We open with a discussion of “empties” (borrowed from the Girl Next Door podcast). What have we needed to buy because we’ve completely used it up?

Then we move on to various categories of things that can be repurposed. From your own intellectual property, to leftovers (heating them up in a pan can be tastier than the microwave…), to gift bags and more, many things can get a second use.

In the Q&A section, we tackle a related topic. What do you do if a friend or relative wants to give you hand-me-downs that you don’t want? We offer some suggestions for politely deflecting or quietly donating.

Please give the episode a listen! And please consider joining our Patreon community. We have lively discussions going over at our forum on New Year’s resolutions one month in, language immersion programs, windfalls, and more. Membership is $9/month and includes our monthly zoom meet-ups.

What do we hope to do in 2025? We look at the realms of personal, work, relationship, and home goals. Then in the Q&A we discuss how often we review our lists — seasonally, or more? Please give the episode a listen!

Since I didn’t manage to get a blog post up last week, I’ll also use this one to tout last week’s episode: our “2024 in review” episode, reporting on highlights, lowlights, and our 2024 goals. How did we do on those? Listen to this episode and find out! And then you can listen to the episode that will come out at the very end of 2025 to find out how we did on this year’s ideas.

Thank you so much for listening! It’s been a great year for Best of Both Worlds. We’ve also enjoyed having our Patreon community, and have lots in store for that in 2025. See you in the new year!

January: Travel — plans, dreams, strategies. I know I have big ideas now that the kids are getting older, though there is also the challenge of squishing these travel dreams into the school calendar. We’ll all get ideas from each other here!

February: The Adventures Project. Starting in January, we’ll be encouraging people to plan big and little adventures into their weeks, and in February, we’ll share what fun things we’ve done. This will be a nice little winter pick-me-up.

March: Money March. We’ll be discussing financial topics — a few frugal wins, for sure, but also ideas for financial goals and how to achieve them.

April: Home organization. It’s a bit of a journey for most of us, but we all have tips and strategies for making life run better, and this will be a way to get at that “spring cleaning” energy.

May: 168 Hours! A book club meet-up of sorts. My first time management book, 168 Hours, came out in May 2010, so this will be the 15th anniversary. We’ll discuss the topics in the book. If you haven’t read it, this might be a fun excuse to do it.

June: I Know How She Does It. In related news, my book on how successful women make the most of their time turns 10 in June. This will also be a book club discussion of the topics in this book.

July: In lieu of a Zoom meet-up, Sarah and I will do a private Q&A video. Ask us anything!

August: Back-to-school and household routines. If something isn’t working, this is a great time to rethink it. We’ll talk daily routines for families with school-aged kids.

September: The joy of work. Shouldn’t work be fun? Seriously. We’ll talk strategies for enjoying the experience of any given workday more.

October: Superficial things. These discussions are always amazing — come prepared to talk hair, make-up, skin care, fashion, etc. Warning: People often make several purchases in the course of an hour…

November: Holiday planning. How to curate your holiday season to enjoy it more and stress less.

December: Our annual goal setting workshop. Yep, it will be time to plan 2026!

To that end, the Patreon community will be meeting on December 19th at noon (eastern) for this year’s annual goal setting workshop. This is always a lot of fun, and a great chance to get started on figuring out how to make next year the best year yet. 2025 is going to be awesome — I’m definitely looking forward to it.

Membership is $9/month and it’s fairly easy to quit at any point. Hope to see some new folks there!

In today’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sara McCarty, head of Run Wild My Child, shares tactics for getting outdoors together. From toys that will make your backyard more fun to things you can do in the dark, this episode is all about the outdoors for people who don’t plan to do 2-week hiking trips.

In the Q&A we tackle a question of when to buy a Halloween costume for kids…in order to avoid Halloween regret.

Please give the episode a listen! Our Patreon community will be meeting up today at noon, eastern, to discuss all things meal planning. We’d love to have you join us. If you’re reading this after noon, no worries, the meet-up will be recorded.

(Time for the annual question…are you Team Pumpkin or no? I like pumpkin bread and pumpkin muffins, but have not embraced the PSL lifestyle or, for that matter, pumpkin beer.)

We discuss our favorite fall products and such, and then pivot to the topic of energy. A listener wrote in that she thought we (as in me + SHU) seemed very energetic and wondered why she didn’t feel so energetic. First, we needed to stress that we tend to pep ourselves up for recording, but then also empathize that this listener’s situation (often solo parenting a toddler) is tough. We share some ideas for managing energy and finding life more doable.

Please give the episode a listen! We welcome ratings and reviews. Please also consider joining the BOBW Patreon community. Next week (on 10/22) we’ll be meeting up by Zoom to discuss all things meal-planning. I know I’m looking forward to getting some new ideas. Membership is $9/month.

In the Q&A Sarah and I read some feedback on our anniversary episode from someone who would like to have the best of both worlds, but is really struggling with finding childcare. We know that availability is a real problem in certain areas, and we express our empathy with the situation. It is hard!

Please give the episode a listen. We always welcome ideas for future topics, so feel free to reach out to me with suggestions.

In the meantime…Before Breakfast continues to feature four short (new) tips each week plus a longer episode featuring an interview. This week’s interview was with novelist Camille Pagán. She talked about making time for creative work, and how inspiration tends to follow the work. We don’t get inspired and then sit down and write a novel (or anything else). We sit down regularly to write and then we get ideas. I know this is true for me. I also suggested that people “Don’t sweat the seconds” and that you might “Browse for a project.”

The Vanderhacks newsletter continues to grow! Each week I share five ideas to make life better. This week I shared ideas to “Make journaling useful.” The post behind the paywall was about “How to lighten your mental load.”

This week’s Best of Both Worlds episode on new routines, whining, and preschool vs. childcare was so fun for me that I listened to it twice. Check it out! In the meantime, the BOBW Patreon community has been discussing planning fatigue, and if there’s actually any upside to waiting to make holiday plans…which has become a discussion of people who plan vs. people who seem allergic to making plans (and how, if those folks aren’t living in chaos, it’s often because they’re relying on other people in their lives to figure things out…).

Thanks for reading/listening! I appreciate it.

On the docket this weekend — my peak long run (for the half-marathon I’m running in 3 weeks…), more birthday celebrations, hearing the 17-year-old sing the Star Spangled Banner for an athletic event, and family photos. The photos will be an experience — the 4-year-old already complained about the sweater he will be wearing BUT I know my remembering self will be glad to have these photos, and I’m not sure the 17-year-old will really participate in formal family photos after this. So we should take them.

In the meantime, this week’s content round-up…The Before Breakfast podcast featured an interview with productivity expert Chris Bailey talking about the Rule of 3 and his point system for building good habits. I also suggested (quoting Jodi Wellman) that people “Make bit-sized bucket lists.”

Over at Vanderhacks I preached the virtues of vowing to “Leave the party while you’re still having fun.” Also, thinking about endings, I suggest people “Begin by thinking about the end.” I began a foray into video posting with one called “Send a note to your Future Self.” The (print) post behind the paywall this week was about how to finish the year strong and “Make the most of the next 100 days.” Please consider a free or paid subscription!

Over at the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community we are discussing how much time we spend outside and (in another outdoor-related topic) how we manage bad weather days (i.e. when kids are out of school). If you missed Sarah’s interview with Sam Kelly about how to get kids to notice what needs to be done, you can check it out here.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoy my writing, you might also like my books. I’ve written several on time management topics. The most recent is called Tranquility by Tuesday: Nine Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters. I really enjoyed writing this book about my favorite time management strategies, and what happened when 150 people learned them over nine weeks. Please check it out!

In this episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah interviews Sam Kelly, a therapist who runs a course called Little Cycle Breakers. She shares strategies for getting kids to see what needs doing in a household and help in a way that lightens the parents’ mental load.

In the Q&A we talk about how to manage the situation when teens don’t want to participate in as many family activities because they are busy with school and other things.

Please give the episode a listen, and as always, we welcome feedback and reviews!

I also listened to the Christmas Oratorio this week. I wound up listening more than once because the first video I’d chosen wasn’t really my favorite. It’s a frequently performed work so not everyone does it as well as it could be done. I wound up settling on the JS Bach Foundation version. I’m a big fan of the opening chorus to the 5th part. So catchy. That powered me through a strength training session the other day. I should be going to a Bach concert this weekend put on by an early music group, so I’m looking forward to that.

Meanwhile….I took my 14-year-old (almost 15-year-old!) to a running store last night to get fitted for better running shoes. He’s been running on the high school cross-country team for the last few weeks and his coach pointed out that he was over-pronating so we went to get some more stabilizing shoes. It was quite the involved experience (he tried on like 8 pairs!) but we left with one he liked. And several pairs of running socks because, hey, we were there.

It’s been fun to watch him do this sport, which I’m now realizing would have been a fairly accessible high school or middle school sport to do. Like on an average day they do some warm-ups then go for a 45-minute run. That sounds like a very pleasant way to end a school day! Not that dissimilar to what I do now.

Although I’ve actually been running in the morning more lately. Now that no one usually needs to be up before 7 a.m. if I pop up early enough, I will go run 2 miles on the treadmill. I’ve been aiming to do some speed work during these sessions. I’m really, really slow (my “speed” is like 7 mph) but hopefully it will help. I do another long run this weekend, but probably not quite as long because I’m planning to do a hike with an area trails association too. Hopefully tonight will be fairly chill (such as it ever is) because it’s been a long week. I went to two back-to-school nights this week, but those are now over. We hit all four! I also feel like I’ve been doing a lot of paperwork. The two high school kids will go to NYC with their school music program this spring and I need to register for that and I was somewhat blindsided by the paperwork volume for an activity for the 9-year-old. I signed him up for an after-school robotics activity, but since it’s run by the official aftercare provider, I had to do everything to register for that as a childcare agency – like the various agreements, vaccination record, getting the app from the childcare provider with a pin to check him out (as did everyone else who might check him out), etc. Whoa.

In the meantime, here’s this week’s content… Over at the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community page, I just posted the recording of our book club discussion on Jodi Wellman’s You Only Die Once. Membership is $9/month and we have multiple discussion threads going each week on issues related to work and life. Please check it out!

The Before Breakfast podcast featured my longer episode where I interview Sarah Hart-Unger about mornings and routines. I also have an episode advising to “Check if you’ll need to reschedule” and one on the idea to “Start a goal club.”

At Vanderhacks I wrote that “Complaining is boring.” I suggested that one might “Map out a busy season.” And behind the paywall I noted that “Procrastination happens” — but here are my tips for getting things done anyway. Next week I’ll be starting my video posts (I believe usually on Tuesdays but we shall see).

Thanks for reading!