Speaker 1: Episode three point eighty nine is episode two fifteen Creativity
Speaker 1: Over Consumerism with Miranda Anderson.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to
Speaker 2: save money, embrace simplicity, and live your life. Here your
Speaker 2: hosts Jen and Jill.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my
Speaker 1: name is Jill, and today we are resharing one of
Speaker 1: our favorite episodes that we did with Miranda Anderson.
Speaker 3: This was so long ago, but it still stands up.
Speaker 4: It's why we do these rerun episodes because we know
Speaker 4: you all are not going back into our backlog searching
Speaker 4: through our archives for this gem, so we're bringing it
Speaker 4: to your attention again because Miranda had some incredible nugget
Speaker 4: of wisdom, like true takeaways that have lasted me these
Speaker 4: past couple of years.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, So for those who don't know, Miranda Anderson and
Speaker 1: her family did a twelvemonth no shopping challenge, which we
Speaker 1: don't necessarily recommend for everyone, but for the select few
Speaker 1: who can do it, it does offer a lot of
Speaker 1: insight and something we always you know, preach about is
Speaker 1: how frugality inspires creativity and gives space for creativity. So
Speaker 1: that's why we loved this episode.
Speaker 3: First, this episode is brought to you by spring Break.
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Speaker 1: Yes, Jill, did you know the movie spring Break was
Speaker 1: filmed in Saint Petersburg?
Speaker 4: Yes, but I also thought, like the MTV any kind
Speaker 4: of reality stuff about spring Break was here, propat merging
Speaker 4: the two.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know. I just remember when I was young,
Speaker 1: Selena Gomez was here whoa filming for it. I never
Speaker 1: watched it, though, because I experience it in real life,
Speaker 1: and I yeah, don't let a drunken twenty something hold
Speaker 1: your baby. That's just great, that's life advice. Uh So,
Speaker 1: if you are interested in how frugality fosters this mindset
Speaker 1: and this lifestyle of creativity versus I would say fast
Speaker 1: consumption or instant consumption, you know, instead of consumerism. Then
Speaker 1: a couple other episodes to check out. Episode three seventy
Speaker 1: eight Psychological Reasons Why We Impulse by one of my
Speaker 1: favorite episodes, and then episode three sixty eight Deinfluencing Yourself
Speaker 1: from Social Media with Paige Pritchard, another one of my
Speaker 1: favorite episodes. Those are both really good. Today we're talking
Speaker 1: about not just like the nuts and bolts of not spending,
Speaker 1: but Miranda she's a great content creator. She published her
Speaker 1: book More Than Enough back in twenty nineteen, so that's
Speaker 1: a really good book to read if you want to
Speaker 1: read about somebody's no shopping year long no shopping child.
Speaker 1: Since then, she's created a lot of content about around sustainability, intentionality.
Speaker 1: She's not even she's not a personal finance content creator,
Speaker 1: so she's just got a lot of wisdom on creating
Speaker 1: space essentially by limiting our consumption.
Speaker 3: Let's get into it.
Speaker 1: Miranda Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to
Speaker 5: be here.
Speaker 4: Oh we are thrilled to have you because we love interviews.
Speaker 4: It's our favorite and we're just gonna jump right in.
Speaker 4: You've got so much to share with us and perspective,
Speaker 4: and so let's get to it. Miranda, can you tell
Speaker 4: us just a little bit about yourself, your family and
Speaker 4: how you then decided to do a twelvemonth no shopping challenge?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 5: So, I am Miranda Anderson. I'm a mom of three.
Speaker 5: My kids are now almost thirteen, almost eleven, and eight.
Speaker 5: I have one lovely husband, two dogs, two cats, six chickens.
Speaker 5: I now live in Richmond, Virginia, But when we did
Speaker 5: the shopping challenge back in twenty seventeen, we were living
Speaker 5: in Austin, Texas. And I feel like maybe, like a
Speaker 5: lot of your listeners who get, you know, find their
Speaker 5: way to this podcast, maybe recognize at some point that
Speaker 5: they're running on a treadmill that doesn't seem to ever
Speaker 5: shut off. I was, you know, a young mom. I
Speaker 5: had a great job, my husband had a good job.
Speaker 5: We had just gotten out of school and bought a
Speaker 5: big house with a big yard and felt like we
Speaker 5: were finally like doing it, checking all those boxes for
Speaker 5: like adulthood and success. And I got a mini van
Speaker 5: and I now had like rooms that I didn't have
Speaker 5: enough furniture for, and I was doing all the things
Speaker 5: that I was supposed to do in order to feel fulfilled, content, successful, happy, joyful.
Speaker 5: And while I felt those things sometimes, and you know
Speaker 5: a lot of the time, they didn't stem from what
Speaker 5: from my circumstances. They didn't stem from my house, from
Speaker 5: my shoes, from my closet. They stemmed from experiences and
Speaker 5: from my family and from these small moments. And yet
Speaker 5: most of my time and energy and money was spent
Speaker 5: on things meant to make my life better. And I
Speaker 5: had kind of this aha moment. I've been online for
Speaker 5: a long time. I was an og blogger. I started
Speaker 5: a blog in two thousand and seven. It was a
Speaker 5: hobby for many years, and around a couple of years
Speaker 5: before our no shopping challenge, I had converted my blog
Speaker 5: into my job and quit my other full time job,
Speaker 5: and so I was blogging full time and the way
Speaker 5: that I was making money was through sponsorships. Ironically, one
Speaker 5: of the third party sponsors that I had was for
Speaker 5: an organization store, and my brief was too I was
Speaker 5: going to do a whole blog post about how to
Speaker 5: organize my kitchen cabinets. And so I had a budget
Speaker 5: of five hundred dollars to go to this store and
Speaker 5: buy baskets and bins and caddies and everything you can imagine.
Speaker 5: And now there's this really popular Netflix show right where
Speaker 5: they come out with all the stuff. So that was
Speaker 5: me ten years ago, right, come out with all this stuff.
Speaker 5: And I got into my kitchen and I started pulling
Speaker 5: things out of my kitchen cabinets and realized I had
Speaker 5: just spent all of this money and brought these bags
Speaker 5: of things into my home in order to organize the
Speaker 5: stuff that I didn't even remember that I had that
Speaker 5: was buried in these kitchen cabinets, just clutter, random junk
Speaker 5: mail stuff that I like, party supplies that I had
Speaker 5: bought for a party that I hadn't yet hosted, and
Speaker 5: so they were yet unused, even though it had been
Speaker 5: over a year. Just I had all this stuff, and
Speaker 5: yet I was just adding to it, and I it
Speaker 5: was like the light switch turned on and I recognized
Speaker 5: that the habit were not aligned with my values and
Speaker 5: that I was that I was just that there wasn't
Speaker 5: really a purpose to the kind of keeping up with
Speaker 5: the Joneses, keeping up with the Pinterest board. And so
Speaker 5: that was kind of my moment of I don't think
Speaker 5: that I want to keep doing this, this isn't working.
Speaker 5: What else could we do? And I had just watched
Speaker 5: a documentary about minimalism and one of the things that I, well,
Speaker 5: I found the whole thing highly unrelatable. One of the
Speaker 5: pieces that I really liked was to use what you had,
Speaker 5: just use the things that you already have. And so
Speaker 5: I discussed with my husband this idea using the things
Speaker 5: that we already had and not adding to it for
Speaker 5: the next year. It was January, so it was convenient
Speaker 5: timing to think, like, oh, New Year's resolution, and he
Speaker 5: was on board. So we embarked on our challenge.
Speaker 3: What an amazing timeline and journey.
Speaker 4: I mean, first of all, wow to your family run
Speaker 4: down and I love that you specify just one husband
Speaker 4: in that whole mead.
Speaker 1: Yes, that was a very important thing for me to hear.
Speaker 5: Yeah, old enough.
Speaker 4: Oh, this sobering image that I feel I can relate
Speaker 4: to of going out and getting all of the things
Speaker 4: bringing them back into your home. Like I feel like
Speaker 4: I can picture you with the excitement, and I think
Speaker 4: I hear so many people say, Oh, wouldn't it just
Speaker 4: be so great to have tons of money to just
Speaker 4: go and get all the pretty containers, And you actually
Speaker 4: had it.
Speaker 3: You did it.
Speaker 4: You had five hundred dollars to spend, which would be
Speaker 4: a lot of people's dream to go do that, and
Speaker 4: then you come back with bags and bags and bags.
Speaker 4: Just the image feels seared into my mind right now.
Speaker 3: And then that realization, like I'm with you in that
Speaker 3: aha moment of.
Speaker 4: I just brought stuff to manage stuff, to keep cleaning
Speaker 4: my stuff and doing stuff with my off holy sayings.
Speaker 5: But then, yes, what.
Speaker 4: I think is really interesting about your story, Miranda, is
Speaker 4: how that realization led you to a twelve month no
Speaker 4: shopping challenge. I feel like some people could realize that
Speaker 4: and be like, Ah, isn't that funny? I bought stuff
Speaker 4: to manage my stuff, and then they move on. But you,
Speaker 4: you didn't even go to a one month challenge. You
Speaker 4: did the whole twelve month thing. So how did how
Speaker 4: did that come about? How did you get like your dog,
Speaker 4: six cats, one husband, four children on board with this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so at the time it was just one dog
Speaker 5: along with the children and the husband. So then the
Speaker 5: chickens have always the chickens are on board for anything. Anytime.
Speaker 1: I was so chill. They're savages, but they're chill.
Speaker 5: So you know, it's so funny because I don't know
Speaker 5: that I ever even considered that, like doing something shorter
Speaker 5: than a year, And it was probably the hype of
Speaker 5: being close to the beginning year, if I'm being totally honest,
Speaker 5: like I've never really thought like, why didn't we do
Speaker 5: one month or three months? Like I think I was
Speaker 5: kind of looking for as I always am. I'm always
Speaker 5: fairly goal oriented, and I like the idea of progress,
Speaker 5: and like I like a project. I like thinking, like
Speaker 5: what am I going to be tackling this year? What
Speaker 5: am I looking forward to? So I think because of timing,
Speaker 5: that's what lent to this idea of a one year challenge,
Speaker 5: because it just made sense. It was January, let's do
Speaker 5: this for a year. I think the other thing is
Speaker 5: that that's a model that I've seen in a lot
Speaker 5: of books, and you know, like I love the Happiness
Speaker 5: Project by Gretchen Rubin, that's you know, this one year challenge.
Speaker 5: I had seen other people do you know, challenges of
Speaker 5: different sorts for a year, leaving the you know, turning
Speaker 5: off their phones for a year, or not using the
Speaker 5: internet for a year, or living in an RV for
Speaker 5: a year. You know, so just kind of made sense.
Speaker 5: I guess I was lucky that my husband was. I mean,
Speaker 5: at the time, he was home a lot less. He
Speaker 5: was working a ton at his job, and so I
Speaker 5: did most of the shopping anyway, So he was like, great,
Speaker 5: you don't want to shop for a year? Sounds good
Speaker 5: to me, I mean, I think to him, it was
Speaker 5: just like, yeah, like, how could I say no to this.
Speaker 5: My kids were young enough as well that they didn't
Speaker 5: have like we sat them down and had a family
Speaker 5: conversation about it. I remember saying, when you like, for
Speaker 5: for a while, you know, until next January, until after Christmas,
Speaker 5: it next year, we're not going to buy any new
Speaker 5: toys when we go to the store, and we're just
Speaker 5: going to use the ones that we already have. So
Speaker 5: if you want a toy and we aren't going to
Speaker 5: buy a new one, can you think of anything that
Speaker 5: you could do? And my you know, at the time
Speaker 5: five year old was like, well, we could make a toy.
Speaker 5: I'm like, yeah, we totally could make a toy. These
Speaker 5: are my kids that we'd take them on hikes and
Speaker 5: they're like playing with rocks and sticks anyway, you know,
Speaker 5: So I'm like, yeah, we could totally make a toy.
Speaker 5: And also, I'm a crafter. I had been a DIY blogger,
Speaker 5: and so I have a craft room full of stuff,
Speaker 5: and we you know, on odd days, we'd go in
Speaker 5: and just pull out scraps and make stuff anyway, So
Speaker 5: making things was not an unusual idea. So it didn't
Speaker 5: feel like we were on an island. It was like, well,
Speaker 5: we have a house full of stuff. I think the
Speaker 5: other thing, too, was that I had just organized these
Speaker 5: cabinets and made them very beautiful with my five hundred
Speaker 5: dollars worth of containers, and I was super conscious of
Speaker 5: how many things I had in the walls of my
Speaker 5: house that I hadn't even been thinking about. We had
Speaker 5: lived in that house at that point for about three
Speaker 5: years and three and a half years maybe, and I
Speaker 5: had kitchen cabinets full of things. I had a pantry
Speaker 5: full of things. I had a home office full of stuff.
Speaker 5: My kid's closets were full of stuff, My own closet
Speaker 5: was full of stuff. I had a craft room full
Speaker 5: of stuff. We had a garage that we didn't park
Speaker 5: our car in, as many people can relate to. So
Speaker 5: I think I did a quick walkthrough and was like,
Speaker 5: what am I buying anyway? Like what are the things
Speaker 5: that I'm continually adding to our lives on like a
Speaker 5: weekly basis, a target run here, or a quick online
Speaker 5: click of the mouse there, Like what is this? Where
Speaker 5: is it all going? And why do I need it?
Speaker 5: And so I think it was different than if we
Speaker 5: really like had nothing or the bare minimum and was like, oh,
Speaker 5: we're not gonna buy anymore, but we actually don't have
Speaker 5: any clothes to wear, like we had plenty, as I
Speaker 5: assume most people. I don't know, most people probably do
Speaker 5: right like have enough, And it's just about deciding that
Speaker 5: what you have is in math rather than deciding that
Speaker 5: it isn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I And the whole time you're like talking and
Speaker 1: thinking of the show that you mentioned earlier where they're
Speaker 1: just organizing all the stuff, and how I thought I
Speaker 1: was gonna love that show and it only gave me anxiety,
Speaker 1: Like why are you holding on to it? Why do
Speaker 1: you need to organize it and just shuffle it around.
Speaker 1: It's like when you consolidate debts and it's like you
Speaker 1: think you're doing something, but you're you're you still have
Speaker 1: the same amount of debt. You haven't done anything to
Speaker 1: it except put it in one payment, which for some
Speaker 1: people makes sense, but like, no, it just that show
Speaker 1: gave me so much anxiety.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's really dope to like make things pretty for
Speaker 5: a while, because right, like, once you start using things
Speaker 5: then they probably aren't pretty anymore. It's kind of like
Speaker 5: the beginning of a dinner buffet, like and all you
Speaker 5: can eat restaurant, Like it looks really good until one
Speaker 5: person passes through that line and after that it's over, right.
Speaker 5: But the difference between that and actually digging in and
Speaker 5: deciding what your values are what matters most to you,
Speaker 5: how you want to spend your time, money, and energy,
Speaker 5: and then aligning the choices that you make with those things.
Speaker 5: And for us, it started with a pause with this
Speaker 5: we believe that we have enough, we're going to just
Speaker 5: make that decision straight off. And it was an experiment.
Speaker 5: I never went into it thinking like for sure, no
Speaker 5: matter what, We're not going to buy anything. I said,
Speaker 5: We're going to try this. We're going to try to
Speaker 5: not acquire any new things for the year and see
Speaker 5: what happens, and maybe we'll those six months and realize
Speaker 5: that it doesn't work. You know that we do absolutely
Speaker 5: need more clothes or whatever, but we're going to try
Speaker 5: and see. And I was overwhelmed by how simple it
Speaker 5: became once I got through the initial discomfort of walking
Speaker 5: into a store and then walking out with just grocery,
Speaker 5: like just like food, and like, you know, go buy
Speaker 5: groceries at Target. You always come home with a couple
Speaker 5: things from the dollar spot and like that cute mug
Speaker 5: that was on the end cap, and you know, just
Speaker 5: coming home with just like milk and eggs and grapes.
Speaker 5: I was like, this feels a little weird. And I
Speaker 5: didn't even browse to see what else I might want.
Speaker 5: And then it pretty soon became my norm, and it
Speaker 5: was so much easier than I expected that it would be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does take that like decision making process out
Speaker 1: of the equation, because you can make your meal plan,
Speaker 1: you can make your list, but when you go in
Speaker 1: there and you're just browsing in quotations like it always
Speaker 1: could be that you end up bringing something home impulsively.
Speaker 1: But when you're doing some kind of challenge, which is
Speaker 1: why we love challenges, and you make the decision to
Speaker 1: say no to everything or to the things you've already
Speaker 1: decided on saying no to, it takes that question out
Speaker 1: so that you don't even are not even tempted to
Speaker 1: go brows. It's not even an option to look at
Speaker 1: what you could buy, which really cuts down on like
Speaker 1: the decision fatigue, because that's when we're tired from making
Speaker 1: all the decisions, is when we make the bad ones. Really,
Speaker 1: So that's what I love about the challenges.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So for your challenge specifically, what did it entail?
Speaker 1: Like I heard you said you bought groceries. What were
Speaker 1: kind of some of the specific rules for you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So our guidelines were that we weren't going to
Speaker 5: acquire non consumable goods and so on. Our kind of
Speaker 5: outline list that looked like clothes, shoes, furniture, technology, books, toys,
Speaker 5: recreational equipment, decorations, and anything that wouldn't be used up
Speaker 5: to completion. We also put like a little caveat in
Speaker 5: there for like body lotions and perfume and makeup and
Speaker 5: things like that that are technically consumable items. But if
Speaker 5: I had them already that I that weren't used up,
Speaker 5: then I had to use them up before I bought
Speaker 5: new ones, just to not like for me, it was
Speaker 5: an exercise in if I feel like shopping, am I
Speaker 5: gonna like go? You know, kind of create a loophole
Speaker 5: into the non consumables. And so I just said, I'm
Speaker 5: just gonna blanket if I have enough shampoo. You know,
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna buy new shampoo until I'm like a
Speaker 5: couple of days out from until I'm putting water in
Speaker 5: the bottle type of thing, you know. But we could
Speaker 5: buy food. Of course, we bought like printer paper when
Speaker 5: the printer ran out of paper and ink, which it did,
Speaker 5: of course, because printers always run out of ink right
Speaker 5: when you need them. Replacing light bulbs, replacing like you know,
Speaker 5: filters for the for the car and for the house,
Speaker 5: basic maintenance stuff, and then when something broke, like if
Speaker 5: something broke, we could replace it. And also because we
Speaker 5: lived in Texas, we had kind of a unique situation
Speaker 5: where it's a fairly seasonless wardrobe. As I imagine it
Speaker 5: is where you all live in Florida, where you you know,
Speaker 5: you toss a light sweater over something in the winter,
Speaker 5: but other than that, like it's you can kind of
Speaker 5: wear similar things year round. And so that was true
Speaker 5: for us and for my kids. I knew, you know,
Speaker 5: when you have young kids, I'm always buying things like
Speaker 5: a little big anyway, So I thought, you know, they're
Speaker 5: going to make it through the end of the year
Speaker 5: with this stuff, except for shoes. And so we made
Speaker 5: also the kind of caveat that when they grew out
Speaker 5: of a pair of shoes, that we could replace them
Speaker 5: for a similar pair. And sure enough, like within a
Speaker 5: month or two of beginning the challenge, my middle sent
Speaker 5: grew out of his cowboy boots. We lived in Texas.
Speaker 5: You cannot be without a pair of cowboy boots, and
Speaker 5: he had walked through them like a hole in the
Speaker 5: bottom of them. They were like daily shoes.
Speaker 4: Those boots were made for walking daily shoes.
Speaker 5: Yes, okay, oh man, if you i that as five
Speaker 5: year olds walking around in their boots, I mean, it's
Speaker 5: the cutest thing ever. So he re upped and we
Speaker 5: got him a pair of bigger cowboy boots. So he
Speaker 5: can continue on.
Speaker 3: Yes, man, man, that's amazing.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: And of course everyone has to decide what they're going
Speaker 4: to do, what's going to work for them.
Speaker 3: I mean this all sounds very.
Speaker 4: Realistic and probably what it produced in all of you,
Speaker 4: just that creativity and problem solving and all of that.
Speaker 4: But speaking of you are definitely obviously quite creative. You've
Speaker 4: already mentioned a craft room that you had, and your
Speaker 4: kids talking about making their own toys and and then
Speaker 4: and passionate about creating. How do you balance or blend
Speaker 4: or find the intersection between what could be perceived as
Speaker 4: like opposing energies of creating and consuming, Like, how do
Speaker 4: you in this no spend, you know, no shop challenge,
Speaker 4: how did you reconcile the two creating and consuming with
Speaker 4: like not bringing more in?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: How can I stop being a craft hoarder?
Speaker 5: That's that's a question. Yeah, Well, I actually I feel
Speaker 5: like creation and consumption are really opposing energies, and that
Speaker 5: we spend we get so much well being from creation.
Speaker 5: We are creative beings. Humans are creative and it's something
Speaker 5: that's innate. Even if you're not a crafter. People like
Speaker 5: to make things. We like to bring things to life,
Speaker 5: even ideas or you know, books, songs, poetry, dinners, like
Speaker 5: whatever it is people are. Most people have something that
Speaker 5: kind of lights them up that is a creative endeavor.
Speaker 5: And consumption because of just the ease and the way
Speaker 5: that we value instantaneous problem solving and quick conveniences, consumption
Speaker 5: is kind of overridden. A lot of what used to
Speaker 5: be are opportunities for creation. Most homes used to make
Speaker 5: food and have a garden, and most people, men and
Speaker 5: women knew at least some basic mending and sewing and
Speaker 5: things like that for their households. I mean, if we
Speaker 5: go back one hundred years, people are chopping wood, people
Speaker 5: are painting and doing glass work and doing pottery, functional
Speaker 5: pottery that they are going to then use in their homes.
Speaker 5: And there's so many like really beautiful artisan crafts that
Speaker 5: used to be just part of normal life that are
Speaker 5: now kind of on the fringes. And while I'm not
Speaker 5: like a self proclaimed homesteader by any stretch of the imaginations,
Speaker 5: although I do have chickens, they're laying their own eggs
Speaker 5: being creative back there, and we do have a garden,
Speaker 5: I feel like necessity is the I mean this is
Speaker 5: such a common phrase. But necessity is the mother of invention, right,
Speaker 5: And when you need something and you don't have an automatic, easy,
Speaker 5: convenient way to acquire it, your mind goes to work
Speaker 5: in new ways. So rather than a quick trip to target,
Speaker 5: let's take the example of my five year old. Two
Speaker 5: weeks after we start our challenge, he says he remembers
Speaker 5: this conversation we had and he's like, hey, mom, I
Speaker 5: want a new toy. And he's got a toy room
Speaker 5: with plenty of toys. But I think he was just
Speaker 5: excited because we had talked about making a toy. And
Speaker 5: he's like, okay, mom, I want a toy today. Let's
Speaker 5: make a toy. After school, he came home from preschool.
Speaker 5: We went into the craft room and I said, what
Speaker 5: do you want to make? And he said, I want
Speaker 5: to make a car. So we found some clay. It
Speaker 5: was like air dric clay, but you could have achieved
Speaker 5: the same result with plato or something. It just wouldn't
Speaker 5: have lasted as long. And we looked up pictures of
Speaker 5: cars and he, you know, his cute little five year
Speaker 5: old hands, molded his little car and we used toothpicks
Speaker 5: to drill like the hole where you'd put the wheels on,
Speaker 5: and we spent an hour creating together in a really
Speaker 5: like low stakes environment because he was five and he
Speaker 5: wanted something for himself to play with. This wasn't going
Speaker 5: on display. I wasn't trying to sell it on Etsy.
Speaker 5: It was just a fun interaction with my son. And
Speaker 5: I recognized that two weeks before, if we hadn't made
Speaker 5: this challenge, that if my son had asked for a car,
Speaker 5: I probably would have said, oh, let's you know, the
Speaker 5: next time we're at Target, let's grab hot wheels. You know,
Speaker 5: it's like two dollars. It's not like the expense is
Speaker 5: the problem. The problem is the lack of opportunity to
Speaker 5: be creative together. The lack of opportunity, like we're starving
Speaker 5: ourselves of these possibilities of exercising our creativity in really
Speaker 5: interesting ways. And it was really fun throughout the whole challenge.
Speaker 5: And you know, this has become a really fundamental part
Speaker 5: of our family culture that we exercise our creativity. So
Speaker 5: we like to make decorations for the holidays, I really
Speaker 5: don't like to. I have like one little basket of
Speaker 5: multi use decorations, like a fabric pennant banner that we
Speaker 5: put up for Easter. We put it up for Christmas,
Speaker 5: so we put it up for birthdays, and we put
Speaker 5: it up for an anniversary. Like it's this, you know,
Speaker 5: it's multicolor. We use it whatever. But for individual holidays,
Speaker 5: rather than going and accumulating a bunch of new decorations,
Speaker 5: we use that as an opportunity to make them. And so,
Speaker 5: you know, for Easter coming up, we'll paint eggs and
Speaker 5: you know a lot of people do that. We'll make cookies,
Speaker 5: will my daughter, I'm sure she loves drawing, so she'll
Speaker 5: draw pictures and we'll put those up on the windows.
Speaker 5: And then after the holiday we just take it all down.
Speaker 5: We can recycle it, and then we move on and
Speaker 5: the next time we have an opportunity to do it again.
Speaker 5: There's just an interesting like if you if you take
Speaker 5: away kind of like what you were talking about Jen
Speaker 5: with the decision fatigue, If you take away the opportunity
Speaker 5: to quickly solve the problem of needing something new, what
Speaker 5: you do is open up this entire possibility of if
Speaker 5: I don't have the quick fix, then how am I
Speaker 5: going to get there? How do I achieve the same end,
Speaker 5: and it will always be a creative solution because it's
Speaker 5: not the easy solution. It's always going to be stretching,
Speaker 5: using what you have on hand, using things in new
Speaker 5: and different ways.
Speaker 4: I love the excitement that you're infusing under the banner
Speaker 4: of using what we already have. This statement that could
Speaker 4: feel quite stifling, a problematic, a barrier we won't get
Speaker 4: what we want. It's going to be frustrating and annoying.
Speaker 4: And how are we going to do it to just
Speaker 4: pure excitement, enjoy and giving opportunity and space and margin
Speaker 4: for our creativity to really come alive and blossom. And
Speaker 4: what that can produce relationally with those in your home
Speaker 4: and probably for yourself. What it what it draws to life,
Speaker 4: what it brings out, what it allows to come to
Speaker 4: the surface when we don't have the quick fixes immediately available.
Speaker 3: I just I love it. The excitement is contagious.
Speaker 1: My I know, I was so excited listening to you
Speaker 1: because I feel so strongly like with frugality, that it
Speaker 1: is not an inconvenient It's just not the most convenient.
Speaker 1: It gives you space to think creatively about how to
Speaker 1: solve your problem without spending money. On it immediately, and
Speaker 1: like sometimes we do spend money to solve our problems
Speaker 1: and we do take those quick fixes because it's worth
Speaker 1: it for our time, but it's not the first immediate response.
Speaker 1: Like that's all you have to change up is that
Speaker 1: it's just not the immediate response. And a way you
Speaker 1: can do that is of course through a no spend
Speaker 1: challenge or no shopping challenge where you kind of train
Speaker 1: your brain. But like that's not the ultimate goal. Like
Speaker 1: obviously you went back to shopping and like we we
Speaker 1: all buy things.
Speaker 5: That's great, but like.
Speaker 1: Just hearing you your experience with your son, like like
Speaker 1: we so often miss those opportunities because we are doing
Speaker 1: something like unproductive that we think is like more efficient
Speaker 1: and so yeah, it was just like beautiful, my heart
Speaker 1: was singing.
Speaker 5: Well, it's so interesting. Kids just so naturally do this.
Speaker 5: They don't have the option, you know, up to a
Speaker 5: certain age, they don't really have the option to go
Speaker 5: to the store and buy things. They don't have access
Speaker 5: to money, they don't have access to transportation. They do
Speaker 5: it's not really part of their worldview, right, So oftentimes
Speaker 5: you notice kids using things in ways that you've never
Speaker 5: thought of using them. Because all they had. It is
Speaker 5: pure creativity, is pure ingenuity. A few weeks ago, we
Speaker 5: had an eighty degree day here in Richmond, which was
Speaker 5: unusual for March, and so I took my eight year
Speaker 5: old out of school for the day and we went
Speaker 5: and spent the day of the beach and it was
Speaker 5: so fun. And we got halfway there and I realized, oh,
Speaker 5: I didn't bring any beach toys. Like the beach toys
Speaker 5: are in a bin, but because it was March, I
Speaker 5: hadn't pulled them out yet. They weren't like easily accessible.
Speaker 5: So I was like, oh, man, I didn't bring the
Speaker 5: beach toys. That's going to like cut down on how
Speaker 5: much fun she'll have the beach boy. Was I wrong?
Speaker 5: Like she doesn't care about having like the plastic beach
Speaker 5: toy that we collect, you know, that we have in
Speaker 5: the bin. She used the cans from we had packed
Speaker 5: a lunch. She used the cans and the extra like
Speaker 5: Oreo cookie container. Once the Oreos were gone, that became
Speaker 5: like a mold for her sand castle. She was collecting
Speaker 5: seashells and cigarette butts to decorate her sand castle, which
Speaker 5: we had to quickly led to cigarette Let's leave those
Speaker 5: ones over there, but just how like, yes, even for kids,
Speaker 5: like providing them with you know, really cute plastic sand
Speaker 5: toys is easy. That's easy. They see a rake and
Speaker 5: they're like, oh, rake, But that doesn't mean that they
Speaker 5: can't use the fork or like the seaweed you know
Speaker 5: those there's like sea branches that work like a rake.
Speaker 5: You know, it's just fascinating to open our adult selves
Speaker 5: up to that childlike creativity and that imagination of like
Speaker 5: if I didn't have any other option, what would I
Speaker 5: do here? I wouldn't just be frustrated and cry. I
Speaker 5: would look around and see what I could use in
Speaker 5: a new way. And I mean that's when really exciting
Speaker 5: things start to happen. That's when fun, That's when you
Speaker 5: make memories because you're not doing it the same way
Speaker 5: that it's always been done. You're doing it in a
Speaker 5: memorable way, in a different way. And those are things
Speaker 5: that our families remember. They're things that we remember.
Speaker 1: Yes, So how do you see society thwarting our creativity
Speaker 1: so that we can start to identify like what those
Speaker 1: triggers are.
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 5: I I teach craft classes on occasion, and one thing
Speaker 5: that I think is kind of funny. At the beginning
Speaker 5: of my classes, I'll often ask how many people have
Speaker 5: made something recently and not just thought that they made
Speaker 5: it because they looked at it on Pinterest, And people
Speaker 5: always kind of laugh, because what Instagram and Pinterest and
Speaker 5: the Internet has done has given us a false sense
Speaker 5: of like satiating that creative endeavor, that creative drive by
Speaker 5: having us see things. We see diy projects, we see remodel,
Speaker 5: we see something that we could do, and we consume
Speaker 5: the story of it, But we haven't actually done anything
Speaker 5: with our hands, we haven't actually made anything. And so
Speaker 5: I think separating out how much are we actually consuming?
Speaker 5: And maybe even you know, if you're curious, taking an
Speaker 5: actual inventory for a week, writing down your consumption versus
Speaker 5: your creation. How much time are you spending scrolling on
Speaker 5: social media, searching on Pinterest, looking at what's happening in
Speaker 5: other people's world versus building something tangible in your own space.
Speaker 5: How much time do you spend reading versus writing or journaling.
Speaker 5: How much time you spend searching through cookbooks or again,
Speaker 5: like on Pinterest for your meal plan versus actually cooking
Speaker 5: and enjoying the process of creating those meals. I find
Speaker 5: a lot of joy and I think most people do
Speaker 5: in the moment of like through the process of creation.
Speaker 5: In if you can be mindful in those moments, put
Speaker 5: your phone aside, you know, turn on some music, light
Speaker 5: a candle, and like, actually allow yourself to be in
Speaker 5: your body during these creative processes. It changes us. So
Speaker 5: I think just acknowledging, like how much are you consuming
Speaker 5: versus creating and think of that as a balance where
Speaker 5: you for your wellbeing, you want your creation, the way
Speaker 5: that you're bringing things to life in the world, to
Speaker 5: be greater on a daily basis than your consumption.
Speaker 4: Speaking of creating together something that we get to do
Speaker 4: every single week, hmmm, I.
Speaker 1: Will consume this till the end of time and create
Speaker 1: more of it.
Speaker 2: The bill of the.
Speaker 6: Week, that's right, it's time for the best minute of
Speaker 6: your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his
Speaker 6: name is Williams. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, Maybe
Speaker 6: your car died and you're happy to not have to
Speaker 6: pay that bill anymore. Duck bills, Buffalo bills, bill clon.
Speaker 1: This is the bill of the week, Miranda. Every week
Speaker 1: we asked one of our listeners or our guest to
Speaker 1: share with us their bill for the week, and we
Speaker 1: gave you twenty seconds before we started recording to think
Speaker 1: of yours, So please share with us what you have
Speaker 1: come up with.
Speaker 5: The very first thing that came to mind is going
Speaker 5: to sound kind of ironic after we've been talking about
Speaker 5: my no spend challenge and my no shopping challenge, But
Speaker 5: I will start by saying that the way that we
Speaker 5: buy clothes now after our challenge is in what I
Speaker 5: call capsule shopping. So I shop for clothes twice a
Speaker 5: year in the spring and in the fall, and during
Speaker 5: about a week and a half period, I audit all
Speaker 5: of my kids clothes and my own clothes. We decide
Speaker 5: what they have that still fits, what they need for
Speaker 5: the upcoming season. I do this. My husband manages his
Speaker 5: own life, but I do it for myself and for
Speaker 5: the kids, and then we decide what we need, set
Speaker 5: a budget for it, and we go do all of
Speaker 5: the shopping for the whole season for six months in
Speaker 5: about two weeks. What this does, I mean you can
Speaker 5: imagine all the benefits for it. I have a really
Speaker 5: clear budget, I'm able to be really thoughtful because I'm
Speaker 5: just clothes shopping, like I can shop secondhand. I know
Speaker 5: that what we're getting anyway, there lots of benefits, so
Speaker 5: we just wrap that up could go. So now all
Speaker 5: of my kids and myself we've got all of our
Speaker 5: spring summer clothes. I don't need to think about talk
Speaker 5: about look at clothes again until September. And one of
Speaker 5: the last stores that we were shopping at, I had
Speaker 5: my son and my daughter with me. Normally I do
Speaker 5: it one on one with the kids because they really
Speaker 5: like the personal focus and we get to you know,
Speaker 5: it's a great math exercise for them too, because they
Speaker 5: each get a budget and then as they choose things,
Speaker 5: we deducted and it becomes kind of like a math thing.
Speaker 5: And so at one of these one of the I
Speaker 5: think it probably was the very last store, that we
Speaker 5: were finishing up a couple things. My daughter and I
Speaker 5: each got a spring dress and my son got a
Speaker 5: pair of a swim trunks that he needed, and we
Speaker 5: were just kind of finishing. We had five items and
Speaker 5: they were all fifty percent off according to the sign
Speaker 5: on the front of the store, and so I had
Speaker 5: kind of a rough estimate in my head of like,
Speaker 5: this is probably going to be around two hundred dollars
Speaker 5: based on what they were, and so the girl rings
Speaker 5: all up and then she charges me five hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty dollars and I paid the bill. I mean, I
Speaker 5: like paid it. And then I said I had this.
Speaker 5: There's always this awkward I don't I'm not really awkward
Speaker 5: around money. I actually am fine talking about money. I
Speaker 5: like talking about money. I think it's great and we
Speaker 5: all should be more open about it, as you all
Speaker 5: know and talk about every single week. And there's something
Speaker 5: kind of like weird about this moment when you're like,
Speaker 5: did you make a mistake? Because even though I could
Speaker 5: pay five hundred and fifty dollars for these five items,
Speaker 5: I don't think that I am supposed to, you know.
Speaker 5: So I said, hey, she's already bagging it and like
Speaker 5: ready to send me out the door. And I said, hey,
Speaker 5: how could you tell me how we got to that total?
Speaker 5: And she was like, oh sure, let me look, and
Speaker 5: like she was on like this little handheld device. She
Speaker 5: was having a hard time, so she called the manager
Speaker 5: here and I'm like, oh no, no, it's turned into like
Speaker 5: a thing. And I'm the embarrassing lady at the front
Speaker 5: of the store that like has a problem with my bill. Well,
Speaker 5: turns out she had rung me up twice for every
Speaker 5: single item, and so she was charging me double for
Speaker 5: every single thing on the list. It wasn't one er,
Speaker 5: it was the whole thing. And the lady. This was
Speaker 5: so funny because they talked about it kind of quietly
Speaker 5: behind the counter. They never like acknowledged that to me.
Speaker 5: She just said, we're going to refund three hundred and
Speaker 5: fifteen dollars back onto your credit card. And I was like, oh, great,
Speaker 5: that sounds more reason why I'm doing the math in
Speaker 5: my head. I'm like, yeah, that ends up around what
Speaker 5: I expected it to be. And that was very funny
Speaker 5: that they just if I had not said anything, she
Speaker 5: just would have sent me out the store having paid
Speaker 5: double for every single item in the bag.
Speaker 1: Was it user error or was it like a computer error?
Speaker 5: It was like probably a combination of both. I don't know.
Speaker 5: She had like a handheld scanner, and so I think
Speaker 5: it just scanned double. But then she didn't. She didn't
Speaker 5: seem funny to her. I mean didn't see she was
Speaker 5: just like, oh, that'll be like a million dollars swim
Speaker 5: drops like this seems very odd, you know, So Yeah,
Speaker 5: my bill was a high bill that then was very
Speaker 5: happily brought down to a reasonable bill, an expected bill
Speaker 5: because I opened my mouth, and I'm really glad that
Speaker 5: I did. Uh.
Speaker 4: Those handheld point of sale systems, I've got my own story.
Speaker 3: I won't get into that.
Speaker 4: I think I said it in a different episode, but
Speaker 4: something something where button gets pushed and starts charging a double.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't.
Speaker 4: We don't need that, especially not us who We've got
Speaker 4: budgets and we know how much we're spending on stuff.
Speaker 5: I was like, how did I so vastly underestimate what's
Speaker 5: happening here? Like these swim trunks are mined.
Speaker 3: And well done.
Speaker 4: We got a fixed sticking up for yourself and not
Speaker 4: paying more than you needed to, Yeah.
Speaker 1: That is hard I always internalized. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess I must have made a mistake with how
Speaker 1: they were priced. Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking, yeah.
Speaker 5: The stickers, or like maybe the set they didn't take
Speaker 5: the signage down out front or something. You know, you
Speaker 5: have that moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll examine the receipt in the privacy of my
Speaker 4: own home because I'm too exposed right now.
Speaker 3: It was on the spot, Yeah, got it.
Speaker 5: Taken care of and finished up, done and dusted. Now
Speaker 5: I think about close shopping again for another second.
Speaker 3: I love that embedded tip. That is perfect. Don't have
Speaker 3: to take up mental space to stop the year.
Speaker 5: It is the best.
Speaker 4: Well, if you all who are listening, you've got a bill,
Speaker 4: whether it's a regular size bill or a double sized bill,
Speaker 4: or a bill that.
Speaker 3: It's too much bill, you need it to be last bill.
Speaker 4: Visit Ruval Friends podcast dot com slash bill.
Speaker 3: Leave us your bill. We're here for it. And now
Speaker 3: it's time for.
Speaker 1: The Lightning Round. Lightning Round the second half of the
Speaker 1: show that's light to shorter than the first half of
Speaker 1: the show. This is what I'm now going to call
Speaker 1: the lightning It's not.
Speaker 3: A very lightning way.
Speaker 5: I love it.
Speaker 1: Nope, it's the opposite. So today's Lightning Round. We're all
Speaker 1: going to get a smidge vulnerable, but in like a
Speaker 1: fun way. So, Miranda, you are so creative, and so
Speaker 1: this episode has been a great mixture of like natural
Speaker 1: like traditional creativity, but then also just like getting creative
Speaker 1: and how we live. So we wanted to like know
Speaker 1: from all of us, like what something that you are
Speaker 1: creating right now that you're excited about. So, Miranda, as
Speaker 1: our guest, you can go first.
Speaker 5: Oh, let me think, Well, I have I have a
Speaker 5: few things we recently moved, and so something that I've
Speaker 5: just been kind of re outlining for myself is our
Speaker 5: garden plan. We we renovated a house for four years
Speaker 5: and touched every inch of it. It was like so lovely, beautiful, garden,
Speaker 5: great everything. And then we had one of those like
Speaker 5: flash of lightning appropriate for the Lightning Round moments of
Speaker 5: there's a house down the block that fits our family
Speaker 5: a little bit better. So all of that happened in
Speaker 5: the last couple months, and I now have no garden
Speaker 5: and it's April and I'm starting again. So I am
Speaker 5: in the process of creating a new backyard garden. And
Speaker 5: I loved the raised bed plans that I did before.
Speaker 5: I created this a plan where using cedar fence posts,
Speaker 5: I can build raised garden beds for under one hundred
Speaker 5: dollars each, which is like, you know, a third of
Speaker 5: what they cost if you are using big cedar planks
Speaker 5: or having someone else build them for you. So that's
Speaker 5: that's on my docket this month, getting my cedar beds
Speaker 5: put in, figuring out exactly what I want to plant
Speaker 5: to yield the biggest bumper crop out of my twelve
Speaker 5: square feet backyard garden. And I just find so much
Speaker 5: magic in gardening that I didn't even I didn't even know.
Speaker 5: So I'm excited about creating a new garden.
Speaker 3: Mmm, Miranda speaking, you speaking to my soul right now.
Speaker 1: To Jill's soul. Yeah, you speak to Jill's soul. I'm
Speaker 1: here soul searching I've got.
Speaker 4: So I'll just go next because I'm already talking. Oh
Speaker 4: and that's beautiful, Miranda. I've got so many projects going
Speaker 4: on constantly, like I think I'm breaking my body. I
Speaker 4: am expecting so much of my body these days. Similarly,
Speaker 4: I do have a garden, so I love that, and
Speaker 4: I love visiting it and continuing to chat with all
Speaker 4: my babies out there.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that you were going to say talk to it,
Speaker 1: because if you were going to say it, I.
Speaker 3: Was going to say, they need encouragement.
Speaker 5: Do there's real studies about that.
Speaker 4: It's a real Oh yeah, And you know, I'm upset
Speaker 4: with one of my plants and I'm telling it so
Speaker 4: and it might not survive because the things I've said. Anyhow,
Speaker 4: that's not the thing I'm currently creating. Similar to you
Speaker 4: as well, Miranda, we're under renovations.
Speaker 3: We have been for two years.
Speaker 4: We probably got like another ten years ahead of us,
Speaker 4: but we do all of our own renovations, so it
Speaker 4: does feel like a really creative endeavor. And the current
Speaker 4: project right now is a lot of things, but I'll
Speaker 4: say Airbnb. We're still working on that, but we're getting
Speaker 4: close to the even more creative stages. Of course, figuring
Speaker 4: out the layout was a big problem solving process for us,
Speaker 4: but I'm getting to the point where I can start
Speaker 4: to pick out how do I want the tile to
Speaker 4: look and the coloring and what do we want to
Speaker 4: make the space for our guests, And that's been fun,
Speaker 4: so fun.
Speaker 5: Jen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So hopefully we are undergoing renovations by this time
Speaker 1: this episode airs. But that's not the one that I'm
Speaker 1: actually most excited about. We have been working on our
Speaker 1: Virtual Summit, our second annual summit, and it's such a
Speaker 1: joy to create because we get to talk to so
Speaker 1: many cool people, like doing all the interviews for it.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of summits are just like people
Speaker 1: talking over a slide show, but we love getting to
Speaker 1: know people and kind of curating like we've been trying
Speaker 1: to curate four days and twenty talks where it's like
Speaker 1: you can take a course on controlling your spending and
Speaker 1: improving your spending over like a full course over four
Speaker 1: days for free. And so to me, it's been so
Speaker 1: excited to try and innovate in this like online summit
Speaker 1: space and still like and bring people together in it.
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, like deep into it and we're very
Speaker 1: excited for I'm very excited for it to be to
Speaker 1: head into the world at the end of this month.
Speaker 4: John, you're very digitally creative. I'm more tactile. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My creativity, yeah, I create all the time on the Internet.
Speaker 1: That's like where I find my creativity. So I feel
Speaker 1: like I cannot do I don't have arts and crafts hoard.
Speaker 1: That's not my thing, but I do know people that do.
Speaker 1: Like but if you could hoard digital like crafts like
Speaker 1: I would have a oh my gosh, yes, websites articles
Speaker 1: like every oh my gosh, I would be a hoarder
Speaker 1: for sure. Tabs you could if tabs didn't go away.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of tabs.
Speaker 5: I've never I've never figured out the tabs. People, I
Speaker 5: I feel like you have like maybe three at a time,
Speaker 5: and I close the browser at the end of every
Speaker 5: browsing session like it's it's gone out. And then I
Speaker 5: have friends that like, I don't know, how do you
Speaker 5: keep track?
Speaker 4: Though you don't it's the anxiety that keeps you moving?
Speaker 5: What about history though? Can't you use your history? I
Speaker 5: sometimes like I.
Speaker 3: Do still do that?
Speaker 5: Huh?
Speaker 1: Sometimes you close the tab too early and you're like, man,
Speaker 1: I needed that tab? What the others open?
Speaker 5: I'm curious. So this is totally off subject, but if
Speaker 5: your tabs correlate to your notifications like on text or
Speaker 5: on email or anything else, like, do you clear the
Speaker 5: inbox and clear the text out and stuff like that
Speaker 5: or do you have that little Do you have badges
Speaker 5: that tell you how many unread are happening at any
Speaker 5: given point.
Speaker 1: So I have muted all of my notifications and all
Speaker 1: my badges, and I just ignore the fact that I
Speaker 1: have over two thousand and unread emails.
Speaker 2: You can.
Speaker 1: I have a heart on my personal inbox I have
Speaker 1: for my business inbox. I for sure have an assistant
Speaker 1: who like keeps us an inbox zero. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: have to my personal email inbox is quite overwhelming. And
Speaker 1: I still have unroll me, which is like a thing
Speaker 1: that you can yeah, roll up a bunch of promotional emails.
Speaker 5: I have that and it still keeps coming.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Well, Miranda, if someone wants you to be
Speaker 3: one of their.
Speaker 4: Tabs in their life, on their computer, on their phone,
Speaker 4: where can they get more from you?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Well, I have a weekly podcast all about intentional living.
Speaker 5: It's called Live Free Creative. It comes out Thursday mornings
Speaker 5: at six am Eastern and this show helps people live
Speaker 5: more aligned with their values. Live on Purpose so touches
Speaker 5: a little bit on frugality, but mostly on you know,
Speaker 5: all different aspects of living a life with the things
Speaker 5: that matter most to you. And I'm online on Instagram
Speaker 5: at Live Free Miranda. Occasionally, I've found a positive correlation
Speaker 5: with the amount of time I spend off of Instagram
Speaker 5: and my life satisfaction, So I check in a couple
Speaker 5: times a week. And then I have a book. I
Speaker 5: wrote a book about our year long challenge and published
Speaker 5: a couple of years ago. It's called More Than Enough,
Speaker 5: and that's available on my website Live Freecreative dot co
Speaker 5: and on Amazon. Yeah. So those are the places. I'm
Speaker 5: mostly my favorite thing, as you all could attest to.
Speaker 5: I'm sure my favorite thing is the podcast, and I'm
Speaker 5: being able to have a weekly chat with people and
Speaker 5: show up there talk about things that are interesting. So
Speaker 5: that's my favorite place to create, is my live Free
Speaker 5: Creative podcast.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, thanks again Miranda for coming on the show,
Speaker 1: and we can't wait to talk to you again one day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I hope that you found that interview as inspiring as
Speaker 1: we did two years ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Again, still remembering back to this conversation that we had
Speaker 4: in some of the nuggets and just this the highlight.
Speaker 4: I know that we've talked about creativity, but the way
Speaker 4: that she described it resonated with me in a really
Speaker 4: beautiful way. I'm curious, though, Jen, we've kind of switched
Speaker 4: roles only slightly in that lightning round what we're creating
Speaker 4: now and what we're excited about. And I was in
Speaker 4: the midst of renovations. I'm pretty much wrapped up, but
Speaker 4: you are thick in the midst of renovations. Yea, the
Speaker 4: summit is not something we're doing. If you did listen
Speaker 4: to Jen's you know, vulnerability round, that's not happening right now.
Speaker 3: Maybe again in the future.
Speaker 1: In a different way. We're contemplating bringing it back in
Speaker 1: a different way. So but yeah, I would say in
Speaker 1: that season, honestly, I was doing too many things all
Speaker 1: at once, and that's why the thing on top of it,
Speaker 1: or the thing that was most timely was definitely.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: That that that was the top on my mind. Behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, I was real stressed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it did.
Speaker 4: I mean, it did implement a lot of creativity and
Speaker 4: it was very well received.
Speaker 3: We've had people ask.
Speaker 4: About the next one, and we love we love being
Speaker 4: creative with it. It's really not rinse and repeat. Other
Speaker 4: than the template for our podcast episodes. That one is
Speaker 4: rinse and repeat. Since day one, we've we've had that
Speaker 4: bill of a week.
Speaker 1: But we are now getting creative with renovations, and now
Speaker 1: you're getting creative with I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what you're getting creative.
Speaker 4: Friend letter has a friend letter, very fun outlet for
Speaker 4: me and both of us writing this book.
Speaker 1: Yes, I feel I read, yeah, I read these things
Speaker 1: and I see stress. But really the question was what
Speaker 1: we're creating we're.
Speaker 3: Excited about I'm excited about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Same.
Speaker 1: The book is a labor of true love.
Speaker 3: HM. Thanks everyone for listening.
Speaker 4: You know you know this already. You know what I'm
Speaker 4: about to say. We have a newsletter. It's called the
Speaker 4: Friend Letter. It goes out three times a week. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
Speaker 4: you're getting something in your inbox. But again we're not
Speaker 4: rinsing repeat. Monday is different from Wednesday, is different from Friday.
Speaker 4: So one of the emails has given you all the
Speaker 4: freebies for the week. The other one's talking about savings tips,
Speaker 4: the other ones talking about life hacks, money, mindset stuff
Speaker 4: prompts for you to consider. We're giving you things to
Speaker 4: meal plan and prep over the weekend. It is at
Speaker 4: the end of the month, we give you a budget
Speaker 4: toolkit like it is chalk.
Speaker 3: How much does this cost?
Speaker 4: It's free, jen why free relfriendspodcast dot com. But we
Speaker 4: also with this email. You can respond to the email
Speaker 4: and it comes straight to us because we're not a
Speaker 4: large machine over here. And we got this beautiful email
Speaker 4: that we want to highlight from Christina who said, thank
Speaker 4: you friends for offering this no spend January, I noticed
Speaker 4: that my debits in my checking account go mostly bills utilities, mortgage,
Speaker 4: and less to Kroger and Aldy Whin. I also noticed
Speaker 4: that I generate less trash waste and less recycling waste. Lastly,
Speaker 4: I made three big new to me meals using food
Speaker 4: I had my freezer and pantry. I am doing a
Speaker 4: no spend February now, thanks again for all you do.
Speaker 3: These are some guys.
Speaker 1: WI you guys. I love reading these emails, and some
Speaker 1: of them I catch in my inbox. Mostly Goldie catches
Speaker 1: them and sends them to me this way, but man,
Speaker 1: I love them. Keep them coming. Yeah, I'm so grateful it.
Speaker 1: You guys are are changing your lives as a result
Speaker 1: of these small little actions.
Speaker 4: Well done, Christina, and again, if you want in on
Speaker 4: this action, Google friendspodcast dot com shared Allure.
Speaker 1: Gorugle Friends is produced by Eric Siriani Chill, what will
Speaker 1: you be doing for Spring break? Seeing as we kind
Speaker 1: of get the week off of work since I have
Speaker 1: the week off of working, well, you don't really get
Speaker 1: the week.
Speaker 3: Off, oh, no break, no rest for the week.
Speaker 1: No rest for the weary. I get the week off.
Speaker 4: I am head in the sand writing art book. But
Speaker 4: also my mom's going to be.
Speaker 1: Here there, Yes, she's gonna be here.
Speaker 4: I'll take her to Saint Petebeach. I'll show her all
Speaker 4: the drunken something.
Speaker 1: Cold luck finding parking. That's all I have to say.
Speaker 4: I do think she was here around spring break at
Speaker 4: some point in the past, and we just ubered.
Speaker 1: We accidentally went to the beach forgetting that it was
Speaker 1: spring break once. Yeah, and we just turned around. We
Speaker 1: just turned around.
Speaker 3: So what are you doing? Your boys are off of
Speaker 3: school and daycare. What will it mean?
Speaker 1: Well, I am going to go and head to the
Speaker 1: library and see what tickets they have available.
Speaker 4: And for those who are still with us long enough
Speaker 4: to be a part of this after after show but
Speaker 4: still don't know about the library, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: So the library offers free tickets to places and you
Speaker 1: just got to reserve them. You usually get four passes.
Speaker 1: They're good for a week. And so we will head
Speaker 1: down there see what they have. Our library has a
Speaker 1: couple children's music so I'm hoping we snab one of
Speaker 1: those because they're not into art.
Speaker 4: Can you can you put your name on a list
Speaker 4: for like renting it out at a certain point.
Speaker 1: No, that's the that's the bad thing. You have to
Speaker 1: go in person. You can't reserve them online and just
Speaker 1: see what they have available, So that is the difficulty
Speaker 1: in that. But yeah, we're gonna maybe head to so
Speaker 1: I will only have Kai. Atlas will thankfully still be
Speaker 1: in daycare, so Mommy and Kai will just have like
Speaker 1: a week fun. Yeah, just doing stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: When does he get one on one time with you?
Speaker 3: That's so special?
Speaker 1: Every day? He actually gets it every day.
Speaker 3: That's like because I'm a good mom.
Speaker 1: No, because I pick him up from school before I
Speaker 1: pick up Atlas.
Speaker 3: How much time do you have with him between getting
Speaker 3: him and then.
Speaker 1: I pick him up at two thirty and then I
Speaker 1: pick Atlas up at like maybe five, so to an hour.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize that.
Speaker 1: But Travis gets home around three thirty, so one on
Speaker 1: one we have about an hour.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh that's cool. Wow what a hack? What?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 3: Yeah? A hack?
Speaker 1: But now I'm looking at I'm looking forward to my
Speaker 1: week off with my four year old