Tiffany Sauder [00:00:00]:
Work deadlines, camps, grocery runs, play dates. If you find yourself wondering how you're going to get through summer without losing your mind, you're in the right place. I'm Tiffany Sauder, entrepreneur, wife, mom to four girls, and a woman figuring it out just like you. If you're tired of living a life of have to, and finally ready to build a life of want to, then you're in the right place. Come on, let's go build your Life of And. Hey, friend, welcome back. I'm so happy you're here. We're in the middle of our Working Parent summer survival series, and today's episode is basically a peek into the real life stuff that helps me and my family keep our head above water during the crazy summer months.

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:47]:
I'm sharing the apps, tools, and the little communication systems that keep our family connected and honestly just kind of help the wheel stay on the bus as we kind of push it to go faster and faster in these summer months. So if you're looking for ways to make summer a little less overwhelming and a lot more fun, you're in the right place. Let's jump in. Okay, so we are in our Working Parent Summer Survival series, and last week we talked about how to set priorities so that everybody can be on the same page and get what they want out of summer. This week I want to talk about kind of those tools, a couple of apps, the communication, like those tools that you put in the backdrop that kind of help everything that's going on just work better. How do you help stay on the same page? How do you stay connected? How do you help everybody understand kind of what the program is for the day? So that's what I want to go into. Here I have six, like again, tools and a couple of apps that just kind of help us stay aligned in the busy summer. And we use these, a lot of these all year round.

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:48]:
But I would say they kind of just become more important in the summertime because things are just, you know, a little busier. So the first one, if you've been listening to this podcast for very long at all, you know that I am a big fan of outsourcing your laundry. And so that is what I'm going to start this one with. If you are trying to find more time for yourself, more time for your kids, more time for summer, and figuring out how to move some of the ordinary aside, try outsourcing your laundry just for the summertime, for these eight weeks that your kids are home. What if instead of folding laundry, you were spending time with them. So you may say, well, my kids are home. They can do their laundry. Maybe that's what you decide to do.

Tiffany Sauder [00:02:29]:
But I'm telling you, I think it's an amazing time to try it. So Poplin is a nationwide service. They're all over the country in the United States. And I called them and told them, hey, I'm going to be talking about this, and I would love to give my listeners a discount code that they can't find anywhere else on the Internet. And they agreed to give me that. So if you want to try POP on the summer, I'll tell you a little bit more about what it is, but use the code Tiffany15. Tiffany15 for $15 off of your first order. So imagine, you know, the, like, white kitchen trash bags that you have that all of us buy at Costco.

Tiffany Sauder [00:03:04]:
If two of those are filled to the very brim, like, stuffed with dirty laundry, two of those is like 30 bucks. It's like about. It's like $30 for two big white trash bags. Poplin is $1 a pound. You send it out, it takes 24 hours. It comes back to your doorstep in these lovely bags, folded and, like, organized. And it's incredible. It's clean, it's folded, and it's just ready for you to put it away.

Tiffany Sauder [00:03:33]:
$1 a pound. So how much is a pound of laundry? Well, I can tell you two white trash bags is like 30 pounds of laundry. That's so much laundry. So with my code Tiffany 15, you can get like 50% off. And 15 bucks is a pretty low hurdle for you to try getting, like, four loads of laundry done. So give it a shot. There's an app that you download and you can tell just, like, when you get an Instacart order, you can have somebody, like, claims your order, and you can chat with them while the order is underway. And then you can tell, like, know as they're getting close to your house.

Tiffany Sauder [00:04:09]:
Like, I can always tell. They can never find our driveway. And I can message the driver and all those kinds of things when I use other delivery services, like Uber Eats or Instacart. Exact same thing with Poplin. Okay? It's just they have your laundry. So some of you are like, I'm embarrassed. I don't want to see my underwear. They will never see you wearing your underwear.

Tiffany Sauder [00:04:28]:
Like, why do you care? I'm like, so over it. We've somehow normalized many of us getting our house cleaned. But this idea of kind of this next thing of getting rid of your laundry and getting, like, four to six hours a week of your life back or that nagging relationship that you have with your kids because there's always like clean laundry sitting about. So this is my challenge to you. Send your laundry out with Poplin and just test it. I mean, 15 bucks. Give them like towels and some workout clothes to start with. If you're like uncomfortable, you don't have to send them your nicest silk shirt like from the jump.

Tiffany Sauder [00:05:03]:
If you want to just test it out. That's what I did. I like, like got comfortable sending out some things, my kids clothes mostly. Honestly, most of it's from Old Navy and Target and it'll be fine. So get comfortable with it, test it and use my code Tiffany15 to get 15 off and just give yourself a treat, you know. Another fun time to try Poplin is when you're getting back from vacation. Oftentimes our inboxes are like overflowing and we need groceries and we need just kind of behind. And so that can be another.

Tiffany Sauder [00:05:32]:
If you don't want to be an every week Poplin family, that can be a nice time to use it. It's just like when you're trying to get back on track, getting back from a trip, getting back from the lake, those kinds of things. So number one is Poplin, number two is Greenlight. Some of you may already be using this. It's a budgeting app for kids. A way that you can give allowance, and this is how I love to use it, is you can put chores and a dollar amount beside them and the kids can do stuff around the house for money. We just started my oldest on an allowance. I don't need to go into how we're doing that as a family in this episode.

Tiffany Sauder [00:06:08]:
But oftentimes in the summer my kids want to do things and they want to do things for money because they've got, you know, I don't know, stuff they want to do or crafts they want to buy or something like that. And so I, I oftentimes start using Green Light with them with just this like kind of special projects or chore lists. Like, hey, if you want to get a bucket of soapy water and wash the golf cart. And I'll pay you $5 if you want to sweep out the garage. I'll pay you $7 if you want to go pick up sticks. And I know some of this is just family stuff. It's not jobs, but it's not record breaking amounts of money and it helps them focus sometimes. So Greenlight is an awesome app if your kids are not using it.

Tiffany Sauder [00:06:50]:
My teenagers use it because there's like a Venmo type function to it where you can scan the QR code of their green light. So if they go babysit for a neighbor or you know, do something for a job for somebody else, they can actually get paid that way. And there's a direct deposit function. So if my daughter decides to go be a lifeguard or something like that, then Greenlight allows them to do all that. So it is actually connected to an FDIC insured like bank account. It's just through the Greenlight app is how you open that up. So they would have a bank account. There's an account and routing number and all those kinds of things.

Tiffany Sauder [00:07:28]:
There's just no physical place that they can go to the bank because it's all online. And I can very easily transfer money from my account to their individual ones. And it's been awesome. So Greenlight is a really great tool for just kind of getting some chores done. And if you want to set up budget or allowance, Greenlight is a great partner for us. We use it a lot and I love it. Okay, gonna move into one more app and then I'll go to just some practical things. Amazon has a function called Amazon Teen.

Tiffany Sauder [00:07:58]:
So if you go into your Amazon app, which we all have, and you go to your account and you go to my Amazon family or my Amazon household, I forget which it says just like in your account settings, you'll be able to add a family member. And if you can say I wanna add like an adult profile, which may be your spouse or partner, or you can add a teen profile, what the teen profile allows them to do. Because then your teenager or you know, my 10 year old might have it on her app, on her iPad. They have the Amazon app on their phone. They can shop as they would on Amazon, add to cart and say purchase. And when they say purchase, what it does is it texts you a link to their cart and you can view it and you can text a letter, the letter Y to approve it or you can text the letter N to, to like delete it and not approve what is in their cart. And the way the reason I love this is because it allows my teenagers to be able to manage their own stuff. So like for instance, if there's like a summer party and they need to take something to it, it doesn't become my job to get it.

Tiffany Sauder [00:09:09]:
They can go into Amazon, they can add it to cart and it can get delivered here. They can manage their own like shampoo and conditioner and like, stuff that's in their space without that becoming a me thing or what often happens in my house. They're like looking on Pinterest and they found a cool thing they want to make or craft they want to do or a recipe they want to make. I don't know what it is. And it allows them to just be able to say, hey, Mom, I'd like to. I need some, I don't know, like 400 popsicle sticks or balloons or I don't know what it is, things that they want to do. And I can. They can add it to cart, it can be sent to me and I can just approve it or delete it.

Tiffany Sauder [00:09:50]:
So Amazon Teen, it just creates a ton of capacity. The other thing I can have them do is, like, go through all of our back stock. Like, do we have shampoo? Not shampoo, but do we have, like toilet paper and paperware and stuff for parties and things that are coming up? I can have them go take inventory in the house of those things. And if we don't have what we need, they can essentially quote, order it from Amazon and I can just approve it from my phone. So I love Amazon Teen. I think it's really underutilized as I talk to people, and so that is just a huge capacity lift. I want to take a quick moment to thank my partners at ShareYour Genius. For the past four years, they have been an incredible part of my journey behind the microphone.

Tiffany Sauder [00:10:31]:
Share Your Genius is a content and podcast production agency that helps leaders and brands bring their message to life. So whether you're trying to find your voice, develop a content strategy, or get your leader behind a microphone, they're going to help you make it simple, strategic and impactful. So that was three Poplin, Greenlight and Amazon Teen. I guess the other, like, app that's already on your phone is Shared Notes. You know, just like if you have an Apple phone, just a little like yellow post it note app on your phone. I use this all the time with my teenagers. Like when we're having parties or if they want to have friends over, they'll make a list of who's coming, what food we need, what's already in the house and who's doing what. And just that shared communication just keeps a lot of back and forth from needing to happen.

Tiffany Sauder [00:11:19]:
And then I can say, this is what I'm responsible for and this is what you guys are responsible for. We use that all the time as well. Okay. Food. I'm gonna try to do a whole episode on Food. But, mom, what is there to eat? Is one of the most stressful questions, I think, on planet Earth. And so one of the things I have learned in the summertime is I realized they don't actually always know what's in the house to eat. And so what they do is they do the one thing they know how to do.

Tiffany Sauder [00:11:50]:
They walk into the pantry and scan at eye level, and that is, like, all. And so then they eat the same granola bars over and over again, and they're not actually eating food. And, you know, as a mom or a dad, what's in the house? If you're the one who, like, planned the meal, ordered the groceries, put the groceries away, and, like, cooks the food and put away the leftovers, like, you know, what's in the house to eat? When you didn't do all those touch points, you, like, literally don't know what there is to eat in the house. And so I've done a couple things. One is I literally make the menu of food available in the house visible on our fridge. So it'll be like, ham and cheese sandwiches, Mac and cheese, leftover enchiladas, barbecue pork. It'll, like, literally be a list of what there is in the house to eat on the fridge. Like a menu.

Tiffany Sauder [00:12:37]:
It does not look beautiful. It looks like a tragic piece of paper. But at least they can see what it is and they don't have to come ask me, what is there to eat. The other question that I hate around food or question comment is there's nothing to eat around here. When sometimes that often means there is things to eat around here. It's just not things you want to eat. Which is fine, but I'm not gonna just, you know, Uber eats you what it is that you want to, like, what, like, scratches the itch for you today. I'm not in that business.

Tiffany Sauder [00:13:08]:
So eat what we have. But if you would like to inform what groceries we have or what kind of coffee creamer we have or what snacks there are, or you're really, like, jonesing for a certain kind of something, then I'm happy to order it. Just let me know. So what I have learned again, I don't really do this during the school year, but in the summer, as I'll be like, hey, tomorrow I'm going to order groceries. Is there anything you guys would like me to order? Is there a snack you want to have on hand? Is there something you're wanting to make a lunch, you're craving? Something you want me to make for dinner? And that way they better know what is actually in the house to eat. So publish the menu and have the kids bring ideas of what the food is that they want to eat and maybe what treats they want to have on hand. Like, that's fine. I get my own habits and my own, you know, just things that I get in the habit of ordering.

Tiffany Sauder [00:14:00]:
And so summer's kind of a fun time for them to experiment and sometimes just have different things on hand. Okay. The last thing I want to just talk about is communication. Obviously that's a huge part of what I care about and like in the Life of And academy, a huge part of what I teach. And kind of the core of it is we talked about having family priorities and then every single week having a family meeting that goes through the coming week. Who's going where, what's coming up, who's traveling, does everybody have a ride? And then I always have a planning meeting with just myself right before the family meeting so that I've looked through what are we eating, what am I working out? Like, my life is put on the calendar and I look at everybody else's life and make sure that all fits together. So our quarterly planning or our priorities, my planning meeting and then our family meeting, that all happens. And those are happening.

Tiffany Sauder [00:14:55]:
My planning meeting and family meeting are happening weekly. But what can often happen in the summer because people are going every which direction is it can be hard to keep that intact. And every day is different. It's like the school year. You know, practices are generally like Monday, Wednesday, Friday in the morning or whatever. There's kind of this rhythm to it. And it's just like about, you know, 7% can change every week, but for the most part, the rest of it's the same in the school year, in summer, who's at camp, who's not at camp. Are we doing vacation Bible school this week? Like, it can just be all over the place.

Tiffany Sauder [00:15:30]:
So those weekly family meetings are super important. Even if you can't get everybody in place together, I will even I've thought about this this summer, do like voice note to the family of here is a rundown of the week and here's what's happening. If I've missed something, please let me know. But I need you to listen to this and to try to do end of day, like daily touch points. End of day, daily touch points. So looking at what's happening tomorrow, what time does everybody need to get up? Who's going to be home? Am I going to be working from home or am I going to Be at the office, making sure even though we've gone through the week, each day is going to be a little bit different. And so I'm making sure people can see what's coming in the next 24 hours. I hate same day solving.

Tiffany Sauder [00:16:17]:
I hate the reactivity of having to still structure the day when I'm on the day. I hate that. So I put a massive amount of energy to getting ahead all of that, so that I can just do my day because that I'm a three on the enneagram and I am ruled by efficiency. And getting interrupted all of the time is wildly inefficient and I feel so frustrated. And then I start to get super grumpy and then I'm not in a place where I'm kind or loving. And I don't like that version of myself. And so I have found getting ahead of everything allows me to stay in the person who I like, want to be and the mom I want to be and helps me be able to show up for myself. So to the extent that I can put energy into saying, does everybody know what's coming? Does everybody understand their role? And does everybody feel prepared and confident and excited for what's coming? That's the tone that I want to set going into each day in the summer.

Tiffany Sauder [00:17:13]:
So doing this, planning, you may be hearing this and being like that sounds so unfun, Tiffany. But I'm telling you, once you get into the habit of it, it becomes very light lift and you start to feel so much capacity come back at you because everybody's doing their thing. And yes, sometimes it gets interrupted, but for the most part, people understand what's coming and who's picking them up and what time they have to be ready and all those kinds of things. So those have been very helpful to us in our family as we're kind of trying to figure out how to survive and thrive through the summer. So, Poplin, get rid of some laundry and if you get, if you outsource it, just try it once, please let me know. I'd love to hear from you. Give yourself the treat of a little time back. Go spend some time at the pool or play some games with your kids.

Tiffany Sauder [00:18:01]:
So outsource your laundry. Green light. Helping to teach kids a little bit about financial literacy and also giving them some chores and ways for them to make money. Shared notes so everybody's on the same page. A visible menu of food in the house and giving your kids a chance to weigh in on what you're going to eat. Amazon Teens so that your teenagers can kind of help you manage the what needs to be purchased and making the week schedule visual. Put it on the fridge, repeat it lots of times and make sure everybody's on the same page. So I hope this helps create a backdrop for you and your family to have an amazing summer.

Tiffany Sauder [00:18:37]:
And I'm sure as your family has navigated seasons and summers, that you also have some amazing tips. So if you do like, share them with me and I will make sure that we share those out with the rest. Remember, building your Life of And it doesn't happen by accident. It happens when we decide to create a life where we can be a present parent and have our own dreams and also find joy in the middle of all of the busy. These little tiny tools and habits, they matter so much more than you think. When we can master the ordinary and when we can have these foundational habits, they are what make the big moments possible in our lives. If today's episode has helped you even a little bit, please share it with a friend. Someone maybe who's also in the middle of the crazy trying to figure it out.

Tiffany Sauder [00:19:20]:
Just like you and me. And if you haven't yet, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the rest of this summer survival series. We're in the middle of it and you don't wanna miss the rest. Look, you've got this. I'm cheering for you and I'll see you next time. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for listening to the Life of And this is your weekly reminder to keep making bold choices, saying clear yeses, and holding space for what matters most. As always, if you like this episode, I'd love for you to drop a review and share it with your friend.

Tiffany Sauder [00:19:47]:
It's the fastest way that we can grow the show. Thanks for joining us. I'll see you next time.