Do it or delegate it: An up close look at my in-home help

Tiffany Sauder: So today I want to talk about a really candid look at our in home help inside the Sauder household. I think it is important that we normalize having help inside of our homes. If you are going to have two career household and you're going to have kids and you're going to say yes to lots of things in your life of and then you are most certainly going to need some help.

Could be family, could be hired help, could be neighbors, could be your kids, but you're going to absolutely have to have some help. And so I thought I'd Talk about what our solving has looked like, as we've had different number of kids in the house, different stages, whether they're at home, like Quincy still is at three, or they're in school and have activities after school, like my older to do and, how we've kind of fit it all together in those stages.

And frankly, as we've made more money, we can afford more help and. That choice is one that I was wanting to give myself. That was one of my motivations for like earning more and continuing to pursue financial success. So welcome to this episode. Uh, we're going to do a deep dive.

I think there is a small voice in the back of my head, the like rural Indiana country girl who is like, are you seriously on the microphone talking about this right now? Um, and yes, I am. And I want to quiet her because I want to step so fully and confidently into the opportunities and who I am today. but there is still this like little tiny whisper in the back of my head that says, are you serious right now?

But we'll talk about that too. so. that probably is a good segue and just setting the stage. Like I grew up in the middle of nowhere, Indiana, there were 1400 people in my hometown. There was only a flashing light. There was not even a stoplight. It took three counties to get a graduating class of 70 people in my high school.

So it was very rural, very small town. And I only saw things like nannies and housekeepers. Literally on TV watching things like Troop Beverly Hills. And if you know that movie, you are my kind of person. and so, these like, parodies, these like satires of like wealthy people is where I saw Nanny's and Housekeepers.

It was not part of my daily life. My mom had no paid support. We live close to family. So my grandma certainly helped her. I had aunts that were close, that kind of thing. But for the most part, she stayed at home. I did not have a picture of what it was like to have a mom who had a career. And I certainly didn't know what it looked like to put all those sort of pieces together.

Now that I'm living in a world where I have four kids, my husband and I have both have careers. My husband traveled a lot. My dad did some, but it wasn't a huge part of his. Job, he worked long hours. So it was very uncertain. It wasn't like he left it Eight and came home at five.

That was not my existence at all. As a kid, my dad was an entrepreneur. He started a lot of different businesses, which is where I sort of get that itch that I have to scratch. and so my mom was the primary kind of. Chief operating officer of the household and she did it all and I learned that if I was going to take that same template of my mom doing it all and put that on myself to do it all while I was pursuing a career while Iyou know, know, had a different scenario of my husband's job requires a lot of travel that I was going to melt and it wasn't going to work.

And I was going to live an existence that was not. living for me. and so I am sure that many of you listening to this, that is your story too. Your mom stayed home or maybe just had like, A job, it wasn't this big career. Some of you did, but you're trying to kind of reconcile this world you're living in, what you grew up around, what you experienced, what normal look like, and how do you recreate normal for your family and what that needs to look like for you and what's going on inside your household.

So, if you're going to have two high achieving people who have great big dreams and have lots of expectations of life, trying to do life together underneath one roof and you have kids or I think pets or nieces and nephews, whatever it is, but like other people that you want to love on and create

life experiences with. There are travel demands. There are time demands. Travel and late night meetings and board meetings and investor relations and partner meetings and things that happen outside of the hours when your kids are in school. And so there's all these time demands that make it difficult to reach the ordinary tasks of life.

There's all these mental demands. If you are a two career home and you are over the age of 30, you are probably in some type of a leadership role where you have other people depending on you. You're prioritizing, you're making decisions, you're helping other people get clear about their lives and their jobs and their roles, and you're solving hard problems.

And so there's a mental demand that comes with being at this stage in life. And then there's relationship demands. There's a lot of people that you want to keep up with. There's friends from your past, there's your side, and his side, and your friends, and his friends, and church, and people at the gym, and that board you're on, and that organization you're part of.

There are relationship demands when you decide to live a great big life. And so when you take the time demands, the mental processing demands, and the relationship demands, and then you say, Oh, by the way, also get laundry done. It's like really hard to reach it. Really, really, hard to reach it. I remember I like have this very vivid picture of our first house, it was a ranch house with a pinkish brick, which was remarkably uncool.

I love that house. It felt very much like home. it's where we brought our first two babies home too. And I remember being like, Ooh, okay, so I leave the house in the morning. I've got everybody set. I think the kids hadn't really started school when we were in that house. So the nanny would come, we kind of had everybody set at leave.

I'd go do my job. I'd get home between let's say five and 7 PM. And then I would do baths. I would make dinner or feed everybody, clean up the house and kind of prep for the next day. And then all weekend I would clean the house and Jera would do yard work. And I was like, man, like we're just Sustaining life, we don't have time for friends. We don't have time to invest in community. We don't, we don't have time for anything like literally anything extra. and, and I just remember being like, I've got to get close to people who are at the next stage because I don't actually see how this works.

And there were some amazing women who like shared with me. This is what I have help with. I have somebody else do my laundry. I have somebody come in three times a week and prep vegetables for me. Like I hadn't even conceptualized that those things existed and if they did exist it was probably for like the Prince of Dubai.

Like those are the people who could afford these things, not regular ish people who had, career ambitions, like there's no way those people could afford that. I thought it cost like 10, 000 a month. Somebody cut a carrot. I don't know, it just felt like so out of reach. And so I just remembered thinking, what if we would move our energy, Jr and I, and in my own striving, achieving, what if I moved it from just working so we could amass more things and experiences, which is, I would say, like, if you would have looked at my original goal sheet, it would have said, you know, here's the car I want to drive, the handbag I want to have, the clothes I want to wear, the places we want to vacation with our family.

But I'd never thought about, getting more money so that I could afford more time. And instead of at the year end of like, Using a 2, 000 bonus on a new handbag that couldn't help me actually at all. What have I spent that 2, 000 instead on a monthly housekeeper? Like how could I allocate those dollars in a way where I got time back to do one of three things, care for the people I loved, work more towards the thing that was going to pay me more or care for myself or insert your things.

But that was like my whole worldview at the beginning was. Time's going to go to one of those three things and anytime I can put resources towards giving me more time back I get to channel those hours that 20 minutes whatever it is Into one of those three things that I love the relationships that I love More time towards the thing that is paying me or more time towards myself.

That was literally how Simply. I looked at it and so I'll say it again. What if we didn't just work so we could amass more things, but we worked so that we could afford to amass more time. And I know there's whole books and programs and all of that written on this idea, but if you're not thinking about it this way in a two career home where you most certainly are in places where there's high earning potential and you are not just amassing things, every single thing that you own has to be maintained.

Every single thing, every sconce you buy has a light bulb that's going to go out. Every drawer you install has to be wiped out. Every piece of clothing you have has to be dry cleaned and laundered. Every addition you put on your house has to be cleaned. every additional car you have has to have the oil changed.

Every single thing you own Takes more time from you. It has to be managed. And I think we get into this crazy loop of getting more things not only do you have a thing and not time, but it takes more time from you because it's something else you have to manage if you don't figure out how to put other systems and places and people in place to be able to give you some time back.

I think I also, I'm very task oriented, very task oriented, and, I definitely got to a place in our marriage and in our family where I was more comfortable completing a list of tasks on Saturday than I was. Thinking about what adventure we were going to go on as a family.

I had no creative capacity to be able to imagine us doing something fun. Like I had no idea because I couldn't think of it because there were all these tasks that were in front of it that were completely controlling my mind, my priorities, my creativity, all of that. I was like completely stuck in it and it created a lot of problems.

And I started to realize that We cannot infinitely attend to our tasks and neglect our relationships and expect to have the life we want in the end. I'll say that again too. We cannot infinitely attend to our tasks, complete our tasks, and neglect our relationships and expect to have a life that we want at the end.

And I'm going to be a little stereotypical here for a minute, but I'll, I guess I won't even stereotype. I'll just say in our world. In my marriage, this would too often look like on a Saturday evening, look at all the stuff I got done. The whole house is clean. There's food prep for the week. I swept out the car.

I paid some bills. Actually, JR always does that. I never did that. but I would like go through this long list of stuff that I got done expecting JR to like, Clap and applause and maybe put a parade on through the middle of the living room about like how amazing all that was and all You really wanted was my time and attention.

You want to go do something together? One of his love languages is quality time and I was doing all these acts of service and like look at me Slugging around the house doing all this stuff and I would be like ship shape. Everything looks good. I'm so happy I feel a sense of accomplishment. And meanwhile, Jer is like essentially sitting on the Side of the stage being like, when is she going to be done with all this manic activity?

I want her attention so that we can do something fun and actually connect as people and By the time we got to that part of the day. I was like, I'm so tired I'm exhausted like I don't have any energy for that and and so the cycle goes and so I started to realize I cannot attend my task list and not attend my Relationships and expect to have the life and relationships that I expect at the end of this thing, you know Like, what are we doing?

And we have all this pride where we hang on to needing to do it all or having to be perfect or it's not up to my standards or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like we have to stop. We have to stop being masters to our task list and stop at the expense of neglecting our relationships.

okay. So I want to.

Take this next segment of the show and like really walk through And I can't really just hope this works in audio and it's like so detailed, but I'll do my best I'm not actually that detailed as a person. So I'm sure it'll be fine. But

Okay, I kind of look at our phases of care in four phases It's probably Not coincidental that we have four kids, but they're really far apart.

So I think it may be also mark stages, but for us, kind of the inflection point of kids, a new kid being added was an inflection point of change for our family. so phase one, I'm calling one kid, no money. That is how it was.

one kid. No money So I knew that we wanted in home care I wanted Aubrey to be home and it was for a couple of reasons one was I Could visualize the time it would take me to pack her up Get her to daycare and not like schlepping for me was going to be a big.

Mental load. And envision there's probably another hour of work that I could get done if I had somebody who just came to my house and I could just leave when they got there. So I did not want to do that kind of morning evening pickup. I was nervous about the time that they would take from me.

The other thing is, is my job as the president of element three at the time was not one that was like over at the same time every day. And these daycares actually close. So I was like, Okay. I mean, there are times where I needed them to be flexible and stay till 7 30 or something came up or I got pulled into something and I needed that flexibility and I knew in home care was going to be an important piece of that.

The problem is we could not afford in home care. We did not have the money to have a nanny full time in our house. And so we did two things. One was we did a nanny share for four days a week. So there was another girl, her name is Rachel. we hardly knew this family. We got connected to them from some mutual friends.

Rachel came to our house. She was the same age as Aubrey. And those two little girls stayed at the nanny at our house for four days. And on Fridays for like one or two years, my mom drove down. Every Friday and was with Aubrey and my parents live like, 80 miles away. Like it's not down the street, let's be very clear.

but my mom knew we couldn't afford it. and it was like the most generous act of love and we live in Indiana. So like in the winter it was very snowy and she's on the interstate and it was just like. A really, really, really intense effort from her, that I'll never totally be able to say a complete thank you for.

So that was what one kid no money look like. We had an in home nanny share for four days a week and my mom came down on Fridays because we couldn't afford more than that. I did the cleaning. At that stage, we didn't have a cleaning lady or any help. our house wasn't that messy and it wasn't that big because we weren't there that much and Aubrey was little.

so that was what phase one looked like. One kid, no money.

phase two, I'm calling it two kids and a little more money. I would say Jer and I, Like for the first 10 years of our marriage, it was like very incremental earning. It wasn't like this big, like, Whoa, am I worried? Look what happened about 10 years in, I would say there was a major inflection point in our earning, but it was like a lot of years of investment, just putting that out there.

So, so phase 2 was 2 kids and a little more money. when our second kid came, we did have a full time in home nanny, with 2 kids, we were making a little bit more, we could afford it. there was just more going on, like a nanny share was harder. And I've always had my nannies help with laundry and food prep.

This is for me, like set expectations early with your in home care. If you have in home childcare, they always did all of our laundry. Not just the kids but JR and I's too, it was just always the expectation. And they would help me with food prep, like peeling carrots and washing cucumbers and chopping up some.

Sweet potatoes, like doing that first 15 to 20 minutes of prep helped me get dinner on the table a lot faster and the kids were sleeping. They don't have to be played with every second of the day. If you were home with them, you wouldn't be playing with them every second of the day. And so I start that early.

Um, and that was a really, really, really important part of me having a little bit more time. So as we were spending what felt like a gajillion dollars, I was getting a little bit more support and getting some time. So, phase two, two kids, a little more money in home. Nanny helped with laundry and food prep.

And then we added a housekeeper every other week, four or five years in, So on the off weeks, I was still doing toilets and maybe wiping down the kitchen cabinets or counters and cleaning out the sink. but a housekeeper would come and the whole house got cleaned at the same time, which was a total lift.

So that was two kids and a little more money.

Phase three for us, three kids. and this is when we started to have our older kids were in school and we had one at home. There's like four years, I think between two and three, and then five years between number three and number four.

so with three kids, we had the same. We had in-home nanny, who was helping with laundry and food prep. we had housekeeper every other week, and then I added somebody who came in for a day a week and helped with laundry. I felt very indulgent. But it was the thing that I was doing evenings and weekends, and I want to spend some time talking about laundry for a minute.

Most of us have only one washer and dryer, which means it is like the one task in the house that you like can't speed up. Like I can't put everybody in the family. On the task of laundry and make the washing machine go any faster, like it just has a cycle time. It just takes so long to dry clothes and each load of laundry from, washing, drying, folding and put away is like an hour conservatively of work.

So, in our household. we're an eight load a week kind of family, with towels and rugs every other week So that's eight hours of work. Think about that. That is eight hours of work that we, that I was doing. Um, that I was like, this is a huge lift. What, what could I do?

What am I not doing that I could reallocate that time to? Exercising, going bed at the same time with my husband. Sending care packages to college kids at church, like what are the things that you want to do and what are you not reaching, spending time with your kids, putting them to bed, like whatever it looks like, doing some work, going to bed an hour earlier, like you could go to bed an hour earlier every single day.

If you just outsourced your laundry, and so I am a huge proponent of this, you are not uniquely qualified to fold your underwear and everybody wears underwear. So don't be embarrassed about the fact that you do, you know, I mean, what the world. So, I wish I would have done this sooner. I guess I kind of did because I had a nanny in our house, that was helping, but having somebody come in and just do all the laundry, was a really, really, really big help.

and then phase four, which is what we're in right now. It's four kids, but I think it's not just the four kids. It's four kids in four very different stages. We have high school, middle school, elementary and preschool. our girls are in all different schools.

and J. R. is traveling. I'm going to call it 30 to 70 percent of the time. He is a very inconsistent resource for me. That does not make him lazy at all. He is working his ever loving face off right now. but I need to have people in place, resources in place that are consistent so that whether he's home or he's gone, the system runs the same.

Otherwise, when he's gone, I'm pissed, and so then when he's home, I'm mad at him. But if he's gone and everything works and he comes home, I can be happy. Does that make sense? Like, literally, it's that stinkin simple to me. so he's very inconsistent. Sometimes he'll have a 48 hour notice before he needs to be gone for two days.

So I need to be able to have a very stable system so that when he's home and he wants to do something, it's like... A lift, it's not a mandatory thing and I have like line of sight to understand if he's on the road for 20 out of 27 days, that means there are a whole lot of things at the office that are not getting done.

And so when he's here, he has very big days. He cannot leave early, like. I can't just become this whiny, crazy person. That's like, you've been gone so long. You need to help around the house. It's not practical. And so I don't want to put that stress into our relationship. And I'm telling you, things are so much better when I just said, you know what?

I need to not solve with him. That doesn't mean he doesn't want to help our family. That doesn't mean he doesn't want to take the kids to practice. That doesn't mean he doesn't want to help around the house. He totally does. He just can't. And we have made that decision together. For him to say yes to this opportunity and we both understood what it required and I'm not going to hold that against him as a result.

You know what I mean? It's like a natural consequence of the choice that we made together. So long preamble, but so phase four or like the stage that we're in right now is a lot of help. And it is in part because we have four kids in four different stages that are in a lot of different things. I have a job that has flexibility, but it still takes time.

And I have a husband who is inconsistent. Consistent for us in his love, consistent for us in his support, but inconsistent in the practicality of his time available to us.

we're back to a nanny share. I did an episode with Samantha on that. Quincy goes to school two days a week and then she's home with a nanny three days a week and we share that nanny.

little bit hilarious that it's come full circle, but that also helps us financially, not have that be 100 percent out of pocket for us. I have a house manager that comes to our house two days a week. And she's doing things like food prep and food planning, kind of like tidying the house, straightening up like the pantry and the drawers and just kind of like tidying things so that it doesn't get all smushy and weird.

she does, JR and I's laundry and then she I don't know, likelike replaces light bulbs. And, Quincy, like colored in marker on this couch. Can you get it out with some stain remover? Like those kinds of things that just like takes some time, takes packages to the mail, like to the post office, does a return at a boutique that's only open from Two to four, like those kinds of things.

I just like can't reach in my day to day. our house manager does that. So she's super flexible. we're in like constant communication of like kind of what the priorities of the week are. And then she's got about, I'd say 60 to 70 percent of her job that is very static and the same every week. And then maybe 30 percent of the flexes.

I have some drivers. and I actually got this tip from Danielle who works for me. she's an executive here at element three and. her girls were very involved in gymnastics and dance and all this kind of stuff. And she's always had a really big job. And so she had high school drivers or like young adult drivers that would take her kids to practice and pick them up.

And so I have the same, my second one is in travel volleyball. Her club is like 30 minutes away from our house. It's not close. And so when she has practice over there, I oftentimes need a driver to be able to take her to practice because I can't do that. Plus pick up my other kid from practice that sits swim practice close and not like be there for the bus, like all those kinds of things with all the different times of people coming and going.

So I have some drivers that helped me. And they're mostly just like young girls that like used to be babysitters for us, people that we've met from church, that kind of thing. Danielle had an awesome tip. what she would do with her drivers is once they would like graduate from high school or like age out of her program is she would pay them like 100 finders fee for introducing her to her next driver, which I think is just like a great life hack.

Uh, a very responsible young person knows other very responsible young people. And so that is a great way to like start the gravy train where you have this constant introduction to people that are like responsible, have good driving records or just like good kids. And that's who you want to be connected with.

and then the last is a laundry service. This is what we have right now. So I have, my house manager does jarenized laundry. And then this is like my new life hack. I'm so excited about this tool. So it's called poplin, P O P L I N. I'm working on creating an affiliate relationship with them because I want to give everybody discounts.

P O P L I N. It's a laundry service where they come to your house. You put your your laundry in garbage bags, set it outside your house. And then. 48 hours, it will be returned to you laundered and folded. So I'm not going to go into all the details of how it works, but look it up.

It's a dollar a pound. An average load is about 10 pounds. So like 10 bucks a load. Very, very, very reasonable. We're doing that with my kids stuff, our towels, our rugs. We're sending that out. Jer and I stuff. I'm just a little bit more particular about the way that it's folded and the way that it fits into our closet.

It's frankly just higher dollar stuff. these loads are insured. I have literally never had a problem with using it, but those are just my reasons for separating it. But I don't want to increase the days that my house managers at my house, but I want her to do some more things. And so one of the ways I solved is by sending half my laundry.

out to using this poplin service that is like so inexpensive. You cannot do a load of laundry for 10 inside of your house. I'm telling you. So poplin, P O P L I N, amazing. I'm working on figuring out if they have like affiliate relationships so I can share with you guys. So that's my help right now.

So many in home nanny share. house manager two days a week drivers to get my kids places when I can't a housekeeper who keeps things tidy That's just every other week and then the laundry service. So I mean, it's a thousand people And I still have really long days and I'm busy. It's just a lot of people a lot of things to get done So it's it's a program.

I'm definitely the COO of the house and it's a lot of people to manage, but everybody understands the system and that makes it very easy for me to manage. And there's one central artery, one central system that everybody is participating in.

one of the things that can be difficult is getting on the same page As a couple on, is it worth it to pay for these things? Like, do we want to, can we, how did you prioritize it? So I made some notes for myself here and kind of remembering.

The way J. R. and I got to the place where we're on the same page and we had a similar view about what we were going to do with more money, in quotes, once we got it. in our early marriage, like in the phase one version, we prioritize in home care. And the time that it gave us to put into our careers over any glamorous experience, like date nights.

This is not an exaggeration. We're literally, we went to Applebee's for happy hour, like at 4 o'clock on a Friday, we would have our nanny stay till 6. We would go from 4 to 6 and we would get half price beer and like bottomless chips and salsa had to have a thousand million milligrams of But that's what we did.

We did date nights at Applebee's over happy hour. And I think our bill, I know our bill was less than 20. for vacation, we did those like five days, four nights stay at the Sheridan in Orlando, um, which is. Fine. But not a glamorous trip to Europe. and so we did those things for vacations and we were very slow to furnish our home.

Like, I'm not exaggerating when I say if we did not use the room, it had nothing in it. Or if it had something in it, it was like the most secondhand thing you'd ever seen. It was like an old bed from his parents old house or something grandma gave us. So, like, our bedroom? Our kitchen in our living room.

We're really the only 3 rooms furnished. It took us almost the whole 10 years that we lived in our house to furnish the whole thing. because we were not afraid to leave spaces open because we weren't using those rooms and we didn't have the money to furnish them. Like we just didn't prioritize it.

We didn't feel the need. Maybe I should say JR didn't feel the need to have furniture there when people came over and I started to learn to understand the wisdom in that, like why spend a bunch of money furnishing a room you don't need or don't use. and so it was not glamorous, but we were very much on the same page.

So we were very streamlined. In the experiences we gave ourselves, we were very streamlined in the vacations that we took, we were very streamlined in the stuff we bought, I remember going to Banana Republic. On the days where it was like 40 percent off of the sale price. And I was like, this is my day to shop.

Whatever they have is what I'm wearing for the next six months. and so we prioritized financially serving the choice for in home care because of the time flexibility gave us. And we did not chase after these glamorous experiences at a young age at all. So it was kind of early.

and we were on the same page about that. I think it probably took me longer to not feel like I needed to buy stuff to feel successful. JR is just better at that, but I would say it was a real pro move. we don't have a lot of things and I would say that's even now. And let me say what I mean about this.

we have been very slow. To add recurring costs to our family budget in, the form of things that we would need to pay to manage or take debt on. So, we drive our cars for a very long time. they always get to the place where they paid off and then we drive them for, like, 5 more years.

We don't have a second home. We don't have a boat. We just joined a country club a year ago, but that was something my husband had wanted to do for like 15 years. But there's like monthly minimums and like assessments and all that kind of stuff. Like, and we just didn't want to allocate the cash to that.

There's very, very, very few recurring costs outside of our mortgage. And so that's given us the cash to pay for the help that we need. So again, we've like chosen time over things, And that's still very much the construct of the way that we spend our money now because we believe it's going to create more opportunity and wealth and like richness of relationship and experiences so that we're creating good foundations today and then, you know, on the day where we can afford both time and money, or both stuff and time, like, that would be rad.

We're not there yet, but we're very aligned in like putting financial resources towards the things that give us our time back.

I know getting on the same page around paying for help can be really difficult. I think one of the things that can happen is that we create I don't know this environment where it's like, yeah, if we pay for housekeeper, then, then I'll do this X, Y, Z, insert promise to your spouse. And then you hire a housekeeper and you don't keep your promise to your spouse.

And so then they're like, well, we did this, we spent this money, but We don't actually go on a date every month or, if we get our laundry done, then I'm going to get up three times a week and I'm going to exercise because I can go to bed an hour earlier. And so then I can get up earlier.

And then if you don't actually get up and exercise, it becomes this like. You're spending all the resources on the things that you're saying you want your time for, but you're not actually redeeming your time against the things that you're saying you want. And I think that can be a trap where the other person in the relationship starts to say like, I mean, you say that, but you're not actually doing it.

Like you're not actually. Leaning into the commitments and the priorities and the new reality that we're trying to create. It's just like old patterns, but more money is being spent. And I think that's where there can be a lot of friction. And I, I think that's part of the reason J. R. has continued to Be supportive of me outsourcing things is because he does see that it creates more time for me to be able to say, yeah, babe, we totally should go on a trip together. Let's do that. I can do that because I have systems in place that other people can pick up and that's not an impossible task. Like, yeah, absolutely.

Let me help you with that thing at work. I have the capacity for that or absolutely. Let's all, You know, as a family on a Saturday afternoon, go to the park, like I can say yes to those things because I have systems in place, taking care of the most ordinary tasks and I have people in place that are helping us.

so I, don't know if that makes sense coming across. A podcast, but what I would say is make sure that you have a place of accountability that the time you're paying for back into your life, that you're redeploying that in a way that is productive towards your goals and your priorities and the things that you want life to become for you.

So,a couple of just quick practical recommendations and resources. If you're trying to figure out, how do I get started? I think one is give yourself permission to try something. J. R. said this to me a long time ago, it's just because you decide something, it doesn't have to be forever. I mean, some things, but a lot of stuff that was just, just try it.

if you're wondering about outsourcing your laundry, just try it. If you're wondering if you can afford a housekeeper, just call some, see how much it costs, see if it's worth it. See if you could spend your bonus on that. See if you could. Not go to Starbucks every day

Just try it. It doesn't have to be forever. I'd also give you the advice that it takes six weeks to get into a groove With any new service provider any new relationship any new everything so manage your expectations If you do it once and it wasn't perfect don't get pissed and quit or you'll never make any progress and it'll never work I often say to myself this quote It's not perfect, but it's done.

So, you know, I do have standards, but I've had to loosen them some because other people are helping me. And so there's times when I will find like the maple syrup in the spice cabinet. And I'm like, that's annoying. I've been looking for the maple syrup for four days. And I'm like, you know what? It's not perfect, but it's done.

Like somebody put breakfast away and the maple syrup got put something very random, but. You know, I found it and it's fine, so it's not perfect, but it's done can become a very powerful quote when you have people helping you because it's not going to be perfect.

and I, I guess, as a plug for the resource that we've created for our listeners and those of you pursuing a life of and especially inside of this environment of a 2 career home is getting clear on what needs to be done is the 1st step.

So we've created this free resource called the task planner. And it will help you get out of your head onto paper what needs to be done because what needs to be done is the first step to figure out who and how and at what frequency. and so that task planner can certainly help you. Start to be able to see it and to visualize it and to get more organized.

So, I hope this has been helpful. If you have other questions, or feedback, certainly please let me know. I am just so desperately cheering for you to hold on to this dream and this vision that life can be big and full and rich and exciting and full of adventure and also be peaceful and sustainable.

And filled with rich relationship. It does not have to be either one. This life of and is an honest, honest pursuit of figuring out how you get what you want and not sacrificing a thing. Thanks for listening.