310: The Summer Planning Episode: What Every Working Mom Needs to Do in the Next 30 Days

[00:00:00] Tiffany Sauder: Summer can steal an enormous amount of time and capacity. When we go into it with just ambiguity, when nobody knows what the plan is, everyone is microso every single day. A visible schedule is gonna kill that ambiguity. It tells everybody at a glance what the week looks like. Your kids know when you're in a heavy work stretch.

[00:00:18] You know when you're committed and when you can be present. You don't have to download every single person every single day on what's happening.

[00:00:25] Tiffany Sauder: I'm Tiffany Sauder, entrepreneur, wife, mom, to four girls and a woman figuring it out just like you. Come on, let's go build your Life of And.

[00:00:35] Tiffany Sauder: Every single working mom I know hits the same wall. It's the first week of summer school is out, the kids are home, and you realize, oh shit, I haven't figured any of this out. Who's watching them on Tuesday? What are they eating for lunch every day for the next 1200 weeks at their home? Is there camp? Is there coverage?

[00:00:53] Tiffany Sauder: Is there anything on the calendar that is actually for you and you feel behind before summer even starts? Here's what I've learned after 17 summers as a working mom, which like asterisk, this is my last summer with all the girls home, so wild. Your summer is not gonna organize itself, ladies. It's gonna expand to fill every single empty space and it will take your entire calendar if you let it.

[00:01:22] Tiffany Sauder: And the women who actually enjoy summer are those working moms who come through and say, it did not literally take like Eat Me Life and Limb. They planned it in April. So that's what this episode is gonna be about. I know you're stressed because you just got back from spring break and you're like, holy crap, may is coming, which is like.

[00:01:38] Tiffany Sauder: Basically the second December for every single working mom. But you're four weeks out, and I'm gonna give you a checklist so that as you walk into summer, you feel like, girl, I got this. that's what we're gonna go through. So we're gonna go through the things to decide, stuff to reserve, stuff to talk through with your kids, things to put on the calendar right now so that when the last day of school arrives, you are not starting your plan.

[00:02:00] Tiffany Sauder: You are ready. We're not gonna survive our summer. We're gonna crush it. Okay? So that's what we're gonna talk about.

[00:02:06] Tiffany Sauder: Number one, I wanna go through logistics. The first thing that has to happen is a practical solve. So do you have coverage for every single week of summer? Like this is a critical question and you're, some of you're saying like, well, of course I do.

[00:02:21] Tiffany Sauder: I'm telling you there are some of the moms that don't. I talked to a mom last summer, like end of mid July, and she was like, I just never got to it. And I have been limping along my entire summer. To that mom right now, I'm telling you right now is your moment. Okay? Print out the calendar and every week from the last day of school to the first day back, I want you to ask this question, who is responsible for the kids each one of those days?

[00:02:48] Tiffany Sauder: If you're in a two-career household like me, the question is not gonna be optional, and it cannot be vague because you have to work. You need a named answer for every single week. Not we're gonna figure it out because that means figure it out means you're not gonna work that day or you're gonna be stressed because you're gonna pretend that work today or you're gonna do 50% of your job that day because you didn't figure it out.

[00:03:09] Tiffany Sauder: Okay? Here's where you're gonna look at camp. If you haven't registered for camps, do it today because the good ones fill up in February. The decent ones fill up in April. We know this. It is like annoying. You're in the last window and you need to go look right now. Your childcare provider. Does your nanny sitter or daycare know what summer looks like?

[00:03:28] Tiffany Sauder: Do you know if they're taking a vacation? Ask them. Get ahead of this. Get that conversation on the calendar this week. Then I want you to go look at your own work calendar. Where are the weeks that you're traveling? Or you're gonna be in heavy work seasons where there are non-negotiable meetings that are happening and flag them now.

[00:03:48] Tiffany Sauder: Those are gonna be the weeks that need the most support, not the least. I also want you to look at the summer calendar and see which ones do you just not that need that much coverage. See when? July 4th falls. See what week you're gonna leave on Wednesday for a long weekend. Those weeks, maybe you can limp along and you don't have to pay for coverage, or you definitely don't wanna register for for a camp that week and waste your money, but get ahead of it and take a look week by week.

[00:04:13] Tiffany Sauder: The last section is look at like family coverage. Where can grandparents, cousins, or family visits, when are those happening and do they actually help with coverage or do they add the complexity and logistics? So the goal is to come out of this exercise with zero blank weeks. If you have a blank week and it says, I'm gonna just watch the kids, well then you know that in advance.

[00:04:35] Tiffany Sauder: And so when somebody asks you if you can give a presentation in LA for a board meeting on that Tuesday, when you're, when you're watching the kids, you can say, I would be happy to do it remotely for you, because you know you're gonna have the kids that week. So set yourself up for success. It gets you out of your reactive, grumpy servant when you have an idea of what's happening.

[00:04:59] Tiffany Sauder: Every single week has a plan. Not a perfect plan, but a named plan. Okay.

[00:05:06] Tiffany Sauder: The second thing I want you to do is to set priorities. This is the piece that I think a lot of families skip, and so ones that like honestly changes everything. It creates focus before summer starts. Every person in your family sits down and writes out three to seven things they want to do, experience, learn, or accomplish this summer.

[00:05:25] Tiffany Sauder: It is not a wishlist. Well, it might kind of start as a wishlist, but I want you to think about it as a priority list and here's how to run with it. Give your family a three day heads up. Don't ambush anyone. I promise there's somebody in your family that is not a high quick start and they need time to process and you need to give that poor, you know, girl or boy in your family a minute to actually think about it.

[00:05:49] Tiffany Sauder: So don't ambush them at dinner, say in three days we're gonna sit down as a family and we're gonna share what each of us want. Out of summer. And so I want you to start thinking about it. And I want you to make that list for you too. This is not just for the kids, this is for you to think about what do I want my, my, family to experience?

[00:06:09] Tiffany Sauder: How many times do I wanna go to the pool? Do I wanna capture, you know, hang out with my friends at the pickleball court? Like, what do you want as well? And one of the things I do is I also think about things I might add to my kids' priorities list. So for example, I have a 10-year-old. She is not as proficient at her math facts as her father and I would like her to be.

[00:06:31] Tiffany Sauder: And so one of the priorities I will have for her this summer is that she works on her math facts 10 minutes, three times a week. And I know by the end of the summer she will know her math facts cold if she does that. So also think about when you're thinking priorities. What are things you might add to their list?

[00:06:48] Tiffany Sauder: Last year, I think one was, somebody needed to learn how to ride a bike. A couple of times with my like preteens, I'm like, you need to learn how to type. We're not a hunt and peck kind of a house. So those things, what do you want your kids to be learning? Where do you want them to be? Focusing their energy is also a time to think about that.

[00:07:08] Tiffany Sauder: So why do priorities even matter? It's really for three reasons. First, your kids now have a list to go back to when they're bored. Because 100% certainty in life is gravity. And the fact that your kids are gonna come to you in the summer at some point and say you're bored. And so when someone wanders into the kitchen at 10:00 AM saying they have nothing to do, you point them to the list and say, Hey, let's take a look at what you said you wanted to do.

[00:07:36] Tiffany Sauder: You said you wanted to learn how to make sourdough. Today's the day. Go pull up Pinterest, rob your neighbor's house for her sourdough starter. I don't know, but like. It gives them a place to put their energy because the boredom problem becomes a priority problem, like they don't know what to do, and so it becomes solvable when you have an idea of what it is that they wanted to do at the beginning of the summer.

[00:08:00] Tiffany Sauder: The second thing is you know what to plan around instead of guessing what matters to your 14-year-old this summer, you actually know, and mine often will say like, I wanna hang out with these three friends at least three times. I wanna go spend the weekend at Nana's house. I wanna go to Chicago and watch a show Like I don't know.

[00:08:18] Tiffany Sauder: But it gives you an understanding of what you need to prioritize, what is gonna get your time and money. Because when you know the kids' priorities, it changes the decisions you make about how to spend time and money. Maybe you'll reroute some camp funds towards a different thing that is more important to them.

[00:08:35] Tiffany Sauder: Third, and I think this is the one that gets skips the most, is that you are also a customer of summer. I remember so vividly. So vividly, and this is where this exercise came from one summer, and I wish it was probably my kids are 14, like. Probably six to eight years ago, and, I got to the end of the summer.

[00:08:57] Tiffany Sauder: We were on back to school like situation, and I realized I did not put my swimsuit on one time that entire summer. And I also had mushrooms growing underneath my patio furniture because I had never like. What's it called? Like power washed it, pressure washed it and like opened up the patio for us to like entertain and eat up there.

[00:09:18] Tiffany Sauder: It was like always cobo and gross. And I got to the end of the summer and I blamed all kinds of things, my clients, my job, my kids for taking up so much capacity. And what I realized was it was me who never actually said, this is the Friday I'm gonna leave at noon and go to the pool with my kids. This is the Saturday.

[00:09:40] Tiffany Sauder: We're gonna have friends over and we're gonna do a summer cookout. I never made those decisions. I never set priorities on a list. And if we don't ever say what we wanna feel do and experience before Labor Day, if we don't name it and put it on the calendar, the whole summer is gonna get filled in, and I promise you it will not happen.

[00:10:02] Tiffany Sauder: Somebody else's priorities will have taken every open day, and I have ended summers. where I experienced none of of it, and this is not going to be that summer for me, and I don't want it to be that summer for you.

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[00:10:17] Tiffany Sauder: I wanna take a quick moment to thank my partners at Share Your Genius. For the past four years, they have been an incredible part of my journey. Behind the Microphone, Share Your Genius is a content and podcast production agency that helps leaders and brands bring their message to life.

[00:10:31] Tiffany Sauder: So, whether you're trying to find your voice, develop a content strategy, or get your leader behind a microphone, they're gonna help you make it simple, strategic and impactful.

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[00:10:41] Tiffany Sauder: So how do we work in a different way so that we can be clear about what we want, when we name what we want, when we put it on the calendar, when there's still time, before it's all gone.

[00:10:51] Tiffany Sauder: We can build a summer for with purpose for ourselves as well, and not just our families. Okay. Once your priority. So you've gone through your calendar like I've got coverage, you've got summer priorities figured out. So once that's done, now we have to make it visible. And I mean, in the most literal sense of things.

[00:11:11] Tiffany Sauder: I know we are living in the world of ai, but there is nothing more comforting to a family who's busy than a printed calendar on the fridge. and I will put one on the fridge and I will give the girls each one to put in their rooms. Because then everybody knows what's going on. So I will write out who's in charge of the kids, what camper activity they're going to, any family commitments or trips that we have to look forward to, what days I'm gonna be traveling or just unavailable.

[00:11:39] Tiffany Sauder: And this one piece of paper I'm telling you is gonna do more for your summer sanity than almost anything else. will also, like, I will literally put unplanned time on there. Literally, I will say this is going to be a day where we have no plans because otherwise, you know, you are never gonna have a day in the summer where you have no plans, where you get to like just experience your stuff.

[00:12:05] Tiffany Sauder: I just feel like we don't experience our backyards, we don't experience our grills. We don't, and maybe some of your families are better at that than ours, but if like given a chance to say yes to a commitment, I will. And so I also have to just plan like. Do nothing. And then I look at my calendar and somebody says, are you available on Saturday?

[00:12:23] Tiffany Sauder: And I'm like, oh, I am. I'm busy. Even if busy means I have do nothing on there. So I think summer can steal an enormous amount of time and capacity when we go into it with just ambiguity. Nobody knows what the plan is. Everyone is microsolving every single day. Who's driving? Who's home? What's for dinner? When is pickup, that daily chaos is going to eat your capacity and your joy.

[00:12:51] Tiffany Sauder: A visible schedule is gonna kill that ambiguity. It tells everybody at a glance what the week looks like. Your kids know when you're in a heavy work stretch. You know when you're committed and when you can be present. Your sitter knows where everybody is, and like honestly, the system kind of runs itself.

[00:13:05] Tiffany Sauder: You don't have to download every single. Person every single day on what's happening. So that's my hack. Okay, last one.

[00:13:14] Tiffany Sauder: Solving for food. I mean, the kids have to eat so many times in the summer at home, when the kids are in school, like food is kind of handled. You know, breakfast is a non-event. They like eat something.

[00:13:27] Tiffany Sauder: I don't know, it's not a big deal at our house. lunches at school or they pack it the night before, so they've already decided it. And then dinner's at home. And so summer blows all of that up completely. They eat every meal at our house and for my pile of girls, they think each meal needs to look like a Pinterest experience and it just can't stand it.

[00:13:46] Tiffany Sauder: So if you don't solve for this now, food is gonna become a daily war, and you're gonna spend more and mental energy on what is there to eat when it deserves. So. A couple things I do before summer starts. One is just decide how food's gonna work. Will you do a weekly grocery order? will your kids help build the lunch menu?

[00:14:06] Tiffany Sauder: Will they get to add one new snack every week? Will you batch cook something on Sundays? I have some older kids so they can make a few things on the weekend as well, but pick a system, any system. that helps you get food out faster and there be less daily micro decision Decision making on what to eat. The enemy is not that the system is bad, the enemy is not having one at all.

[00:14:33] Tiffany Sauder: The second is get your kids involved with planning. Have 'em write down what they want for breakfast and lunch each week. And again, put it on the calendar. The one that's already printed on the fridge. When they have invested in the plan, there's much less pushback on like, I've got nothing to eat. I hate what's in the house.

[00:14:50] Tiffany Sauder: It's like, just like the school publishes a lunch menu every week, like every month, right? Like April's just dropped. Somebody planned the lunch menu. And if your kids eat at school, they eat whatever somebody makes them, because there's not more choices. And I think when we take that choice thing away, even in the summer and say, Hey, we've got June coming up, can you go ahead and plan every lunch?

[00:15:17] Tiffany Sauder: Then you just have to order like the groceries. They don't, it's like trying to set it up more like school where it's like, I'm just not in the mood for that today. I mean, the lunch lady's not gonna go back and like make chicken nuggets for your kid and your kid alone. That's not how it rolls. So we can set it up like that in our house as well.

[00:15:33] Tiffany Sauder: And I usually say like, Hey, Monday through Thursday, it's just more rigid, like we still need to be. Like business version of our family rolls on those four days and the play version of ourselves can of our family can roll more on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So I'm not this rigid every day. Them knowing the plan, them participating the plan.

[00:15:55] Tiffany Sauder: It's like, I think really important. And you're also like teaching them something really real about how a household runs, because someday they're probably gonna have kids who also need to eat during the summer and they'll have a toolbox for doing that. So, last thing.

[00:16:08] Tiffany Sauder: I'd like to prep our environment for summer too.

[00:16:11] Tiffany Sauder: And it, it feels silly, but when. We kind of prep our space for school too, meaning like where are you gonna study? Is it cleaned off? Do you have sharp pencils? Like creating a space for the girls to be able to do their schoolwork and have a landing place for their backpack and know where to place their lunchbox when they get home from school.

[00:16:32] Tiffany Sauder: All of that is like a school intake, a school version of our space in our house, and I like. To move it and prep it for summer as well. So do a pass through the house with a fresh set of eyes and think about where are the zones, where the kids are gonna spend time, and is there places where you need to move things around?

[00:16:52] Tiffany Sauder: Are there toys that are worn out or like, I usually update and replace like all of our markers and crayons and colored pencils. It costs like $25. It's like not a big deal, but it makes it feel fresh and prepared and like interesting. Again, a $60 order of like new sidewalk chalk and bubble wand and reusable water balloons and like fresh art supplies.

[00:17:14] Tiffany Sauder: All of that can make the space things that have already been used and feel super like I don't know, worn out. It makes it feel new again and new things extend engagement and make 'em happy. I mean, think about when you see like a new shirt in your closet, like woo. Fun day, I am gonna feel great about myself.

[00:17:32] Tiffany Sauder: It's the same thing with kids. When the space is set up to be used and it looks fun and colorful and engaging and inviting, they will do that instead of defaulting to screens or at least you've got a shot. So, I mean, Goodwill is worth a run to. You can always spend 20 bucks and come home with. We always go find things to like paint and clothes that they can cut up and turn into something else.

[00:17:57] Tiffany Sauder: So I have a pile of girls, so that's where my experiences come from, but they're like very low cost, high return things that we can do. And for like less than a hundred bucks, I can make the house feel really, really new again. So the goal is to make house feel like a destination, like not just this default of like yesterday's school was happening today at summer and literally nothing feels.

[00:18:21] Tiffany Sauder: Different like that I think would be really disappointing. So I think with a really a few simple things, here's what I'm gonna have you do. Get your house cleaned on a Saturday and use that Saturday to get your house prepped for summer. How about that change? How about that switch? Go listen to my other episode on outsourcing, but like give yourself a little capacity so that you can do this as well.

[00:18:44] Tiffany Sauder: Here's some things I know about summer planning. The families who love summer are not the ones who have more money or more flexibility. They're the ones who sat down right now in the spring and asked the right questions. What do we need? What do we want? What has to be solved before the first day of school is out?

[00:19:02] Tiffany Sauder: And how do we go into the summer as a team? Summer is long and it's loud and it's fast and it's a lot of meals and it's a lot of logistics and lots of wet, sweaty kids with a thousand towels to clean, but it's also the season with the most white space in it. If we set it up to be that way, it has room for moments that actually matter for connection and some stillness and nature, and just time to be so we can have it.

[00:19:33] Tiffany Sauder: We have a decision to make. I think we can either let it fill up with chaos and crazy and just whatever happens and comes, or we can decide right now what is our summer gonna hold? What are we gonna make sure it feels like? So right now, the window is open and I want you to take advantage of it.

[00:19:53] Tiffany Sauder: if this episode gave you the push you need, I would just love it if you would forward it to the working mom in your life who hasn't thought about summer yet, or you know, she spent last summer feeling like she did not take advantage of the time. She needs it more than she knows, and I would love it if you shared it with her.

[00:20:10] Tiffany Sauder: If you want a system for running your household, that doesn't break down every single time a new season hits. That's exactly what we've built inside the Life of And program, and I would love for you to join us. The link is in show notes, so go plan your summer, all of it. And don't forget, you're a customer too.

[00:20:25] Tiffany Sauder: I'll see you next week.