199 | Self-Care that isn't a cliche--Talking burnout, home life and more with Tami Hackbarth
Tami Hackbarth of 100% Guilt Free Self Care Podcast
When you hear the phrase "Self-Care" what comes to mind? To me, it's hearing people say "go take a bath and read a book" when the reality is the world can feel like it's spinning out of control. My guest today is trying to change our view of what self-care REALLY is.
Today I am talking about balancing the domestic load, in a conversation with life and work coach Tami Hackbarth. We are discussing the Fair Play method, focusing on the redistribution of domestic labor and mental loads to create a more equitable household dynamic. This episode is one where I want to bring together help for you as an entrepreneur in professional organizing, along with ways you can help our organizing clients as well--it's a double win and a double header epsiode!
We are talking about it ALL--family roles, parenting, and the division of labor, emphasizing the importance of communication and implementing changes in a team-oriented manner. Tami shares her expertise in helping clients manage their mental load and prevent burnout, bringing valuable advice for both professional organizers and their clients. The episode stresses the necessity of ongoing conversations and systems to maintain household balance and offers perspectives that are applicable to various family structures.
TIME STAMPS:
00:00 Introduction and Podcast Overview
02:13 Meet Tami Hackbarth: Life and Work Coach
11:49 The Fair Play Method: Redistributing Domestic Labor
17:24 Addressing Burnout and Mental Load
25:34 Client Stories: Teaching Kids Responsibility
26:31 The Laundry Debate: Independence vs. Pampering
30:00 Setting Household Standards: Minimum Standard of Care
32:22 Invisible Labor: Recognizing Unseen Efforts
34:00 Food Decisions: Balancing Family Preferences and Allergies
38:02 Collaborative Parenting: Sharing the Load
45:39 Communication Strategies: Regular Check-ins
47:30 Conclusion: Reflecting on the Conversation
You can listen here, read the full transcript below, or find us on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you love to listen to podcasts!
LINKS FOR LISTENERS
CONNECT WITH TAMI HACKBARTH: www.tamihackbarth.com
Tami's new course on Reducing Mental Load: https://www.tamihackbarth.com/reduce-mental-load
Connect with Melissa and Pro Organizer Studio: CLICK HERE
If you are interested in our Inspired Organizer® program, you can find us at www.inspiredorganizer.com and don't forget, we have a whole library of podcasts here, our YouTube channel, and you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pro Organizer Studio.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Melissa Klug: Hey pro organizers. It's Melissa. And I have a two parter for you because I talked for so long to my podcast guest and we covered so much ground that if I left it all in one podcast, you'd be like, Melissa, I'm exhausted.
A lot of times on this podcast, we're really just talking about things that help your organizing business. But today's episode has kind of an overlap of a lot of different things. It is something that can help your organizing business. It is something that can help your life as an entrepreneur.
And it's something that you can use to help your clients. I live better lives as well. So it's just a wonderful overlap. I like bringing you something that you're able to implement in your own life and also bring to clients. I think that's really where a lot of the magic in our organizing work happens.
And today I have a guest that brings all of these things together in a really great way. We are going to be talking about essentially a thing that is the real game of life. And I'm going to let her explain what that means.
But I just want to say one thing before the podcast starts—in today's podcast, we are going to be talking a lot about families and family roles. We are talking about parenting. We are talking about division of labor in a house. We're talking about women's roles in the house. So there are a lot of things wrapped up in this and at many times in the podcast, we are going to be talking about the concept of spouses or partners, marriages and parenting. And I just want to recognize that I know that we have a wide audience that listens to this and not all families look the same.
There is not a one size fits all for a modern family. We have lots of different family structures in the world, and a lot of different family structures that we service as organizers.
So as you're listening to this, I would just encourage you that if you don't hear your specific family situation being referenced, please stay tuned. It's a long podcast. We talk about a lot of different types of family structures. And I would also say, even if you live by yourself, there are ways that this Fair Play idea can work for you.
It's really interesting concept and I can't wait for you to listen. Okay. So let's get started with my guest Tami Hackbarth.
Melissa Klug: All right. If I told you that before I press record. My lovely podcast guest and I were talking about banana slugs. You might not believe me, but that's really what we were talking about right before we got started. So Tami, I'm happy to have you here.
Tami Hackbarth: Thank you. I'm really happy to be here. And if anyone has not yet had the experience of seeing a live banana slug, Please come to Northern California where they are prolific so you can wow your friends with how less disgusting they are than real slugs because real slugs grossness and banana slugs have these cute little faces and they they look like bananas.
Melissa Klug: And the way we got started on this subject was we were talking about a school that my friend's kid might go to that their mascot is the Fighting Pickles. So if you ever want to know, I think I should do a podcast of the before we start recording the podcast because sometimes that is the most entertaining thing that happens.
Absolutely. So I like that plan. It's a good plan. Well, Tami, we have I'm actually like a little concerned that I will have 212,000 things to talk to you about today. And you'll be like, ma'am, I have to go to dinner, . And so I'm gonna try to keep myself together. But can you give everyone just a little bit of your background, who you are, why you are on our delightful
Tami Hackbarth: podcast?
Yes, thank you for asking that. And if we haven't met yet, my name is Tami Hackbarth. I'm a life and work coach. I am a keynote speaker, an author, and I host the 100 percent Guilt Free Self Care podcast. I help Gen X women. And if you're like, I'm not Gen X. It's okay. Just come to the party. I help women get their time and energy back so they can create the world that they want to live in.
And what that means is I help people redistribute the mental load, the invisible work, the second shift. I bring my clients the gift of having their people that they live with, whether it is their in laws or the grandparents. or their children or their spouses or even their roommates together to run a house together like a team.
So I used to be an elementary school teacher. So I take giant concepts and I break them down into manageable pieces that even eight year olds can put in place. I love it.
Melissa Klug: I wanted to have you on for many, many reasons, but we have a very dear mutual friend, Carly Adams, who is in our Inspired Organizer group, is a professional organizer, and she has known you in real life for many years, and she just has told me time and time again, you have to get Tami on the podcast, and I'm like, I swear I will, and I, I just love everything that you do because we have like multiple layers of people that you can help here.
So obviously you have things that are going to help entrepreneurs, which everyone listening to this is, but the more important thing is it's not only going to help you, it is also going to help your clients. All of the professional organizers that listen to this, if you work with anyone, Who is a mom or a woman with or without children, these topics are relevant.
What we want to do is give you some tools and give you tools to help your clients. Lots of things that we're going to get into today. Who is your favorite kind of person to help?
Tami Hackbarth: I have a very, very soft spot for teachers. I'm married to a teacher. I spent a decade in the classroom. Many of my clients are teachers. I love teachers because they got into their profession usually because they wanted to make the world a better place. And what they found was a lot of dysfunction, a lot of being asked to do things with less Then was even possible.
And yet they make magic happen with the children every single day. So one of my favorite things is to work with teachers who want to. to have a life outside of the classroom and also have the energy and the bandwidth so that they can create change in their work environment, but also so that they have something to give to their kids that they work with every day, because we've all heard it a million times.
We can't give what we don't have. And our energy and our time and our bandwidth and our patience, it's all related to how well that we care for ourselves. Teachers are our gift to the world, and so I spend a lot of time helping them recover from and then stay out of burnout once they have kind of gone off the deep end a little bit, which a lot of teachers do.
What I like to do is I like to work with people who want to make the world a better place.
And I'm like, awesome, let me help you have the wherewithal to get up and go, wow, a lot of really bad stuff is happening. And yet I have direction. I have hope that things can be different. I have a vision of how I can be part of a solution by what I do in my own home, what I do in my neighborhood, what I do in my city.
And it keeps going out and out and out. But we can't do that when we're like, oh my god, I'm so tired. Oh my god, I didn't feed myself. Oh my god, my doctor said I should do all these things and I'm not doing them.
Melissa Klug: We have a tremendous number of former teachers that are now professional organizers. So they have had to leave the teaching profession for one reason or another, usually burnout, and now they are still in the helping profession, just in something that's a little different, but lots and lots of former teachers.
Tami Hackbarth: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're I think a lot of us are just like, we want to help. And so that, that sticky part of, we can't help when our needs are not being met because then our needs kind of sneak out and get on everyone else. So, so we pour into ourselves that we don't get our, our burnout, our agitation, our irritation, all of that on everybody else.
Melissa Klug: When do you feel like the zenith of the burnout crisis hit? I mean, I feel like we've talked a lot about the pandemic was a very, very challenging single event, but it was long before that. But what have you seen as the progression of burnout and just all of the things that we have on us?
God,
Tami Hackbarth: I love this question. So I may turn into a sociology slash history professor for a moment. So I don't know if you know, if you've ever read the book, the feminine mystique was published in the fifties and it was all about, it was all about the job that you have. And in this case, women's jobs were to keep their homes.
The job expands to fill the time that you have. I don't know if you know this, I bet you do, women could not get their own checking accounts, they could not own homes, they could not, they could not do a lot of things that we take for granted. Back then. For
Melissa Klug: a very long time, like through
Tami Hackbarth: the 70s. In my lifetime.
Yes. Correct. Yes. As a Gen Xer, I was like, oh, thanks for the rights to be able to have my own bank account with my own name on it, my own credit card being able to get a loan without a male co signer. So when did burnout start? I don't know. The beginning of time? Correct. Right. But, but, but interest, I, I'm like, I say that in jest, but I would say that yes, it did. As we have progressed from the 50s through the 70s what happened in the 70s? A lot of women went to work. A lot more women went to work because they needed dual income households. Interestingly enough, there used to be commercials like for perfume and stuff. It's like you can bring them home, bring home the bacon fried up in a pan, never let him forget he's your man, whatever.
Anyway, that perfume was really stinky. But what it also said was like, you can do it all at work and at home and everywhere else there's places to it to be done. That's your responsibility. And the messages that men got was you're a provider and you're a protector. Do not let those feelings out because then people will think less of you as a man.
So there's all of these messages that we are all swimming around and we are all really tired because what we could be doing instead is working together to make every part of our lives better by redistributing the domestic labor, the childcare, the homemaking, all of the responsibilities at home. And at work, so that it's more fair for everyone.
And fair doesn't necessarily mean equal. Fair means equitable.
Melissa Klug: Tell me the, tell me the difference there. The
Tami Hackbarth: difference is equitable, you know, let's start with equal. If there are, I'm sitting here, I'm a Fair Play facilitator. Yeah, we're going to talk about it. Yeah, yeah, I'm a Fair Play facilitator.
People don't know about it. And in the Fair Play method, there are 100 task cards. So if we were going for equality, each player would have exactly the same amount of cards. So if you are a couple that has no children, There's 60 cards for you. So each of you would have 30. If you're a couple that has one child, just one little itty bitty baby, you get an extra 40 cards.
So in case you're wondering if kids are expensive, yes, a lot with your time and your money and your effort and your bandwidth. So in an equal system, each partner would have 50 cards if you have a child. But what we really want to do is when we start with a Fair Play deck, say you're a couple that has one, two, three, whatever, however many kids you have, you first want to go through Okay.
A hundred tasks of adulting and you want to throw some of those cards away because you've decided as a family, you're like, this is not important to me at this time or ever. Like maybe you at this time in your life because you have a newborn, you have decided that. Family vacations are off the table until your kid can sit up, or maybe you are done with holiday cards because it's not just going to the drugstore and buying cards, you have to do a photo shoot and a this and a that, right?
So in this idea of working together, You have deep conversations with the person that you love the most, your spouse, about what's important to them, and what's important to them enough that they'll do it, and what's important enough to you that you'll do it, and then you just get rid of everything else, and then you divvy things up.
Again, it's probably not going to be, 50 50. Equity, on the other hand, is everyone's needs are being met. Some people get more because they have more to give. Some people get less because they need less. Right. But we are, it's a really dynamic system when you're looking at equity because you're constantly checking in like, hey, are your needs being met?
Are my needs being met? Are their needs being met? And working together to make that happen versus one person by default is holding all the cards. Which happens a lot, especially after people have kids.
Melissa Klug: Sure does.
Tami Hackbarth: Yes. Yeah. And it happens at work, too. It happens in your own business. It happens in all kinds of families.
So if you're, if this is you, you're not alone at all, this, this idea of how did I get myself here before we got married, we had all of these conversations about how we weren't going to fall into traditional gender roles. We were going to work together. And a lot of couples before they have kids have a really equitable. Distribution in their homes, but you add your both of your new favorite roommate called the baby, it all goes off the rails.
Melissa Klug: Blows everything 200, 000 pieces. And sometimes I think you just end up defaulting to well this is just how things are now, and you don't actually think about it. You just go like,
Tami Hackbarth: that's it.
Well, because also, when you're looking around, you're like, my mom did it this way, my grandma did it this way, my neighbor down the street did it this way, literally every single person I see on the playground is doing it this way. Everyone is legit, under the surface, boiling mad about it, but we're still doing it.
Right? So one of the reasons why I became a Fair Play facilitator is because after we brought our kid home, my husband and I had already been together for 16 years. We adopted our daughter. My husband took a four month paternity leave. It was great. He went back to work and I was like, I hate you.
Yeah. What? Where did that come from? I was like, I am no better equipped to take care of this child than you are. We need to figure this out. And we decided we were going to do something different. Because we wanted our family to feel different. Well,
Melissa Klug: I will tell you, I see it even in very good, healthy marriages with good people.
Yes. In this
Tami Hackbarth: conversation. Thank you for bringing that up. No one is wrong. No one is the villain in this situation. We don't
Melissa Klug: have any, like, when I just think about just anecdotally either my own situation or a friend's situations, we're talking about good spouses. They're good people who do a lot of things.
It's still There is just a lot of inequity, I think, because women just have so much more in their brains. I tried to explain this to my husband one time. I'm like, I just want to give you a download of all the things that are in my brain right now. And he was like, what? And I go, here are the 16, 000 things that are in my brain right
Tami Hackbarth: now.
Okay. And then Melissa, but that has a name. The thing that you're talking about is the mental load, right? And so we taught when we go to our spouses and we say, Hey, do you want to do holiday cards? And they say, yes. And then you get together and you're like, let us have a meeting about what holiday cards for our family means.
Right. Yes. Right. And you, it's all brains together, all brains together. What does this mean? Why are we doing that? Why is it important that we have to do all the planning? Then we do the execution. And then we have this thing called minimum standard of care, which is how will we know this job is done?
Because we talked it all the way through. Because we run our households like invisible machines. Yes. But, when we go to work, there's systems and processes. These two things could be run much more similarly, right? If we brought the systems from work home and we had open communication, we had job descriptions, we have standard operating procedures, standard operating procedures.
Absolutely. I'm going to tell you what I always start. If people come to me and they're like, ah, I'm drowning in housework. I don't have time to do anything for myself. I don't even have time to do self care. A self care. is built directly into the Fairplay system. It's one of the cards. It is mandatory people.
You can't throw the self care card away. There's other, this thing called unicorn space, which is time to be your awesome self, totally unavailable a couple of hours a week. It means you're going to learn how to do your tap dancing lessons, or you're learning how to paint or you're swimming or whatever.
And your spouse. Your totally capable, loving partner is holding it down at home. They're not calling you and texting you like, where's this? Because you've covered it in your SOP at your house, that they're a capable adult, right? We're not in the business as grownups of giving somebody a list. My biggest hot button of all.
We're not asking for a list. We're asking for people to step up and own that they're part of an organization. And there are a lot of pieces of organizations that are kind of being dropped. And the Fair Play method can help you and your spouse. be on the same side of the table, right? So how it works in my house, we have a weekly meeting, me, my husband, and our 13 year old.
And we started meeting with compliments. It's so hard for me every week because usually it's like on a Saturday or Sunday morning. And I'm like, I'm already mad at you guys, but I had to come up with compliments. Right. Right. And then we review what you enjoyed me in
Melissa Klug: the
Tami Hackbarth: cutest way this morning. Right. And I'm like digging deep, but I'm like, damn it.
I give these people compliments. But then we, we discuss as a family, what is the issue that we need to tackle as a team. So it's the three of us against the issue, instead of the three of us against each other.
Melissa Klug: I love that. I want to stop you because that's really interesting because I'm a person that I go from, I go from zero to like really frustrated or really angry about something pretty easily.
And it is often it, I, I will get annoyed at someone and it's like, no, I should be annoyed at the thing. I should not be annoyed at the person that like, I've never thought about it that way. I should have thought about it that way, but I never have. Wow.
Tami Hackbarth: But we're not taught that. I mean, so much of our personal lives are, it's left to this mysterious, like, oh, you should just know that I'm like, well, I apparently was holding the door open for everyone when they got their adulting handbook.
I, I don't see it. And recently got diagnosed with ADHD. My daughter has ADHD and we're like, I'm sorry, sir. You're going to have to explain that a little bit further for us. So it's this idea of like, when you tell your 12 year old, like, ah, it's the weekend you learn how to clean the bathroom. You don't hand them a bucket and some cleaner and say, go clean the bathroom because they'll stand there and be like, I don't.
Know what these things do. I don't what what they're gonna do it wrong, right? But what if you got together and you talked about the reason we clean the bathroom is X The reason we do it in this order is why these are the tools. These are the steps This is how you do it. Then at the end of that. They might go.
Oh They'll 100 percent complain because they are children Sure. But at the end of doing this, throughout their childhood, when they move out, everyone's going to love to live with them because they have a clean bathroom and they have clear communication skills.
Melissa Klug: Or I will also give you a hot tip.
Sometimes they come up with a better way to do it than you do, and you go, that's great. Keep doing that. Every
Tami Hackbarth: once in a while, I used to be a fourth grade teacher. Okay. I taught third and fourth grade, my first year of teaching. Very tiny little kid. His name is Alan Martinez.
He came to talk to me and he said, and I quote, You are the laziest grown up I have ever met in my life. And I was like, I'm gonna sit down for this. Bring it. I was like, Mr. Martinez, please school me in how I am lazy. He's like, you don't do anything around here. And I held up my keys. I was like, I open the door.
He's like, that's all you do. You don't grade the papers. You don't take attendance. You don't check in homework. You don't help us with our writing. I was like, I hope you're ready. He's like, you don't edit it. And I said, look, is this a good time for me to tell you what my philosophy is? He's like, I don't know what that is. I said, a philosophy is a way of thinking. Deeply held beliefs. And he said, okay, go ahead. I said, unlike most grown ups that you know. I believe if a child or a human can do something after they've been taught, after you've done let's do it together, now I'll watch you, after we've taught people how to do things, they should be able to do it.
They get to practice. I was like, dude, I don't need to get better at grading spelling tests. I am super good at that already. And so my philosophy is if a kid can do it, then kids should do it. And two is the way that human beings build confidence is not by talking about it. It's not by outside people saying, Oh, you're so great.
It's by doing things successfully. So if you want your kid to be happy and confident, give them a job, teach them how to do it, ask for their feedback, because a hundred percent, they're going to come up with some idea that you're like. You know what, that's actually a really good idea. I would have never come up with it.
Great idea. Yeah, great idea. Thank you. And they will feel so good about themselves. And so I said, Mr. Martinez, I would just like to say two things. One, I can tell you're feeling yourself. You just told a grownup they're lazy. And I was like, two, come back to me when you're in fifth grade and let me know how it goes.
came back first week of fifth grade, and he said, they don't let us do anything. What is wrong with them? He's like, also, how did you know that? I was like, I eat lunch with them every day. Yeah. And he was like, kids are super capable. They're so are spouses. Yes,
Melissa Klug: very much so. And I want to go down this path on the kids thing a little bit, because this is something that we see a lot in the, the homes that we're organizing is people will say, I have, I will never forget this.
I, I'm going to, I'm going to go down a, I'm going to go down a diatribe here for a minute. But I had a client one time. Who said to me, she was, she was a mom of one teenage daughter and she said to me, the daughter was 17, by the way, she said to me, Oh, we might move. She had the most adorable house I'd ever seen.
And she goes, we might move. My daughter doesn't like our house. I go, I'm sorry. What? That was the first thing. The second thing she said was my daughter doesn't like how I do her laundry or put away her laundry. And I say to her my kids have done their own laundry since they were like eight or nine. 10 was my upper limit of when I was going to do their laundry. And she was just like, what? And I'm like, yeah, she's 17. Like she drives a car, right? Like she can probably do her own
Tami Hackbarth: laundry. But here's the thing, Melissa, when I was in college, I was like, I had a boyfriend who, from his college apartment, drove his dirty clothes five towns away for his mom to do his laundry and she would iron his shirts?
I was like, I could not find you less attractive with this nonsense. And he had the nerve to say, she likes doing it. She likes doing it. She's good at it. The reason she's good at it is because she's had to do it. You know who else is good at ironing?
I was hella good at ironing growing up. You know why? Because my dad, my dad hated ironing. That fool's still ironing his clothes. He's 82 years old, still ironing his clothes. But when I was little, the only thing I could get paid for was ironing my dad's stuff. So I'm hella good at ironing. I will not be ironing anything for anyone unless there is an actual paycheck.
Yes, but again, it speaks to that. Oh. When you do things, you're good at them. And it also is, I bet that client never thought, Oh, I need to teach my kid move out skills. I'm teaching my kid good roommate skills because currently she is my roommate. She lives in my house and I'm like, guess what? You're gonna learn how to do.
Clean the bathroom, have daily chores. If you also, if you come to my house, You'll be like, where's the spoon? I'm like, go to the drawer by your knees. Why? Because she started putting the silverware away from the dishwasher when she was three. Yeah. Because she was very enthusiastic. And I was like, honey, let me move this silverware down to where you can get in that drawer.
Right? But a lot of people don't know that's an option.
Melissa Klug: Yes. This is again, this is where everything's going to transcend. This is good. These are good things for your own life and to teach clients because what we see a lot, I can think of one example from from one of our groups recently, where she was like, this mom has blah problem.
And it's with the kids coming home and putting their stuff like all on the floor. And I was like, how old are the kids? And you know, she gave me the range of ages and there were, there was a baby. Okay. We're going to let the baby get a free pass. But I was like three and up, Marie Kondo will tell you age three and up, they can figure this out.
Like I said, and the mom was shutting down every idea. And I was like, the mom is actually the problem here. I know we can't call her a problem, but the mom is creating her own problem. She's mad. The kids won't put the things away, but you're giving her options for the kids to do that. And she's telling you why it won't work.
It's not going to work because she's not going to implement those things. That's okay.
Tami Hackbarth: Interestingly enough, recently a friend said on Facebook, is there a right way to load the dishwasher? Oh, right. And everybody, again, immediately was like, you bet your ass there is, there is the best way
Melissa Klug: to do it is just so it gets done.
Tami Hackbarth: Ding, ding, ding. So everybody was like, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I said, only if you want that job for the rest of your life. And she has four kids. And a very capable spouse and her answer to me was, damn it, you're right. You're right. I was like, dude, we cannot micromanage our people. We can have a minimum standard of care, which is that the dishes.
are clean. I'm going to say by any means necessary that I didn't have to, I didn't have to do it. I didn't have to talk about it. I didn't have to stand over everyone because you can either be right or you can be free.
Melissa Klug: But I think that's one of the biggest problems that I see just in general, again, either in my personal life with friends or with clients is Well, I don't want to do it.
I don't want to be in charge of it, but I'm also going to tell you exactly how it has to be done step by step. And I'm going to criticize you when you do do it. And like, there's a little bit of that letting go process.
Tami Hackbarth: There's a lot, there's a lot of bit of letting go. And I get why people hang onto it because I used to say this to my husband.
I hope My in laws aren't listening. They're not gonna, but I would say, Oh, when so and so's coming over, I was like, we're going to step it up here. And he was like, I don't care. And I was like, they're not judging you, sweetheart. They're judging me. Yep. They're judging me. So exact conversation with my husband.
So there's a couple of things. One in Fair Play, there is this thing called the minimum standard of care. And it is not who cares the most, who has a higher standards. It's what y'all can agree on. Because you love each other and you want this to work right so there's that so we will all know this job is finished.
When, then there's also this really, really good book called Drop The Ball by Tiffany dofu. And it's about this exact thing because the Fair Play system came out of. The author, Eve Rodsky, being like, what happened? I have, she's a lawyer. She's got this. And then she got two kids and her husband is like, Oh, I'm surprised you didn't get the blueberries.
And she's like, I'm surprised my head is still attached to my body. I am so angry. Right. Your head is
Melissa Klug: still attached
Tami Hackbarth: to your body. She's like, lucky we're on the phone, we're not together. And so she came back with him because she asked, like, I think it's a thousand women. What do you do at home? And it became this 98 tabbed.
Excel spreadsheet called Shit I Do. I'm going to save everyone who's listening time. Do not present your partner with a list of shit that you do because what you're going to get in response is a list back because they're doing invisible work too. It might not be at the same quote level, right? It might not be the daily grind.
So what in the fair places and there's a bunch of they call it suits, but you know, the things that you do every day, feed those kids, wash those kids, get those kids from here to there, get them in bed, get them up, all those things. It's the things that are like Oh, paper cuts, death by these paper cuts, death by a thousand cuts.
Where's your spouse is probably like, I handle all of the garbage. I handle the life insurance. I handle the this. So they're doing things that we're not seeing. They're just at a different rate. a rate of frequency, right? And so, but we need to have those conversations to be like, honey, I didn't know you were doing and oh my God, thank you for making sure you had that done.
Can you take some of these? Can you feed your children, please? I don't like them anymore. I don't even like food anymore. Can you make food happen for the children? And they might be like, how hard can this be? And you're like, God, I love it. No, you know what? It is easy in the beginning. It is. I hope you and your children enjoy whatever it is that you're having.
I will not be in the room because I don't like breakfast with my family anymore. But what a bonding moment for you and the kids. Love you. See you later. Godspeed.
Melissa Klug: I, have you seen those reels, I'm sure you have, where it's there's a sound effect that it's just basically like, I did not know that I was going to have to think about food like three times a day, every day for the rest of my life.
Like, like being an adult is just constantly like, what is the next meal going to be and how do I have to make it and how does it get put together? I'm,
Tami Hackbarth: I'm explaining it poorly, but I love it. No. I mean, I think. Well, two things. I think that's what broke a lot of people during the pandemic. They're like, if these people ask about food one more time, I'm just going to bury them myself.
And two, I had a conversation, I don't know, many years ago with somebody and she was telling me about, she had some very selective eaters in her home, AKA picky eaters, right? But we're, rebranding their selective eaters. Love it. And We were having this conversation and I said, well, what do you like to eat?
What do you like to feed yourself? And she looked at me like I had three heads and she was like, what? And I was like, Oh, I gotta tell you a secret, hon. She's like, what? I'm like every week for the rest of your life, you're gonna make at least 21 food decisions, plus snacks just for yourself, let alone the people that you cannot please, called children with food.
I was like, how about we start with mama, feed, feed the mama 21 times, get her a snacky every once in a while, and then when you're faced with the people who won't eat, you want to feed the people? Maybe have compassion rather than actual mom rage at them, because you are at least fed. This is one of those things where that oxygen mask on first thing really matters is food, because let's be real.
A lot of us get hangry, and I mean, that's kind of a kid's job is to be like, yeah, I can control very few things in my brain because I'm a little kid. What I eat is one of them, but yeah, yeah. Newsflash everyone 21 times a week at minimum. Until you are dead, and it sucks.
Melissa Klug: I actually just as you were saying that though I was thinking about like, you know, there there is the selective eater or the picky eater and then there was a client I had, who had the most nightmarish situation I've ever heard of, and they were all food allergies so one kid had a dairy allergy one kid had a tree nut allergy one kid had a peanut but not tree nut allergy.
She was diabetic. One of them was a vegetarian like it was. Seriously, like, I was so stressed just talking to her, and I'm like, that, those are things that she really can't control. It's not just the kid won't eat the chicken nuggets, it's the kid might die if they have the chicken nuggets, right? And so it's, those things are just out of your control and they're so hard to deal with.
Tami Hackbarth: Absolutely. As a shellfish allergic, dairy allergic person yes. But you know what I decided a few years ago was, And my husband is what he is. It's a flexitarian, which is he's a vegetarian that eats meat once or twice a month. Maybe. Okay. What I decided was I'm going to make things for me. And if the people in my home would like to eat those things, cool.
If they don't, they can put other ingredients together to make something for themselves.
And that's just one aspect, right? You can say you have breakfast, you got lunch, you got dinner, you got snacks, you got weekends, you got weekdays. And guess what? Other people besides. The person who's doing it right now could be in charge of that. And you're like, but what if my spouse travels? And yeah, if your spouse travels, maybe they order your groceries from the target app, from the other city that they're in and you pick it up, maybe they read bedtime stories over FaceTime.
so that you get a little alone time at bedtime. Like the, but these are the things that we can worse. Once you have that list of like, Oh we're, we're missing some things in the adulting category. Once you've decided what you're adulting together with your person, this is the part where you're like, Hey babe, you're away a lot and your people love you and miss you.
How are we going to make this happen? You love and miss your kids. How are you going to make it happen? And it's setting each other up for success.
Melissa Klug: And it's having the conversation, because that's the other thing that I see a lot is, oh girl,
Tami Hackbarth: it's not, it's not one conversation. Yeah. Sorry.
It's not one conversation. It's like a lifetime of conversations.
Melissa Klug: Fully agree with you. I think what I meant more is just like, I know so many people. Again, friends, Romans, countrymen, clients who just never have a conversation. They're just super resentful and just super seethingly angry under the surface all the time.
Tami Hackbarth: But also, but if that's you, if you are somebody who is like, I, I don't want to have to do this. I don't want to have to be the one that makes this change. I don't want to have to be the one to bring this up. This is one more job on me. I hear you. I am hugging your heart and this is one of those, it's gonna hurt in the short term, but in the long run, you're going to be like high fiving yourself in five years.
when your own children can say, you are the laziest grownup I've ever met. You don't do anything around here, woman. Right. But this is a, it's a very long game. And yeah, when you get in that. resentful, angry place because you're like, why does nobody see this?
Two things is literally called invisible labor. No one can see it. Also women have been fed this line that they're better at multitasking. The answer is that is, that is a big fat lie. We, no, you're, you're really good. Scientifically not true, right? Yeah. No, it's literally not true because brains don't work that way.
What you're doing is you're really good at switching from one thing to another. Back and forth. P. S. that's why you're so tired because you've been flipping your brain between projects all the time. Well, yeah, this like mental load, invisible work is exhausting and no, people don't see it. The other reason people don't see it is because you've already done it.
Let me tell you, if you stop doing some of the core things, Just like a couple days, people will be like, where's the toothpaste? Where's the toilet paper?
Melissa Klug: I told a friend of mine one time she could, she should go on strike. And that she should just not do anything for a couple days. And just see, like, what happened at her house.
And she, she said to me, I will never forget this. She goes, Well, she travels for work and she goes, well, you find what I'm on the road. And I'm like, I'm going to stop you right there, sister. Do you know why they do fine? Why you're on the road? Because because she everything for them before you even leave the house and there is a spreadsheet and you hire someone to come and do all of these other things that you usually do because they won't do it while you're gone.
I go, that's why they're fine when you leave. Cause you're literally still there. You're just
Tami Hackbarth: gone. But your face is not complaining at them in person. I will say, like, it is, I just want to reassure people, it's a leap of faith because You're like, my person doesn't want to have this conversation, because let's be real, it benefits them.
Like, come on. It benefits. It benefits one person. And it's not always gendered, because, you know, I was a primary parent when my kid was little. I have men who, in my life, that are primary parents. We are all saying the same thing. Whoever is the primary parent is ready to fight, right? Right. It is. I do
Melissa Klug: want to talk about this a little bit, too, because I do want to make sure we're not being.
Being super gendered, like we're talking a lot about, but it is exactly that's the primary parent versus the secondary non default parent. Right.
Tami Hackbarth: But, but then again, also a lot of men are being, they, if their, if their job has flex time or their job has paternity leave, a lot of it, a lot of men are I don't know what the word is.
They're punished. It's a synonym for punish, for taking that. But here's the thing, change doesn't happen because people are comfortable. Zero changes happen, right? People don't hire professional organizers because they feel good in their homes. People do not hire life coaches because everything's going great.
They're getting along with everyone. Their health is great. Their job is great. Their relationships with their in laws. They have excellent self talk. That's not why we make change friends. That is not why we reach out for help. It's because we're like, Oh, I insist to love these people, but I don't want to live with them anymore.
Right. But, but again, we don't have to fight each other. We want to invite our people into our life, into our internal experience, because we live in a fairly gendered society. Things do feel different based on your gender and where you are in the hierarchy of your job, or if you own your own company, if you, where you live in the world.
But we don't have to make this an adversarial thing of one spouse against another. Because remember, what we're trying to do is be on the same side of the table attacking the problem. And P. S. this is not a personal problem. This is a systemic problem. Because you know what would be great? Is if we all had access to free quality child care, or free quality early childhood education, or health care that wasn't determined by our employer or by our marital status.
What if we had these social safety nets? Would any of us be married or we would just be happily paired up? Because we wouldn't need to have those structures because we would have other structures that held our families in great esteem, which was to help them be successful, but we in the United States, we do not have this.
Right. What we do have is an opportunity to work with the people that we love the most to say, Hey, the, the, the load of living in this time is really hard. Can we work together so that we all feel better? There's this, you know, there's a, there's that saying, happy wife, happy life, just pretty sexist and crappy.
But we could say. Emotions are contagious. It's it's again, the brain, the brain action is like, if I smile at you for long enough, even if you are really mad, you're going to smile back because we mirror each other. So if you come at your spouse raging that they're wrong and that this is shitty and that, that they're taking advantage of you, there's a very high likelihood that you're going to be met with that same energy.
Right. But when we tackle problems as in it's over there and we're over here, how can we do this together? It changes everything. Is it going to be perfect? No. Is it going to be a one time conversation? Absolutely not.
Melissa Klug: And I think that's a really, I love that point in particular because I do see, and this is a pattern I have in myself and I see it in some of my friends too, is things will be fine for a while.
And then you start to get like a little bit of like, I'm a little frustrated by this. And then you like get a little bit more frustrated. And then maybe you're since you work with Gen Xers, you're having a perimenopause day and you're like, just rage monster comes out. And then it's like a blow up and it's a big thing.
Whereas if we just would have headed it off, Right back here. Yeah, it would
Tami Hackbarth: not be an issue. Totally. It's like, well, part again, part of this communication system is that you if you see that your partner is 100 percent failing at the task. That, that they're in charge of, that the card that they're holding, you get to be a scientist to watch your own behavior and not murder your spouse over the dishes.
Because we don't talk when we're mad. What we do is we wait until our assigned time to have a conversation because this isn't a one off. This isn't a, like we have these occasionally you, you and your family ought to be talking once a week. Okay? Yeah. I like, I like yours. Right. That's cool. Once a week cadence.
You and your, you and your spouse maybe have a five or 10 minute check in every day because in that moment they could be like, Oh my God, the day got away from me. I can't believe I didn't hold the card the way that it was supposed to. I left the dishes. I'm soaking the pans, but they can also in that moment say, I can see why that would be frustrating for you.
I know I've done that in the past. I know that you might not even believe that I swear I am going to come back to those. I am responsible
Melissa Klug: for that.
Yeti Stereo Microphone-9: That was part one of my conversation with Tami Hackbarth stay tuned for next week when I will bring you the second half of our conversation. It's a great one. And I just appreciate you guys coming here every single week. And listening to me, I hope you have an awesome week organizers, and if there's ever anything I can do for you, please reach out.
hello@proorganizerstudio.com. It's really me that answers. So reach out, let me know what you're thinking about. Have a great day.
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