Bridge of Chaos – Joe Episode 3

Welcome to No Shame in the Home Game, the podcast that caress,

how your home feels, not looks.

I am your co-host and chaos today.

My world is a bit everywhere, but we're here and we're making stuff happen.

I am here with your co-host and calm.

That's what I'm gonna call you, Sarah.

Sarah

Hello, Lacey?

Yes.

not only for you, but for me as well.

August.

It's like July.

I was like, everything's under control.

Like all the pots are simmering.

And then yes, for me and you both August turned into like, oh, everything's

boiling over at the same time.

The exact same time, and to be very transparent with our listeners,

You're gonna hear in this episode that Joe and I put in an offer on a house,

there's gonna be emotion at some point,

and I love, I love that it just encapsulates life.

Like life just keeps happening.

We're not putting rose colored glasses on any of this.

We laugh when it's funny.

We laugh when it's painful, and then we acknowledge all the shit

storm that is just life sometimes.

It is life.

And that's actually really relevant for our episode because this is, Joe and Lacey

part three of, our journey in our home.

And it is a very, I don't wanna say scattered episode, but there's just,

we've got a lot happening in this household , and so we really go through

it and, we're in this place of kind of what ifs with the house with,

if we do get this house, how are we gonna do this with selling our house?

Well, and one of our pi, one of our tags for this whole podcast

is we say it's like a reality show.

And in true form,

Yeah.

It's not scripted.

although, let's be honest, a lot of reality shows are scripted.

But yeah, that shows the reality of this, and it's about pivoting when

you have to pivot and yes, your priorities change dramatically.

Not necessarily suddenly, but your priorities changed, and that's

part of this whole home, c e o.

No shame in the home game is yeah, sometimes we have to drop

our priorities in a second.

and Pivot, and that's what this episode is.

It is.

I will also say something that I originally was a little hesitant about,

but I'm glad that we talked about was we get into finances a bit in this

episode, which we have not covered at all in other places, and finances

are a big part of home management.

I.

Now, you're not gonna get a full financial snapshot of my life,

because that's my business.

But we do share about our process and our worries and that kind of stuff.

I'm excited for people to continue to see the beautiful chaos that is our life

beautiful chaos and my, balance to that term is, I love

the term imperfectly Perfect.

it's.

It's not perfect, but it is imperfectly.

Perfect.

And that's, yeah, I think it's beautiful and I love that you and Joe were willing

to share everything that's happening

uh, we'll jump right into, Lacey and Joe part three.

Today is also Joe's first day, post job.

So we are in between the two jobs.

Today's Joe's first day off.

He's got two weeks and he starts at the new job.

and we're.

Using these two weeks as furiously and fastly as possible

to get as much as we can done.

my, my mom was here and she is a badass, as I've said multiple

times, and gets shit done.

So, this morning was getting shit done and then Joe cut the grass.

So yeah, it's been a morning on top of all the other things.

And the other things.

Being that we have a, we're putting in an offer on a house and

Indy, our dog has a giant tumor on his foot that basically has exploded and,

constantly having to wrap his foot so that there's not blood everywhere

on the floor.

He got at it yesterday.

and it started bleeding, so I dressed it.

And changed it before bed.

And then today, I changed it again this morning, but when I moved that

bandage man, it like rocketed blood in everywhere . So I, I don't know if , I

don't know if the bandage had stuck to the wound and I, I don't wanna say

cauterized, but if it had stymied the blood in some way, and then when I

removed it, it just started Spurting.

I have probably changed that bandage, I don't know what, eight

times so far today this morning.

Really?

Yeah.

Man, I didn't even know that.

Because he keeps bleeding through, he keeps bleeding through it.

So I finally went ahead and put a, a rubber glove over it.

So that it won't 'cause, but it's not it's not like it's not like

it's soaking through completely.

It's like he's bleeding through in one spot, but it's enough that it bleeds

through to the bottom of the foot.

And then when he walks around, he just leaves blood trails everywhere

in the house, blood paw prints.

So we have two carpets now that have bloody paw prints along them.

Luckily one of them is a luggable rug that we bought on purpose when

our previous, it's very washable dog.

Luna was having a lot of accidents and it was just like, you can just

roll it up and put it in the washer.

So yeah, that one we're like, you walk on that one bud.

You go . It's just fun.

This one we can easily walk . Yep.

Yeah, so I called the emergency vet yesterday, or I'm

sorry, I called them this morning.

and said, can you get us in for a surgery appointment?

And so we're gonna take him in tomorrow have what is essentially,

a debulking appointment.

So he's gonna go in and have surgery on the foot to attempt to remove

as much of the mass as possible.

Yeah.

Which is something we had done four years ago and was good for

four years until about two, three weeks ago, when all of a sudden

It was not good.

The size of the damn thing just exploded and yeah, it exploded in size and then

to, I guess yesterday it exploded and he was getting at it, it exploded.

And Constitution it's like falling apart now.

it's bad.

Joe would, Joe just told me I'm not allowed to look at it.

He was like, you gotta just walk away.

I'm like, okay.

So two things.

One, I'm picturing y'all showing your house and people walking

in and they're like, I'm sorry, did a, did a crime happen here?

keep seeing blood splatters.

I'll say, one thing Joe keeps saying is, I don't know how to remove

blood from the deck . That just keeps getting said over and over again.

I've said it twice.

. Yes.

Yeah.

I don't, I, I haven't attempted it, but I did try to wash away what was

there by just throwing water on it and it didn't do anything to it,

Yeah, so I'm assuming peroxide or pressure washing will be enough,

I was gonna say, blood is surprisingly easier to get out than other.

Liquids.

I'd rather clean up blood than a lot of other stuff.

the other thing is I love how this just goes right to the point

of life just keeps happening.

We're put a sale in a house.

We're trying to figure out the toy room.

The dog is bleeding, we gotta get surgery tomorrow.

It's just your health stuff is still happening.

It's just, oh, and Joe's between jobs.

it just, life just keeps

life is coming at us . It doesn't slow down.

It doesn't, yeah.

Joe earlier was like, I don't even know what we're gonna talk about.

We haven't done anything.

And I'm like, shut up, Joe.

Save it for the podcast.

because we haven't proactively done anything.

'cause we're just keeping up with life right now.

that's true.

But I will say something, and this is what I've been thinking about, is

something that I am particularly excited about is, so we did put an offer in on

a house this morning, or an offer, like literally as we are speaking right now,

our realtor is working on the offer.

When we went into houses to look at them, I pictured them like it was very

different than when I did the first time.

So like when we looked at houses 10 years ago now, I was not looking at it

thinking . Like, where is stuff gonna go?

What's the flow of people?

Like one of the things that was killing me is like, all these places have these

entryways and I'm like, yeah, we're never gonna walk through that entryway.

We're gonna be going through the garage and like starting to really

see and think through how those things are gonna function for us,

I think was very helpful for me.

I don't know about you, as far as. Like I, I was like, there's no

storage on this floor, so if we do this, we need to do this, and this.

And Yeah.

I was definitely focused on functionality of the house.

Yeah.

And the different floors, like the individual, would, we spend a lot of

time in this basement where we spend a lot of time on the first floor.

We spend a lot of time on the second floor, and every house had their

own quirks, shall we say, and places where we clearly would be spending

more time than in other houses.

And I kind of wish we could chop up pieces of a lot of the houses

that we saw and mix and match.

But yeah, obviously that's not the case, so we went with the best

option of the ones that we saw.

Yeah, and I think it's gonna work.

I think it's gonna work.

I don't love the house, but it's definitely the best

of the options that we saw.

Yeah, and

I think that's, it's such an interesting thing as an adult,

like how your priorities changed.

So when Joe and I bought this house, I was like, I love this home.

I love being in this home.

Light was so important and all these different things

and, . Those things are there.

Like one of the houses we went to, Joe was like, what did you think?

And I was like, I don't know.

It was fine.

I had no, he really wanted me to, have more of a feeling about it.

And I was like, it's fine.

I could make this work.

I didn't have a,

I expected you to have stronger feelings about that house.

Yeah.

'cause I thought.

I thought, oh, this is way better than the last house that we saw.

but yeah, you just didn't care.

You weren't feeling it.

and that's the thing we realized, a lot of the times with looking at houses,

yesterday was that feeling played a larger part in it than we realized it was.

How does this feel?

How does this neighborhood feel?

How does this yard feel?

Yeah.

And so of course there's logic to it of how many steps and what's the distance

here and what's the space in the kitchen.

But really a lot of it was like, oh, this back porch feels really nice and this

neighborhood feels a little uptight kind.

kinda stuff,. Yeah, the feeling played a lot larger of a part than

I think we, we thought it was going

to, for Joe , like I expected Joe to feel less and me to feel more,

but we were both even you felt more and I felt less than I expected.

He and I like, it was so interesting 'cause after we saw the other houses

or we saw the houses, Joe like really went in on one that he really

liked and it surprised the heck outta me that you liked it so much.

And that was just such an interesting thing of that he had such this.

Feeling that I didn't

it.

I will say in this case, it was less feeling and more logic of

it had the most spacious, most complete, finished basement.

the kitchen was the most amount of space out of all of the kitchens that

we looked at, which to us is important.

We have enough equity on our house to have a bridge loan, and so

that means that does allow us to speed up our timeline as far as buying a

house, getting, being able to get our stuff out of the house, to potentially

leverage the new house as a way to not

To be able to move some of our stuff.

And yeah, there's just, I was,

it's not just speeding up the timeline, it's doing

it completely differently.

Normally you have to get your old house ready, sold, and then

once it's sold you, then you can start looking for a new house.

But yeah, we can go about it completely differently, with two kids and a.

Hobbled dog, shall we say, to bleed all over the house.

now we can actually buy a place and get all of our stuff out and yeah.

that way selling the current house will be a lot easier and smoother and it

won't have to be us trying to find some place for all of us to go and yeah.

'cause finding a place for all of us to go all the time.

I was not looking forward to, yeah.

yeah.

We just, it's a lot.

It's a lot.

It's a lot.

It's still a lot

. Joe: It's still a lot.

And we still, by the way, the surgery tomorrow morning, they're

gonna, they're like, oh, you have to put $3,000 down that morning.

Solid.

they will accept credit cards, so

Damn.

Right.

They better.

Yeah.

Such a weird thing.

So Joe and I were talking yesterday about how we are able to buy a

new house that's a nicer house.

That's a bigger house be literally because we bought our house at the

perfect time, that the value has doubled.

The value of our house has doubled over the past 10 years.

That's ridiculous.

That's it.

It's one of those things where I'm like, it's all made up.

It's very much shows that this is all made up and all that stuff.

We also put work into the house.

we did put work into the house and we picked a neighborhood on purpose

that we really liked and wanted to be in, but wasn't the most expensive.

Up and coming, that kind of thing.

yeah, and the neighborhood's really gone a long way since then.

yeah.

So there is part of that, but does that mean it should double in 10 years?

I don't know about that, We are cash Poor right now.

'cause I am sick.

I didn't, don't make a consistent income.

Joe was our single income and then will be making more of his new job.

But it's also gonna have a little bit of a leftover, not leftover.

There's gonna be a little bit of A tightness there when it comes to money.

And then, yeah, but I still

get paid out for all of my, yes.

what was it, a hundred hours of vacation from my last

place.

But when you look at our, it's so weird when we go into the home buying process

and they're like, you can borrow, I like, I just did the math yesterday

'cause I was curious, like technically with our income and in this house,

like we could get like A $600,000 house, which I'm like, oh my God, no.

We should never, ever have, no one should ever give us that money in

the current state of our world, and so to think, and it's all because

of the equity that we have in our house that we joke, keeps joking that

we're gonna be wealthy landowners.

'cause we're gonna have two

two different, two different properties.

and, yeah.

But it's not money that you see and that's so hard still

for me to wrap my mind around.

And, I don't know.

I just, I, and I told Joe, I'm like, I'm just so thankful we have

this opportunity and I hate that.

I know that this is not an opportunity other people are gonna be able to have,

The money of it is scary, but it's there.

And I'll be honest, Joe and I, figuring out how to manage that is one of the

things that we struggle with when it comes to our home management.

I know we don't really talk about finances a lot and the management of those,

but that is part of home management.

and how a home c e o run would run a home.

So I just, I think it is important for us to mention that.

. There's a lot of that stuff happening too.

That's a no, that's a really good point.

And maybe sometime in the future we can have a financial advisor

or specialist come on, because

Yeah.

yeah, there's no one way to approach it, but obviously that

becomes the source of a lot of conflict

Yes.

and it's so uncertain.

Like I, hopefully it's not too much for me to say, Joe and I had a

heated, disagreement last yesterday.

I don't even know if it was a disagreement.

We just were not, we were not communicating, we were having a hard time

communicating and a lot of it came down to

Both of our assumptions on what the other person knew and didn't know.

What.

what our own belief, like when we talk about, we ask people what

were some of the unwritten rules in your house and that kinda stuff.

That's the same with money.

You know, like Joe and I are very different when it comes to

our relationships with money and whether or not some of that is

in active truth doesn't matter.

'cause we come into it knowing those assumptions and how each other work.

there's just . There is a lot of stuff when it comes to money, that I

think it would be remiss for us to not

Yes, and again, we could do a whole episode on this.

I worked with my husband, we met with a financial planner, just

to even just do a snapshot of where we are, what our goals are.

And one thing that was really helpful was we did a risk assessment, independently.

so we got to see where our and our numbers were actually out of a hundred.

We were within two of each other, which was amazing.

But yeah.

What if you were, what if your partner wanted to be like, yeah,

let's risk everything for this gain.

And the other one is no, we have to have every dollar under our mattress.

Yeah.

So again, how you approach those things when you manage a house

together is very important.

it is, and it is part of how your house flows and you know how

money gets spent and where, and I do think you show what you value.

With what you spend, literally, I think it was on the last episode, Joe was

like, I will spend money on beds and sheets, And I'm like, that's my man.

We agree on that

Yeah.

Anything that you spend that much of your life, in or on, deserve to put

a little bit of extra money into it.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Somebody said once, it's everything between you and the ground.

So a bed, a tire, and a shoe.

are you like, you should never skimp on.

it's oh yeah.

And the foundation of your house as well, it's not the, it's not the pretty

stuff, but it's the essential stuff.

yeah.

But I think for us, especially in this moment in , The physicalness of

what we're doing of moving our house.

There's a lot of, do we need this, do we not?

this morning was really interesting in the basement of Joe.

Got overwhelmed 'cause there's just a lot of crap down there.

it wasn't, I would, it wasn't quite overwhelmed, it was more, I just

didn't know where to start tackling.

Yeah.

'cause I wasn't sure what our goal was.

Gotcha.

With.

what exactly are we moving?

Are we taking donation stuff?

Are we taking trash stuff?

Are we taking stuff to keep?

And so I just, I just needed a, like a, an inroad into where we were gonna begin.

Yeah.

And so that, that's what I was just trying to figure out is I was

like, I don't know where to start.

'cause I don't know what our goal is.

I don't know what.

What exactly we're doing this first run?

Yeah.

and that's the, the magic of Carolyn is what I'm gonna

call it, which is just my mom being the badass that she is.

she, she's just yeah, just separate them out and I'll take care of it.

So Joe and she and Joe filled up her truck to take to, storage unit, and then

Tomorrow we'll probably do the same, plus the donations and

not to mention she's taking all of it to the storage unit by herself.

Yeah, she's nice.

I offered, I was like, oh, I'll go with you.

And she goes, no, it's too far.

I'll just take care of it , make sure that nothing's too heavy for me to get

by myself, but I'll just take care of it.

And I was like,

Oh my goodness.

Great.

Fantastic.

Thank you, . But I was like, I felt so bad.

'cause I mean it wasn't that much stuff.

Everything was in boxes and contained mostly.

So it should be relatively easy to like unpack, but again, shouldn't

have to do it by yourself.

But the storage unit is all the way up by the new house.

So I understand her being like, no, 'cause then I'd have to drive you back down.

and it was like, it's just easier for her to make the trip and then Yeah.

Go home afterwards.

So

it was like, okay, and then she's gonna come tomorrow and do the

same thing, and then on Thursday do the same thing, same thing again.

Yep.

So I, I think because we have that level of support with that, I'm

like, okay, that's taken care of.

We've got at least the financing figured out.

. So we are making a lot of progress.

, I think I am now starting to worry about kids and daycare and that kind

of stuff because I told this to Joe.

I keep calling and things are not looking great as far as availability goes.

If I could pull out a couple of threads.

One that you already touched on is, so you're looking at these new

houses, you're using a different lens of . Flow and function.

And so it's nice 'cause in a way you're not starting over blank

slate, but in a way you get to do a bit of a reset, which is a great

opportunity to do with intention.

yes.

so you said, you mentioned some things are going to donation.

Are you using this as an opportunity to cull through your Yeah.

That's beau, that's I know it's, I know moving is a lot

in so many different areas.

It's every area of your life.

And then, so making sure that at least you're maximizing that

opportunity with the Carolyn to get rid

Carolyn.

I really do.

yes.

magic.

And when you set up your new house, you get to really think

about what worked in your toy room.

Yeah.

How you're gonna put things out.

what I'm always amazed by and it's such a natural cycle of if you move

into a new space and it's sparse and you start that way, very sparse.

Things naturally just start to build back up.

And so keeping that intention of not letting things build back up because it

feels so good when there's just not a lot.

Yeah.

So utilizing that storage unit.

Of, maybe if in six months you haven't pulled some of the stuff out, maybe

that stuff doesn't come to the house.

Like using it as a gate to what do we really want to come into the house?

Because if once it gets in, it's harder to get back out, is the key there.

Yeah, a funny one this morning is mom was helping go through the toys in

the toy room and she was like, oh, there's really not as much here as I thought.

I'm like, yeah, mom, I already went through it.

It's fine.

Yeah, it's all jumbled, but it's just fine because I already went through it.

She was like, you did a good job.

And my mom telling me I to do good job is like the best thing and then she

got stuff underneath the couch and was a little less impressed, but still . She

was like, there's more underneath the couch than there was over there.

I'm like, I didn't have the energy to touch that

That's awesome.

Yeah.

She's it's not gross stuff, it's just toys.

I'm like, yeah, if it's gross, we get it.

It's just, I'm not gonna fight.

As we've said me, like changes in elevation, of my body is challenging.

So if something goes under there, . That it's not gonna hurt anybody.

If it's under there, I'm not gonna worry about it.

But I will say that was a thought that I had during the house hunting,

is that I was really excited to be able to set up these spaces in a

way that is thoughtful, and actually making sure that everything that's

coming into the house has a place.

And if it doesn't, it probably doesn't need to come into the house.

Because where we are now, , like we've accumulated so much stuff and a lot

of things just don't have places.

And so they just exist and then you end up with like junk drawers and boxes

full of stuff and just things that sit out on counters and in any empty space.

But this moving process allows us to really cut down on what we have.

It allows us to be meaningful in where and what is stored and be thoughtful

about the different spaces that we have and what we want to happen in them.

And it was like, this is a really good opportunity for us to just

like almost start over in a sense.

Yeah.

And really just make this space, Better than what we've got now.

I think another thing that, Joe actually did a really better job

of this than me is thinking about how to take my . Chronic illness into

account two and how we can better accommodate that in this new space.

So there's just things like, he was like, there are less steps in this house.

And I'm like, you know what?

You're right.

There are less steps in this house.

It is easier.

The steps are also carpeted.

So if maybe I fall , that's not gonna be as big of a problem.

Or, The laundries on the first floor.

So if we maybe get me like a rollie cart, I can even, do some of the, like

taking it out, switching it over and then bringing it into a different room to fold.

there are just a lot.

He even was like, you know what, we should set up your coffee 'cause

it's gonna be a four bedroom house.

And the fourth bedroom is gonna be kind of office space for me,

but also kind of so then I don't have to be in my bed all the time.

Another place I can go to lay down.

and Joe was like, we should set your coffee up in there so you don't even have

to go downstairs in the morning until you're truly ready and all this stuff.

And so I do think that has also been nice to think about of oh, okay.

And don't get me started.

We're gonna have Sarah, hold onto your hat.

Okay.

We're gonna have Four toilets in this house, so two full

baths and two half baths.

Okay.

Y'all.

Y'all have to all go to the bathroom at the same time just

because you can, because that is

Huge.

It's huge.

Don't even get me started on how exciting I am about potty

training, and there's Iris at least,

there's at least one on every floor, at least one on every

floor, so you don't even have to go to a different floor anymore.

Oh,

Yeah, but the big thing about it for us is we are gonna have a

bathroom and the kids are gonna have a bathroom, so my shower chair can

stay in the bath, the shower, and I'm not constantly moving it around.

There are just so many places where I can see oh, this is gonna make my life easier.

Oh, this is gonna make my life easier.

now it is more house.

It's, but we've been thoughtful about that in a lot of ways.

it'll be more consistent vacuuming.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

but honestly, aside from that,, it really shouldn't be any less

manageable than this house.

Yeah.

on that note, first of all, you could automate the vacuuming with those

little robot vacuum cleaners for each floor, which would help at least on the

most traffic it did floor, the, the little

Yeah.

circular ones.

And then second of all, So again, thinking about the stuff that you're taking

into the house, how it's easier just to not let it in when you're cleaning.

It isn't actually the square footage that's the issue.

It's how much stuff is in the square footage.

So it's if each room has, if you bring in more stuff, 'cause it's

actually every surface that you touch.

So just because you have more . Floor space that doesn't take that much

to vacuum, but it's how much stuff are you putting on the floor space?

How much is going on that dresser or on that shelf?

Or on that, yeah.

So again, being thoughtful about your health limitations and

time of being really thoughtful.

If, yeah, if you brought everything that's in your house now to there,

yeah, it would not, it would be minimal.

More.

Even though the square footage might, what double is that accurate?

Doubled.

no.

It's

Oh, 25% increase.

yeah.

About

that.

Yeah.

Yeah, because it's really, the kitchen will be the big one.

'cause you'll have more counter space, I'm assuming.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That the most

there that much count It takes.

It's not significantly more, but it is

more.

Okay.

kitchens and bathrooms are the most time intensive for cleaning

because that's where the most.

I don't wanna say fluids, but shampoos and water and all the fluids, those

are the most, so yeah, the bathrooms will take a little bit more time, but.

I will happily clean extra bathrooms if it means that we have them

again, just, I'm also excited.

We like, if we can knock it out the little potty and just go right

into a toilet, that would be great.

I'm gonna clean out that little potty was always such a big.

Big

I'm.

I'm thinking you all, I just bridge is the word of the episode.

Bridge loan Bridge.

Daycare bridge.

I think you should be the bridge to our next season of participants and we should

do a series of how you're adapting to the new house, the new cleaning routines, the

new everything, routines, what are what?

What did you think was gonna work?

And now you have to adapt differently because I.

Think that is a, there's a lot to learn from when you move to a new house,

especially when you've got little ones.

it's really everything at one, everything all at once.

everything everywhere.

All at once.

Yeah.

. I think one other thing that we haven't mentioned thus far, but it really is

important to me is that in our house right now, there really isn't a space for Joe's.

Things like he has that wall and And the closet in the spare bedroom.

And that's it.

Like the, there is no space for your things and I think that's

always been a problem, for us and probably you feel uncomfortable.

So that is also something that I wanna be very thoughtful of, to

make sure that Joe has that space.

So yes, there's this, office space that I plan on being u using

primarily, but I don't want it to be . A place just for my stuff.

I want him to be able to have like his computer in there and his d and d and

dice and all those different things.

this is me saying it out loud for everyone.

For the record,

for the record, your laundry rolling cart, which

right now is between you and Joe.

I can't even see, Joe, your laundry cart has become basically

a fixture in our relationship.

so I'm like, where's the laundry cart gonna be?

Like, wherever you are in this new house.

I'm like, but is the laundry cart gonna be with us?

Like, am I losing, am I losing the laundry cart?

might be losing the laundry

car.

what it is we might have one in the laundry room and one upstairs and.

That it rotates that way?

Or will there be one in the see, maybe we need three.

Do we need three?

okay, now wait

a second.

one, because if there could be one for their clothes like that, we

like keep in that open space at the top of the stairs and then one in

our closet where our clothes go, and then one in the laundry room.

Do you see?

What, do you see what I'm saying here?

Like the flow.

Oh, I see it . I see it.

I, they, and then I could even use that to roll out and fold clothes, and then I can

set the ones that are folded at the end of the stairs for someone to then take up.

They should have their own hampers in their rooms.

I, they have their own hampers in their rooms now.

she's gonna need a bigger one.

She is gonna need a bigger one.

hers

is just a little laundry like bucket.

Type thing, with the, it's like cloth or, it's

very, it's more like for toys.

, you just,

I was gonna say, when you said bucket, I was like, like a five gallon

bucket, like a Home Depot bucket,

no.

Like it's got an elephant on it and two handles and it's

round.

It's like a, it's like a fabric bucket.

Yeah.

But it's got

So.

stiff sides to it.

One idea and may not apply to you, but for anyone listening

is to have color coded baskets.

So dirty is always in a black basket, and clean is always in a white basket.

That way if you're trying to go between floors, it doesn't get

mixed up like which one's dirty?

this needs to go up 'cause it's clean.

This one needs to go down 'cause that's dirty.

That's something that could be utilized.

The more people you have in your house, the more important that becomes.

But if it's the one person designated a laundry, it's not confusion.

so what you don't see for our laundry is we have,

this is the clean one and

there's a dirty one over there.

Yeah.

That's our, and that's how this works, is that . Joe knows that whenever that

gets full, he can take the bag down.

He washes it and then it, and then he uses that same bag to

bring back up and put here.

And then that's my, cue to then . Fold it and get it put away.

That's what I argue.

The kids, I think, should have the

Yeah.

structure system because his, when his thing gets full, it causes problems.

'cause then it's on the floor and then it's

rarely getting full.

But I will say he does get a little confused as to whether or not

he can put dirty laundry in it.

'cause he asked me yesterday, he was like, what's in here now?

Yeah.

And he opened it up and he was like, oh, it's empty.

And I was like, all right bud, you can put all your dirty laundry in it now.

And he goes, what about the clean stuff?

And

I was like, it's on the floor for him to put away.

And he hasn't put it away yet.

I know exactly where it is, but I'm trying

to give him, I've been trying to, I've been trying to only

fold his clothes and try to make it his responsibility to put them.

'cause he knows where they go, they're in his reach.

So that's something we've been working on.

But yes, I think a system where it's obvious what's clean and what's

dirty would be helpful for him.

Yeah.

Or.

Or you could get, some kind of, I'm sure I could find one, some

kind of color coded system.

So if it's green and it has a c he knows it's time to put it away.

If it's D and it's red, those are dirty.

some something for him visually.

if you ask a kid if something's folded, One time I folded an

entire load of laundry for my son.

He usually folds his own stuff, but I did it 'cause it was just quicker.

And then he came in and just dumped it all 'cause he didn't realize it was folded

It doesn't surprise

So kids don't see that as clearly as they would like a red or a green.

so that's a tool that you can use.

I will say one of the biggest shifts that this system has done

for us is it made it okay for there to be clean laundry that's not put

away and there to be dirty laundry.

You know what I mean?

'cause that was always a big thing, is there was never a place for clean

laundry that wasn't put away to live.

. And it was like this assumption we would just fold it and put it away right away.

And that doesn't happen.

That's not realistic for us.

And so I think keeping that mindset for us of clean laundry and dirty laundry

will need a home pre being put away.

You know what I mean?

I think that'll just be something we, we really need to, yeah.

Remember.

I've, I feel like laundry, the more people you have in a house,

laundry becomes the number one issue.

And I've heard that with clients who have teenagers, where the

teenagers don't put it away.

And I said, if they don't care if it's wrinkled, Just have a

designated basket that's clean and then they get to dig through that

As long as they know that's the clean, it's gonna look as crumpled

as the dirty stuff, . But they'll know it's clean 'cause it's in a

white basket and they can just dig.

Because yeah, if they don't care, then don't stress it.

Getting back to where it needs to go.

I'm real excited.

I'm excited and, I love change.

Let's just . I am like, I'm a change champion.

I'm an early adopter.

and Joe is not, he, I don't wanna say struggles, he just has a different

relationship with change than I do.

I don't

love change because I like to, get into something, find a

system for it, and optimize that.

And then, change is just, Throwing it up in the air, disrupting it, and

meaning that you have to, and who knows how permanent that change is.

And it just, it's so many different new variables to consider and

it's a lot more to think about.

So I not, change is nice 'cause it means that you don't have to

spend a bunch of brainpower on it.

Yeah.

But.

Yeah, I'm okay with this change.

this is all good change.

It is.

So

it's, it is good change.

It is.

we're sad about leaving your neighborhood.

Oh yeah.

And the proximity to, of course, our friends and family who

are here, that kind of stuff.

But, I'm excited.

I'm excited to move into that next phase in our life.

and for anyone listening who's going through a big change as well with

moving, just remembering, as you've already pointed out, you love change.

Joe takes a lot more energy.

And just being aware of even the kids, how each of them is gonna

adapt to the change and just being.

Very aware of how are you all restoring your energy in this process?

How are you like finding your anchor to just ground the family through this

so that you don't get to the new house and everybody's on their last nerve

and you want it to, as, so making sure that's also on the to-do list.

how are we restoring ourselves through this process?

Yeah.

Where's Joe's time?

Where's Joe's?

Where's Joe's time?

Yeah.

Where is that time?

I was literally about to say that I'm very conscious that over these

next two weeks also need to be a time for Joe to rest, recuperate.

you heard him say he had a whole bunch of vacation 'cause Joe never

takes vacation 'cause he saves it up for something we might need.

Like, you know, there's just a lot of that.

So I am aware of it.

, I may not be great about it.

but I'm

only, I mean I was excited 'cause before we had all of the plans for

finding a house and the bridge loan and moving right away and all of that.

I was like, oh yeah, I'm gonna take two weeks off and that

first week I'm gonna do nothing

And that second week maybe we will start working on the house.

And

I know honestly though, the person who really kaboshed that was Carolyn,

that she's I'm coming these days.

actually no.

I said these are our two weeks to get stuff done and she was like, I'm

coming three of the five days during the week for both for the weeks.

We'll schedule in.

Maybe you schedule in a day where there's no Carolyn and there's no

meetings and there's no appointments, and you two just enjoy your house.

there are a couple of those.

I'll make some time.

I think Wednesday's gonna be a big day for that for you.

Possibly Wednesday and Friday possibly.

yeah, we'll go from there.

We're trying.

Yep.

I don't know if we're succeeding.

We are succeeding.

We are succeeding.

We're trying and succeeding.

And

then things keep cropping up.

like your dogs blood everywhere.

Blood, gosh, foot, blood explosion, tumor.

It's, and Indy's an 80 pound dog.

He's not a tiny like puppy, like they're, he steps.

It is a print.

Yeah.

And like at one point earlier I had him bandaged and he had bled

through it a couple times, but again, it's not like he's like

profusely bleeding just everywhere.

It's like directional bleeding, but it's like getting in between.

And so it's soaking down to the past to a point where when he walks, it's

leaving blood print on the ground.

And so I was like, okay.

I finally changed this dressing like for probably the fourth

time in less than an hour.

and then we're downstairs and I hear him like, like stomping

around and I was like, oh no.

'cause I could tell the way he had jumped from like the landing to the first floor.

He had impacted rather heavily.

And when I went upstairs to check, there was just blood like in a trail of two

trails of blood, like on the first floor.

And so of course I'm getting like a.

Like a disinfectant wipe and like cleaning up the blood.

And then I'm like trying to, quarantine him so that I can pull

the bandage off and redo it and just,

I will say he is the best boy in all world.

Oh, so sweet.

I know I say that, but he just sits there and let's Joe do it.

He doesn't move, he.

Stays and Yep, he's just,

oh, he's very calm and gentle and the only issue we've had that's was when

I put too much pressure on it a couple times and he, his lip moved a little bit,

and that like where dogs were like, but he didn't growl, it's just his lip moved.

So he was like, I'm letting you know that's too much.

And I was like, I'm sorry.

I realize that was too much pressure.

So

honestly, most of the time the reason why he's walking around

is 'cause he is moving to wherever I am trying to get to where, yeah.

So I know he's just the sweetest boy in the entire world.

it's, it is not pleasant right now.

I'm probably gonna bandage it maybe two more times before tomorrow,

but yeah, I don't wanna mess with it too much because I know.

they're gonna clean it up before surgery and stuff, but yeah, I, every time I

mess with it, it just moves stuff more.

So we'll see how much he's bled through, but I imagine I'll

probably have to continue to change it every couple of hours

Life just keeps.

Keeps happening.

Yes, it does.

Oh

It does.

man.

Joe, . Thank you for being willing to share and be open and honest about all

of the chaos that is our life and why not?

Yeah.

Thank you Joe.

It was great getting this perspective and like I said, I really wanna

follow you, y'all, to the next house and share the journey and hear how

things keep going, and I want Joe to have that space to decompress.

Yeah.

Ho.

Hopefully it'll be less eventful.

Oh, I am.

It's like cliffhangers though.

I mean with Alex, it's what is she gonna name her baby with you two?

It's, is this offer gonna go through, I mean it the,

we're landing on cliffhangers.

Thanks Joe.

You're welcome.

That was an adventure for me and probably for the

listeners and for you and Joe.

It was an adventure for everybody and I was along for the ride . I actually

love listening to you and Joe sometimes.

I just wish that there was a video cam and I could just listen to you

all anytime of the day, what you're talking about, because I actually

really enjoy the way the two of you.

Process and come at it from different angles, but yet have a similar vein.

But I really enjoy it.

can you imagine, maybe we just have another podcast where we just listen

to couples discuss topics like this.

I would love that because I do think it's really interesting

how, Joe and I's marriage works.

I think I've said this before, my marriage is so different than the ones that I see

around me in a way that I love 'cause it fits him and I, It's so interesting how

we are two very different people, but the things that we have in common are

like our values and our sense of humor.

And I really think those two things are what carries us through when

it comes to our differences in opinions of a lot of other things.

I don't wanna say we were just arguing, but we were just having a little bit of a

. Back and forth of things to be done today.

And I had to be like, Joe, more than one thing can happen at once.

And he was like, I'm well aware.

And then he just came in to get socks and was laughing at me.

So it just

and that really is actually a beautiful, again, I love the

diversity of all of our participant stories and I really enjoy that.

We had a couple, because that brings to the heart of home management is how you

communicate with those in your home.

How do you resolve points of tension?

How do you laugh at sometimes the ridiculousness of what's going on?

And still end up at the end of the day liking one another,

which is really the end goal.

so

And I do like him.

as many times as I am, like, uh, I like him a lot.

we're still waiting for our, offer whether or not it was accepted, so everyone's on

their edge of the, their seats about that.

and.

Indie right now is in surgery, so this is like major cliffhangers

I was gonna say like true, television, we're ending on a

cliffhanger and y'all are gonna come back for season two or whatever's

next, to find out what happens with the house and the offer and with.

The dog.

and on the note of communication, a little teaser, we are gonna have episodes

in between our participant seasons and I am hoping to get in a communication

specialist, to really give some tools about how do you hold space for your

partner to express what's going on?

How do you listen?

How do you show up?

lacey, would you like me to start or would you like to start

with our moment of gratitude?

I'm gonna start and I am going to say that I am

grateful for my local library.

I am always listening to an audio book.

. My son and I have been doing books on my iPad at night, so me reading out loud

actually really, really pulls my energy because it's one of those things where you

don't think about the processes happening there, but when you're reading out loud,

you're reading it and you're speaking it.

And I'm also managing a four year old, and so it, it can really take it out of me.

Our library has an app called Hoopla, which if you don't know

about Hoopla, check to see if your library has it 'cause it's the bomb.

And they have, children's picture books that also have voice narration.

So Isaac and I snuggle in the bed and we have books that he loves.

I made a TikTok about this where he, . , he has learned that this author, Ryan T.

Higgins is his favorite author.

'cause I've got more books from that author.

'cause he really liked one of the books.

And he noticed oh, Ryan T.

Higgins mom, he put it together that it's the same person.

And so I explained to him like, that's an, that's the author,

that's the person who writes these.

I think it's safe to say he's probably your favorite author.

And the next night he was like, mom, Ryan D.

Higgins, he's one of my favorite people.

Him and Dolly Parton because . We get a, the Imagination Library.

So Dolly Parton sends us books every month.

And just the joy that brought me, and the tool that is that book being read, and

we both still enjoy the moment together.

Like when I say Isaac laughs out loud and loves these books, oh my gosh.

he like recites them now.

He loves them so much.

So to be able to have both of those things for free, It was amazing.

Libraries are amazing.

that was one of the first things that I did . I was like, okay, if we're

moving, what's my library gonna be?

And I looked it up.

So even though I primarily only use digital resources, I am still

so grateful for a public library.

They're the, they're amazing.

I, I could do a whole series of episodes of how much I love libraries

and moments in my life that are keystone moments, memories of libraries.

And yes, when we moved to this area eight years ago and my son was young,

we would go to different libraries.

Every day.

And I remember talking to somebody who came to visit telling him about

these libraries and he goes, you spend a lot of time at libraries.

And I was like, yeah, 'cause they're amazing.

Like each one had a different kids center and different programs and all.

And I said, yeah, why wouldn't you spend every day at a library?

They're the best.

And it's free.

I know we pay for it with taxes, but

Yes.

it's free.

Like I just, I can never get over.

the amount that I get from my library.

So I just, I honestly, I probably say it a lot on the middle or like in my

newsletter and that kinda stuff, but I just tune the horn to libraries.

I'm thankful for them and I am thankful for their digital resources.

'cause they do, they keep me afloat.

Listening to my trashy romance novels makes me so happy, the best.

Love it.

Hashtag we love our libraries.

What about you, Sarah?

so this links to our episode, but unknowingly, 'cause I've actually

been thinking about this one for a while, was I am thankful for dogs and

specifically my dog, I love my dog so much and I've had three dogs as an adult,

and it's amazing how my relationship with each dog is so different.

So you can't even say dogs in general, like each dog is so

unique and the dog we have now.

I love in a way that I've never loved a dog.

She's so adorable without even trying.

When , she'll lay down and then she'll lift her head up and half

of her s face will have smooshed into this really funny position.

But she looks all serious.

She looks like totally serious, but then she has a half smooshy face

or like when we're walking, she'll be in between a walk and a trott.

so like the way, but she's so delicate the way her, and she's a 50 pound dog,

so she's not small, but the way she.

kind of dog is she?

I'm, I am like realizing how remiss it is that I don't know

anything about your dog, Sarah.

So we're, we've been told that, so we got her as a rescue.

We've been told she's half plot hound, which is just a hound

breed and half pointer short hair, German short hair pointer.

And I've definitely seen her point and we've never trained her to do that.

So there's definitely pointer and she's sniffs like no dog I've ever had.

So definitely got that hound thing going on.

And her name is Ray, which is after a Star Wars character.

It's funny when we meet people in the street and they ask, and we say, Ray,

they know Star Wars if they know she's a female, immediately . If they dunno

Star Wars, they think she's a male.

They think it's r a y.

So yes.

So she was named after Ray from Star Wars and oh my gosh,

she is just, she's so sweet.

Yeah.

The way she goes up and down and in the morning, every morning she

greets me with a downward dog.

She's, so she'll see me and then she'll stretch and oh my gosh, I drink

my coffee out in the back porch, and as long as it's not raining, she'll

come out with me and she'll just sit there and just look and it's she's

just like taking the morning in.

She'll just look and look and it's just, I can't even tell

you how much I adore my dog.

. I'm a crazy dog person.

Yeah, I love it.

I am too.

, I don't even wanna talk about how much we're spending on energy surgery.

Yeah, I know.

Joe just texted me that Indy is outta surgery now.

It sounds like you're laying in bed for a week with Indy while he recuperates.

I love dogs so much.

this is our last participant episode, next week listeners will be hearing a

kind of wrap up from me and Sarah, what we've learned, what we found interesting

amongst our participants, and then also just our plans rolling forward

and what things are gonna look like.

Yes, very excited this journey.

Yes, I'm very excited to do a capstone debrief of our journey, and I hope

our listeners are excited too.

me too.

All right, thank you