The Village Chat: Decluttering & Meal Planning with Megan

Parenting Hacks to Simplify and De-Stress Your Life

In this episode of Motherhood Intended, Jacqueline welcomes her sister Megan to The Village Chat as they discuss practical strategies to simplify parenting and household management. They touch on meal themes like 'Taco Tuesday' to reduce meal planning stress, incorporating kids in routine activities to teach responsibility, and decluttering techniques to create a more peaceful home. The conversation also highlights the use of snack boxes, implementing the 'Don't put it down, put it away' rule, and the importance of balancing family time with household chores. Tune in for relatable insights and useful tips to ease the chaos of motherhood!

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EPISODE BREAKDOWN:

01:17 New Year, New Parenting Strategies

01:52 Meal Planning and Themed Dinners

04:36 Prepping Snacks and Meals Ahead of Time

11:32 Tackling Clutter and Household Organization

16:34 Struggles of Balancing Work and Cleaning

17:12 Minimalism and Decluttering

20:35 Kids and Household Responsibilities

24:20 Teaching Kids About Money

27:10 Creative Solutions for Clutter

Transcript

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 ​Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Village Chat. Today I have Megan here. For those of you who've been listening to the podcast,  for the last couple of years, you know that Megan is my sister. She is a mom of an almost five year old. It's nuts. 

Yes. 

What? I feel like the first time we talked to you was almost three years, no, 

it wasn't that long. But time flows. 

Yeah. I just remember having the same shock value every year. We're like, how is he already five?  

Which will continue every year. 

Yeah. It's never going to be normal. Yeah. It's never going to be normal. But, Megan's here today and I'm super excited. 

Yes. 

And full transparency. And you'll see a before and after at some point once it's fully done. I took pictures of our home office, which is  my recording studio slash my husband's work. I'll call it a work corner because,  he doesn't really have a job where he sits still. He's on the phone a lot. He's traveling.

Tried opening the closet, right? Didn't work. 

Yeah. Yeah. You know? So, we're on video and we have a new microphone set up. We're on a couch, just chilling, drinking a glass of Prosecco while we record this. Yeah, it's a little too relaxed. Like, we didn't even know how to start this. That's why we took, like, three takes because it's just, like, not the norm.

But yeah,  get excited because I will eventually show you what the new setup is. 

It's going to be great. 

Yeah. But today's a little chat. Megan and I were just going to chat about some things that we are going to be implementing into our families, into our parenting styles, whatever, like going into this new year.

 It's the beginning of the year, so, you know, still top of mind, setting ourselves up for success this year. So we're just going to chat about a few things that we're  either started implementing or are going to implement into our kids, into our family, into our motherhood lives.

Yeah.  

Do you want to share one first? Remember, this is just on the fly, as you know. If you're new to the Village Chat, it's very on the fly. We have nothing planned. We're just, you're just here joining us for this Village Chat. 

Yeah.   I mean, one of the first things that comes to mind, which I'm sure, you know, every mom, we all hate meals, right? We hate them. Yeah, I'm already stressing about tonight's meal. I hate that we even have to, you know, digest food and do the whole thing.  But, you know, I've tried recipes, I've tried the, , meal orders, you know, you had given me some tips on some, which like, some of them did work, I mean, if it was just me and my husband, totally,  but the rest is kind of like a waste. But I've tried, starting off the year, I saw a lot of TikToks,  on the Just picking a theme. The theme. Which, you know, means you don't necessarily need a recipe. You can probably wing it with whatever you've got.  Keep it simple.  Yeah, so we've done that two weeks, I think, so far. It has worked like a charm.

Yeah. 

Like, easy, easy shit, like pizza or Italian. 

Taco Tuesday. 

Taco Tuesday. Call it whatever you want.  that has worked really well because then we at least know what type of food and then we just scrap it together. Even if we don't have  Like the best ingredients of what we would want to make like say maybe you want to make enchiladas like As long as we have ground beef or something like that. We have a veggie 

make work 

put it together Yeah, so you want to keep going on that train? 

That's a good idea because you're not like reinventing the wheel  because half the battle is just figuring out what to eat, 

right? 

Like so if you know, it's Taco Tuesday or pizza Friday   or whatever. Like easy enough. Then I'll just go with that. 

And I kind of feel a little silly that it is taking me this long to come to the theme idea because that is probably like the most simple thing. And,  I feel good about going this route because  work smarter, not harder. So like,  right. That's prime example. I'm not going to work harder. No, I'm just going to have a little bit of guidance. 

And also this is something you can implement that will last because like you said, like I've tried the meal plan things too. I've tried so many different  ways to organize our meals and dinners and coming about that. And  it has to work for you and it has to be easy enough to like. keep it going. Otherwise it'll just fizzle out and you're back to square one. 

Right. Yeah. This way I'm like no longer hopefully hating food because I, don't get me wrong, love food, love eating it, but when it comes to meals Monday through Friday, I despise all foods. 

Yeah. 

Despise. 

To the point where like on Fridays or Saturdays, like I'll look at Dosh. I think literally we did this last night and I was like, we made the kids dinner or something they'd like. And I was like, I don't even, I don't. I don't care. 

Right. 

I'll eat like whatever they don't eat, I'll eat their leftovers because I'm just, I'm over it.

Right. Seven days of all the meals and snacks, I, I, I got nothing left.  Well, on that note, one of the things that  I'm started to do, which we'll see if I can keep this going, but it's been really helpful is. Prepping things ahead of time. Now. I'm not talking like i'm not the person I've tried to be this person where i'm like meal prepping all the things on a sunday like I'm, not like to me. It feels like a rip off of a sunday. 

I'm sorry. I'm not gonna cut you off  Sunday meal prep. 

Oh, i'm sure we share the same feelings on this. It's it's just not for me It works for a lot of people. I don't like spending my sunday that way. I like spending family time on sunday I don't want to get ripped off of my weekend. I'm also not going to take a full day and do this. So what I've done this last time is I'll pick   an hour, like honest, different day,  and do one thing. So like last week, again, things I found on Instagram, somebody who  focuses on protein in their meals and whatever I meal prepped, breakfast sandwiches and breakfast burritos.  This being said though, they're not for the kids like, they're not eating them. 

Yeah. 

I mean, like , I've given Lorelei like the eggs and thing. Mm-hmm . And veggies and things that I've made from it. But like, the boys aren't gonna eat that, which is super annoying. But it's helped Josh and I  eat breakfast and know that like, at least we're taking care of it. And if I can do that for myself, then  I feel good because normally, you know, I'm last. I don't even think about food in the morning. 

Like, oh, shit. 

Yeah, like, oh, I'm raging and I have a headache. Yes.  So that's been good. I also prep snack boxes for myself. Like this wasn't even for dogs. It was just me. 

Snack boxes? 

From the same person that I followed and I'll add it into the show notes. But this Same girl I followed on Instagram,  it was like meats and cheeses and some veggies and then like salsa with the protein chips. And I have like a couple bags of those on hand, but then I just use like literally Fritos or tortilla chips. But it was so nice because that's the other thing. I'm not good at eating enough in the day. I learned. And so that'll be like an afternoon snack or sometimes I'll eat it at lunchtime if I'm busy and then just like have another snack later. But I prepped that for the week and that was like, took me two seconds to do. So that was nice.

I love that.  That's prepping for you. 

Yes. And because I've done that, I've actually been better about getting meals prepared for the kids because I'm like, at least feel fueled and feel like I'm taken care of. I don't have to think of myself.  So now I want to that to do more of that for the kids. Like I bought these snack boxes, they're like snackle boxes, like a little tackle box thing. For the boys that I want to. Have mostly for the weekends, but also for after school too, or in between like that three 30 to five 30 period where they're just like asking me for 87 snacks before dinner, like after school. And I want to have it like pre set. And I'm like, if you're just grab anything in there, you can have, otherwise please don't talk to me about snacks. I'm also already starting to freaking out. It's obviously end of January and I'm like, summer's around the corner. It's not, but hopefully it is.  I know. 

Save that for another episode.

I know, I'm so sorry. But it like came up in my mind, and I'm like,  I don't, I'm like, I'm bothered now that they're asking for snacks, and the summer's the worst. But so anyway, those are things that I've prepped, and it's working so far. I've been doing this for like the last two weeks. 

Do they ever ask for anything outside of the boxes, or you have enough in there that they couldn't possibly ask for any?

So I haven't done the kids snackable boxes yet. I did mine. I have done a version of this, not with a box. I've done this in the past where I, like, pre fill a, container of stuff. And that's what's approved. Like, you don't have to ask me because I fill it with, healthy stuff.  That was cool for a few days until they got down to, like, The things that I bought as healthy snacks, and they're like, I'm not eating that shit. 

And then they even tried, in the fridge, the bottom drawer, like, put, cheese sticks, fruit, , yogurt pouches,  whatever I thought that they could have for the day or whatever. Because honestly, if I said they could have pouches or whatever, whenever they want, Noah would just eat all of them.

I was just gonna say, like, we tried that, that backfired with yogurt. 

Yeah, that's a slippery slope. 

He will consume the entire pack of Danimals. 

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. 

And that was fun. Fine, but I want it to even be more specific and more so like well rounded Like I gave them too many options because then they'll just pick the things they like, right? But if they run out of stuff in this snackle box, i'm like, well, that's That's your choice. So, um, that's what's coming this week. I'm going to try that, but 

that excites me. Let me know how that goes. 

I will. 

I want to do that for Sylas.

Yeah. And the containers I got for myself were literally, I didn't even mean to buy the same of the girl on the video. I saw I was at five below for something and got them there super cheap. So that was a pack of four, pack of four or six. I don't know. I got two of them. They're great.  But the one thing that I have prepped for the kids, which, I say kids, it's mostly for Hunter because Noah won't eat these, but the Hawaiian roll sandwiches. He'll eat like salami and cheese or turkey and cheese and I'll just make the whole thing and then I could just pop them into his lunch. Some days we'll do like an uncrustable of Nutella, but that actually helped him eat something else because he likes those little sandwiches. So.

That's awesome. Yes. Speaking of sandwiches. Sylas yesterday. So we've been needing to go to the grocery store to just fill up on everything that we have. Well it's the weekend. We don't want to spend five hours doing that. So, we had enough and we ended up getting just like lunch meat and stuff. Like, okay, we just need the stuff. Well, Dan got this nothing fancy, but it's just like fresh. It's not like the white bread that you get in the, it's not like wonder bread. It's like fresh. Sliced bread from the, uh, 

bakery, 

from the bakery. Yeah, 

yeah. And so I made Sylas. I asked him, I go, because usually, sorry, backstory, usually he only eats. The meat so like when I in his lunches, I literally like roll up the lunch meat and 

either way. That's a good lunch 

Right, right  but I Just wanted to like see because like yeah, if you're if you finally get the kid on actual sandwiches There's so many things that you could do so many options. Um, yeah, so I asked him I go Sylas.

Do you want? Do you want me to make you a sandwich? He said yes right away. And at first I was like, he's just distracted. He was watching a show. 

Yeah. 

But I was pleasantly surprised. I made him a turkey and cheese sandwich and I was just waiting for him to immediately toss the bread aside and just start eating the lunch meat. And he ate. And then I cut it in half. He ate an entire half with the bread and was like, Mommy, this is the best sandwich. And then of course the second half, he's like, can I take out the meat?  But it was a step forward. He ate half of it. I'm like, yes. Cause now I always feel so gross when I'm making his lunches and throwing, rolling up the meat. So I'm. For sure going to, like, try to implement more and more of the 

that's, like, my dream is to get Noah to, eat some kind of sandwich. Because, his options of what But no, he But he doesn't. 

Not anymore. What happened to the bagels? 

Who knows? No, no. And he's very specific. He will eat a bagel. It has to be plain and it has to be warmed up. 

Not even with butter. 

No, but the other day he did try butter on bread and what, and he said it was good. And I tried to add it to his bagel the other day and he said, absolutely not. 

What if you served it and didn't tell him that there was butter? He wouldn't know.

You would think, but no, no, he wouldn't know. He would leave the table. Yeah.  But these, these food things are. A whole conversation right in itself. Yeah. I mean, right. Yeah. So you're going to the theme. Well, the theme thing, the theme dinners is perfect.  Perfect for implementing.

You got your snack boxes, snack boxes and meal prep as well. Yeah. I love that. We were talking earlier before we hit record about. As far as clutter and our house goes, I have a couple of things that I am going to start implementing that again, I saw on like, I'm not even cool enough for Tik Tok.

So I'm not going to act like I saw it on the Tik Toks. I saw it on Instagram. I am an elder millennial. I saw it on Instagram. but one of them is. And this is somebody I've had on the podcast a long time ago, Stephanie Hanrahan, and she has two children on the autism spectrum. And she's very open about educating people about,  just advocating for them in their lives and teaching people about autism.

And this isn't like an autism specific thing, but I really feel like it would help in our household. It's so simple, cause I'm like going crazy I feel like I follow my family around just literally just picking up things as they go.

Like there's a trail of each of them, mostly Josh and Hunter, I'm going to say it. And they know cause I've said it. But those two alone can just, I can see what they did all day based on what was left behind and where, what was half done. And so what she does with her kids or she started to do is, the phrase in their house is, Don't put it down, put it away. 

And I think it, it's just simple because it clicks, don't put it down, put it away. And then you don't have to be like, can you clean up this? Can you clean it up? What are you doing? Clean up that. Like, just, uh, don't put it down. Go put it away. Like before they move on to the next thing. Because, like for Hunter, I don't even think he realizes he's doing it.

Like today,  I have a big box of for bingo for books. He was going through the books, looking at books. Left a pile of books by the front door. Then he goes to his closet, gets this,  spacecraft activity, brings it to the table, realizes, oh, no one can help me with this right now, so I'm gonna go do something.

Like, in, with a matter of ten minutes, he created, like, three messes in the house. And then he's like, actually, can we go play outside? And I was like, ugh!  I was like, hold on. Cause otherwise, that's all I do all day, is like, try to keep the house sane, so I don't lose my mind, cause I spend most of my time in the house.  So I'm going to try that. 

Yeah. Let me know how that goes. Cause I, I am, I am past the following them and picking them up, picking things up. It's probably not good, but I've literally give it up. So I, I don't think there's one way better than drawing at all. So what happens is,  they do what they do and then we have these,  power cleanups, which literally take hours 

that reminds me when they were little and you've heard us say this before too, but we would say okay, let's do a power pickup. And really it was just  a quick, like as a family pick up the toys and that we were trying to teach them to do this. And then for a while they do it on their own, but mostly it would result in  full blown meltdowns. And ever since we got the room in order and the basement in order, I, on top of it, because I cannot dig out of that room one more time, and I'm so sick of spending my own time doing it, at five and seven, they're old enough to put their own stuff away, but what I am learning is, especially  with Hunter and his personality, he's not doing it on purpose, he didn't walk away from those books, because he was like, I'm just gonna make a mess, and I don't care, He's literally not even on the mind track of thinking about those books because he's already on to the next thing. So I'm trying to really implement more of  a supportive household where I can instead of lecturing, we can just help  him. 

Isn't it harder, like, because every kid is different, right? Because I think about I think about Sylas and yes, maybe there's times that he  does something and then moves on to the next and doesn't pay attention. But I feel like the majority of the time, no, he's just not listening. 

He's not going to do it. 

Cause I will literally say, Sylas, if you're going to move on to your bottle flipping over there, you have to put away your monster trucks. 

Yeah. 

And then he just fights me on it.

So it's, it's not in like Hunter's case, like, I, I think 

he does get the same way though. Like he will be like, 

oh, does, okay. Oh. So then how do you know it's, I guess, how do you know if it's just them not listening and like, being lazy or them  really not 

so, like for him, I, I literally watch him go around the house.

Yeah. 

And I see him lose. Interest or track of what he's doing and all of a sudden start doing something else. Mm hmm. And. 

That's Dan. That's what Dan does. 

Yeah. And Josh does the same thing. Mm hmm. But I  wasn't saying it like I am now. Like, Oh, like, let's just put it away. Don't put it down. Let's put it away. Right in the moment to get him,  in the habit of doing that. 

Yeah. 

Before, I would be like, you're not doing that you gotta clean up that first. And then he would think of it as this, like, whole big task and be like, ugh.  

So it's just a mindset. 

That's what I'm hoping. I'm trying to get him into, and I keep saying him, Hunter, because I'm more aware, mostly because Noah, if I tell him like, you can't do that until you go clean up, he'll be like, fine. And then we'll just go do it. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

But Hunter is the one who will have the meltdown. So I'm hoping that I can just get him more in the habit of like, Oh, before you move on. Like it just be more aware now I've witnessed him do this and act this way And it obviously usually comes up on the weekends we're at home and spending multiple hours at home during the week, it's so busy, you know, there's only so much time to do so much and they're tired and whatever but like I'm not going to spend all summer.

Sorry, I keep coming back to summer because I'm scared. Um, I am not going to spend all summer just cleaning up. I'm sorry. It's been top of mind for me. It's like the Sunday scaries with the summer scaries. But I'm also looking forward to the summer. It's very confusing. Anywho.

I know I was telling you about this earlier, but I'm to the point where, granted we're also in a smaller space, I love the idea of being a minimalist, uh, I don't think I, need to go as aggressive as some people, but I am just so, I don't have time to clean.

That's my number one. I don't have time to clean because I'm working my ass off at work for eight to 10 hours a day. And then I get off of work and then I want to spend time with my son. My son just immediately wants to play with me. 

Yeah. 

If I don't do that and if I do the dishes or if I clean up something, then it's just like, okay, I'm not spending time with them then. Okay. See you on the weekend. All right. 

Yeah. 

So anyway, I'm to the point where I just want less things. Like I've grown. Into a terrible relationship with things where items actually make me cringe. 

No, I get that. 

Whether it be clothes, actually, literally anything, anything that's beyond the necessities of the shit that I use every single day.

Yeah.

And I've said this so many times and jokes on me, because one day it's going to happen. I said, I just want somebody to break into our house and take all of our shit and move on. And then, you know, it just is what it is. After that, that's what I want for myself. 

Well, there's literally, there are studies that show, The more stuff people have, or the more clutter, you are more stressed, you can't focus, you feel overwhelmed. And that's exactly it. There's been so many times, and obviously it's seasons, right? Like depending on the age of your children or like, like when Lorelei was born and we were getting adjusted, like things definitely fell to the wayside or like the holidays. I dream of a day. I love the holidays, but it also brings me so much anxiety because of all the extra stuff that comes in, whether it's. Decorate 

or host like you do. 

Oh my God. This year was a lot, but it was, it was a good a lot, but it was like a revolving door of parties, I wish I could just care less.  Let's make more. But I couldn't, but I'll, I'll get there, it's a mind shift too, of just like, like, it's not going to be perfect everything. And, um, the less you have, the less there is to worry about for sure.  

Pull the bandaid off like it, Dan doesn't know this, but he will when this comes out, I've just been slowly throwing, not his stuff,  but I've been throwing, and donating kitchen dishes, just dishes. Okay, yeah, he probably doesn't know this, but 

you're so funny because you sound like Josh, Josh will just get rid of stuff left and right. 

Well, this is what I get it.  I feel like I'm doing the dishes and putting things in the dishwasher like doing two full loads of dishes like twice a day, which is outrageous. We have two adults and one child and the child, 

I mean, we definitely do ours every day, but I get it. 

But like in the child, Monday through Thursday, he's at school. School. So like, okay, so it's just us. And I don't, I keep forgetting to eat. So I'm like, who is, what is this? But anyway, so like. My theory with the dishes is like, okay, well, guess what? We only get one plate for you, for me, and for Sylas. 

You want to use it, you'll wash it. We probably have like four big plates. So like we're still, we have a little bit of extra, but that's where I'm at with the dishes now nope, we don't need that. 

Well, that's more, earth conscious than my.

Oh, sure. Yeah, that's, that's the reason I'm using it, earth conscious. 

No, but we've just been using paper plates. 

I didn't want to say that out loud, but 

yeah, you can judge me. You can judge me. I mean, it's not ideal. It's not the forever plan, but it is the right now plan, 

right? My mental state, the days I just need fricking paper plates all day. And guess what? No dishes because, 

and truthfully this, we just started that back up again. I did use it in the summer when they're home, when they're eating three meals a day at home. Plus frickin snacks and all the things. Yeah, I did switch to paper plates but I think it came back because again, I was just sick of doing so many dishes. And Josh is really good about keeping up with the dishes. We both have the things that  we keep up with. That's his thing and when he's out of town, Oh god, that's why probably when I like, when he started traveling again, at the beginning of the year, I was like, um, We're gonna need those paper, paper plates back, so.

When you were talking about, obviously, you work your ass off and you work a long day, and then you have, like, minimal time, that's your time to spend with Sylas, no, no one wants to be doing dishes or whatever. That did remind me of something that's been top of mind that I'd like to incorporate more, especially, like, on the weekends, and with Noah, on his day off of school or like in between when he gets home from school and Hunter gets home. Cause depending on which preschool he's at, some days he's got like two and a half hours before Hunter gets home. Some days he's got like an hour and a half, whatever. And then of course, usually on Fridays he doesn't have school or Mondays, depending on, I don't know, it's been a shit schedule so far, but at least one day a week he doesn't have school.

And. He's not good at entertaining himself.  

Welcome. 

I know. You're like, Welcome to my life. 

I know. 

Monster trucks and bottle flipping  every single minute. 

I know. And it's not that I don't want to spend time with him, but  I now find it harder because I have Lorelei to care for and I'm making sure, okay, she's on the floor, she's having her time to play, and then she needs, you know, to be fed and it's her nap time and I want to keep her on schedule and she's trying to, you know,  and so I don't want Noah to just be on his tablet so one of the things is like, I do want to be more conscious of incorporating the kids into the things that I have to do, whether it's the weekends or, even after school or whatever, but like if there's dishes, let's both do the dishes get in there because at five and seven, they are old enough, they're part of this family, they have responsibilities too. And the hard part is I've limited the responsibilities because we haven't mastered things.  And a lot of it's with Hunter, but hasn't mastered things like easily getting dressed, making your bed, brushing your teeth, you know, we still have issues, like there'll be a day where socks. 

Not a fan of socks, like he'll have like some sort of sensory thing where like socks are not fitting well and then he has a meltdown. Or the both boys will fight over who's going to brush their teeth first and then it's like a whole like,  like stupid shit like that.  Just the toothbrush part because Sylas is like, I just, I don't want to.

Right? I know. So it's hard to add more things, but I also read that, I mean, kids, they want to feel useful. And their confidence will grow, and it's easier on us, because we know there's shit we have to do. But, I'm like, I want to spend time there, especially like, I feel this with Hunter all the time, and it's probably what you feel, because, like, you're working all day, and then Sylas is at school.

I don't see Hunter all day, and he comes home tired, and so I'm not going to be like, come home and do dishes, but the point is, even on the weekends, like, Hey, why don't we both do whatever it is together? 

Right, we, we haven't done the dishes yet, but what kills me is that, At school, he does all of that, and they always, they always tell me, like, Sylas, he went out of his way to clear everyone's dishes today, he set the table for lunch, and I'm like, What?

You're like, I'm sorry, who is this? My son? 

Right, so I know he can do those things because he does them, and he does them with pride at school. 

Right. 

But at home we haven't done the dishes yet, but we have, him and I have made many meals together. He likes cooking. Usually he likes just like stirring things, or just watching things on the stove, so that we got going. That's, that's good. And I feel like it's all the time that I'm like, We have to clean. We have to clean. I feel like I'm constantly saying that. 

Yeah, 

it has.  Not had a great effect, but there have been times where, like, if I'm not doing that all the time, and I do it occasionally, then he's, like, into it.

Yeah. 

Even, finding toys to donate. 

Yeah. 

He's done a really good job 

Oh, that's always a tricky one. 

See ya, see ya, see ya.  Which is great, but then, you know, then, then, it just so happens that the things he's saying, See ya, and I'm just like, what, those are the things that I think you would keep. Right. Because I used to play with that yesterday. 

Also, it's like, do you know how expensive that was? 

Right. So then I'm just like, okay. But, It's amazing that he has made those choices. 

Yeah, that's good. That's good. I mean, other than like, like I said, those three things and like the boys set the table and things like that.

They'll do things randomly for me. Like when Josh is out of town, they bring the garbage cans down, they bring them up, things like that. But. Somehow, probably in a desperate state of my own, somehow now they earn a quarter for doing stuff like that. 

Oh, no. 

Yeah. They got really into learning about money. I took them to the mall cause it was raining so much, you know, for a while. And I like took them to the mall.  I took all three kids. I had, I personally had to get out. Josh was like, are you sure? And I was like, yes, that seemed easier. I think it was at the end of,

if that seems easier, then yeah, you had a day, you had a day.

I had a week. I mean, yeah, it seemed easier than being at home. 

Yeah. 

And it was, it was nice. Like we got a pretzel. We poked into Build A Bear, like, now they're into like GameStop, we went to one of the bookstores that had like 

Tell me how you just poke into places and not leave with chaos.

We talked about money. They knew, that's the thing, that was like the end of many days of talking about money, and it was the first time, they earned a quarter from me, and they have piggy banks, and then hunter lost his first tooth and then he got money and he's like, well now I have this What can I get for this?

But yeah, The, the thing I saw on Instagram was basically like, these aren't special things that you shouldn't pay your kids to do this. They are in the family and they should just do that. So, retract that a little. But I was just so excited that they were getting it done. 

Well, if anything, positive outcome was the understanding of money. 

It really was. I mean, and that was like the whole mall experience. Noah was more into it. He was like, okay, so. I, if I buy this, then I still have 15 left. So, cause that's 5 and I have 20.  They're both like, yeah, very good at math. And so that was really the whole trip was like doing that. And then if you don't find something here, we can go back to, I mean, I had all the time in the world.

I was like, this is fricking easier. Lorelei was in the stroller. I had a coffee. I was like. Oh, you wanna go back to that store? Cool. I'll, I'll get some steps in. Let's walk to the other side of the mall. 

Yeah. 

What kills me is what they got like, yeah. Noah picked out some like $5 little minion figure.

Mm-hmm . 

And I was like $5 for that little thing, like McDonald's toy  

in the corner and never play. 

Yeah. But it was a good lesson. But then they were very motivated Yeah. To do more things. What else, what can I do for you? Then I'm trying to think, like, what are they capable of? What do I actually need help with? 

But it has to be above and beyond what, like, the normal tasks. 

Oh, yeah. Like, you're not getting a quarter for making your bed or picking up your toys. That's not how it is. It's like doing extra.  Alright, well we should probably wrap this up. I feel like there was another thing that we Implementing. We talked about like food prep and clutter. And now we were  talking about helping. Having the kids involved. Those are the main things. 

Right It's like  if you can control the chaos a little bit more in some capacity that just actually right that naturally introduces more peace Less stress, less anxiety, and then, you know, the other half of some of the things like we're all trying to do just making time for yourself and self care and all of that. So, I think the goal is to implement some of the things that we talked about and that would naturally leave more room for those. 

For the other things. I agree. I agree. The other thing that actually just popped in my head. on the same lines of clutter and all that is, I saw, I sound like such a turd saying like, I saw on Instagram, like on your phone, on Instagram.

I said, no, I mean, I actually haven't been spending a lot of time on my phone. No, I, but you're literally never on your phone. No. But the point is, is like, if I know something, it's From Instagram, which is embarrassing. Um, but this is the truth. Most of the time it's TikTok, so you can be a little bit That's kind of what I wanted.

I almost wanted to be just like Fib and be like, no, on the TikTok. Well, TikTok shit is on Instagram. It also sounds more normal. Like, I saw it on the TikToks because that's what people say. Oh wait, they do say that? They say, they do. They, they say that. Who's they? Grandma? Other people. Grandma? No, the people younger.

What?  My grandma's cool. She's not that cool. Let's be honest. Yeah, she is that cool. She is very cool. She's way cooler than I am. Um, no, the thing I saw is basically like they put, she puts like a basket or a bucket in every room. And then when she has time throughout the day, she doesn't, she's not picking up after everybody.

So this is another option if your kids aren't around to be like, Oh, don't put it down, put it away. Another option is just toss everything. Like say you have a bucket in your family room or your playroom or whatever, just put it in the bucket. Put it in the bucket. And maybe at the end of the day  As a family, you go through the buckets and you put everything back, but maybe you don't have time that day. Maybe at the weekend, you're putting everything back.

That's not a bad idea. 

And I like that. 

I feel like that's more realistic. 

It is, because then you're not having the stress of, like, your family room with crap everywhere, your kitchen cluttered. It's at least cleared off. And then when you have the time or want to take the time, unload the bucket or the basket and put everything away.

Most of the anxiety comes from visually seeing the scatter of everything. 

And like you said before, and I go through moments like this too, where  I'm just like, I can't. So I'm just gonna let it go because I don't want to spend my energy and time on that. But it doesn't help with the stress because you still see it.

Right. Yeah. In the bucket. I like that. That's, that's. I, I, the only part of that I've done is like, we have a basket at the bottom of our stairs that's like, if it's something that has to go upstairs, we toss it in the basket. Yeah. But our biggest problem is we would, no one would, except for me, would ever take the basket upstairs and unload it. And so then it would just turn into this big, like, pile at the bottom of our stairs of things that have to get put away upstairs. 

It's not a full solution, but it is a good solution. 

It can be if everybody works together. 

Correct. Yes. Yeah. But. No, I like that. And I, not  actually planning to do this, but I ended up Doing this with Sylas's playroom since houses under construction all that his playroom is basically our couch, 

right?

That's just in the holding. 

Yeah 

But I literally can't organize his stuff. So his stuff is everywhere. 

Yeah, 

and that's what I've resorted to? is putting everything in a bucket. I don't clean it up anymore. I just, there it is. 

There's no pipe, yeah. 

But then this is what happens.

Where's this? Where's that? 

Right. I haven't been able to organize anything because I'm waiting till that room is done. That's all I get now is like, mom, where is it? And then I say, I don't know, like check the bucket. His checking the bucket is dumping the bucket on the floor and then going through everything and then leaving it on the floor.

Right. 

It's been the ass a little bit, 

but that's situational because of everything being under construction at your house. 

Right. 

However, maybe it's a combination of the two that we were talking about. Cause then, yeah, the bucket sits there. 

But I would feel okay with that at the day. Like, I mean, okay, well. It's in the bucket. I know it's there and 

yeah or  you can also incorporate the don't put it down put it away. Oh, you didn't put it away. Then it must be in the bucket. Yeah. You go look in the bucket. 

Did we just create something? We sure did. We sure did.

We took two ideas from other people. We put them together. Boom. 

What should we call it? We'll work on that. I don't know. 

We'll, we'll workshop it and circle back. But, uh, don't put it down. Put it away. Or it's in the bucket. 

Yeah. 

That's just like what it is. I don't know what it's called, but yeah, 

I like it 

in the bucket or fuck it.

Oh, that is so good, honestly, though. Oh my god. 

Yeah, the kids will love that. They want. they want on our podcast. We probably don't want our kids saying that, but, you know, we'll know.  Well, Megan, this was fun. 

Yeah. 

This was fun. 

It's been way too long since the last time.

Yeah, I know. It's been way too long. So I'm excited because we've got some  more Village Chats planned, but this was good. I like talking about things to make our lives more peaceful and easier, especially at the year, looking ahead, because clearly I'm already stressed about summer, which is ridiculous. 

All right. Well, guys, thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Village Chat. I will talk to you again later this week and Megan, we will see you again soon. Thank you. I'm excited to be back. Yes. Bye for now.