Moving FAQ

Published Feb 1, 2022, 10:00 AM

In this episode, Laura and Sarah answer frequently asked questions around moving! Both are relocating (though not very far) in similar time frames. Laura has moved in, Sarah is working on some minor home improvements first.

They discuss logistics of the move itself, selling while you are still living in your home, the merits of renting vs buying, and more. In the Q&A, a listener writes in asking about cry-it-out sleep training methods - to try or not to try?


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Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and thirty five. We're going to be talking about moving and home renovation, something both of us are going through to various degrees. We are both moving, Sarah is doing slightly more limited home renovation, though she is doing some. So Sarah, where are you in the house process? Right now? So right now we are We own our new house, so that's exciting. We've closed that part's all done and it actually was fairly painless, so I'm very happy to report that that worked out. But we have not moved because as we did a walk through, we were thinking about just painting, but then at the very last second kind of looked at the floor and decided that it was time to do the floor, and then speaking with multiple people. No spoilers for the rest of this episode, but apparently it's much better to do your floor before you live in sethouse. So our rental is flexible and we can just give them a thirty day notice when we're ready to depart and end our contract. So right now we're in limbo. We're working on setting up the floor stuff, making our floor choices, and hopefully expediting that process so that we don't have to rent and own at the same time for too many months. Yeah, no, floors are all kinds of fun. We went with golden oak stain in case you are curious, are you doing carpet anywhere or just the no carpet. But we are actually kind of like paralyzed with indecision about like wood versus luxury, vinyl versus tile versus I don't even know. So we did kind of find a great store that's local that I think made the whole process a little bit less confusing, So I'm happy about that. Well that's cool. Yeah, I mean, you know, having good people, you know, and you think we'll show up. It's all the good stuff, and you guys moved in what was it December twenty eighteen, Right, that's when you lasted December twenty eighteen, and we'll talk We can talk about real estate later in the episode. But it's kind of hilarious how how everything ended up working out, but it is what it is. Yeah, yeah, Well, we are in the process of selling our home, which is all kinds of fun as well, but we don't need to go too much into that since we have not in fact closed yet, so hopefully that will happen eventually. So we're going to do this episode sort of Q and a format question for both of us to answer, such as required or makes sense with this. So the first question, why are both of you moving? Or why did you move? So Sarah, why did you guys decide to move? Okay, we decided to move this time around for a purely financial calculation type decision. We were renting and it was very reasonable. I think I disclosed on a prior episode that the rent came out to like seven percent of our take home pay, and I was like, you know what, this is great, no commitment. We had also come off a very stretched out and frustrating selling process, and we weren't excited to go through that again. Spoiler alert. If we had rented out that home, let's just say, that would have been a more advantageous financial position to be in right now. But the thing is, hindsight is very much twenty twenty and we had no idea. But it is rather hilarious to look at Zilo, which lists our Miami Beach home for like double what we sold it for two years ago. But you know, whatever it is, what it is, okay. So in terms of right now, there's actually a great calculator via New York Times where you can put in different variables about your home and how much you're renting it for, and it will kind of spit out an equivalent mortgage, like if you can rent for less than xyz, then it's worth renting, and if not, then it makes sense to probably buy. And that calculator was always kind of equivocal for us, So we felt like, Okay, not a huge disadvantage to rent, We're comfortable doing it, why not do it. Our rent went up hugely. In fact, South Florida is one of the places rents have gone up across the country, but South Florida has been one of the hardest hit areas with that. I think it was like forty nine percent in certain areas of my I know, like crazy, And so it just no longer like calculator like no longer worked. And then we paired that with the fact that we no longer have uncertainty about whether we like the neighborhood. We know we like the neighborhood. We moved here in part for the schools which were not currently attending, but we really just like the people. We like the safety. I like that I can go run even when it's dark and feel comple letally fine about that. So and the location works really really well for both of our jobs. And my husband is at a place where he feels confident that he really likes his job. So I already knew I liked my job, that like his, was fairly new, so it was more uncertainty. So putting all of those variables together, it just made sense. We were very I guess, kind of like casual looking for houses. We went to a couple that like went on the market, but it was more like I just put something on the list, ser of like, hey, if anybody's selling, like let me know, and then the right thing just happened to come up and we went there and it fit, and so yeah, we're doing it, and we are very excited to get one extra room out of the deal. That I guess is another part of it. That we felt motivated to have each kid have their own room. Yeah, that was certainly one of our considerations. You know, we wanted the kids to have their rooms, you know, my husband and I to both have our own workspaces. And we had been semi looking, you know, the whole Zilo stocking whatever, since we knew Henry was coming. And the issue, of course is that there has never been that much on the market that is big enough, and that is in our elementary school catchment area. So if we considered ourselves very very location limited, that obviously limited our options a lot. So we had also engaged a firm to come look at our house, our old house, and to see what it would take to add two more bedrooms, like to do an attic conversion to put in two bedrooms and a bathroom in the attic, And we certainly could have done that, like we had plans drawn up for it, and we had thought about going for it, like a COVID hit. We were trying to figure everything out, and in that we wound up looking at this house that I'm currently recording from the pictures. The real estate pictures did not look all that appealing to me, but then we elected to drive past it, and I have no idea what they were thinking with the photo. Anyway, it looks so much better than you know it was conveyed from there, so we went and toward it. It needed a ton of work, that's why it had been on the market for so long. Eventually we got the same construction firm to come in and look at it with us and to let us know, you know, what it would take to redo it, and wound up going for it. But yeah, it's been a long process. We closed in November of twenty twenty, which is after looking at the house in June. It just took a long time for negotiations and everything closed in November. Started construction officially in March, but had done so much planning prior to that, and then moved in the first week of January of twenty twenty two. So you know, a lot of time has gone by in the meantime, but you know it's going to be fun, I hope. So the second question is why renovate because everyone says it is so painful. Sarah, you are of the opinion that renovation is painful. Oh, I just find it like so boring. I don't know, Like my eyes glaze over when I walk into a loas. I have decision fatigue immediately upon looking at colors of anything. I just and my husband tends to be like somewhat opinionated, but also very slow to make said decisions. So I think that just like makes it even worse because I would probably just be like whatever, this, that and this, move on, like, but I can't totally do that because I don't think that would fly necessarily. Although we did choose paint colors at least online in about thirty minutes for the entire house. That's good. That's good. So I don't know, but we did decide that, you know, the floors were kind of like outdated, and again, as I mentioned, it is just so much harder to do floors when you live in a home because there are parts you can't walk on. And we're planning to do like the kitchen and kind of like all the all the areas that would be high traffic in the house. We're not doing the bedrooms. The bedroom floors are actually excellent there would they're already done. But yeah, we're just feel like our hand is being forced and painting just seems like a logical step. But other than that, we're not doing any major renovations. We're lucky that the people who lived there prior did a big renovation where they actually enclosed a big porch and they turned it into a what they call it a game room because they were really into ping pong. Actually, okay, we are not using it as a pingpong room. We are using this kind of long, somewhat narrow room as a workout area slash office space for my husband and myself. We love what they did, Yeah, but we didn't have to do it, so it was great. No, that's nice. I mean, obviously, the ideal would be to have something that is move in ready, that is absolutely as you want it, in a good location. But in many cases, if there's anything that you are you may wind up paying quite a bit extra for that versus what it might cost to renovate, or you may not even get it. So in our case, the issue is that people do not build seven bedroom homes, and so if you need home offices, you need rooms for five children, like you can't have a five bedroom like you need seven bedrooms, and again people do not build those. So we were either looking at buying land, which there are very limited plots in this elementary district right like we're in an orb, like it's very near in suburbs. You can't just buy land. And you know, what it would cost to build something new is quite high. So you know, I haven't totally run all the numbers. I mean, because we like this house too, but if you wanted enough bedrooms, you were going to have to renovate something that already exists, that was older, that was built when people did that sort of thing. And you know, we did, like honestly everything to this house. We have a new roof, we have a new HVAC system, We have about sixty percent new windows, gutted the master suite and the kitchen combined for like useless tiny rooms to make a playroom, you know, so aided the whole house, redid all the floors, like everything. There's all new toilets. I mean, it's just because they were old and gross and not working right, like I mean, you know, so it sounds like one step from just a tear down. Yeah, I couldn't have turned the house down. I mean that's because it's historically preserved. So given that that's not an option, you had to redo basically the entire inside. But you know, it's funny because you see this on the other end with selling, a lot of people sort of do lack a bit of imagination when it comes to renovation. Like there are people who walk in and be like, I don't like the color of the paint, and you're like, okay, I've I've got an idea, you could paint it. So that's so funny. That is so funny. The minor cosmetic stuff. I remember I would make those kind of comments on My husband rolled its eyes. It's like, okay, calm down, oh my god, Like you can in fact paint this room. You know, microwaves like another thing that could very easily be swapped out, or I don't like the oven, Like guess what, you know, for a rather small amount of money, you can purchase a new oven, although they're hard to get right now because of various supply chain inches. But you know so, I mean, yes, everyone says renovation is painful, but there are a couple of things you can do. I mean, one is just make sure you are adequately budgeting for it. Do not undertake any project where the estimated expenses you are getting are close to the maximum of what you can afford, because it is going to always cost more. And I have no idea why construction works this way, Like why is this an industry where that is the accepted like way that it works. But it does. I mean, I can just I can tell you it doesn't. We we are not far off what our initial estimates were, but it's still more right, Like there's just stuff that comes up and it is going to take more time. Again, I'm not sure why construction is allowed to work this way, Like I don't get to just say, hey, my book is running a couple months long then expected, and think everyone's going to be a okay with that. But whatever, construction does work that way. You know the crash jobs people see on HDTV, like there are things that have been like taped in place for the reveal. It doesn't go that quickly, like even with people working around the clock that they do on some of those So and I've read some really interesting, like expose's on people who had those kind of HDTV flash renovations and like they didn't do key things so that it looked really good for five minutes, but like they didn't seal the floor, so they didn't do this or that. It's like, well, okay, okay, so probably quality takes a little time. Yeah, yeah, so whatever. I mean, as long as you understand that going in, then you can just be annoyed by certain things as opposed to like horribly anxious when it costs more than you thought you do. But you know, all right, let's take a quick break and then we will be back on more on moving in renovation. Well, we are back talking moving and renovation. The next question, what can I do to keep it from being a complete nightmare? Is this what you're worried about with doing more extensive renovations like I would be, I just I don't have a bandwidth, Like I don't want to have to call this person because this person broke this person. And you know, I've heard like terrible stories about contractors who quit in the middle of the job and things like that, and it's very hard to like, once someone started something, if they mess it up, you're sort of stuck it away. Yeah, and somebody else might not want to take that on, or they might but then they might be like, well, no, I have to charge double what they even start. I don't know. My brain goes to a lot of worst case scenario. Yeah, so, I mean, the one thing I can say is when you have, you know, a big job, like hiring a general contractor is almost always going to be a wise idea, because yeah, you don't want to be calling all the subcontractors and figuring out what goes first, like do I do the painting first or the floors first. I mean there's not actually like there's there's a right answer, but you probably aren't going to know it, you know, because you haven't done this before. And if you do this, well, like I mean, so they will warranty work as well. So we had when I did the kitchen in my old house back in twenty eighteen, we had we repainted the cupboards, and everyone had thought it would be a fairly simple job, and then for whatever reason it was not. It had to be redone twice, but we never had to pay an extra cent for it, because the price they had given us was the price it was going to be and then you know, the various subcontractors had to like redo it when they did it wrong that time, they brought somebody in again to like, you know, do it again, And so that's what you're looking for. If you can read this in reviews on you know, I would definitely do your research when you're hiring a general contractor, like talk to anyone you know who has done a home renovation, Like if they liked their contractor, that is a great sign, like, you know, you should be excited about that, you know, because they'll have relationships with all the subcontractors, the electricians, plumbers, painters, roofers, hvat, carpenters, whatever it is you're doing, and they know what order it should go in. Yeah, there are definitely horror stories out there of all this, but you know, so one thing you could do again is if you get bids from multiple places, keep in mind if somebody bids lower but they have worse reviews, like don't actually go with that person because it's a fake number, like that's not what it's actually going to cost. And so I would say you would prioritize good reviews. Somebody having been in business for decades maybe have been independently audited various things, like any of that is going to be a far better sign than the actual price. This is somewhere where I'd say you don't necessarily want to go with the lowest bid, like go with something that seems reasonable, but is with somebody's who's reputable. Even so, like you're gonna make thousands of decisions just you just have to prepare yourself for it, and decisions on things you probably didn't care about before, like the trim on the carpet, on the stair runners, in the shape of your your drawer pulls. So yeah, it helps to be a satisficer where you know good enough is good enough, because most things can, in fact be changed if you hate it. Like we repainted the bedroom, like the master bedroom, because I didn't like the color, so we had to repaint it. We did. It's fine. You know, the first coat had only gone on and they could just get the color and the second coat for a different color. That was all good. And you know, the as with Sarah was saying, like if you are doing group decisions, it might help to as we discussed with Eve Rodski a few weeks ago, have complete ownership of certain areas, Like one party might be completely responsible for say, HVAC decisions, and another party could be completely responsible for hardware and paint colors or something like that. You know it. Where you wide up with problems is if one person is doing a lot of the legwork to make decisions and then the other person somehow winds up with VETO power. I mean that just is like it's going to make for an infuriating situation because that's basically implying that the person doing the leg work works for the person who's making the VETO decisions. And that's that's not a romantic relationship. That's just somebody's power trip. So I would get out of that situation if you're in it, like assign you know, either refuse to do it or like hire somebody make all the decisions. Who can then report to that guy or your girl or whoever it is who's I don't think that's our problem at all. I think I would gladly just not make any decisions. I just don't want like six months to go by where we're paying the women two plays. Yeah, exactly, you know, assign deadlines like you know, listen, we need to get out. That's why we moved in with the stuff still here, We're like, we got to get out of it, you know, eventually. Also because when you're in a place, you see stuff that also then you need to do that you wouldn't have known about before and figured them out. So anyway, all right, any practical tips, wait, we forget the satisfy. So the satisfy well, just you know, if you good enough is good enough? Right, like, if it really helps to get in your head that it doesn't have to be perfect. Most things can be changed. You know, it might be expensive, it might be a hassle, but they can in fact be changed. So if you have that in mind, then it turns down the pressure at least a little bit. You know, it's hard to bat a thousand. Like again, if you're making a hundred decisions, like the odds that all of those are exactly right? Are it? Just minimal? I like it? I like it, don't try for perfection, but you're right having that open minded this so like, eh, if I don't like that in five years, ten years, whatever, that is something that could theoretically be changed or maybe by then you just won't care exactly. That's kind of how I feel about my shower tile at the moment. I don't like what I do chose, but whatever, it's going to grow on me and it's fine. It's just our I mean, there's some element of that that. It's like, Wow, I've built this bathroom from scratch. I could have chosen any tile in the world, and I chose this, which I don't like. Like what was I thinking. I don't know. I think I felt like I had to make a decision. I'm going to see this tile now I'm able to put a picture up somewhere. Apparently it's really nice tile. I don't know. And it was like doubled in priced since I chose it, so at least I got a good deal on it. But wow, and you could probably see it. One it off my back, come chip it off. Put something that was just plain white there instead. All right, So Sarah, you have done this, any tips for moving locally, Like what are you guys doing? That's gonna yeah, I'm like trying to remember. I mean last time we definitely had we didn't do any of the packing. We completely outsourced that. We did move a few things on our own. We could do a lot more of that this time, because I mean last time our local move was like, you know, a thirty five minute drive and this time it's one mile. So I think we'll probably do some of that ourself. I'm intrigued by like the unpacking service. I want to know how much that costs. Although it's probably a bad idea because then they've decide where to put everything, and like you're probably gonna have different opinions where you want things, and then you don't want to have to move things like re you know what I mean, like, oh, they chose that closet to do that, I don't know, so we'll see. Yeah. Well, and also if you are getting different furniture, it like wouldn't even work because how would they know what to you know, And we didn't even have all our furniture delivered. I mean we still are getting stuff because we got rid of a fair amount of Ikea type particle board furniture that we had collected over the years. That was just it's recommended that you don't move it. We have moved some of our Ikia furniture multiple times in it hastood the well, apparently you guys are good at it. Then your construction I gotta say, like, yeah, I, Josh and I are waiting for the part for like the part in life when we're too like fancy for Ika we there. Sometimes we go West Elms and we're like, ooh, we're probably about thirty to forty percent West Elm and the rest. I think it's because of the age of our kids, Like they still wreck everything, so why why would I invest in like super nice stuff. I totally agree a four year old who likes to adorn everything and scrape things and like, yeah, well just I mean, so yeah, I've been intrigued by the unpacking as well, given how much time I've been unpacking. But I don't know. I think we did want to like go through it and choose places ourselves, and we're making progress. I mean, you know, and we say, do you try to throw or out or donate as much as possible, like create a giant junk pile somewhere. I don't know your garage, just you know, label whatever furniture that is not going to make it that you're going to donate or sell, which again, you can't donate stuff that can't be sold. I guess just a public service announcement here. If you are planning on donating something to a charity. They are not like giving people who are who don't have furniture. Like what they do is they sell the furniture and then they give the money to people to use as they you know, do or to support their programs or something. So if they can't sell it, they don't want it. So if it's like I mean, you just can't donate garbage basically as our public service announcement here. So with that in mind, you might want to create a junk pile of stuff or recycling pile and then call a junk calling service that can then determine if it is junk, if it can be recycled, if they have a program for that. So you know, that's the way to go with that. We did hire a packing crew to box up our stuff. It is expensive unless you're going to do this over a long period of time, like driving stuff to your new house. It's it's just going to be more work than you can do. And also i'd say give some compassion to yourself when you are then unpacking stuff that is in essence garbage, because it is impossible to have gone through all of it beforehand. And like you just don't see stuff necessarily, and like unless you did just mariecondo your entire house, you're gonna wind up with things like, oh, I didn't know I had this many glass vases. Like you don't think to just like throw out or recycle glass vases necessarily, and so you probably have them somewhere in a curio cabinet and then you wind up unpacking all of them. You're like, I just don't need this many vases, like you know, so it just happens. It happens. The junk calling service, I think is underrated, Like people will you know, keep stuff around for ages, thinking that they're going to like haul it off themselves or figure out what's recyclable and what's not. And there are actually great services that will like sort that all out for you and take it all away. And it's like for them, it's so easy, and for you it's so much mental language because that's like literally what they it's it's a fairly competitive industry actually, because you don't need a huge amount of capital or whatever to get into it, like you need to hire a few guys and have a few trucks. So probably there are a fair number of local companies. There's also like national franchises, you know, junk dogs or a jade dogs or whatever it is. You know, there's one I don't know if they're still in business. It's called like college hunks hauling junk that was around. You know, there's just a lot of them. So definitely a veil yourself of this possibility when you're doing I would also ask your movers, like when you're getting bids on this, what items will be more trouble or expensive to pack and move than necessary. So often things like anything that is framed, they are going to wind up putting in a special framing box because they don't like they're not allowed to break things, so they don't know if it's like they have to treat everything as valuable. And so if you framed some twenty dollars poster you got at a museum in college, like just bring that over yourself, Like it is not worth a twenty dollars box and frame to bring that over, so you know, do that. Probably Lamps like table lamps are another one that they're going to put so much packing around it because again they are not allowed to break things. So if it's like a ten dollars our thrift store table lamp that you got. Just bring that over yourself, because it's going to make you mad that you spent like thirty dollars on the special box to get it over to your new house. Often live plants they can't do as well. So that's that's one that you're you're probably gonna need to do. And then pull out anything you think you're going to need for the first I would say two to three weeks. I was thinking, you know, people told me, oh, your first few days, pull out what you'll need for the first few days. Like that, like massively underestimated how long it was going to take us to get through our stuff. I didn't find most of my pots and pans for three weeks, and so because it just happened to be in the bottom box, like it was the last box we got to in the kitchen for for whatever reason, and so we were working with one sauce pan, one frying pan, and one like bacon cooking pan that for whatever reason like made it out, and so that's what we had to cook with for three weeks. So I would recommend being a little bit more judicious and thinking what do I use in a two week period and that stuff. I mean we're talking towels, laundry, detergent, any of that sort of thing. Make sure you have Did you kick your kids out or send them somewhere so you could unpack, because I think I really want to do that. No, I mean, you know, I especially if your kids are like old enough that they could just watch TV. I'm not sure that it's really going to be all that necessary, you know what I'm saying, Like, or I have to put the TV in to well, do that first, like we put up, we put up the computer and television like absolutely first, right like that. That's and plus they have their devices, right, so I mean, I don't know. I feel like modern children who are over about age six, like haven't built in entertainment like in the form of a device. If you need to avail yourselves of that, obviously you can't have them under foot while movers are actually moving things in and out. So but they I mean our movers again, within a local move, they work basically like an eight to four day for packing, So the children were in school during that time and then when the moving crew was there, they were you know again the eight to four time they were in school, and so then that just left a couple hours in the evening when things sort of took a longer time one of the days to finish up. So we just kind of sent them off to one corner of the house, like kept them over there and out of you know, out of reak. I think mine would be all up in the boxes wanting to unpack. I don't know. I think I'm going to send them away somehow, like tor nanny's or to a friend sleep not for like a long time, but like, hey, what a good night to sleep over your friend's house. Yeah, I mean sure, if I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I'm just saying, like, if it doesn't work out, like you you know, it would wouldn't be worth Yeah, you're right, Yeah, you're totally right, and you're right, Like I always have it in my mind that I'm going to unpack everything in you want. It's just not I just don't think it's reasonable to expect that of yourself. I mean, because it's not like you're going to stop working and stop having three children, like they they're all still going to be there. Like we've tried to kind of pace ourselves on this that it was so overwhelming at first. But if you commit to doing, like if both adults in the household, let's say do two boxes a day, well for a day, you know, twenty eight a week, like I don't know, you have a hundred boxes, that's four weeks. Like you're done. And if the children aren't doing anything, then that's additional. You just have to keep going. Like you don't necessarily feel on Tuesday night like unpacking two boxes, but like you probably should do at least one, and you know, know that you'll do three on the weekend or whatever, but just to maintain that pace, so it's keeps moving forward. No, that makes sense. Ugh, I want to be done. It's a while off. I mean, we're not done, but it's not the end of the world. I mean, it's just it's a process. It's like it's not going to be perfect, but eventually it will be done. And you know, I say, as somebody who just spent hours yesterday waiting for the furniture to get delivered that wasn't delivered. It just you know, it's fine one day at a time, day time at least, we don't Oh, I know what I wanted to mention related to moving, which is moving school because you didn't do it this time, but I did do it last time, and I guess I would share that we did move in the middle of the school year. It was not the worst thing. We moved like over winter break, so it was like, Okay, you left for the holiday and then you started at a new school. I think it was mildly stressful for Annabelle, but she got over it pretty quickly. She was going in first grade from one really good public school to another one. I have one regret, which is that Cameron went from like a reggio style preschool to like a much more regimented one, and that is like a contrast. So if I could have done it all over again, I would have looked for a school with more similar vibes because I feel like, all of a sudden he was in trouble for things that were like charming and cute at the first school, and that's like a root awakening. So I mean, he survived. But if you're going to switch your kids in the middle of a year, you might want to at least think about, like does the school have similary disciplinary processes and philosophies, If possible because I could have like, but I know the local landscape as well. Like now I'm like, oh, it would have been obvious. I could have sent him here or here, and I didn't know. You can't get everything right. I mean, you just can't make every decision perfectly. It's you have to sort of give yourself some compassion understanding for this. There's so many decisions to be made, and they won't all be perfect we I mean, which leads us to our question of re establishing or improving upon routines in a new place, because when you think about many of your routines turn out to be somewhat place based. I mean, they're based on your space, and they will change when you move, and especially when you have a big family, that can be very disruptive, and probably more so for many of our listeners who are accustomed to building very good routines. I mean, if we had listeners whose lives were chaotic all the time, I'd be like, whatever, it's now chaotic in a new place, Like so what, but that is probably not our listeners. Our listeners have thought through every detail of their day to optimize and now they have to change it. So I mean there's some things you just can't. No, we had become accustomed to our local school buses picking up our kids at our driveway. We now know that that does not happen universally, and our buses don't come up our street, don't come up our hill. I don't know. If it's hard to turn around, I'd be happy to have them turn around in my driveway, but whatever, I don't know. If there's a process you could petition for that. The key thing here is they pick them up at the bottom of the hill. It's a long way down. You know, they could walk through our yard, but our neighbors have put like hedges right at the edge. They'd be in the road there. It's a busy road where the intersection crosses. Like. We tried it for one day and it was like no, no. So the older boys get driven to school, which is it's very quick for both of them, and because we didn't want them waiting in the dark at the bottom of the hill in this busy road. But they can take the bus home. They take the bus home and because we trust them to get out off and you know, make their way up the hill, that they can do that. But are they at the same stone, like losing ones and make ones in high school. The elementary school age kids just we have because our nanny went to wait for them. Like the first day, she said, the bus driver was like laying on his horn trying to get people to stop because they have to come around a curve and so, you know, he didn't open the door until traffic will stop both directions, like so till somebody came along and had stopped, you know, so that they would stop the rest of the traffic. But I was just like, oh my god, like no, like, and I don't want her waiting there like you know, to on a busy corner. So anyway, she now drives them and picks them up. Driving is easy. Picking up is a bit of a pain because it's the car line, which apparently we have a very intense car line. Usually when I would pick them up, I would do what we call student pickup, which is you park and you go right to the door and they come out, and it's very quick. But since she often has the toddler with her that pickup time, because we can't guarantee we'll be here, you be able to take him for you know, the thirty forty minutes it would be to go that she does the car line, and it's a long car line. That was our local elementary intent. Car Linne. I don't miss it at all, So you know, we've had to change our routines based on that. But you know, like if I'm here, you know, and he's sleep, for instance, I don't Usually she doesn't have to wake him up to take him and I'll let him nap or whatever. But yeah, we don't want to be switching back and forth daily from one way to another, and so we just said, well, we'll do the pickup. But yeah, it's you know, it is. What it is. The routine for us that I think is going to change that I'm kind of looking forward to is that they're going to be all going to bed in their own rooms. So I think that we'll listen. I'm not going to lie on all of their floors like you can. So either we'll figure out some sort of rotation or maybe it'll just be like a natural end to that process. And then the other thing is that there are a lot more kids in the very immediate area, some of which my kids already know. So I'm hoping that lends itself to more like around the block kind of playing. One of the girls is Anvil's agent, takes tennis lessons in our complex where they ride. She rides her own bike to the lesson, and I'm like, oh my god, Adamo could transport herself to an activity, Like how cool is that? So I'm excited for those kinds of routines. So that's gonna be nice. And yeah, there's obviously going to be like the bus thing is kind of a you know, unfortunate thing that was not anticipated. But you know, there's other routines that have gotten better. I mean, among other things, like the baby. We have not had middle of the night wake ups. It's just that I think we're slightly further from him and now that he has his own room and so maybe he wakes up, but we don't hear it, and he's not looking traumatized in the morning. So given that he's over two years old, we're just going to like run with it. And you know, I mean there's some nice things like my husband and I now have a fireplace in our room. You know, we convert it was because it's such an old house like it was at one point, Like how they heated the room, but you know, we converted it to a gas fireplace, so we turn it on with a remote control and it's kind of nice because you can just sit there and have a little you know, cudd ale on the couch and with the fire and it's it's really you know, we didn't have that before, so it's a you know, there's some nice new routines, So that's good. Last question I want to ask is tips for selling while you are still living in your house. So Sarah, you guys attempted and then stopped right or like you didn't even it was a I almost am. Like my tip is if the market is bad, just give up and rent. But I mean I wasn't going to listen to that advice two years ago, so who knows. I mean, right now it's such a seller's market. So I don't have any selling tips because I didn't. I haven't sold in the current climate, which I'm sure is very different than my experience. Yeah, it was hard to know. I mean, we had a reasonable number of people come through, and we had the requirement that we had to have twenty four hours notice just because you can't I mean, you know, because we had to get out of the house every time, and so it's like you can't just like leave at two pm, you know, and find another place to go. I mean sometimes we did. My husband and I would go work in the garage over here, but it was, you know, it was hard to get everyone out. What we did is we had gotten a lot of stuff out of closets and again put it in the garage over here. So decluttered down to a spot where there was just less stuff in it, and then figured that we were approximately an hour from having the house be presentable. Now, of course we did have to do that hour like every time, because you know, the kids would put toys out, you know, so we'd have to pick up the base and we would go through like who put toothpaste all over their cabinet, you know, their countertop or over the mirror, Like how do you even get toothpaste on the mirror? I don't get it, you know. And then a house full of little boys using bathrooms. Always need to check that everything has gone where it should and you know, cleaning up the kitchen, decluttering and stuff like that. But yeah, it'd take an hour and then we have to get out of the house and you know, it was it was kind of painful, like and if there's no other way to describe this, but on some level, it's just a money thing, Like if you can convince yourself that it is actually a pretty good payment back on your time for doing this, because most likely when you're negotiating for a house, there's often like at the end it's it's small amounts compared to the size of the house purchase. But like, objectively, it's not small amounts of money, Like you know, even if you're talking about one or two thousand dollars, you wouldn't just, you know, go blow two thousand dollars in a store on a random day, like it actually is is a lot of money. Even if it's like two thousand is you know, a small percentage of what your house price is. So like if you could convince yourself of that, it kind of helps, like, oh, yeah, you know, we're all going to spend an hour cleaning up. But on the other hand, this is probably you know, if it gets it sold, like again, a month faster than it would have, if it gets it sold for even one or two thousand dollars more than it would have, like, the return on that hour is fairly good. So I don't know, that's just mentally what I tried to do. No, that's good. That's good helps you get through it and makes it seem worth it rather than painful waste of time exactly. All right, Well, let's go to our question and answer for this. So, Sarah, I'll put this to you first. This listener is reaching out regarding the cry it out method for babies. So her partner and her are from different cultures and are having trouble agreeing on what is the right thing to do with their baby. So in the US, so this listener is not from the US originally, and her her partner is. They said, she keeps hearing the advice to let the baby cry it out. It's awful for two weeks and then they will never cry at night again. However, in her culture, they absolutely do not leave a baby crying for any length of time. Also, as a first time mom, she doesn't think she can do it without listening to the crying, without rushing to help. She already has some anxiety, so when the baby cries, she imagines that the absolute worst thing is happening. So they have survived to nine months. The child most of the time sleeps through the night at this point, but they would like to have other children eventually, so she's wondering if there is a way not to have the first nine months be up all the time, and you know, if it's possible that a strict routine would help with avoiding some of that sleep deprivation. So what do you think, Sarah. I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. I do think from what I've read, there isn't really strong evidence that cry it out like ruins your child or anything, So I don't think there's necessary harm in trying it. It's more the question of whether it makes you super comfortable, and as Laura will get to, how effective it is because that can depend on the kid. For us, we did kind of a modified version where I would try some like cry it out when we first put them down if they were still awake, to help them learn how to, you know, go to sleep, when all the bedtime cues were there. But I was never one of those like, oh, I'm going to have my baby sleep twelve hours kind of a person, because I was pumping and I knew that my baby might be hungry, and so I'd rather feed them overnight than like not. I mean, it just it just didn't make logical sense to me if they were getting their nutrition for me, and I knew the pump wasn't necessarily as great at extracting, like it didn't seem fair to deprive them. And I also was lucky to have babies where like when I fed them overnight, there was no soothing necessary. It was like you eat, I plunk you back down, and I go back to sleep, So there was no training needed. At some point when I weaned my kids, like depending on the age, or when I just made a decision that they did not need to eat over and more like gen of you nursed into like twenty months, but I think at twelve or thirteen months, I was like, you do not need to eat in the middle of the night, like you're eating meals like you're fine. We did do like a brief cry it out, and I guess it works because I don't feel like I have a lot of like bad memories from it, But I don't know, I could see it being very difficult when the kids are really little and they're still needing to eat anyway. So yeah, I mean, and I think that's one of the things to think about here. There is very different approaches of this in different cultures. And I read a book it was like an anthropological book a couple of years ago that pointing out that it's true, like in like some places, they were shown videos of like American mothers with their kids crying on a changing table, like while they're being changed, and like people were like horrified, like that you don't pick up a baby as soon as they're crying. It's just like everyone's different, right, Like different places are different, and yet kids are fine everywhere, right, Like most children are fine anywhere, like no matter what you grow up with. So you know, there's there's some places where no one would ever do cry it out. There's some places where everyone does cry it out, and it's like the kids are fine regardless, So you can take without what you will. Like, if you think cry it out is going to be hard for you, then don't do it, Like if you're not gonna be able to do it, like, then don't tell yourself you will. But if you think you want to try it again, don't think you're hurting your baby. Your baby's probably going to be fine. So I guess it's really just you know, totally up to you, and there is not one right way to do it. The question is is it effective? For some kids it might be and for other kids it's not. So there you go. We you know, there are some children that, as you said, like you know, they cry for people like, well, I just let them cry for twenty minutes and then I never had to do anything. Ever again, it's like, well, you know, you got a good sleeper, like, just be happy about that. And maybe they needed a little bit of figuring out how to fuss a little and put themselves to sleep, and that's great, like you should enjoy that. And that doesn't mean you know your child is I would put this, It doesn't mean you're a great parent. You probably are, but that in and of itself does not mean that you are a better parent than somebody who's child does not do that, because some kids don't do that. And I know this from five children. Some of my kids were better about going to sleep than others. Some you could, you know, fuss for ten minutes and mostly they'd figure it out. Others will fuss for hours and still never figure it out, and it would be night after night after night, and so then you have to figure out other ways, and you know it does get better over time, like as you noted, you're nine month old, is sleeping and so you know, I guess I could say do what you want and just you might experiment as well, because it might work and it might not work too, Like you don't have to commit yourself to one thing or the other. All right, so let's quick do a love of the week. What's rocking your world this week? Sarah? I will say I have been enjoying reading a lot of different booklists for the new year. I think I started with Modern Missus Darcy, but then she invited like everybody else to post where they put their twenty twenty two reading list, and I just had fun perusing all these different lists that people made because it's just I got lots of my own ideas from it. So yeah, I guess reading other people's reading lists is my love of the week. Excellent. So my idea of my love of the week is having one drawer that is officially drawer where things don't have another home, so as a category, you know, when you're trying to put things away, like you can be stymied for a long time with like a pile of stuff that you just don't know where to put it, right, Like, it doesn't fit any of the obvious other categories of you know, you've put different drawers or different closets or different places where things go, and so this is a drawer of stuff that does not have another home. And you know, some people have like a junk drawer whatever, but I started think of as junk drawers where you put specific things like you know, rubber bands and pencils and you know whatever. This is more random, and we now have one in the kitchen that has a lot of random stuff in it. But the kitchen counter is finally mostly cleared off, and it was never going to be if I was like trying to come up with categories that were you know, mutually exclusive and comprehensively exhaustive for the organizing. So that is what we do. An other can you name a couple items they're in this drawer? So there is a bin with some crans in it. There is a Tyrannosaurus rex head that is a cup. There is a pool toy. There is a few, uh like decorative things children have made but that they you know, I haven't quite gotten around to doing something with yet there is Yeah, it's really stuff like that. I like it. I like it. It's the mississliness. All right. Well, this has been best at Both Worlds. We have been talking moving and home renovation. We will be back next week with more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of Both Worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.

Best of Both Worlds

Love your career? Love your family? Best of Both Worlds is the show for you! Hosts Laura Vanderkam,  
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