Tiffany Sauder [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Scared Confident. I'm your host, Tiffany Sauder. Okay, I'm into time saving tips right now, and I'm going to share three apps that you probably already have on your phone. And the way that we use these as a family to just, like, collaborate, and I feel, like, get more stuff done with less friction and for me to start giving my teenagers a little bit of responsibility. So these things have been super helpful for us. We've been doing them for probably a couple of years. They're not, like, new. Okay, first one is Amazon teen.
Tiffany Sauder [00:00:33]:
So you already have an Amazon account. I know you do. You already have Amazon Prime. I know you do. Did you know that Amazon has a profile called Amazon Teen? And what it allows you to do is to put the Amazon app on your kids's phones and you set them up as a teen. I'll tell you where to find it in the app. And you can set the permission so that they can add things to cart. They can go to the Amazon app, it functions just like yours does, and they add things to cart.
Tiffany Sauder [00:01:00]:
And then when they push order, it sends you a text message and it gives you a link to the cart so that you can view it. And then in the text message, you can just type in a y for yes, like approve it, or an n for no. Amazing. And the things get ordered and they show up at your front door, which to me is so helpful because the girls need shampoo and face wash and deodorant and q tips and toilet paper, whatever the stuff is, the refreshing the stuff in the house, or they need a new trash can for underneath their desk. I don't know. That kind of stuff is need stuff, not want. Or if they're like, hey, mom, we have a project at school and I need a thousand clothespins. Like, amazing.
Tiffany Sauder [00:01:49]:
Knock yourself out. Go to the Amazon app, Adam Descartes and I will approve it and it will get so it takes it away from it being a me to do, which, yes, please. And it makes it so they don't have, like, carte blanche access to just, like, order anything that they want to because that's not the game that we're playing in our household, you know? So amazing Amazon teen. I'm sure there's YouTube videos on how to do it, but I'm going to, like, quickly talk through it case it's helpful. So if you go to your Amazon profile, like, go to your app and just click the little, like, people person avatar, and then you're going to click your account. I'm sorry if this is like really hard to listen to. And then you're going to go to manage your household. So once you get there, you're going to manage your household and then you're going to go to manage your household members.
Tiffany Sauder [00:02:37]:
You'll see a little like arrow drop down. And that is where you'll see there's adults you can add and they can just like whatever, order everything. Like if you want to add your spouse and they want to help, kind of refill the backstock of toilet paper and paper towels and stuff. I think people know that that's available. And then there's Amazon teen and you can customize the teen settings to be kind of what I just said, which is where you're given a text message. Incredible. We also use this with our house manager so that as she sees stuff that we need, she can go in and add it and I can edit it because I might have already ordered it or whatever that looks like. And so is very helpful for her to have access to this, too, so that as she sees we need more light bulbs.
Tiffany Sauder [00:03:18]:
As she sees that, like, I don't know, something is broken, she can just say, hey, this needs to be replaced. And it's like one motion for me to get it delivered to our house. So Amazon teen function in credible, check it out. The second is Instacart. You probably already have Instacart on your phone. You may know that it has a family function to it. If not, you should be using it again, this is an awesome way that I crowdsource from my family. What snacks do you need for an upcoming volleyball tournament? What food do you like to pack for your lunches? If it's summertime? What lunches did they plan and what groceries do we need? Is their favorite peanut butter out? I don't know.
Tiffany Sauder [00:04:00]:
Like, I don't want to keep track of all of these things. I do the major meal planning in our house and I make sure that, like, the main meals are done and I have like dots, pretzels, dried mangoes, a couple crackers. There's kind of like the main snacks that we have on hand. And that's kind of my scope of responsibility. That's what I'm going to do. And so Instacart family allows you to add users in your family. They can add stuff to Costco and to Kroger or whatever the local grocery store is for you and you can see it added to cart. And then when you check out, you can just make it happen.
Tiffany Sauder [00:04:35]:
So again, how do we lighten the load so that, as the mom, we don't have to be everything in every minute. How do we share the responsibility with our families? And again, like, we have to help them with an easy, accessible. How we can't just sit and, like, complain about it, you know? Okay. The third one that we have used quite a bit as of late, especially with my two older girls, is just the notes app that comes, like, natively in your iPhone. Sorry. If you're on Android, I don't know how to do this on Android, but if you have an iPhone, just the notes app, and you can share. If you click on the little, like, I don't know, it's like, a little square with a little arrow on it, you can share as a collaborator. I can share that note with my daughters, and they can be collaborators, which means they can also type in it.
Tiffany Sauder [00:05:25]:
So, for instance, we have a really big last day of school party, and this was a way for me to say, like, I need to know who you've invited. I need you to let me know on there who's RSVP yes. And who's RSVP node. I want to know what menu you guys want me to have. I want to know what snacks you want me to have. And then I could have the agenda in there of, like, what time are kids supposed to arrive? Here's the copy. Here's the text message that you need to send out about how to find our house. And again, it just allowed us all to collaborate in a way where they can have responsibility and they can see the progress I've made of on the stuff that is my job.
Tiffany Sauder [00:06:01]:
I can see the progress they've made on the things that are their job, and it allows me to teach them planning, organization, make a list. Did you do your thing? How do you work as a team and get something done? Like, I love all the residual effects of that. So we use the notes app for a lot of stuff. When Aubrey Ainsley, and I are all working on something together or we're trying to get everybody packed, that's another way that we use it. Like, Aubrey Ainsley, ivy Quincy. I'll, like, make lists, and they'll go in and check them off. Sometimes we also do a paper version of that, but when it's all on everybody's phones, we can all instantly know what's happened, and it makes us so very, very, very productive, which makes my heart so happy. So, anyway, hopefully these, like, little, I guess, like, double clicks into some apps that you likely already have on your phone can help you with some family efficiency.
Tiffany Sauder [00:06:52]:
So there's more time for the things that we love to do, and there's a little less time for the ordinary. Thanks for listening. Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared confident. Until next time, keep telling fear. You will not decide what happens in my life. I will.
