Managing a home is a lot. Between meals, laundry, cleaning, finances, clutter, home projects, and all the invisible things that keep a household running, it can feel like there’s always something else that needs your attention.

And in this season of having two little kids at home, I’m learning that I don’t need a perfect system for everything—I need simple things that make our home a little easier to manage.

In this episode, I’m sharing 10 things that are genuinely saving my home right now. It’s a mixed bag of practical products, podcasts and resources I love, simple home organization ideas, motherhood support, meal staples, decluttering motivation, and a few mindset shifts that are helping me simplify our home without trying to fix everything at once.

If you’re overwhelmed by managing your home, trying to simplify your routines, or just looking for realistic ideas that make everyday life feel a little lighter, I hope you’ll find one or two things here that work for your season too.

Key Takeaways From This Episode:

• Why I’ve stopped trying to “finish” our home and started solving one small problem at a time
• The simple mood board system that helps me avoid impulse-buying home decor I’ll regret later
• How changing the content I consume is helping me become a more thoughtful, frugal consumer
• Why hiring a mother’s helper has been one of the best decisions I’ve made in this season with two little kids
• The household MVP that helps us choose something rather than nothing when it comes to keeping the floors clean
• A few easy food and low-tox swaps that are making everyday decisions require less mental energy
• What finally gave me permission to ruthlessly declutter clothes, home decor, toys, and things from past seasons of life

SHOW NOTES

• Click here to view the full shownotes for this episode on my blog

THE SEASONAL EDIT EMAIL NEWSLETTER

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LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Join my email list
• Caroline Winkler on YouTube
• The Lazy Genius Podcast
• Frugal Friends Podcast
• Roborock robot vacuum + mop
• Attitude Living
• EWG / Environmental Working Group
• Girls Who Eat Non-Toxic Substack + newsletter
• Amylu breakfast sausage
• Amylu meatballs
• Over-the-washer-and-dryer shelf from Amazon
• The Seasonal Edit newsletter

Want to share what's simplifying your life in this season? Email me at [email protected] to share it on the show!

Learn more at www.jadeboyd.co.

# 10 Things Saving My Home Right Now

So if you're new to the podcast, let me back up and share about what I mean when I say home, what is saving my home this fall. Because I think of life and my to-do lists and organization around priorities, all of that in four categories: personal health, relationships, home, which is what we're talking about today, and then business/work if you have a traditional 9 to 5 job

And I think about that in four different categories as well. So there's interior design or design in general, all of the To-dos around, like, replacing furniture or decorating or getting your kid new bedsheets or decorating your porch for the fall, which is what we spent this morning doing, and is super fun.

And then money in general, so managing a household budget or finances, investing, all of that. Those are the things that I think about when I'm thinking about managing a home in this category. So the things that I'm sharing might be a little bit across the board for you, so just so you're understanding where I'm coming from, that is how I think about the category home in my mind.

And women are often the default person responsible for running the home, and research has shown that that's true even when both partners are working full time. And this in itself, like, even a fourth of this could be a full-time job in itself, and then we're like, "Well, why is this so difficult?" Wow. Because it is really difficult, and I don't claim to be perfect at this or have some magical system to give you.

That is the most helpful thing, rather than trying to adopt somebody's, like, complicated meal planning system that works for their family and their kids and their lifestyle and their priorities. That's obviously not gonna work for me. But if someone shares a specific food that they really like, maybe that food would fit into my categories for my family as well, and what's mattering most to me in this season.

So I've seen a few different content creators do episodes or blog posts like this. I think the most frequent one that I see is The Lazy Genius Podcast, which is one of my all-time favorite podcasts to listen to right now. But we're just gonna go through the line of 10 things that are really working for me.

I think it's the only platform that I scroll or enjoy, like, engaging with content these days. I'm really not on Instagram at all anymore unless there's a reason that I'm there to check it, like someone literally texts me a link to Instagram or I have to message someone and I don't have any contact information for them other than Instagram.

And her intro right now, if you go to her channel, channel, first of all, her content is just hilarious. She's so funny as just a human being. It is... It feels like watching TV. It-- I can't recommend it enough. It's just so funny and also so thoughtful and I learn a lot from watching her decorate. But one of the things that she has really emphasized over the past maybe year or so since she moved into her new house is that she's designing her home by changing one small thing and solving one problem at a time rather than saying like, "This episode is the living room makeover and we're gonna make over the entire living room at the same time."

But it's not entire room makeovers in one episode which I think can be so harmful for our mindset when we're designing our own homes because we expect it to take 30 minutes and then be completely designed and done and in reality that doesn't happen in real life unless you hire an, a professional interior designer to come do that work for you, right?

And I've just found a lot of freedom in that mindset and something that I do in my home because I really love interior design and I just geek out on this stuff, I have a Canva document with different pages with mood boards for every room in my house so that I'm not just buying random decor and then, you know, over the course of six months if I buy a few different things Realizing that, oh, none of this works together and this actually looks horrible.

We should probably just do an entire different episode on interior design, because I could talk a lot about this. Um, but number one is Caroline Winkler and her YouTube channel, and also the mindset that you don't have to solve everything and design your whole house at once. It's okay to let that organically develop over time, solving one little thing at a time.

Okay. Number two, the second thing that is saving my home right now is the Frugal Friends podcast, and this, again, kind of comes back to that money category and budgeting category. I think the more time we spend with people, the more we adopt their behaviors and attitudes, right? Like, there's so much research on this, and, you know, the keeping up with the Joneses, of paying attention to what your neighbors are doing and buying.

And I think the Frugal Friends podcast has been the opposite for me. I am so frugal with my time, and oftentimes the things that take less time cost more money, right? And my time has always been my most valuable resource, and I'm happy to pay more for something that saves me time and convenience. But I know that I should be slowing down a little bit on my consumption and taking the time to find things that are more frugal or more affordable or, you know, not just necessarily always just paying full price for something just because I like it.

Also, if you're a business owner, obviously helpful to understand from that perspective, too. But they do a lot of psychology and a lot of just, like, current happenings. They pull a lot of social media clips showing how these things are playing out in real life, and I've just really enjoyed listening to th- listening to their podcast, and it has made me a more frugal consumer just for the sake of spending time with frugal people consistently, if that makes sense.

So that has really been saving my home in the finance category this season.

But after having two this summer and being in such a challenging season where both my kids needed such different things, often at the exact same time, I hired a high school student to be a mother's helper and just be around helping me while I'm at home. So it's not like they're babysitting my kids for me.

I'm still around the house getting things done. But the key is I'm actually able to get things done. Like when the baby's napping, they could hang out with the toddler, and I could get some stuff done around the house on my own, which just saves my sanity. Or they could hang out with the baby, and I could take the toddler around the house with me to do things that she can actually be involved in and help me with or enjoys doing.

And this fall we have the same high school student helping us three hours a week in the afternoon one day, and then we hired another, um, babysitter that's helping me three hours a week on a different morning. So between those two different segments, it's not like I'm leaving the house for three hours or not being around my kids for three hours, but I'm having somebody else there who can take the bulk of the responsibility so that I'm better able to get some of the other stuff around the house done.

And that has been so, so good for me on so many levels

We really should get out the actual mop and vacuum more often because, I mean, the robot only does so much without... You know, if I'm vacuuming with a handheld vac, I'm going to move the end table a little bit that's a leggy end table so I can vacuum underneath it. Stuff like that, the, the robot vacuum is not gonna do.

It's not the perfect solution, but it does mean that we're vacuuming something rather than nothing in this season. And in this season, something rather than nothing is like the gold standard. So it is definitely saving my house right now

And because of one of those allergies, a lot of the products that I was using, I could no longer use anymore. So I went on this deep dive of like, okay, what ingredients are actually in my products? And while I was swapping them, I was looking for cleaner alternatives. And again, this is something that we're six years into now, and I'm still not perfect at it.

Like we've tried so many of their products across the board, and they're all just so great. So when I'm looking to swap out a new product category, I'm always looking to see like, has Attitude come out with any new product categories that I need to try? And they have just saved my life because switching out products to non-toxic products is such a lot of...

It's so much work, and it can be very stressful. There's a lot of fear mongering, but Attitude has really helped make that process a little bit simpler. So would highly recommend if you're on a similar journey

They really educate their viewers on the ingredients in toothpaste and, like, when you're thinking about toothpaste, here are, like, five common ingredients that you need to look out for, and here's why. Here's what the research says about why this ingredient is harmful. Here are brands that you should definitely not try, maybe like popular brands or greenwashing brands that are saying that they're clean that are not actually clean.

So I found it really educational and also just making this goal of mine a lot easier. So I will also link that. Everything in this episode is gonna be linked in the show notes, so make sure you head over there if you're also interested in learning from the Girls Who Eat.

Number seven is Costco breakfast sausage. This brand called, I'm gonna butcher this, but I think it's Amylu, A-M-Y-L-U. And at Costco, it's obviously, you buy it in bulk, and it's a little bit cheaper. But we get their breakfast sausage, which my toddler absolutely loves, and we also get their pesto meatballs.

So the ingredients are very normal and minimal. There's no, like, chemicals in them, so I feel really good feeding them to my toddler at least once a week for breakfast. I feel great eating them myself at least a couple times a week for breakfast, and it's just been, like, a huge staple that simplified breakfast and meals in general.

We do a lot of breakfast for dinner in this household. We actually served breakfast for dinner at our wedding, so we're firm believers that breakfast can be eaten all day long. And this is something that we consistently keep stocked in our freezer, because it's such a great plan B meal to just pull out and make if we don't have anything prepped ahead of time.

At least I'm around the kitchen more often to be able to make sourdough bread, and I finally was like, "You know what? We haven't been making it as consistently." I was making a sourdough sandwich bread that's kind of like a discard recipe that was not, not doing it for me, and I... It was an easy recipe, but it just wasn't the best bread.

I wasn't looking forward to it. And so I finally took the plunge and learned how to do sourdough bread myself, and I will say that it is, after making, I don't know, five or six loaves myself, it is a lot easier than I was making it out to be in my head. And I've just been doubling the batches, so I'll make two loaves at a time.

I think in my mind it had to be so specific and exact, and the recipe directions are so long. There's just so many steps in the process. And I will say, I'm not the best at like, oh, if we wanna make bread on Friday, then that means on Wednesday I have to feed the dough to get, like, the process started. And then if you forget to feed, feed the dough, then everything is, like, ruined.

You can't make bread, like, you know, in a couple hours with this recipe at least. So it's gonna take a little bit more getting used to, but man, oh man, have I really loved having fresh sourdough bread in our fridge again

So there's a lot going on there, and we were just dumping everything on top of the washer and dryer, which of course have a huge crack in the middle. I'm pretty sure there's actually still a book, a kid's book wedged in between the washer and dryer that we haven't gotten out yet. But it was just really annoying to have the normal, you know, laundry soap and stuff out that we needed to have out for laundry, but then also be spraying dirty clothes and leaving them there, trying to put the car seat up there to get it off the floor.

We just had a million things and not enough space. And so I found this shelf that is perfectly sized to go above your washer and dryer. I'll link the one that I bought, but there's a million options if you want to go searching for one that, that better matches your decor style. I think the one that I bought comes in a few different styles too.

We'll leave that on top of the washer. If towels get dirty in the kitchen, we throw all the dirty laundry throughout the day on top of the washer, and at the end of the day, we'll throw it in and do, like, a quick wash cycle or we'll do... We'll wait and do it with the next load of laundry, throwing everything in.

Okay, number 10 is a strong one. It's something that I'm actually very excited about, which is so funny that the last episode I talked about fall capsule wardrobe and how I've been storing extra clothes in our storage room, because number 10 is garage sale prep. My sisters have talked me into hosting a garage sale this fall, and

It's mostly for one of my sister's benefit who lives out of town coming to the city. It's so funny to call my area a city, but it is kind of a city in Iowa at least. There's more traffic. There's a lot of traffic for the fall garage sales, and she's bringing a ton of her kids' stuff, and my other sister also has a few things she wants to sell, and I'm like, "Well, if I'm gonna host this garage sale, I might as well sell stuff of my own."

In a certain season of life, this was absolutely my style. Like, I still have a lot of shirts that are business casual, and I don't remember, it's probably been three years since I've wore anything that's business casual. So like releasing a lot of that from past seasons of life even though I like it, I just...

I'm not gonna use it again, and if I ever do need to dress business casual, I probably will be able to buy something new. Like it feels good to just get that stuff out of the storage room. Releasing a lot of my pants from pre-first pregnancy because I've actually found new jeans that I really, really love, and so even if I were to get back to a pre-pregnancy size, I would probably buy the s- same pair of jeans in a different size.

The place that I actually would like to donate things to is like 30 minutes away. I just think their mission is a little bit more aligned to the place that I would w- want to be giving free stuff to, and that has not happened yet. So it just feels like a really great opportunity to also make more money because when you're letting other people resell your stuff or if you're donating stuff, obviously you're making very little money.

My clothes was a big one. We're gonna do my husband's clothes, kids' toys, kids' books. We're probably gonna sell the Mockingbird stroller

So anyway, it's saving my home because it's given me excuse to ruthlessly declutter some stuff that I've probably been hanging onto for a little bit too long. Okay. That's all 10. So to sum that up again, number one was Caroline Winkler's YouTube channel and the mindset of changing one small thing at a time.

Number nine is the shelf on our washer and dryer, and number 10 is garage sale prep. So thanks so much for hanging out with me today. I hope you found something within this episode helpful. If you want the specific links and resources that I talked about today, I can send them straight to your inbox in the Seasonal Edit newsletter.

You can join this newsletter for free using the link in the show notes. And until next time, enjoy the season you're in.