200 | "Creating a life that you don't regularly need to escape from." | Tami Hackbarth on how to help yourself AND your pro organizing clients at home
Tami Hackbarth, of 100% Guilt Free Self Care Podcast
The record-screech moment in this podcast is in the title: The definition of self-care is "creating a life that you don't regularly need to escape from." My guest Tami Hackbarth is back to drop some knowledge bombs for our home life and that can help your organizing clients live better as well.
Today we are talking about a fabulous resource called Fair Play--and I am excited to have you have this for yourselves and for clients. It works for all types of family systems and structures and I am hopeful it will help lots of people live better.
In part 2 of my discussion with Tami, we get into a range of topics from the often-overlooked reasons behind relationship breakdowns, such as the failure to share household responsibilities, to the broader implications of self-care. We talk about 'weaponized incompetence,' generational shifts in domestic roles, and how maintaining a functional, rather than perfect, home can contribute to better relationships. The conversation weaves through the impact of childhood responsibilities on adult capabilities, co-parenting challenges, and practical steps for teaching children essential life skills. The episode emphasizes the importance of creating a life that doesn't necessitate escape and the value of communal support in achieving balanced and equitable family dynamics.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 The Clickbait Headline That Changed Everything
00:22 The Reality of Unheard Conversations
01:46 Generational Shifts in Household Responsibilities
05:42 Teaching Kids Independence
16:47 The Importance of Self-Compassion
26:42 Embracing Flexibility in Home Organization
27:14 The Unrealistic Expectations of Organizing Social Media
27:57 Prioritizing Function Over Perfection
30:20 Fair Play for Non-Traditional Families
31:51 Breaking Down Fair Play: Conception, Planning, Execution
33:55 The Importance of Communication in Fair Play
37:29 Building a Family Success Team
41:07 Self-Care for Solopreneurs and Organizers
47:25 The Essential Guide to Guilt-Free Self-Care
52:18 The Power of Asking for Help
53:49 Conclusion and Future Conversations
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: tamihackbarth.com
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 am back with part two of my conversation with Tami Hackbarth. If you did not hear part one, you can totally press play on this.
It's not like an episode of house of the dragon, which by the way, anyone else watching it, anyone team green team, black, what are we doing? But I want you to be able to listen to both of these. If you are a person who is yourself looking at what labor is in your house, who does labor in your house? What are the unseen labors that women in particular tend to have, or as organizers, we are working with women primarily in their households and they might be struggling with some of these things.
So today, We are getting into a book and a system called Fair Play that Tami is a facilitator for, I know a lot of people haven't heard of it. I asked someone last night if they knew what it was. And it was someone that I thought would be totally up on this.
And they're like, no, I don't know what you're talking about. So totally recommend listening to this. And really internalizing it both perhaps for yourself, but definitely for clients. I have recommended it to clients many times, and I think that you'll be able to see why. So. I will give you Tami Hackbarth at 100%. Guilt-free self-care. Lots of things we're talking about here, I hope it's helpful. And I hope that you have a fabulous day whenever and wherever you're listening to me.
Melissa Klug: I read an article, a very well written article a few months ago. And the clickbait headline was my wife divorced me because I didn't do the dishes.
Tami Hackbarth: I just read that book. It's called, this is. How your marriage ends. Oh,
Melissa Klug: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it was isn't and I was like, all right, I'll click on this. I'll see it because I thought that it was going to be one of these things like listen to how unreasonable my wife was. It was really a quite beautifully written piece by a man who was like, My wife divorced me because the dishes weren't done, but like, that's not the story.
The story is, for years and years and years, she had tried to talk to me about this, and I just didn't care, and I didn't give it credence. And I was like, why is she upset about this? I'm vastly under over, you know, simplifying
Tami Hackbarth: what he said. Oh, but why is she making such a big deal out of nothing? Who cares about that?
Blah, blah, all this stuff. And then she left him. They sure did. And she moved her, her, their son across the country to live near her parents because they were the ones that were going to provide support that she actually needed to hold up her family. And now he's like, Oh my God, she's been telling me this whole, she didn't just leave.
She didn't just wake up and leave. She
Melissa Klug: tried to talk to him about this a thousand times. And I think that's another thing. In a thousand different ways. Sometimes, and I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer, but sometimes there are, and I see this So much in the work that I do with clients, those conversations are tried to be had.
Sometimes I think of some of my friends who say, I give up, I'm not going to try it because it doesn't go well. So I think that's unfortunately reality too, is then you have to say like, there are people that are unwilling to have this conversation and then that becomes a different set of.
thoughts and decisions you have to
Tami Hackbarth: make. Absolutely. And I will say was a big divorce boom in the seventies, late seventies. There was a big divorce boom in the seventies. 2020 PS family courts did not close down during the pandemic because everybody was too busy getting divorced.
There was lots, lots of, lots of zoom divorces happening. There was, there was a lot of, turns out I don't like these people and they're unwilling to pitch in. So I'll just go ahead and be on my own. This is my prediction. There's going to be another
a great wave of divorces because if a partner is not contributing at home financially exponentially more than someone, because let's be honest, most households are two income earners. So if I'm paying my own bills, If I'm doing all my own, like, what do I need you for? And so there is a great reckoning happening, which is if you would like to not be divorced, please come to the table.
I love you. I don't wanna break up our family, but if I'm gonna be doing all the work and you're like an rock in my shoe, I'm going to shake you out of my shoe and I'm gonna put my own shoe on. I'm going to continue to do the work. I mean, if, if I've heard this from. Many, many people when my spouse and I broke up, my domestic labor went down.
Interesting. And I'm like, that is a sick burn right there. So there's two things. It's like, Hey, sweetheart. You're super capable. You have a job. And if you come at me with like, I don't know how to do laundry. I'm like, that's funny because I taught your seven year old how to do laundry.
Right. And no one wants to be by a seven year old. Right. Right. Weaponized incompetence is a thing and it's not going to end well for those who choose to live their life that way. .
Melissa Klug: I do think that generationally we're getting a little better. But when I look at My husband, as example, who is a really great, thoughtful, kind, helpful person, he grew up in a very gendered household with very gendered tasks. When I said earlier, my kids do their own laundry since the time they were very small, it drives his mom insane my kids are older.
One of them is in college. One of them is at the end of high school and his mom will still say, let me come over and take your laundry for you because she's mad that I don't do it for them. And if it were up to her, she'd probably still be doing my husband's laundry. And there's a lot of like this, the, the way people grew up, I think it's changing, but it wasn't inherent.
So Tim had to
Tami Hackbarth: learn it. Well, absolutely. But then there's also that part where women of that generation, that was the thing that they could hold onto as like, look what I did it's like, I get it, sis, but guess what? Let's get you a hobby. Yeah, right. With all, with all this, doing energy, like, you'd be a great non profit fundraiser.
You'd be a great person to go to a school and read with those kids. Why don't you go do some yard duty at the elementary school? Well, seems like you've got time on your hands, mother in law.
Melissa Klug: Funny thing is that the example you gave of the kid, I'm sorry, I forgot his name alan Martinez. Okay, thank you.
So, the example of him is a great example of my kids will be like, Grandma, I don't need you to do my laundry. I'm perfectly capable of doing my laundry. Like, I enjoy it. Why would I send my laundry to your house? Like, they'll give her all the reasons as to why it's ridiculous for her to be saying this.
It's just inherent. And so I think a lot of the people in my generation are, again, that the tides are turning, but there is still a lot of stuff. And now our generation with helicopter parenting, we're supposed to do now, we're supposed to be so overly involved in our kids lives, that then that's where we see it in clients sometimes of, no, I'm supposed to be doing all of this to show love and care and concern.
And then they have kids that go to college who can't do anything for themselves. Not a single thing.
Tami Hackbarth: So I referred earlier, I was third and fourth grade teacher. And when you are hanging in the teacher world, It's like you attract each other. Like, I have preschool teacher friends, I've got college teacher friends, and all in between.
I remember having this conversation about student writing and this, that, and the other thing, and how somebody's mom called me about some ridiculous thing that I wanted to say to this mom, we are not in relationship together. I'm in a relationship with your child. And so if you could butt out, that would be terrific.
A lot of parents don't want to hear that, but I'm like, no, seriously. It's between me and the person whose name is on my sheet. And I know there are only nine, but still. And then it was funny because I had mentioned that to my friend. We were at the gym working out, completing some stress cycles from our teaching jobs.
And she said, that's so funny because I teach college and I have parents. emailing me and calling me to talk about their student's work. And I'm like, but they can't do that. And she's like, they try. Yeah. She's like, you would think somebody would give them a memo but, but let's, but let's see where that comes from.
It's makes so much sense because when you look around and you see everybody doing this and you love your babies and you want them to have the best shot at everything, you don't want to be like, oops, I messed up because I didn't do that thing. Right, because we're all playing this long game, but what the research has found, a lot of books about letting your kids make mistakes, the gift of failure, they're like there's all of these things, because We don't grow up like turning on a light switch.
It's more like the world's longest, slowest sunrise. Tiny bit over time, you don't notice it. So you, as a parent, you're like, where did my baby go? Well, they're driving cars and not doing their laundry, which is nonsense. Let's get back over here when they're little and teach them. To do stuff.
So at least they're useful and helpful while they're there, but also they feel good about themselves. They feel capable. And when other people in your life, make fun of you comment on it. What you can say simply is we're trying something different. Or this works for us.
This works for us. Oh, one of my friends says, Oh, different houses, different rules. Oh, I love that. Different mom, different rules. Because then you can also say that with your kids. Like, my kid, why do I have to do these chores? I'm like, because you live with me and not someone else. Lucky you! So exciting for you.
You ended up in the house when my kid was in kindergarten they had this extended day program so they had this big meal together and every day we would go pick her up and my little five year old was walking around the table opening everyone's milk and their string cheese and starting their oranges.
Because she had been doing that for years. Because she's got nimble little fingers. Of course she can open a string cheese. Yeah. Right? She's got a really good pencil grip too because she's got all these little muscles that are working.
We've got to let the kids do stuff so that they can be capable. And we have to be grounded in our own confidence that we're giving our kids the gift of a long runway. into moving out a long runway into adulthood, like moving out skills. Like you want your kid to be capable. You don't want the kid that's like banging on the mop bucket going, what is this for when they're 20?
Melissa Klug: You do not realize when your kids are littler because it feels so relentless, right? Like you're tired, even a middle school kid. So it's a lot of work, right? They go to college or they, they're adults faster than you can fathom.
Their time in your home ends way quicker than you think it's going to and giving them those skills to your point earlier, unless you want to do this for them for the rest of their lives, which there are some moms who want to, I just don't have to be one of them.. That time comes fast and you, it is going to be there for you more quickly than you can possibly imagine that they are out on their own.
They are going to have to be out in the world doing things and teaching, having to teach them every single thing when they're age 18. It's really hard. Do
Tami Hackbarth: it along the way. Yeah, because they think you're an idiot at that point.
They're like, all you're talking should have them before I was in double digits because you're a dumb dumb now. Yeah, I know everything. Right. So that's why I'm like, if so, but it's also never too late to teach people things. Also a great point.
Melissa Klug: Right. And so organized till I was 42. Okay. Like, right. It sometimes takes us
Tami Hackbarth: a long time.
Exactly. So, but this,
if, and also there's also, I want to have a little asterisks here. I know a lot of your listeners are going to be like, yeah, but what do you do with the neurodivergent kids? What do you do with the fancy brains? Which I would say you do this over and over. You just do it more and you be more, you're more explicit and you model your thinking because for the longest time.
Oh, I remember the longest time called my entire childhood. Every Saturday morning, my parents would say, don't come out of your room until it's clean. So as anybody that has an ADHD kid knows what I did, I stuffed everything under my bed or in the closet or in the drawers. I just cleared off the floor because That looks clean.
That, no, that is literally what I thought cleaning my room was. Oh, okay. Right? So they would come in and then they would pull it all out and I'm like, Hello, you're undoing what I just did. Right. What is wrong with you guys? And they were mad because they thought I was being naughty. But I was like, No, I'm just your ding dong kid that doesn't actually know what that means.
It's a process. So I started following KC Davis on TikTok. She's struggle care wrote the book how to keep house while drowning. Her system is so brilliant. So what's the system? If you want to clean a room with a child, you do not leave a child in their own room. You say mom is going to sit here.
She's going to have a recycling bin. She can have a laundry basket. She can have a garbage can. This is what we're going to do. We're going to set timer for five minutes and we're going to find all the garbage. Don't look at anything else. We're only finding the garbage. Boom. Okay. Let's find all the dishes.
Yeah, and we put them in the dish tub. Okay, let's find all the dirty clothes into the hamper. Let's find all the clean clothes. Let's put those somewhere. Then we're left with two categories. Things that have a place. Right? If you've had an organizer come over, likely those places are even labeled, right?
Often are. Yes. Right? So we put things back where they go and then we're left with a pile, perhaps of things that have come in since the organizer was there to help. And those are the things that now need homes. The difference in how my child keeps their space, the difference in how I keep my space because we also call it resetting.
Yeah. Your room, because resetting is a finite thing. Cleaning can go on forever. Your can. Right? But we have to, again, breaking it down for everyone. Again, it's like clean your room. In some people's mind, that's one step, but for a child, that's a lot of steps. Many steps.
Melissa Klug: Many steps. We do something pretty religiously in our house.
My kids are actually way more religious about it than I am called the Sunday reset. So Sunday reset is, you know, we, we do all of our laundry and we get ready for the week and whatever. And Sunday this year, I think Christmas Eve was Sunday this year. And so it was Christmas Eve and my daughter brings down like a little you know, a bunch of laundry.
And I was like, Oh Sunday reset is even for, for Christmas. And she's like, Sunday reset waits for no holiday. And I loved that. I was like, that's great. It's Sunday. It's Sunday reset time. Fantastic.
Tami Hackbarth: 100%. We do the 15 minute tidy. Yeah. Where, right? It's like, and some people scoff at like, Oh, how much can you get done in 15 minutes?
I will, I will say to you how much take a before photo, set a timer, take an after photo and amaze yourself with how much you can get done. But also my 15 minute tidy is not only 15 minutes because I have my 15 minutes. I have my 13 year olds, 15 minutes and I have my husband, that's 45 minutes of tidying.
Yeah. Every day.
Melissa Klug: Totally additive.
Tami Hackbarth: Yeah. And that's where you're getting rid of the garbage, you're putting the dishes where they go, you're putting the laundry in the laundry, you're putting the stuff away, and you're finding homes for things. Eventually you're gonna run out of things that need homes, or that pile's gonna shrink a lot. So all of this is When we tend to our family as a teamwork, situation, tackling a problem outside, and we're not blaming anyone except the problem. Look, that is a problem. That's a pile. How are we gonna, how are we gonna solve that problem?
Melissa Klug: What I love about this is I feel like it's so that this concept of we're just going to tackle it as a problem is such a good thing to teach organizing clients to not just about the organizing process, but about how do they how do they keep it up with their families? Because one of the things that I see all the time is and some families are a little bit more about it than others is you know, you might be working with, you know, both of the parents or both of the, the people in the household and they will be like blaming each other for why things happen.
Well, this is his fault. This is her fault. This is the kid's fault. This is their fault. This is what, and I love that concept of like being able to dial down some of that emotion, which in some cases is again, filled with a lot of anger and resentment of nope. We're just going to tackle our house as the house is the issue that we want to solve, not the people.
Let's just go solve that problem.
Tami Hackbarth: I, and I have to say, as somebody who has had a lifetime of, if only I could be meaner to myself, to motivate myself to do things and fail over and over that, I decided to give the other thing a try, which was like, what if I was nice to myself and the people around me? And maybe we could make change from that perspective.
And I have to tell you, Melissa, I've got a lot more done. When I'm like, Hey I could be mad about the dishes on the counter, or we could just all clean the kitchen,
Melissa Klug: or we could. Yeah, the amount of time spent being mad about it would just go get it done. That's just, it feels like it's, it's it's Sort of what we're talking about.
I got a tweet from a friend of mine yesterday that says all of my plans for the future involve me waking up tomorrow with a sudden sense of discipline and adherence to routine that I have never displayed once in my entire life.
Tami Hackbarth: And I have to say that is January.
That's January energy right there. Right. That's I am going to be a new person. Right. On Monday. New year, new me, new Monday, new me, new month, new me, right? Or, or we can stop pretending that that thing is going to work and we can be like, So I have a lot of evidence that I can't do X by myself. So here's an example.
I used to be super fit because I went to group exercise classes. I was also 35. I'm about to be 54. So I'm just going to say that in between when I was super fit and today, a lot happened, including a pandemic. And I also learned that there is no amount Of videos on a screen that are going to make me do the exercise the way that I need to do it to make the gains that I need to make.
So a few months ago, , reached out to a friend and I said, are you taking personal training clients? He said, not right now, but I am teaching this class for people who are 55 and up. And I was, I was like, I'm not there yet. He goes, I will allow you. You are in your fifties. I said, okay. And now I just drive to a place.
two days a week where lovely people tell me what to do for an hour. I have never lifted stronger in my life. And you know what I think? I'm really glad that I got a lot of evidence, which was, I'm still not doing it. And then I was like, it's not a me problem. I am not a garbage person. I am not undisciplined.
I have not yet found the answer to, to my question yet, which is no, really, but how do I make this happen for me? Right? So if you're somebody who's like, I don't, I can't make myself do X. Okay, let's try something different. And it could be anything different. Right? It could be, maybe you need to call a friend.
Maybe you need to throw money at the problem. Money doesn't motivate me. I was a member of a gym for a very long time, and I didn't go! Right. The reason I'm going to this now, My trainer, if I am one minute late, he's like, are you on your way? I feel like I'm a new boyfriend. Yeah.
Melissa Klug: You're in a relationship.
Tami Hackbarth: And there's two of them. And I'm like, if you miss, they're like, are you okay? I'm like, did I accidentally join a cult? But okay. I mean, I'm going to be super fit, but the point being is I could be super mean to myself about that. Right. Or. I could look for ways to remove the obstacles. So if you hate how your house looks and you haven't figured out how to do it, invite somebody over.
Could be your sister in law or it could be somebody that you meet through Melissa and get your house organized.
Melissa Klug: Well, and there are a ton of things in here that I just want organizers to hear too, of we deal with clients who have a tremendous amount of shame, a tremendous amount of guilt, a tremendous amount of bad self talk about, I'm a bad person because I let my house get this way.
And The how to keep a house while drowning. I, I know her as Domestic Blisters on the internet, right?
Tami Hackbarth: I know struggle care. Yeah.
Melissa Klug: Struggle care, struggle care, and Domestic Blisters. And, and I know her name is KC Davis but I just always think of her as Domestic Blisters, but th that is a good book to read, to help with your clients as well.
Because when we deal with people who have this amount of self determination about how they got in this situation, it can be hard to work with them sometimes. Because they have this bad self talk. So again, taking that emotion out of it and saying, no, you're not a bad person. This is just a dispassionate situation we're going to fix.
Tami Hackbarth: Right, but it's also the idea, so one of her main tenets is that care tasks are morally neutral, that our, that our homes work for us, they don't have to look a certain way, but they, what they do need to do is function for the people that live there, so they don't have to be aesthetically pleasing, but you do have to have all the same stuff in the place ready for the people who need it when they need it and the places that you put things should probably make sense for the people that are using them.
Yes. Right, so she's an example where she has every member of their family shares one closet. And she brings all of the laundry in that way. And they don't have dressers. They have bins. Because it's that idea of like, how can I solve this problem for me? Not Pinterest. How do I solve it for our family?
Melissa Klug: Yes.
And that's important for organizers too, because especially newer ones, if you don't have as much experience or frankly, even if you've been experienced for a while, you're used to doing things the way you're used to doing them and reminding ourselves, especially as there is so much more, you know, more people getting diagnosed with ADHD and other neurodivergence, there are so many people that we are going to have to come up with really creative solutions of how they solve it.
Problems in their home. And it's not always about having a beautiful pantry with everything decanted like a Khloe Kardashian's house. Okay. Sometimes it is, it is okay to just have a laundry bin where the clean laundry is just in the bin and it never gets hung up. It just gets worn. That's reality for some people.
That is what is actually going to move them forward versus no, you have to fold everything like Marie Kondo folds. And by the way, I love a Marie Kondo fold. I'll do it all day long, but that's not realistic for a lot of people. So
Tami Hackbarth: exactly when it but it's also been this interesting, but I'm also going to push back on every single person that's like, I need an A plus in bed making, I need an A plus in dishwashing, I need an A plus in baby onesie folding, because in the same breath they're going to tell me I don't have time for self care and I'm like, no one cares if your baby's clothes are wrinkled says throw them in the drawer.
They're going to spit up in a basket. They're going to poop on them anyway. Right. And so it's, but again, I know it's like we feel judged, but you know, it's interesting, Melissa is when we stop judging ourselves so harshly, we realize people actually care way less about us than we realize. Absolutely. So when we're practicing self compassion, we're, we're like, I'm trying my best.
I also, in my mind, have this big, Parenthetical statement is like my sass. My best is really sucking in the situation. And then I'm like, but it is my best. Some days.
Melissa Klug: The best you have to offer is not, not that great. And that's your favorite. Yeah. It's not my
Tami Hackbarth: favorite day. I'm not, it's not my favorite. Not my best.
However, I could try again later for sure. And everyone else. trying their best and maybe you're catching them on and off time, right? But if we, if we loosen that, like everything must be this way, it must look a certain way. It must feel a certain way. Then we, once we remove ourselves from that, it frees up the, we freeze up your brain space to be curious.
So one time I had, I did have a client who in a session, she mentioned folding baby clothes. And I was like, okay. Is this important to you? And she said, I've never thought about it. I was like, is it important to somebody that you're related to? She's like, what do you mean? I go, would your mom or your mother in law come over?
Open your kid's drawers and then like judge you harshly that would hurt your feelers if they noticed that the baby clothes were not folded. And she was like, think so. And I was like, okay, but you have a toddler and you have a baby. And she said, yeah, I was like, you know, the best time to teach a kid how to do something is when they're a toddler and they're going to do everything poorly.
Right. What they lack in skills, they make up for it. Enthusiasm is a teacher toddler to put these little tiny clothes in that bin over there. You're empowering this leadership position for your toddler. You're opening up this whole place in your brain. That isn't. Folding baby clothes and she was like, it was like, she's like, I've never questioned it.
I've never thought about it. I was like, there's freedom. I was like, feel free not to fold your kitchen towels. Because what happens in our homes is what we bring in. So if you want it to feel less rigid, listen up a little bit. Right. And again, and let go of judging other people in their spaces because you're like different houses do things differently.
We just do things differently. We're trying something new. It's an experiment.
Melissa Klug: I, I believe so deeply in the power that a professional organizer can bring to a person's home. I can also judge our own industry for the fact that we have created some completely unrealistic expectations of what an organized home looks like.
And I refer to it as organizing porn. On Instagram or the, you know, the beautiful spaces that don't look like that for 2 minutes after they look there that the pictures taken. And you know what? There are people that want that and that's fine. I will serve those people, but I personally believe that we have to give people the message.
That an organized home does not have to look like a quote perfect home. It is not an Instagram home. It is exactly what you said. It is a home that functions for the people that live there. And you're actually doing a client a disservice if you give them a home that they are unable to keep up without paying you to do it for them.
I think.
Tami Hackbarth: I am over here dropping all the mics. Yes. It's the same thing as a hairstylist giving you a haircut that you can't maintain or your personal trainer giving you a workout that's unobtainable for you at this moment, or just simply doesn't work for your brain and how it functions. And again, I have to address this.
Because we do live in a visual place and it's multi generational, people have been judging others about their homes and how they look forever. And,
and, I was going to say but, but it's an and, and it takes guts to be the first person to say, we're trying something different. Love it. We're choosing to prioritize. x over y. We're choosing to put our silverware in a weird place so that our toddler can put the silverware away. We're choosing to not go behind our eight year old who's terrible at making a bed because beds are really big when you're eight.
They're awful and, you know, eight year olds not great at details. Let me tell you, if you go behind that kid and remake their bed, what the message is, is you're not good enough. Your effort sucks. You're not up to the job. And so that's not the message that I want to send. I want to send the message of thank you for doing that.
I'm thinking you're going to get better at this as time goes on, because that's usually what we do. Right. I may offer as time goes on some tips or I may go, I'm choosing to have something be done more than something be perfect.
Melissa Klug: It's, it's, it's a big deal. It
Tami Hackbarth: is a big deal.
Melissa Klug: Could I take a total left turn and ask, ask you about something that I try to do as much as possible is recognize that there is not just one way to have a family.
How does Fair Play work with. single moms or divorced families or people that do not have a traditional cisgendered man partnership.
Tami Hackbarth: Yeah. Okay. I love this. Thank you. Can I address this actually on my own podcast? Yes. Right. Okay. So the, the, the, okay. So Fair Play again, You start out with a hundred, if the hundred cards, if there are kids involved.
So if you are in a situation where there's no kids involved, say your college roommates, you have the 60 cards. The very first step is we got to get rid of some of these cards. First things first is like, not everything can be important, right? If it's important to one person, We'll keep the card, but we really have to get into what we call the humanity, which is like, why do you, what does this matter to you?
Right, right, right. And if it does, You're a single mom, the baby cards don't have to get folded. Exactly, or maybe holiday cards don't happen, or all of these things, right? So, Fair Play is less about, Tasks and more about communication, communication amongst the team players, but also about how you break tasks down.
So in Fair Play, it's C conception. That's all the thinking that goes into a task. So again, let's look at holiday cards. Some people, the thinking might be these are really important to me, we've always gotten them, and they're going to run to the drugstore and get a preprinted card with a cute message, and they're just going to sign the name and then do the stamping and get out.
And if you bring two grown people together to talk about holiday cards, you are not talking about the same thing. Until you have that conversation, right? So the first part of Fair Play is having the conversation around. Is this important to you.
And if it is, tell me a story about how you grew up, and how this was reflected in your house, and why you hold this deeply personal value about something I do not care about because we didn't do that at my house, right? And then, so, but you get all the players in. The kids are there. It's this big brain fest.
Imagine everybody mind melding together to talk through each of these situations. Then you get to the planning part, which is like the nuts and bolts of the 75 tasks. Because if you put holiday cards on your to do list you're never going to cross it off because you're never going to start because that's, it's not a, it's not a checkoff able thing.
That's when you task it out. And that also could be that part where everyone goes, nevermind, it's too much work. We're going to get rid of the card. Yeah. Right. So we have conception, C. We have P, planning, C, P, and then E is execution. And we go through the entire thing. One person holds the card, so they go from the thinking with everybody, all the stakeholders, to the planning, to actually doing it.
And in those conversations, we talk about the minimum standard of care, which is, we'll know the holiday cards are done. when they have been delivered, addressed to the post office, and people start getting them. These are conversations. I've never had with my family. My parents, I mean we had a relatively clean house except when they were pulling all my stuff out from underneath my bed.
But if they had sat with me and said, hey honey this is how we clean a bedroom. First we take all the garbage out, then we take all the laundry out, then we take all the dishes out, then we put stuff back where it goes, and then we find homes for stuff. I would have been like, Well, now you can expect me to have a clean room because I know what you're talking about.
Yeah. Right? And since we all grow up in different households. We have ideas implanted in our little brains about how the world works and we think that everybody does everything the same way our family did, except it can be further from the truth. Right? So if you're coming together and you're living in, say a college roommate situation,
so maybe you're going to talk about. dishes. I mean, who didn't get a bitchy post it note on their door in college or cleaning the bathroom, right? Some people maybe never learned how to clean a bathroom. And so you all decide together this, these are the tasks that go into cleaning a bathroom. And we will know that the person has completed their card because all of these things are done.
Say you're a single mom. Guess what says the very first thing you're going to do is you are going to call. those carts.
Melissa Klug: It's about what's important, like the main thing is it's what is important and so therefore there are some things because you don't have someone necessarily to help you with these, those have to be off the table.
But
Tami Hackbarth: what if, but what if you're, because you're a single mom, maybe you have grandparent help, or you have an after school helper, or you have neighbors, or maybe you do like a child child care swap with another single mom. What if you're co parenting with someone? I mean, could you imagine you and your spouse have gotten what I like to call unmarried.
You've gotten unmarried. Now you all have your own homes, but you still share kids. So one of the cards is kids teeth. Would it blow your mind to know that you could say, Hey, you're holding the kids teeth? teeth card spouse at another house. In that way, that person finds the dentist, hooks up the insurance, sets up the appointments, takes the kid, does the aftercare, really is very invested in flossing because they're the one getting the stare down at the dentist, not you.
Do you know what I mean? But like, so if you're co parenting, you say you're in charge of teeth. I got the rest of the body. I'm doing shots. You're doing sports. I'm doing music. You're doing magical creatures. You've got Santa. I've got the tooth fairy, but, but it says ideas, but it is very much like an SOP in that you're like, all bases are covered.
And you're like, but what if my spouse won't do it? Yeah, that sucks. You're right. Absolutely. Call your cards. You can really only control what happens in your own home. Let's be real. This is likely why y'all aren't together anymore.
But we build communities with people who want our families to be successful. In my own home, I came over this a long time ago. We have what we call our family success team, and it's everyone who makes our lives easier. So that could be my hairstylist. On our family success team, because I get a cut, and I'm done. Gal does my eyebrows, family success team, the massage therapist, the house cleaner, the grandparents, the occasional babysitter. Who's at the top of everyone's family success team. Post COVID school, school, that place where the children's go so you can get your work done. It's all of those things that when, when we first went into shelter in place, we're like, Oh, I'm sorry, I don't do this by myself.
Right. We let people in to help us because we are a communal species. We all want our teams to be successful.
Melissa Klug: So it's about having a family board of directors of other people, you know, that are on your team and that are helping out.
And we understand that that, that team might look very different depending on finances and abilities and all sorts of things. And then if that team is very small team, It might mean some of the things that are important to you have to become less important. Is that fair? Like some of those
Tami Hackbarth: things have to.
Yeah. Well, but I mean, it's the same thing as saying, Oh, I'm going to learn how to be a skydiving instructor. And I have a newborn. Those seasons don't match up. You are busy. You're likely hurt from, you know, creating a, an infant you're tired. All these things. So. It does. Things don't have to cycle off forever, but they can, they can.
ebb and flow. But the nice thing is, is that you know what you're putting down on purpose. The other nice thing is when you're playing the game, and it is a game, you're, you're tackling problems with your loved ones but you can also see very clearly people who've dropped the ball. I just interviewed Eve Rodsky, the creator of Fair Play, recently for my podcast, and she told the story about there was a dad who took on magical creatures.
Kid lost their second tooth, totally forgot, and he was like, what do I do? So he googled toothfairy at gmail dot com, got a response, got a response and then before Fair Play, he would have went to his partner and said, why didn't you remind me that it, that because he was owning that card, he's like, I totally messed this up.
Now I need to fix it. And he did because he's a grown up. Our people, whoever they are, when they are not with us, they are successful without us. Your children kick ass at school without you. Your partner, so good at work. We got to bring that same energy into our own organization, right? And so. Yeah. Like, let's have faith in our people, we gotta let go of our needing to micromanage everyone in our life.
Yes. Needing to control. Gotta let go of some control. Because when you let go of control, you free up time, space, energy, bandwidth for your greater pursuits. Beyond laundry and packing school lunches, one of my most despised tasks,
Melissa Klug: I, I also think about this. So, you know, every, every time I have a conversation with someone, I'm always like, Oh my gosh, there's so many like applicable things on this.
And when I think about this whole conversation, I also think about the people that I serve who are. Usually solopreneurs, that is another part of this of like, if you are just starting out building your business, or if you are, if you have a very successful business, or maybe you're in a tougher time right now.
So you're having to spend more time with your business. There are so many different applicabilities here where you just say, okay, this is another example of, I might have to spend some time over here, extra time working on my business. And therefore I have to let X, Y, Z thing go over here at home and say, this is a season that will change, but it's just that whole concept you were talking about way earlier about equal and equitable and all of that.
It really makes you think about sometimes you just have to like ebb and flow with what's important to
Tami Hackbarth: you. Ebb and flow. So the conversation used to be about work life balance as if there. different spaces where different people, like we're cut in half. I'm like, do we cut down the middle, like in the middle of your nose?
Or do I, is it like from your waist down? No, you, you bring your whole self to work wherever you're working. And so that the reason I put, I've been talking a lot about Fair Play because The number one reason people tell me that they do not practice self care is because they do not have time or resources.
So when you play Fair Play, guess what you get back? Time and resources. And to all the people who are working for themselves, without you, there is no business. You are your number one asset. You are the golden goose, my friend. The more you pour into yourself, it seems absolutely counterintuitive because you're like, I only have 24 hours in a day, but 168 hours a week.
I know. And. The more you maintain yourself, your mental health, your physical health, your spiritual health, all of it, the better off you will be in the long run. This is, I should just get a t shirt that says, The Long Game, because that's all I'm playing. All I'm playing is like, what do I do now to set me up to be an amazing senior citizen?
So I'm investing in my retirement, and I'm lifting weights, right? Because I can see the future, as you were saying, with kids, you're like, oh my god, they just graduated, they're there. You know what? We're not aging in place. We are aging along with them, and so our care needs, when you're 25, you can go to a club, have some cocktails, Not go to sleep, put on more mascara, and go to work.
When you're 40, you have to drink coffee to go to a movie when it's dark. So, your, your care needs, like, your, your kid care needs go down as they get older, and your own care needs go up when you get older. This, it, it all plays in together. We do our best work when we feel our best. We do our best work when we're in community with others.
We do our best work when we feel like things are equitable in our homes and our businesses and in our world. So if you've been neglecting yourself because you don't have time, self care applied correctly will give you, it's not time that people are missing. It's energy, it's bandwidth. It's feeling feeling good, right?
Melissa Klug: And I think that that concept of is especially applicable. And we talk about it a lot with organizers because you cannot be good for your clients. This is a very physically demanding job. It's an emotionally demanding job. Everything we have talked about, this is some heavy, deep stuff. And we, we deal with heavy, deep stuff with some of our clients.
Some of them are very straightforward and some of them are not. And if we are not taking care of ourselves, then we're not doing a good job for our clients, which means then we're not doing a good job for our business, which then is going to lead to more stress. It's all, it's such a circle. for, for the people that do this work.
Tami Hackbarth: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's that the Venn diagram is an actual circle. Yes. Yes. Well, because, well, because I mean, it's like, you can't really phone it in as a parent because your kids know, and they reflect it back to you. You can't phone it as an organizer. You can't phone it in as a teacher or a nurse.
We are all connected to each other when we're together in our, moods and emotions are contagious. But the more resourced you are as a person, the more choice you have on, Am I also going to have a tantrum? Because that little person over there is rolling around on the floor and yelling.
Am I going to meet that energy? Or am I going to help try to pull them to my more calm energy? And we can't do that if we're not resourced, and what I mean by resourced is, we're not hungry, we're not cold, we're not tired, we're not overwhelmed with the amount of tasks that we have to do to keep the ball rolling.
It's sort of like a equilibrium has been met.
Melissa Klug: Well, and it's, it's really important, and I think it's also an easy thing to just let go by the wayside, cause you're like, I don't have time. To your point.
Tami Hackbarth: Right? And also, and when you're young, it feels optional. Yeah. It's
Melissa Klug: not, not as much as you get older.
That's, that's absolutely for sure. Yeah. So I legitimately could talk to you for like 712 more hours. I want to be respectful of your time. What I would love to do. Can you tell us, can you give us just a, because there is so much more we could have talked about. Could you tell us a little bit about.
You're we talked a lot about Fair Play and so much stuff that we can help our clients with and ourselves, but can you tell us a little bit about your podcast, your book, all of the things about self care? So how we do a better job at that?
Tami Hackbarth: Yes. So I wrote the book, The Essential Guide to 100% Guilt Free Self Care.
And in it I dispel the myth that self care is something that's kind of outside that you could buy at Target or from an Instagram ad. And it's
Melissa Klug: not just go take a bath,
Tami Hackbarth: I assume. It isn't. It is not just go take a bath, and it's also not just take care of your physical body. It's so much more than that.
It's about, are you ready for this? It's about boundaries, both at work and at home. There's this great article that I always quote, and I cannot remember the woman's name right now, but if you Google right now self care is creating a life that you don't regularly need to escape from.
Melissa Klug: Oh yeah.
I'm going to have to have
Tami Hackbarth: you come back. Right. Did everyone just get tears in their eyes and kind of sweaty in their armpits? So my book is, is laid out where I give you a little bit of research about like the things that you should do, but I also challenge you to actually do them. And it's a short book.
It's a hundred pages. And the reason I kept it short. Is because apparently people are real strapped for time and I'm like, all right, you know what, I'm going to break it down for you. This is what you do. This is how you do it. So you can find my book on my website. You can find it, Google it. You might even find it at your local library.
You could ask them to buy it and because it's at my local library because I asked them to buy it and they did. I also run a group coaching program called Deferred Maintenance. Does everybody know what deferred maintenance is? I do. Yeah, so deferred maintenance is that thing that you do on your house or your car where you're like, I know that check engine light just went on.
Yes. I'm going to go ahead and keep driving. And then. Four days later, you're on the side of the highway because you didn't have time to stop then to check to the check engine light, but now you're on the side of the highway. That's the same thing that happens with your self care, right? You've been meaning to get enough sleep.
You've been meaning to get your mammogram. You've been meaning to do all these things. And a lot of times when moms have little kids, It's when they get into preschool, when they get into elementary school, when they get to middle school, when they get high, so I'm like, Okay, but again, our kids are not aging without us, and our care needs do not go down as we get older.
Right. So I, I host a year long program where we meet every week. And we, we go deep into all aspects of self care where we create lives that we don't want to ever run away from. And I also have a self study program where if you're like, you know what, I just actually need one monthly call.
I just need someone to check in with me to help me keep the promises that I made. That I made to myself about taking this seriously, and if you are somebody who's like, I'm really interested in this time. Energy bandwidth situation
you can come on over to my website, Tami hackbarth. com. Get on my newsletter list and
you can follow me on Instagram at Tami Hackbarth. And I have a Facebook group where you can come on over and join that. And that is 100 percent guilt free self care with Tami Hackbarth. There are a couple of Questions.
Okay. So answer the questions if you actually want me to say yes, come in. But yeah, I'm all about helping all families find their way in this world where we don't have a lot of outside support. So we're building the support inside. And if eventually, lots of people. In lots of houses in lots of neighborhoods.
It all spills out into change for the better for all of us. And that's what it's all about.
Melissa Klug: I love it. And I just think I would, and all of this information, by the way, will be in the show notes. So as people forget, if you are listening to this podcast, there are a couple of things. voluminous notes that you can just click on the episode and all of this information is there.
But I, there are so many resources to help our clients. And that's where I feel just the biggest pull is not just in our own homes, but our job is to help other people live better. And there are so many ways that we can do that and offer help to the people that need a higher level of help. It again, not the people that just want the beautiful pantry.
And those are great people that we love to help. But the people who are really crying out for extra help, it is out there. So,
Tami Hackbarth: and also another asterisk, there is no shame in the asking for help game. There is actual TED talk. Called if you want to be better at something, hire a coach. Oh, I love that because, and that guy is a surgeon.
And what they did was he, he was a top surgeon. He hired a coach to observe what he was doing. They made these tiny, tiny, tiny changes in how he was performing surgery. And the death rate of his patients went way down. Their health outcomes went way up. Then they started doing. It's, it's that idea that you have somebody on your team to be like, you know, if you moved just a little to the left, you would actually be in the frame.
And you're like, what? I didn't even see that because that's a coach's job. They help you see what you can't see. And if you want to be better at stuff, you ask for help. I mean, I have a lot of coaches, I'm just going to say, I got coaches for everything I want to be better at. Well, that's how we get
Melissa Klug: better.
As I like to say, therapists have therapists, doctors have doctors you know, we, we all need people to help us out. So there are, there are organizers that need organizers to come help them in their own homes. Like there, there is no shame in that game. So exactly as much as we can help our clients though.
I think that's, to me, that's where I find the most joy with, with my job is to be able to help people live better in their homes. And, and a lot of this is about being a woman in 2024 and beyond, so.
Tami Hackbarth: And I'm here, I'm here to change the narrative that we have to do it all by ourselves. Yes. Because
Melissa Klug: we don't.
No, we don't. We don't. I have learned a lot today. So,
Tami Hackbarth: thank you. You're very welcome.
Melissa Klug: Thank you so much for being here, and if you are game for it, we will have you back another time, because I would love to talk to you about all of the things non bath related that are self care.
Tami Hackbarth: 100%. Call me, as the kids would say. Call me! But don't call me, because just text me. Yeah, no. I don't use my phone for that. No,
Melissa Klug: no, no. I would prefer my phone not to be a phone actually. But yeah, I just, I don't know why it just cracks me up that everybody's the idea of like self care is to just go take a bath.
No, I love what you said about it's creating a life that you do not want to run away from. That's I'm just like on that.
Tami Hackbarth: Above everything. Right. Where you're like, Oh yeah,
Melissa Klug: yeah. I love that. So yes, you will have to come back and we'll talk about all that because I could talk to you for
Tami Hackbarth: hours. Yay. Thank you so much for having me.
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