at your costs of stuff. Joe is
Lacey:much better at being money conscious than I am too,
Joe:for sure. Yeah. And I do, I would say through the grocery list, I do most of the meal planning. Yeah. I asked Lace for contributions, like what kind of foods she would want for the week. But if she's not feeling like contributing I still put together all of the meals
Lacey:and stuff I will say this has been a big win for us in the past few months that we've gotten considerably better at and Mostly Joe, so I want to give him as many props as possible because with me losing my job We have a lot less money going out is not really the option that it always was growing up my mom stopped cooking when I was like 13. And she was done. She was like, I fed all of you guys for so long. And it was just me, my mom and dad. And so going out to eat and picking up dinner was always an option. And it was always what we did most of the time. So for me, it's yeah, you just go get something. Whereas Joe's no, you don't just go get something. So that has been a lot of retraining for me that we held on to a lot. But then when money became much tighter, Joe was like, no, that we're going to get better about this. And he really has made us a lot better about it. And as I'm starting to get more of my energy back, I have been able to do more cooking and stuff, too, as well. we're hitting a pretty good stride there, I think, that
Joe:we're doing a good job. Yeah, we're doing pretty good. We still splurge every once in a while on the groceries, but, if you eat hot dogs and mac and cheese a couple nights a week, you can really save a lot of money. A lot of money. There's a lot of meals you can make out there that are a lot cheaper than eating out. and we used to do one of those meal services where they would drop off the ingredients and stuff, and that was nice because it got us to kind of branch out and learn how to cook and stuff, but as soon as we couldn't afford it, we had to drop it. Yeah, it definitely because it's not cheap,
Lacey:it definitely gave us the confidence and skills to just be like, yeah, I can cook that. Yeah,
Joe:I can cook that. Yeah. So now we can look up almost any recipe. And even if it's got, like a decently high level of technique required, we're like, yeah, we can do that. We'll figure it out. Yep.
Sara:That is, that's a lot of great info for me. I love how you two problem solve that together. And cause I'm already hearing that you two are figuring out where to meet in the middle, how to adapt to your new situation using tools. Like I can't say the name, but the AI that lives in your house with you.
Lacey:I, so that's me. I get super jazzed about home automation and I'm the one who like programmed our house to be home automated. Most of the lights in our house are on and off through that. I can lock the door through that and all these different things. It has helped our kids be more independent because my son can tell her to. Turn off lights and turn on lights. so anywhere technology can help, I am in, and I will figure out how to make it happen. That's true. And I get real jazzed about it, as you already know, Sarah. That's a zone of excitement for me.
Sara:I love that. That's really good to know when looking into solutions.
Lacey:If something can be 3% easier with technology, I'm gonna make it happen.
Sara:I like
Lacey:Joe is gonna
Sara:three percent.
Lacey:Yeah. Joe is gonna roll his eyes, but I'm gonna do it. And then at some point he is gonna be like, all right, yeah, that is next. So I
Joe:didn't actually roll my eyes, but I wanted to
Lacey:I feel like wanted 2%. That's just too little. 3%? Yeah. Okay. 3% over time. Yeah.
Joe:Ok. I'd much rather just save the money and do the task myself.
Lacey:But we don't have the energy in our house does
Joe:not. The conveniences that you have come up with have saved us a lot of time and stress in a lot of different ways. So it has been very helpful. Thank you. Oh, wait, That was, recorded. that was recorded. So people are going to know I said that out loud. I know. Oh, no.
Lacey:Take it back.
Sara:I was gonna say that was a beautiful moment. I feel like we've peaked actually. We haven't even gotten to the juicy stuff.
Joe:Yep, we're done. Everyone go home. We're done.
Sara:Problem solved.
Lacey:I told Sarah, we were going to talk a lot about dishes. I didn't know you were so cool with dishes. I thought dishes were going to be a point of contention.
Joe:I don't love doing the dishes. Like I said, I love grocery shopping. I don't love doing the dishes, but I don't mind the dishes in that I do them every night. So at a certain point, you just get so used to it that you just it has to be done. I
Lacey:am curious though, and I know this is Sarah's next question, so I'm just going to go there. What is a task that you hate doing? Like a least favorite house task.
Joe:picking up kid toys. Yeah. Because I do it and then I come back down the next day and they're immediately all over the entire house. So Yeah. Probably the kid's toys.
Lacey:That is a one of our big sticking points for sure, because it's hard for me. That takes a lot of energy. I did get myself a grabber. I have tried doing it, and I've tried getting the kids involved, but there is no system that has worked yet.
Joe:I will say that with our kids, they do great when there is structure and routine to something. And so bedtime for us is fantastically easy. Yeah. We do the exact same thing every single night, and they comply. our son, when it is time for him to, lay down by himself and be alone, he just says goodnight, and then we leave him in his room and he doesn't get out of bed, he doesn't scream, he doesn't cry, there's no, fighting it or staying awake super late. He just lays in bed and then goes to sleep, and it's, we do the exact same routine every single night. we do the same routine in the mornings, and the mornings go mostly super smooth. There's the occasional hiccup, but nothing that's actually all that bad. Kid toys are an area where we never set up a routine to begin with. We never said, every single night, you're gonna put your toys away. Or, every Saturday, we clean all of the toys. We never really set up a routine and what it became was mostly just me cleaning up the room when it finally reached a point where I was like, frustrated and just decided I'm going to clean up the room. So it would be a night where, for example, my ADHD didn't prevent me from cleaning up toys. And I was like, I'm going to go and clean up all the toys. And then I would clean and vacuum and make sure everything's like good to go. And the next day I would just be right back to where it was before. That's certainly a pain point in the house.
Sara:I loved hearing everything you had to say. I already started problem solving in my mind. So I want to come back to that. But before we get to that, a couple more basic questions. Joe, what do you feel is one of the desired home feelings when you come home? What is your what do you want to feel ideally in your space?
Joe:I think relaxed. not stressed. I know those are similar, but not the same thing. and, the more I think about it, as long as I can feel relaxed and not stressed, then I think I can feel the joy that I want to feel with our kids. I work decently far away from the home, and so I have a pretty long drive, and then by the time I drive from work to daycare, pick the kids up and get them home, it's been about an hour of me being in the car. And by the time that we get home, a lot of times I just want to go and be by myself and de stress and be alone, but I don't really have that option a lot of evenings, and so I find that sometimes, trying not to get like short with the kids because I haven't had a chance to, de stress, but I've already got to start making dinner because it's late, and if we don't start right away, then we'll eat too late, and then everything else, snowballs from there. So I find myself trying not to bring that with me and trying to leave that at the door so that I can be present and happy to see them because it's not their fault that I have to drive, for an hour before I get to be at the house and they deserve. Me being happy and relaxed and ready to play with them and give them attention
Lacey:Our kids are very joyful. Yes, if I had a word to describe our children It is joyful. And so it is very easy to want to be joyful with them
Sara:That's wonderful. I love that. Cause that, that just, that gives the parameters and the reason we're doing it, why you're, why we're doing this process together and what the goal is, so that's great that you have a lot of clarity and so I have, and the listeners have a general sense of your space that you're living in, if you could just tell briefly the size of your house, just. Number of floors rooms. are you maintaining a lot of yard? Do you have animals? Just the basics
Lacey:we have one dog Indy He's a old man, and the best dog in the entire world.
Joe:he is an 85 pound, probably more than that now, looks like a black lab, but he's got longer fur than that.
Lacey:A black lab in Pyrenees, Great Pyrenees.
Joe:He is currently sleeping and I think he's dreaming right now.
Lacey:he's real, real easy. You just open the back door. He goes to the bathroom. He'll let you know when he wants to come back. And he is. Yeah. We've even taught Isaac, our four year old, how to feed him, which has been real clutch lately.
Joe:Yeah, it's been real nice. We also have a fenced in backyard, and a front yard that's not fenced in. what do you, what's the size of the property? it's half an acre, I think. We've
Lacey:got a little bit of land. It's very, we live in a neighborhood of the city, so it's like a urban suburban type area. Our house is three bedrooms, one bath. one, we have a toilet
Joe:in the basement. We have a half bath in the basement. We have a toilet down there. But it does have walls. It does have walls. It
Lacey:doesn't have a ceiling. It doesn't have a
Joe:ceiling, but it has
Lacey:walls. we actually have a really large basement. we're talking 15 foot ceilings in our basement. It's a very kind of weird, bizarre thing. but it is just junk and that's where the laundry is. First floor is living room. there is a little area that we've designated the playroom. It's like a little room off the living room. It's
Joe:not really much of a room though. Yeah, it's its own thing. It's maybe... It's five, six feet wide and then maybe 12, 13 feet long,
Lacey:but it's open into the living room. So it's just separated a little bit. Yeah. Dining room, kitchen. Yeah. I think square footage wise, we're at like one, 1, 700 square feet. Around there. Yeah. Not including the basement. The basement. Correct. But the basement is just where laundry is. So many steps to go down there.
Sara:I was, yes. And so you come upstairs and that's where the three bedrooms and the one bathroom is up on the, okay. Yeah. That's a lot of walking for you up
Lacey:It is. It is. That's why, with laundry, I can't do the laundry. I can't physically do it, because the taking it up and down the stairs, all the way down to the basement,
Joe:is... It's a significant haul to get it down, all the way downstairs, and then all the
Lacey:way back up. Yeah, that is, because stairs are already hard for me,
Joe:I don't mind. I don't mind taking it down and washing. I really don't. So
Lacey:what usually happens is Joe does the taking down on the washing and then the coming back up and then I try to fold and put away as much as I can. And then that's our system there. I, and I think the other thing in listeners probably still know this, but if this is the only thing they listened to, I have a lot of health issues that affect my energy and my input into our house hold. And it is not predictable. And I think that is often one of the hardest things with it is that some days I can do everything and some days I can do nothing. and that makes it very hard. For both of us in a lot of ways, like I, I would say I used to be the default just barely mostly because I didn't have the drive and that kind of stuff. But now Joe has 100% become the default in our household for pretty much everything.
Joe:I will say even before we still had tasks that were split. It was never, to say that you were the default. That's why I said just by a little bit. Yeah, it was the default for certain things, but we still did a pretty decent job of splitting almost everything. We like to
Lacey:have a very egalitarian household. It's important to us.
Sara:Your kids are four and two. And what is their participation? I know I've heard you mentioned they're really good about putting their socks in the laundry basket on the first floor. Do they have
Lacey:do it. It's awesome.
Sara:Do they have any other areas that they contribute to or they're asked to contribute? You mentioned feeding the dog
Lacey:Isaac has recently started getting the dog
Joe:and letting him out after and letting him out. It's very nice because the first person to wake up every morning is almost always Indy. Yeah. And he is very, when you're 85, 90 pounds, and you try to, fit that bulk onto someone else's face, it comes across as decently demanding. Yeah. so I would say Indy is somewhat demanding in the mornings about when he wants to eat. and it's usually starts at about 6. 30. Sometimes he sleeps in a little later, but...
Lacey:It is also a hard thing because I used to be the morning person. That I would get up, I'm feeding Indy in the morning wasn't a big deal for me. I would get up, I would feed him.
Joe:Yeah, you were up long before 6. 30,
Lacey:I usually would get up like around 6 or Indy would wake me up at 6. 30. And I could get up and go and do all that stuff with my illness. Mornings have actually become very hard for me because my body physically cannot get up, a lot of mornings it like it has to, it's almost like it's been frozen and has to thaw. and then again, you have to remember that I have to go downstairs to feed him to let him out to then come back up. there's just a lot of little things that make it. not worth me expending my, one, not able to, cause I'm still trying to move, but then even if I do get up, it's okay, do I give my energy here? Or do I get the kids dressed? there's a whole thing about it. So that, that has become a bit of a struggle in that Joe is not a morning person. I wish I could be a morning person again. Yeah. I am
Joe:not a morning person still not a morning person, even though I've been doing it for. Months now. Yeah. Yeah, there'll be good days where lace can help out and get the kids dressed. and, sometimes help get them out into the car, at least get them out the front door. and then there'll be other days where I have to do all of it myself.
Lacey:and I can't, I physically cannot, I. I can't even say bye to them. It's a hard one.
Joe:It's a hard one. Those are tough days, but they still try to come and say bye to you before they leave. in terms of the kids helping out, Isaac, who was four, is obviously the better helper. He does a really good job with his laundry, putting the dirty stuff away, making sure it goes into his hamper. he's very good about the things that we've enforced. So when he's on the first floor, we have a little laundry collection point where if he's got dirty laundry, he's good at putting it in there. he's done a great job of going potty by himself. And handling that all on his own, still needs an adult to wipe his butt. But, I wish I had someone to do that for me, right?
Lacey:he also poops more than anybody else I've ever met.
Joe:So he does.
Lacey:That's a lot. Our kids are very hydrated, and they have no problem with their digestion. So yeah, good problems
Joe:to have what else is he good at?
Lacey:he's good at, usually if you give him specific instructions of can you do this for me please, I would say about 90% of the time, he's good about doing it.
Joe:it depends on his mood. Yeah. Hey buddy, can
Lacey:you put this over here for me? Can you go get this? Can you go let Indy in?
Joe:yeah. Yeah, I've been having him help me with, laundry and dishes. But not enough that it's any kind of routine, and he certainly can't do it on his own.
Lacey:Almost a little extra work, but...
Joe:Yeah, it's probably a little extra work to have him help me. Which is part of the reason that I've avoided it for so long. But I'm realizing now, obviously, that I let it go too long. And I should have had him help me sooner so that we can get into habits. Because he's more than intelligent enough to take care of these tasks. But he hasn't been doing them. To the same degree that we've been doing a lot of the other routines that we have and you know He can't do it without my assistance So yes, it is more for me to have him help me like when we do laundry I basically we're doing it one piece at a time and it's a very slow process, but he really enjoys
Lacey:he does like having a job and a task he is He's pretty good about that stuff, and he likes the feeling of the job done afterwards, and, And Iris is two. She just turned two last month. She, she knows, there are certain things that she knows. So the same, she learned from Isaac, the laundry basket thing. She knows that her socks go there.
Joe:She's, I think she's more rigid in following rules, even though she's only two and can get really sassy about stuff. I see her as more strict, because she'll see Isaac doing something that she believes he's not allowed to do, and she will try to enforce that he is not allowed to do that.
Lacey:No! Isaac, no! Isaac, no!
Joe:yeah. She's almost the little police officer of the house sometimes. I don't know if I'm looking forward to her policing the house more or not as she gets older. it could be enjoyable, but it could also be terrible, so we'll see how that goes.
Lacey:She also is the same way too, that if you give her a task and she completes it, she is very excited and proud and happy to share that with you.
Joe:We need to get both of them in the routine of doing. Stuff around the house like the toys for example, but branching out. So it's more than just that because first of all, they enjoy being involved. and the more we can teach them now, the better it will be later, when they're old enough to actually do it on their own.
Sara:Lacey really thought this was going to be about the dishes,
Lacey:thought the dishes were going to come up. hold on, let me just say, it's not necessarily that I thought the dishes are usually very emblematic of a thing that feel that is a weight on Joe that he sees that he has to do every day, without any help. And there are a lot of those things that pop up, but the dishes I think are the most consistent, Oh, I have to do that. Oh, I have to do that. Oh, I have to do that. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's not something that I'm great at helping with because there's a lot of bending over and reaching up and these, again, things that are hard for me with what's going on with me.
Joe:I will say you're not wrong. It used to be more of a pain point. I realized very recently, that I have spent a lot of time, like most of my entire life, being busy, and I don't know how to not be busy, and so when I'm not busy, like I don't have an immediate impending thing. Of Oh, I got to try and get a new job or, I've got this paper coming up or I have this big task that just needs to be done. And so that's how I was moved through life was one big. thing that was impending and putting a lot of pressure on me, whether it was self induced or not, was moving from thing to thing, and I realized that I just don't know how to be not busy. and so I've been very recently trying to work on being more, relaxed and not needing, that Pressure to force me to do stuff because with ADHD a lot of the times the only way to motivate myself is with pressure and so I've been trying to find alternate sources for motivation and part of that has been me trying to be more relaxed and putting less pressure on myself about stuff. And so the dishes. I don't see as like this task that I have to get done that's driving me to get them, to get to that point every single night where Oh my God, I have to do this. I have to do this. It's this pressure and now I see it as more of a well can do the dishes, I just don't try not to stress about it. I'm trying to not stress about it basically be, I guess some people would say probably more present, but that's not how I think of it. I just see it as, putting less pressure on myself so that I can be essentially. Happier instead of moving from important thing to important thing. That makes sense.
Lacey:It makes a lot of sense I'm, really proud of you That's really great.
Sara:that, That felt very profound. And I was, I'm glad that you shared that with the listeners. I was, it was interesting how you put a question mark on the end of happier. I'm trying to be happier. you're not quite sure what that feeling is when you're not stressed. What is that feeling when I'm not running around?
Joe:yeah, because I still don't know that's, I've always been a proponent for people having hobbies and, trying to have things that are your own and not reliant upon your partner or your kids to derive some sort of. meaning in your life, not to say that you shouldn't get meaning from those relationships, because you absolutely should, but you shouldn't require those relationships in order to have any form of meaning. And yet somehow I've fallen into that exact same thing. By basically deriving most of my meaning from what is the new impending thing, what is that pressure that I always forced on myself so that I would get things done, and I've, lost track of a bunch of, I still have a few hobbies, but not to the extent that I, I want to, so that's, the thing that I'm trying to move more into is, Following the thing that I'm, reaching for other people, trying to listen to it myself.
Lacey:Yeah. And him having space for those hobbies is very important
Joe:to me. It's, that's the tough thing now, though, is I don't quite have the time and space for it like I did before. So I am regretting letting it, letting those things drop in the past because now it's I don't really have much time for it. but I can probably still make more space for it and working on that.
Sara:from everything you shared, what I heard as a real stress point is once you've driven home, gotten the kids, gotten home, and then I heard you want to be able to relax, but you go right into making dinner, and then it's feeding dinner, then cleaning up from dinner, and then there's the toys on the floor, and that sounds like the real pressure cooker time spate time. Is that someplace that you would want us to focus solutions on right now? Or is there something in the flow of the week that feels more draining to you?
Joe:that well, aside from mornings, which I don't think we're gonna be able to fix right now. just because I have to be, on although I will say there are some mornings releases up and is able to get them dressed and having more good mornings. So that has got that has improved. so I think that's something that we can probably leave alone for now, because that's Dependent upon really the variability of how you're feeling every day and how your energy levels are, and it's been great to, to have just a break and not have to do every single morning. but yeah, I would say the biggest stress area is. the drive home from work, pick up the kids, bring them home, get them in the house, get dinner started, get everybody fed. by that time it's Iris's bedtime. And so then I put Iris to bed and then I get a brief period of time where usually I'm the one responsible for Isaac in general. And then it's almost shortly after that, his bedtime. And then after his bedtime is over, I try to spend a little bit of time with Lace. At least a little bit every day. and then I finally around nine 30, get some time to myself, but, usually unlike let's say Lace is having a bad day. It starts first thing in the morning, where I'm woken up by the dog, and I have to get the dog fed and outside, I have to get the kids dressed and together, and, it's just the entire day, the first break I get is usually about 9. 30 PM, sometimes 10. And at that point, the night's almost over. how long should I stay up to try and win back some of that, relax time? and there's a term for it. I wish I could remember what it is you end up staying up later and doing less than you should because you're trying to regain some form of control over your day. And what all you're doing is making your next day more difficult by staying up even later. And then it just snowballs into this, you're like, I'm going to regain control. I'm going to regain some relaxation by staying up till 2am and doing nothing. But you're not getting any enjoyment out of that. And so it just, it makes you feel bad and then you wake up and you feel worse cause you haven't slept as much and it just snowballs very quickly. so I've been trying to do better about that,
Sara:I want to ask about cooking, Laci, when you have the energy, what are your feelings about preparing food?
Lacey:I really don't mind it. I've actually gotten a lot better. I would say in the past three or four weeks where it's like, I go down and I'll try to get a meal started so that by the time Joe gets home, it's to a place where it's either ready or I can be like, hey, can you do these few steps and then we're all set. I would say generally three days. I think about I've been averaging about three days a week doing that.
Joe:Yeah, two or three days. It depends on the
Lacey:week. It depends on the day. And so usually when I feel fine and when I. I have noticed, for me, that if I can sit down and think, okay, like a meatloaf, for example, I'm like, okay, I can make the meatloaf and put it in the fridge at any point during the day. Okay, I can peel the potatoes and they can sit for a little bit during the day. Like, when I can, parse out the different pieces of, I can really paste these throughout my day. I do tend to do it and do well. it's just so dependent on my energy, which is not consistent. Yeah,
Joe:it's also been beneficial that fairly recently I started putting, so when I make a grocery list, I started putting together a list of the dinners. That we have the food for on hand. and so in that same list app where we actually put groceries that we need, I made a list of dinners that we have the food on hand for. So like hamburgers, meatloaf, pizza, pasta, like all that kind of stuff. And so it's been more convenient to go and you can see, oh, we still have the food left for this. I don't always keep it up to date. it's been nice to be able to see oh yeah, we have the right stuff so that we can make, like biscuits and gravy if we want to have a breakfast dinner kind of thing.
Lacey:And then every once in a while I get my manifester weird energy and I was like, we're gonna, I'm gonna make a shepherd's pie. We have everything for a shepherd's pie, I'm gonna make a shepherd's pie. And I did.
Sara:And when you're doing the dishes at night, Jo, are those dishes from meal prep? what's the bulk of the dishes? Are you preparing a meal every night and you have all those dishes plus the dishes you eat off of?
Joe:It depends on who cooks. If Lace cooks, I'm cleaning everything that was ever used in the kitchen that day. if I cook, usually I'm just cleaning the remnants of dinner and maybe the occasional meal prepping utensil or something. I'm a clean as you cook kind of person and Lace is not. I do some.
Sara:again, I love how you two fit together. It's, when Laci doesn't have the energy, then Joe actually has less dishes. But when Laci gets energy to make the food, it's like, then Joe doesn't have to make the food, but then Joe has more dishes.
Joe:That is exactly how it
Sara:That's kind of interesting Do you want to jump into the whole toy situation?
Joe:We probably need to talk through it. first, but the toys is a definite need to fix,
Sara:when I heard you talking about the toys, I, I heard. That you said the toys are scattered over the living room, but then when we were talking about your house, you said there is actually a toy area. Is, am I led to believe they're taking the toys out of the toy area and playing with them in the living room? Is that
Joe:they're playing with them in both rooms. We're playing with them
Lacey:anywhere
Joe:that they want. Now, to be fair, the dividing, space between the playroom and the living room is a, like a two foot piece of wall., the rooms are connected. There's not really anything dividing them. It's not even like a doorframe. It's wide open. yes, what's in the toy room inevitably ends up in the living room. And the dining room. And the dining room, true. And sometimes the kitchen. And the kitchen, yeah. And they travel with the toys.
Sara:That's what kids do, and that is great, and in theory, if all the toys were back in the toy room, would they all fit in there?
Joe:Yes.
Sara:Okay.
Joe:What?
Sara:That's a period for Joe and a question mark for Lacey.
Joe:as someone who cleans up that room fairly often, yes, they do all fit. They fit in
Lacey:there, but They
Joe:don't fit well, but they fit.
Lacey:It is, in my opinion, it is not a usable space.
Joe:It's not
Lacey:every single surface being completely filled is not ideal. And my, it
Joe:is not an ideal space. It is a usable space. It is not an ideal space
Lacey:table and literally the entire train table on top is filled with toys, filled with toys.
Joe:And so they can't use the two feet high, but they didn't use the train table when it was empty. They stood on it and pulled toys up onto it. That was what they did. They never played with the table.
Sara:So what I'm hearing from that conversation is, am I led to believe the kids do not have clarity on where to put the toys back?
Joe:Yes.
Sara:Okay, perfect. Okay, so toys don't have a def don't have a defined
Joe:they did, and then those defined homes got dumped out every time because those defined homes did not have lids, and then, yeah, we do have some boxes with lids now, but, every time we try to use them, they were like, oh, a box with a lid. Let's open it and dump the toys out.
Lacey:Specifically, that's what Iris asks to do. It's actually, I think it's funny. Joe does not get the enjoyment out of it that I do. I wonder
Joe:why.
Sara:and the time flow, if I go back to our previous conversation, you said that after dinner, it's Iris's time, bedtime, or do you play a little bit after dinner?
Joe:know. I try to give her some time to play before bed, because I don't want her to go straight from dinner to bedtime.
Lacey:But usually only like 10 15
Joe:minutes. Yeah, a lot of times it's 10 15 minutes tops. Yeah, because
Lacey:they'll get home around 530, we usually eat dinner somewhere between 6 and 630. We sit at the dinner table for a very long time. We sit for a while. All of us at the table. And so then her bedtime is between 7 and 730. And so by that time we try to give her a little bit of time to run around,
Sara:I heard a couple of things that I want to utilize. You said the kids love having tasks. They feel very fulfilled when they do something. You said you have a very strong bedtime routine that you do the same every night. Those are all great things. To build off of and what I am thinking is, if we can come up with clear system for them to pick up and it becomes a routine that after bed, you anchor the picking up to some other. Established routine. So you anchor the picking up after dinner when mom and dad are finishing clearing up, Iris gets to play. And then right before it's time to go upstairs, you start bedtime. Iris and Isaac maybe help pick up Iris's toys together because I'm assuming Isaac gets to keep playing when Iris goes to bed. Is that
Lacey:yeah, it's usually where he gets his more like one on one time with us.
Sara:So if it just becomes a routine and then Okay. And this is a positive reinforcement of, Oh, here's a new system. We're going to put this into this and we're in coming up with a, an easier pickup system for them where they're, they don't have to guess where things go or try to walk over something to get something else. And in order to do that, how would you feel about taking 50% of the toys, putting them in clear totes and rotating them? So you take those totes to the basement because kids love novelty. The fewer the toys, the more they'll actually play with them. And I didn't just make this up. I've actually had childhood specialists say this numerous times. No. And then the novelty I love on a rainy day or the not great weather, or if a kid is homesick, you go into the basement and you get one of those totes. And those toys are, they might as well be brand new to them. They're like, Oh, where have you been my whole life? Not knowing it was just out of sight for three months. it's great because, and you, so the basement you said is fair game, right?
Lacey:I've tried this before. The reason why we're
Sara:The toy
Lacey:tried. Yes.
Sara:Okay, great, what
Joe:it fell apart though. one,
Lacey:the bits are open on top. And that does seem to be a problem. Cause it...
Joe:Iris, seems to thrive on chaos sometimes. and so one of her favorite things to do is anything that's organized to undo said organization. She is... She is entropy, in that she just loves chaos, and she is always moving to that state of things being not organized.
Lacey:Okay, that's a little, she's two.
Joe:Yeah, but specific. So he never used to just see toys that were put away nice and neat and go. I must take everything that's neatly put away and dump it. No, he would dump what he wanted to play with. No, he
Lacey:just dumps everything. So what ended up happening? Is I did not keep up with the system. I did it on a whim by myself. And then I was like, and we've got these bands and we can move them down and bring them back up. And then my energy stopped going into it. And Joe was like, whatever. And it just
Joe:ended. Yeah, I was focused on other stuff. So I just let the toy thing go
Sara:So a couple of things. I'm glad to hear that you already tried it so we can recognize what didn't work. Instead of thinking of, I'm going to rotate them on a regular basis. Just if it's a rainy day, we're stuck at home. They're seeming particularly bored. That's when you ask Joe to go get that other bin and you immediately take the other toys. It puts some other toys back in there. So it's more of a, we don't do this in three months, but we bring up the basement toys when we need them. And then the second thing is, I am hearing what you're saying about Iris loving to dump things out and that's a total kid thing to do. You also mentioned that Iris is the police unit in the house. She loves policing.
Joe:policing everyone except for herself. Yeah.
Sara:but I'm wondering if you told Iris about this new picking up your toys rule, let her dump them out. Who the heck cares? Awesome. Cut that number in half. If you have a bin that doesn't have a lid, and I actually advise not having a lid because then it's going to be easier to put stuff back in if there's not a lid. So if a bin has a hundred items in it and she's going to dump that bad boy out. Cut it down to 20 items in that bin, let her dump them out, and then let her count to 20 when she puts them all back in before she goes to bed. if it's too much, reduce it. Reduce the number of toys. They will be fine. They will be fine. They're not leaving the house. You're not throwing them away. You're putting them in the basement. It's a manageable amount, clarity for the kids of where it goes, and then you start the new system. We have talked about how Iris learned to put the socks back in the hamper because Isaac was doing it. She clearly is capable, right? She's already shown that.
Lacey:Yeah.
Sara:She's already shown that. but I'm wondering if there is not clarity. And I know you said you already tried it. How long were you trying that system
Lacey:my manifesto energy is, I get an idea, let's do this, and then usually I run with it by myself, and I don't get everybody on board, and then it dies, so really I think it has more to do with that than it does with the manifesto. Cause sometimes I have to get Joe on board with me. Once he's on board we can do it, but if I don't get Joe on board then it usually dies cause my energy and care about it dies.
Sara:I'm going to come up with some ideas and then we can revisit. And then we'll just revisit this. We got a lot of, we got a lot of good nuggets to chew on.
Lacey:we do. I think so.
Sara:We are now at the moment of gratitude section of our podcast and this will be an ode to coffee. I have read, I read a lot of articles and listen to a lot of different aspects of people saying, Oh, you shouldn't be addicted to coffee. You should try to go Without it for a couple of weeks, reintroduce it, all these things, yada, yada, no, thank you. I, my ode to coffee, it, that river runs so deep. When I go camping, the only thing I care about is the coffee. How are we making the coffee? Where's the coffee? The coffee. And this morning, Was especially moment of gratitude because my husband actually put a cup of coffee next to the bed for me. So when I woke up, it wasn't,
Lacey:a showing of love. Like my heart just fluttered at that.
Sara:I saw it on your face. I know it doesn't, it's not like I, I'm not, I'm not the queen of England. God rest her soul. it's not that it happens every morning and just, so when it does happen, it is really nice. So to be able to roll over and just pick up that cup of coffee and it was like, I love you coffee. And I love you husband for bringing me the coffee.
Lacey:I love that.
Sara:So Laci, what is your moment of gratitude for today?
Lacey:My bed is the best bed in the whole world. I am so grateful for my bed. I had a really rough, weekend. I had a big crash, which for me just means basically I lose all my energy and I lay in bed and listen to books and audio books so that I don't go horrifically, crazy without. And I have this moment, this weekend where I'm just like, Oh, I love my bed so much. I'm so thankful for it. I am thankful for the, energy that it puts back in me. The fact that it just hugs me when I lay down. I also love when my kids come in and talk to me. Iris has gotten a lot better about getting into bed with me and talking to me. Like on Sunday, she... Did that. I have no idea what she was talking about, but she was chatting up a storm too. It was so funny and I just was like, Oh, I'm so thankful for this bed and the support that it gives me day to day. I wholeheartedly appreciate it.
Sara:Now, I'm curious, is it a specific brand that you adore, or is it just the bed in general?
Lacey:It's just the bed in general. We got this particular bed when I was pregnant with Isaac. and we got a king size, which Joe and I were both really excited about, the bigger the bed, the better, I love my husband so much, as you all heard, but if he could just not touch me at night, because I don't want to be sweaty, great, thank you, we have a, Indie, our dog is 80 something pounds and he likes to get in there with us. And then when I was pregnant with Isaac, we were both like, there's no way a kid's not going to be in this bed with us. So we wanted to get it as big as possible. And honestly, we just went with the one Joe wanted. Because he likes a firmer mattress, I like a softer mattress, and in my mind, I can add things to make it softer, so like pillow tops and that kind of thing, and so that's what we did. In my dream world, it would be a reclining bed, in my mind, I have a plan for my next bed, basically because I live most of my life in my bed, and I say that happily. I don't want anyone to feel like, oh man, no, my bed's my favorite place in the world. So there's one thing that I'm grateful that I have a chronic illness, that being in my bed is restorative and I get to be in my bed. I am thankful for all of those things.
Sara:Oh, can we start a campaign? You know how sometimes you get like a movement from the people that actually influences a company? I want to start a campaign. I think it maybe is the sleep number bed where the two actually go up and down independently.
Lacey:And then you can, that's my dream one. They go up and down independently. Then you can also customize side by side independently. Just. And then I think they'd have a new one, because both Joe and I are hot sleepers, so if they have one that's supposed to be cooling you too, if I could have all of that, I would get sleep number, tattooed across my chest because it would mean so
Sara:Okay, okay, so hashtag bed for Lacey at sleep number. What if, maybe we'll start a movement for people with chronic illness. You know how they have like different discounts they should have if you can send in a note from your doctor of a chronic illness you get a discount on the bed because you live in your bed
Lacey:there. I
Sara:then you would become the biggest advocate for that bed
Lacey:When I'm passionate about something, have you heard me talk about my shower chair? My 19 shower chair from Amazon that I have written blogs about?
Sara:Hashtag bed for Lacey at sleep number. Love it.
Lacey:I would love, nothing more, absolutely.
Sara:Power of the people. Power of the people. Let's make a difference in Laci's world.
Lacey:mean, they already do if they listen,
Sara:Yes! let's make a bed difference in Laci's
Lacey:oh, thank you so much, Sarah. This has made my day.
Sara:world. Thank you, Laci.