The One About Crafts and Games

Tia: Hey, Monica.

Amber: Hey, Monica

Tia: Welcome to Hey, Monica, the podcast that helps you drop the perfectionism to make space for what really matters in your home, in your food, and in your life. I'm Tia, a professional home organizer and founder of Room For Serenity

Amber: And I'm Amber, a weight inclusive licensed nutritionist and founder of Whole You Nutrition and Meal Planning Collective. On today's show, we are talking about organizing and storing arts and craft supplies and board games. this came up in a previous episode for, eagled-eared listeners. But first, as always, confessions. Tia, what's your confession?

Tia: All right, so between our living room and our bedroom, we recently had almost four empty bottles of lotion. You know, like, the pump lotion,

Amber: Yep

Tia: when you start to get to the bottom, there's a whole, bunch at the bottom that that little straw can't suction up. that is such a design flaw. I don't know why it hasn't been solved for yet, and it's so annoying 'cause then you end up all this lotion that you should be able to use but cannot access. our whole family really struggles with super dry skin, so we need lotion accessible and easy and regularly refilled. we kept on buying new bottles And then not releasing them because we knew there was stuff in the bottom, but we didn't get to it. So I found this lovely thing. I was influenced on Instagram, I will admit So I cut open the old lotion bottles, took a little mini spatula, and scooped out the contents from that old lotion bottle, and was able to transfer it into this new product that I just bought because I was influenced.

Tia: it's got this screw-off top, so it's just this open cylinder that you put all

Amber: Like a jar?

Tia: like a jar,

Amber: Okay

Tia: then you screw the jar top back on. attached to the jar top is this little pump mechanism

Amber: Okay

Tia: all the lotion up from the bottom. But here is the part that I can't quite understand how they engineered it, but there's like… Somehow it pulls all of the lotion up with it as it gets emptied so that all the lotion continues to rise up, up, up, up, up to the top of the cylinder so that on your very last pump of the lotion, like you've basically used 98.5% of the lotion that could possibly be pumped through it

Amber: Is there like a floor in the jar that is raising?

Tia: yes.

Amber: so it's like a hydraulic deodorant. So instead of twisting the deodorant, the pumping action is like pulling the bottom up. Okay, I can picture this now. Oh, I didn't, I, I didn't know such a thing exists. I just do the ridiculous thing where I put the bottle upside down in a glass and take the top off and stick my finger in and like try to scoop out around the

Tia: I am very happy to say, I guess it's both a confession and a what's working now, because

Amber: Two for one

Tia: four almost empty bottles of lotion that were gaining dust between our bedrooms and living rooms, and I was able to consolidate all of those and get it into two separate little pump canisters that have their little hydraulic pumps to get the lotion out. And I don't know if I'm ever gonna go back. These things are brilliant. They're great

Amber: And since you can open them, they're reusable, so you can just continue to fill it every time you're, at the end of a bottle of lotion

Tia: what about you? What's your confession?

Amber: Okay. I d- I don't know if this fully qualifies as a confession, but I just wanna say I really love TV. I love TV. the reason I put this in the confession section is because, one, it's true, and two, I have found that not watching TV sometimes gets talked about as this, like, superior way of being. Like, "Oh, only the hoi polloi watch television. When we're cultured, we don't watch TV."

Tia: Wait, what is hoi polloi?

Amber: It just means, the common people

Tia: my gosh, I learned something new today

Amber: this also is probably top of mind because I watch, some travel channels on YouTube, and when they give room tours, the number of times these travel channels will say, "Oh, and there's a TV, but we don't watch TV." And in my head I'm like, "Um, I've not booked an Airbnb that didn't have a television in it." Like, everything else about it was great, but it didn't have a TV, and I'm like, "No, I just, I just want one." If we get, a rainy day when we're somewhere, it's nice to just be able to, throw something on. these are also often the same people who then, like, watch a movie on their laptop, which honestly I'd rather have an ice pick driven into my head than watch a movie on a laptop screen.

Amber: Give me a TV any day over a lap- or God forbid, a telephone. Like, can you imagine? People who watch videos, like long-form content, on their phone screen,

Tia: Yeah,

Amber: No.

Tia: husband.

Amber: cannot. I cannot do that.

Tia: I'm outing my husband here 'cause, but

Tia: he does it while he is washing the dishes. he'll have his phone up on the counter and he'll be watching some long-form content while he's washing dishes or while he's folding laundry, like some mindless task, and he's like, "I must have this thing running in the background."

Amber: Yeah, well here's my question with the laundry. Do you not have a TV you can bring the laundry in front of instead of trying to watch a tiny screen on your phone?

Tia: if he's folding in the living room, no, we do not. We don't have a TV in our living room. We have a TV in the basement, but not in the living room.

Amber: a TV in, like, every room of our house.

Tia: Mm.

Amber: and we're only two people. I think we have six televisions. okay, there is a television show called Baskets that was on, I don't know, probably some- it was probably on, two decades ago now, because what is time? Um, but in the show, Louis Anderson's character, who plays the mother of Zach Galifianakis, um, was talking about the TV being on all the time in their house, and the quote is, "I just like the patter." And I think that's what it is. I also just like the patter. I just like the sound in the background. I think it probably comes from, I lived alone for, 20 years of my adult life, so I was the only person in my house or in my apartment, so it's just nice to, hear voices not just in my head.

Amber: I think that's also why I made such a, smooth transition into adopting podcasts too, because it's just people chatting, and I just like that in the background.

Tia: It's

Amber: I, yeah, so I often have the TV on while I'm doing chores, or I'm listening to a podcast because I just like to have it. I'm not, zoned into it. In fact, I'm kind of a bad television watcher. my attention span is whatever. I just like it in the background. But I like TV, and I think it's okay to like TV. I don't think it makes other people better if they're just not into TV.

Tia: I love that you said that because it's true, and I do think, yeah, w- as soon as you said it, I was like, "Oh yeah, there definitely is like a, a stereotype that's placed on people who watch a lot of TV," versus like maybe even some judgment call on whether you choose not to watch TV all the time or, or if you don't have a TV in your living room.

Tia: Does that make me a better person? No, it does not. It just means I don't have a TV in my living room.

Amber: At least you still have a TV in your house. I see, like my head explodes a little bit when people are like, "Oh, we don't have a TV." Do you never watch, a movie there's so many, cultural touchstones related to, I mean, our podcast is named after

Tia: A TV

Amber: show.

Tia: So

Amber: Which has always been one of my comfort shows. It's been a long time since I've watched it all the way through, but that definitely made the list. So anyways, TV is great. If anybody has show recommendations or wants to talk, send me a note.

Tia: Oh, man. I would love to hear what other people's favorite TV shows are. it's one of my husband and my favorite things to do, just kinda like wrap up the night, is just to watch a show or two. And I'm so, so, so, so very happy that Ted Lasso has another season, because I love that show so much.

Amber: I just watched the latest episode last night.

Tia: Oh, it's so good. Yeah, I think I'm behind one episode, but oh gosh. Ted Lasso, The Silo, and The Pit are the three

Amber: Oh, I love The Pit. Ugh, The Pit is probably my favorite show of recent years. When it's in season, I so look forward to watching an episode every single week. And we did just finish up the latest season of Silo as well. It was great. See? I watch all the shows. I watch all the shows.

Tia: I didn't used to watch so much TV, but, but, and even still, I wouldn't say that I watch that much. I think it's maybe, like, two nights a week maybe if I'm lucky that I actually have time. But it's so

Amber: I for sure watch TV every day.

Amber: All right. I could literally talk about TV for an entire episode. Maybe we will in the future. But today we're talking about… First, I think we're gonna talk about board games, because that feels like the more contained, th- I don't know if that was an interesting word choice for our organizing topic today, of the two portions. compared to arts and craft supplies, board games are a little more contained. Also, I'm a little skeptical going into this conversation, particularly around the board game piece of it. But Tia, tell me what you do with board games in your house, and why

Tia: Okay. So I am coming at this admittedly from a family who loves board games, and from one kiddo in my family whose passion is playing all sorts of games, card games, board games, Dungeons & Dragons, all of the things, right? And collects them regularly, gets them for his birthday, for Christmas, buys them himself. And also has a hard time letting go of them, because once you've played a game and you enjoy that game, it's hard to let go of that game, 'cause what if you might wanna play it in the future? we've got this open console table with a bottom shelf, a middle shelf, and then the top shelf is just where we lay, like, bouquets of flowers and,

Amber: Like decor

Tia: of frame-- decor. I only have two shelves of this small console table within which to shove and stack all these board games and card games and things of all different shapes and sizes. And it's in our living room, which is, like, a pretty central visual point of interest for anybody that comes to visit our family. If they're sitting at our dining room table, our living room console is within, eyesight of all of it. So I, I want all these board games to be contained and put into containers that visually are aesthetically pleasing and are also easy to find what you need to find when you need to find it.

Amber: Got it

Tia: And I've also found that if you leave your board games in their original container, like 60% of the space that's taken up is just air.

Amber: that does ring true because there are all of those, plastic pieces that holds all the bits in place so they fit. And I wonder what the… There's gotta be marketing psychology behind that for why the boxes are as big as they are. Like, something about how it takes up shelf space in a store, or, like, is more visually appealing or larger so you grab it. Because you would think it would be more cost efficient for the companies to put them in the smallest boxes possible, but they don't, so there has to be some sort of reason for it.

Tia: and all the… They're not all the same shape and size.

Amber: No

Tia: some that are like square boxes, and others that are rectangular thick boxes, and others that are really thin profile rectangular boxes. And then imagine my scenario where I don't have a closet to shove them behind like

Tia: exhausting to look at and overwhelming. It needed to be dealt with. So my solution was I could choose to either put them in these, and I will… I'll link this product in the show notes 'cause it's gonna be hard to describe. But it's kind of like a really thick mesh bag with a zipper, and it comes in like really large sizes and really small sizes. So, I could either decant

Tia: all of the, all of the board game, into these mesh bags or mesh pouches and put a label on the pouch.

Tia: another thing that I've seen is kind of like a thin profile rectangular plastic container that like has these little snaps on the front that you can open it up and like lay the little board flat, and then lay all those little pieces on top of it flat, and then it snaps shut almost like a thick folder again, I will link it in the show notes if anybody is curious at, like, what in the world is she talking about? But it's, it's out of like, thicker plastic. So can actually, when you have everything put inside of it, it can actually stack so beautifully and have this one little label on the edge of it.

Tia: So you can vertically arrange all of them, almost like a library shelf of games, and it's so nice. Here's the pros and the cons. I went the mesh bag route because the mesh bags are insanely affordable. And I was like, "Well, if they're all put into a mesh bag, they're not gonna stack well," right? Because they're all these lopsided little playing

Amber: Sure. Yeah

Tia: So it's gonna look weird, and it's gonna be kinda clunky to manage. So I'm gonna put them in these IKEA square linen boxes and then I alphabetize them. So I have little chalk labels

Amber: Girl.

Tia: edge

Amber: my gosh.

Tia: So it's like A through F games, or whatever. You, you get the

Amber: Yeah

Tia: So I think we have about seven of them. and then I have one that is It's not alphabetized, but it's anything that has to do with, like, puzzles basically.

Amber: this subject first came up in either our freezer or refrigerator episode because we both talked about how we love to take everything out of the package. So if we buy, like, a package of little yogurts, we take them all out and put them in the fridge instead of the box. And I said, "The only thing I leave in the containers that it came in are board games and puzzles." And you went,

Tia: Oh my gosh.

Amber: mm."

Tia: Do not do that.

Amber: And I was like, "What?"

Tia: I know. I have gone to the extreme of even taking puzzles out of their original box and putting them in these mesh bags, and I still … Clearly you need to have the front cover of the puzzle so you can see what in the world am I putting together and what piece goes where. But I cut that part off and then put it on the inside of Yeah

Amber: I'm, I'm just gonna throw up a, slight r- rejection on the puzzle front. Because with puzzles, I find the boxes so useful when you're doing the puzzles to help with sorting the pieces and having a place to put the pieces you don't wanna deal with. if you sort for the edge pieces first, and then you can put all the other pieces, back in the box until you're ready with them, especially if you don't have a huge, giant table to be able to put stuff out. So I find the boxes for puzzles functional

Tia: Yes, and I would agree with you there. They are definitely functional, and I do miss the part where I would put the box that has the picture on it upright and have the other ones kind of tucked into it at a 90-degree angle to hold it upright. I do miss that, will admit. the thing about puzzles is if you've had family puzzles for quite some time, especially like little kids puzzles, they get taken out and put back, and taken out and put back, and they start to fall apart, then the box itself becomes kind of unruly. I could see either case, and it doesn't really matter to me if people just choose

Amber: Yeah,

Tia: way or

Amber: of course.

Tia: But like, for my family and for our needs, I needed to slim down the air space as much as humanly possible so that we could squeeze as many games and puzzles into one small location as humanly possible. I needed to maximize the space. So I've gone the mesh bag route completely with all these board games. It's been this way for probably two years now, and I will say I am now wishing that I would've invested a little bit more in those hard plastic or acrylic cases. not the flopsy bags. Because

Tia: one, they stack better, two, I'm one of those people where if something is out of sight, it's out of mind. And so even though I have something that says, "Games A through F," will not be able to recite off the top of my head every game that's in that little

Amber: Sure

Tia: the mesh bags are pretty great for tiny board game items. if it comes with a set of six dice or something, you can toss them all in this little zipper pouch and have them… It's amaze- It's great. If you like to micro organize, it's the best. So I will keep the little mesh pouches for things like that, but for the overall, like the game itself, will be moving towards these bins,

Amber: Here's my question for you okay. You have kids, they're growing.

Tia: Mm-hmm.

Amber: When do the games stop being applic- like, where are you in the phase of, your kids are growing where it doesn't make sense to invest in a more sturdy container because, maybe you're only playing with that game for, maybe this year? are we already starting to lose interest in some of littler kid games?

Tia: Mm-hmm

Amber: where does the declutter step come, come with the games?

Tia: so that's the other part of the investment that sort of bites you in the butt because, yes, if your kid is only gonna end up playing with that game for, like, a year or two, and you've spent a bunch of money organizing all those things in containers, then yes. it feels like you're throwing your money away. my hope is that for those games that I have so nicely organized in these little acrylic containers, I can then take it to something like the Minneapolis toy library and be like, "Some other kid can enjoy this, and it will come in this nice, wonderfully packaged thing." there's pros and cons because, yeah, you've just invested a whole bunch of money in these toy containers, And there are, I will say, there are some games where the box itself is almost part of the game, so you just cannot do this method with those.

Tia: it's not for everyone, for our circumstance with the limited amount of space that we have to all of our games, I really needed to have a solution that worked better. And for how frequently we actually do play these games, would like to have better visual sight into what games we have available to us,

Amber: it's great that there's options because like you said, you have a space limitation and your family really enjoys games. So being able to have as many games as possible but keep them contained in the space that you have available, like this is a great solution. I love games so much, but we're never the hosting house. We tend to go to other people's houses, so our selection of games at home is pretty small. So we just have a shelf in a closet where we put the games. And honestly, I would be okay if the only game that existed was Trivial Pursuit because that's my favorite. And then with puzzles, I might do a puzzle one time and then I'm, I'm over it.

Amber: So then I either lend it to others or gift it to someone else. I use Buy Nothing a lot to give directly to other people in the community when we're done with something. and puzzles are always a very popular item on that app.

Tia: They're so

Amber: I know. I get sucked into them hardcore though, so I, like, cancel the rest of the day, I'm doing a puzzle.

Tia: I am not a great parent when I'm puzzling because my, uh, my little one she'll do a puzzle with me for a little while, but then Her attention span is out, and I'm still very much wanting to con- Like, "No, I haven't finished this person's foot yet.

Amber: should we shift gears and talk a little bit about arts and crafts supplies

Tia: okay, arts and crafts supplies. we're gonna be coming at this from two different angles. if you know me, you know I'm always coming at it from the kid angle, and wonderful Amber here is always reminding me that a great majority of the population does not have kids, and this may not apply

Amber: great majority, but I don't.

Tia: Or, or I should say kids not present in their life at the moment. 'Cause like even if you do have kids, your kids might not be in the house anymore, and then it doesn't apply anymore, right? there's the arts and crafts all of your kiddos, if you have kiddos, and then there's the arts and crafts if you're an adult that loves to craft. where do you put all these things, and how do you store all these things? So I'm gonna start with the kiddo side, and then we'll graduate into the adult arts and crafts. first thing I'm gonna start with is crayons and markers. Very similar to the board games that get tossed around all the time and those cardboard boxes fall apart, and marker boxes fall apart so easily.

Tia: And on top of that, if you've ever had a little one with their little fingers trying to put their crayons back in the crayon box, those crayons have to go in a two-row fashion or exactly the way that they were supposed to be made to be put in there. And if it doesn't go right, they get crammed in there, It ruins the box. It's hard to even get those things back. So I get rid of the boxes, totally.

Amber: what about the built-in sharpener on the back of the 64 count Crayola? 'Cause I have such fond memories of that as a child

Tia: Oh gosh.

Tia: if it had a built-in crayon sharpener, it maybe it would be a little bit harder to get rid of. But at the same time, the benefits of how to organize these things, I think, outweigh the built-in sharpener. So what I do, and because most families have more than one crayon set, they have multiple crayon sets. I take all of the crayons from all of the sets and put them in a mason jar

Amber: Nice

Tia: And you can just dump the whole Mason jar of crayons on the table, and they can find every color they could ever wanna color with. And then it's so insanely easy to pick them all up and dump them in this little glass Mason jar. I would give the really big caveat that if you have young little kids that are rambunctious and likely to toss this thing around, a plastic pencil container would work much better and probably be far safer. But either way, you get the idea. It's an open cylindrical container with a bottom on it that you can toss the stuff in. and it's amazing. And I do the same thing with markers.

Tia: I do the same things with… I do the same with pens, pencils. Like, any, any category of writing utensil or drawing utensil can go in its own little cup container.

Amber: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense

Tia: and then there's other arts and craft supplies, like the scissors, and the tape, and the washi tape, and the glue, right? And all of them have their own very different shapes to them, so it depends on whether you're putting this in a drawer and if you want little drawer organizers, or if you have bins that you wanna toss things into.

Amber: Yeah

Tia: advocate for separating them by category, at least in some sort of a mesh bag or a Ziploc bag, and then putting them into some canvas bin or otherwise. But it doesn't have to be, like, Instagram or Pinterest perfect. You can just have things contained in the simplest way possible. But also, I'm such an advocate for, like, it doesn't have to stay in the container that it came in, 'cause a lot of times those containers, like we mentioned before, have something to do with advertising, and they take up way more space than they need to. And you can probably reduce down the size of what this crafty project came in into a gallon Ziploc, or a mesh bag, or something else

Amber: I think you made a really great point when you were talking about the crayon jar and all of that, and being able to just, like, dump it out and easily put stuff back in. Because especially if you're dealing with kids, if you want them to clean up after themselves, it needs to be simple.

Tia: Yeah.

Amber: probably not the place to do super micro organizing, because your kid is probably not gonna line up all the rolls of washi tape,

Tia: another thing I would be remiss if I didn't add in the lazy Susan, with the dividers.

Amber: Wait,

Tia: I'm

Amber: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but just a reminder, we have renamed it The Genius Susan.

Tia: Oh, I love it, 'cause Susan is not lazy. She is a genius.

Amber: let's get started.

Tia: I know, I know. We have one of these upstairs by our command center, and it is where we keep our family scissors, our family Sharpies, our family pens and pencils, and there is a little divided slot in that little mini rotating lazy Susan- hmm, genius Susan, all these things. And so it's, it's out in the open. It's easy to see. You never have to ask, "Where's the scissors?" It's, in its spot, in its little rotating caddy. those types of things for kids' arts and crafts are also quite amazing, And then as far as paper is concerned, I would include in paper, the colorful craft paper that's blank.

Tia: There's the sketchbook pad paper that comes bound. There's the notebook paper, right? There's all sorts of different all go in the same category in my house 'cause they're all used for art or crafting or whatev- so they're all, they're just all in the same paper area. It's in this upright, vertical holder with different dividers. So all of the paper, including the coloring book paper, all end up in these magazine slots, and they're so easy to just grab and go 'cause it's at our kids' height, like eye height, and it's right next to where we keep our mason jar of all of the coloring stuff. I love vertical paper organization.

Amber: is also how we had I think it was in the paper, it was in the paper episode, I don't think, I know. We, I talked about how a lot of the paper clutter in my house comes from crafting, in particular sewing patterns. And my storage solution has been I put the patterns, I kind of like fold all the pieces and stick them either in those file folders or into manila envelopes. And then I put them either in, a magazine storage thing, so those little vertical ones, or a file box type of thing so that,

Tia: Yeah

Amber: is so helpful to have that. And then it's easy to like sort through and find the one I'm looking for. there's a reason file cabinets still exist. It's the best way to store paper and be able to access it and find it in that vertical manner, for sure.

Tia: let's talk about the arts and crafts for adults, 'cause right now I've been focusing a lot on the little kid arts and crafts storage. so me, Amber, 'cause

Amber: Yeah.

Tia: are a crafty person,

Amber: Yes

Tia: what kinds of things do you, what kind of arts and crafts supplies do you have in your house, and how are they currently stored? How would you like them to be stored? What's your future vision? Yeah. Tell me all the things

Amber: I have a lot of arts and craft supplies. I always joke that as an adult in particular there are two parts to arts and craft hobbies. There is the procuring of the supplies for the arts and crafts and for some people that is the only part of the hobby that they partake in, is like buying the things. Then the second part of the hobby is actually making it. And like I said, those things don’t always cross. I am definitely a dabbler so I have quite a few different types of arts and craft supplies but my main one, the thing that takes up the most space, is I like to sew clothes. So I have a lot of fabric stash.

Amber: And part of the challenge is I'm a very thrifty lady, so I'm not just like, "Oh, I wanna make these pants," and then I order fabric specifically for those pants. I'm like, "Where can I get a good deal on some fabric?" And I buy the fabric when it's something I like and the price is good, which is often at, a thrift store or gifted from other people. I also have a lot of yarn that I am, using for mostly knitting. I also have a mix of watercolor supplies, mosaic supplies, embroidery supplies, different paints. The list goes on and on. there's quite a bit of stuff. I have a space in the basement that is my sewing room.

Amber: It's not really a room. There's no walls in our basement. I have a very large… IKEA, Kallax units. It's, one that has a TV place in the center because there's a TV in my sewing space. then bins all around the edges of it, so that's where most of the fabric is stored. I do fold it, for the most part, Marie Kondo style, like my T-shirts, so that I can see everything. would it be nice if I had it divided more by the size of the fabric that I have or whatever? Yeah, that'd be great. That's not really how it is right now. And then, of course, there's also- thread needles, so many different types of scissors for different things, plus the machines for sewing.

Amber: So I have a sewing machine and a serger. there's just a lot of stuff.

Tia: it sounds to me like you've got a pretty good organized setup. It's… I mean, from what you're describing, it seems like it's fairly organized

Amber: Organized enough. because I dabble so much, I do have a hard time getting rid of many things because I don't know if and when I might use it again. I've definitely de-stashed things, and I get rid of fabric as I decide I don't really like it anymore. it's really easy to hang on to craft supplies when you like doing a lot of different things because you're like, "Well,

Tia: Yeah.

Amber: I'll probably revisit this again at some point."

Tia: Yeah, yeah, especially if it's easy to find. as long as it's not, like, in a box in a closet somewhere tucked away where you're never gonna find it again, then you… It might as well be donated at that point. But it sounds like the majority of your things are a place where you could find them if you wanted them. I think the one thing that's coming to mind for me, if you haven't done this yet, I'm curious if you've thought of maybe doing this, is using a pegboard to organize

Amber: Yeah, that's definitely, it's a very common, especially those IKEA pegboards, those are in, like, every craft room on YouTube that I've ever seen.

Tia: Really?

Amber: I have a- we, we have a couple in the house, but not in the craft room. Part of the challenge is because it's in the basement and we don't have walls except for concrete walls, it's very difficult to hang anything, so that does limit some of that, and I would say most of the things that would benefit from hanging would be too big to just do it on the door of a Kallax unit.

Tia: Do you organize by type of craft? So d- are all of your sewing things generally in one place, and all of your mosaic things generally in a different place,

Amber: they're all in the same corner of the basement at this time. Before they were more spread out around the house, but I've consolidated over time. 90% of the bulk is fabric, so that just takes up a lot of space. But I do have like all of the embroidery thread and needles and everything is in one of the drawers. And then I have one that's like miscellaneous, and that's where the little like mosaic clippers are. That's where a lot of like Mod Podge containers and brushes, like those are all kind of in that drawer. some random scrapbook paper. I mean, there's just a whole mix of stuff.

Tia: Mm-hmm.

Amber: that drawer the most organized thing? No. But it's also the one I go into least, so it feels fine, and like I know what's there.

Tia: you've got a, you've got a very functional, system for your arts and crafts supplies.

Amber: Yeah. It's taken time though, for sure

Tia: oh, I'm su- I'm sure it does. And for those who might not want to take as much time as you have taken to put things into their specific homes, give them a specific home, 'cause you have, you've done that hard work of finding a home for everything, so that you can find it easily, you can use it easily, right?

Tia: I would say, my advice would be do what Amber has done and collect everything from around the house and bring it into one area. Because a lot of times what I s- what I see is, or even just in conversation, is people who are artsy, craftsy, they love doing their craft all over the place, but then that means that their s- their crafty tools end up all over the place, and then it's really hard to find I would say do what Amber did and corral everything into one artsy craftsy space. And if you do a project outside of that space in the living room or something, just make sure to bring it back. Like, it- that's the home.

Tia: Like, that's where it lives

Amber: I do have a couple of projects that I keep in the living room in a little basket next to where I sit because they are projects I only do sitting on the couch watching TV. See, everything comes back to TV for me.

Amber: those are probably the only things that I have outside of the

Tia: Yeah.

Amber: craft room at this point.

Tia: working on it and you wanna be mobile that makes perfect sense.

Amber: we have talked a lot about arts, crafts, and board games. Should we transition to, what's working now?

Tia: Do it.

Tia: what's working now for me is I would love your thoughts on this because you're a meal planner, but I'm doing meal planning in Claude. what I do is I will verbally process with Claude, like, "These are the, the meals that our family typically loves. These are the days of the weeks, of the week that we're generally free, where I could maybe make something within, like, an hour timeframe. and please create a, a meal plan for the week, and then from that meal plan, create a grocery list for me." And here's the part that gets nutso, and maybe a little creepy for people who have not done this before.

Tia: But Claude has this thing called Claude Cowork, or is it Claude Code? I don't remember which one it was, but, it can actually browse the web for you. And so I said, "Can you take this grocery list and, purchase the order at my local Hy-Vee where I can pick it up?" it was like, "Yes, we can, but you need to log into Hy-Vee, select the store you wanna pick it up from, and then we'll go in and we'll add the things to the cart." So it took probably 20 minutes to add each individual item to the cart, because I gave it very specific criteria. Like, if it's grapes, it needs to be red grapes, and if it's produce, I would prefer organic over not, or if it's this, then I need that, blah, blah, blah.

Tia: So it was, like, double-checking each time that it went to add something. But this is my first time ever trying this out. It was so weird. It was so weird. I don't usually go to that length of AI, but I will say I was able to, like, brush my teeth, do my hair, put on my makeup, get dressed, and by the time I was done doing all of that, my entire grocery order was in the cart ready for me to review and purchase, and then drive over and pick up later. It's pretty… It was pretty cool

Tia: But I would love to hear your feedback because I'm sure there's lots of other listeners who will listen to this and be like, "Holy, what did you do?"

Amber: Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot of feelings about AI right now, because it's a new tool. I don't support AI recipes because I'm a recipe developer, and I've seen some terrible results. it doesn't sound like it really streamlined the process this first time, but maybe over time it will be trained better, where you don't have to be so specific about which grapes to put in. Because in that, you could enter it in faster without talking to… Like, you'd be using your hands, but people aren't good at multitasking anyway, so

Tia: Yeah.

Amber: if you get it to a point where it, works best for you, I… People get to do what they wanna do.

Tia: Mm-hmm.

Amber: I love a grocery shopping trip. I like picking out my own stuff. I occasionally do online ordering, but for the most part, I'm a grocery shopper. I wanna go in and, pick out my apples and make the substitution if something is out, or know that, oh, I'll stop at this other store 'cause I know I can grab it on the way home since I'm already out

Tia: Yeah.

Amber: I don't think it's a system that would ever work for me per se, but if it's simplifying your life, I think that's totally fine. I also think you could, um, sit in community with other people and do this in Meal Planning Collective and have it done in less than an hour for the whole week, and get inspiration from other people. So instead of just being like, "Our family kinda likes this," you'll hear somebody else be like, "Oh, we're eating this." And you're like, "Oh, I think my family would love that."

Tia: I think that would be so much better, truly, as an experience

Amber: Obviously I'm biased in this situation.

Tia: Well, sure you are, but let me also add, when you had said AI is not very good at recipe development, I could not agree more, 'cause after… So this was my first time trying this, and then when I actually tried creating the recipes from what it had said, it either missed a step, or it didn't have the right amount of ingredients, or it came out too dry, or it came out too soggy, or gave me the wrong temperature. it was dis-

Tia: Getting the ingredients as a whole, sure, that was a lot more streamlined. But the recipes themself were total ick. Like, I will absolutely admit

Amber: Yeah

Tia: it was an interesting trial. but this whole virtual shopping thing, I feel like people will have very strong feelings one way or the other. To your point of I don't want an AI choosing what I gonna have in my cart, and I don't want another person choosing what I'm gonna have in

Amber: That's the part that gets me.

Tia: give me-- they're gonna get me the soggy avocados, or they're gonna get me the grapes that are moldy, right?

Amber: I've heard that that's kind of the rule at stores is give the online orders the things that are looking maybe a little less fresh

Tia: Oh,

Amber: as a way to move produce out. that's the risk, I think, of online shopping. The AI piece is kind of whatever. with time you could probably streamline it. if you had a folder of recipes that are, tried and true and tested, and you could direct Claude to like, "Oh, these are the five recipes I want to make this week. Can you

Tia: Mm-hmm.

Amber: cart?" But that does also miss the step, which is another suggestion that people can do during Meal Planning Collective, of inventorying your kitchen. you probably already have garlic powder. You probably already have olive oil. You probably already have whatever. And not that you couldn't review the grocery list before you click purchase, but then that's just adding kind of another, fuzzy step where it's like, is it saving me time or not?

Tia: Yeah, and here's where I'm gonna just go against what I had said in the first place by, by commenting. One of my other friends recently was like, when I was telling her… 'Cause I'm, I'm, I'm a little bit of a tech geek, and so this is why I do these crazy things. I was describing to her a recent AI project that I had worked on, and she said, "That sounds really interesting and very creative, but imagine the amount of technical debt that you're adding to your life by having to manage that over time." And I was like, "Oh, solid point." So yes, same thing when it comes to this grocery shopping thing, 'cause when you said you probably already have the olive oil and the salt and the… Yes, I had to go back into the cart, and I had to delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete all the things that I already had.

Tia: And if I ever wanted to redo this process in the future, I would still have to go through my pantry and my fridge and my freezer to see what do I already have

Tia: before telling it what the grocery list needs to be. And by that time, I coulda just had it on a pad of paper or just ordered it in, on my phone as I was going

Amber: Or don't you just say to Alexa, "Add this to my grocery list"? So like you could still be doing it vocally as you're walking around your kitchen

Tia: I think I had said, like, that's what's working for me in a

Amber: Yes. Yeah

Tia: is, "Hey Siri, add this to my grocery list," and then she does, and then my husband and I both have the same grocery list moving forward. So now I'm, now maybe it's not what's working now. I think you've convinced me that it's kind of… Not, not that I'm upset

Amber: No

Tia: truly now that I've thought through, like, okay, from start to finish, how much did it actually help? Well, actually, it wasn't the best

Amber: But it was still kinda cool

Tia: It was still kinda cool. But truly, maybe not what's gonna work in the future.

Amber: great thing to play around with because who knows? Like, who knows when that thing is that you try where you're like, "Whoa, that really did save so much time or make something so much easier." You don't know if you don't try.

Tia: Okay

Amber: my what's working now is couscous. So, uh, do you have couscous much as a food in your house?

Tia: We do actually. We don't eat it very often, but it's, it seems to always find itself in our

Amber: So the reason I love couscous, and I'm talking about the, like, classic couscous, not the Israeli couscous, so the super tiny one.

Tia: Okay

Amber: the reason it's so amazing is because you don't even need to use a pan to make a side dish because you just take the dry little couscous, and you put it in a heat-safe bowl, and you dump in some boiling water, and you cover it for five minutes, and the couscous is done. That's all you have to do to make couscous. add whatever seasonings you want. So I made the fanciest, easiest dinner last week. I made this couscous. I added some arugula to it before I put the water in. I probably put maybe, you know, like, some salt and some pepper. Put it in a bowl, covered it, set it aside. I had some wild-caught Pacific cod that was thawed.

Amber: I seasoned it with Trader Joe's lemon pepper seasoning and a little extra salt, stuck it in the air fryer, which to me does not count as a pot or a pan either. And then I made a sauce that was so easy and so fancy feeling. It's olive oil, chopped olives, chopped up, like, grape or cherry tomatoes, some garlic, lemon juice, and I put a sprig of thyme from the garden in there. So I let that sauce simmer on the stove top in a little pan while the fish cooked in the air fryer and the couscous just sat on the counter.

Tia: Ah

Amber: And then, you know, fish on top of the couscous with the sauce. So delicious. The whole thing took, like, 15 minutes, and I looked at my partner, Will, and I said, "They would charge us $50 for this at a restaurant." And it was one of the easiest meals that I have made in weeks, and so delicious.

Tia: gosh

Amber: and then we took the leftover couscous. I dumped the extra sauce that had the olives and the tomatoes and the olive oil and the lemon in there. Um, mixed that all together. The next day, I added feta cheese and s- chopped salami and some pickled peppers, and it was like a cold pasta salad that we ate for lunch

Tia: Oh my gosh, what in the world? See, now this is the kind of thing I will never get from Claude.

Amber: But you will get from Meal Planning Collective.

Tia: Yes. Oh my gosh. I am literally salivating right now. That sounds so delicious. I I did not know that cous- is that typically how couscous is made? I thought I always had it on the, like, in a pot of boiling

Amber: Yeah, the little tiny couscous does not need to be… Like, you need boiling water,

Tia: Yeah.

Amber: can get boiling water from the microwave, or we have a kettle that we use to make our coffee, so we boil water in the kettle and pour it over the top and just cover it

Tia: We have one of those kennels too.

Amber: Five minutes. Five-minute side dish. No pan. It just makes the cleanup feel so much easier to have, like, not a… Too many pans is, like, my mental struggle in the kitchen. So as much as I love cooking, if I need, a giant pot to boil water for pasta and a big skillet to, sauté stuff, that starts to get a little ugh in me. So

Tia: Yeah.

Amber: was a lovely way to have a really lovely side dish, no pot. Cleanup was so easy, and it was all delicious, so

Tia: Oh my goodness. Well, without even planning it or realizing it, I think I just gave you the perfect, like on a platter reason why people should not be meal planning with AI

Amber: This was

Tia: was

Amber: not a planned thing.

Tia: planned. This was not planned. We separately put in the show notes what was working now, and mine was Meal Planning Quad. And then after, like, you heard what happened with that discussion.

Tia: And then Amber comes with this most brilliant, delicious, 15-minute, like, amazing dish that I'm

Tia: sitting here salivating, like, "Please give

Tia: me the

Tia: recipe for that." That's why I'm dying laughing right now. Okay, well, if that isn't a, like, an amazing ad for Meal Planning Collective, I don't, I don't know what is

Tia: If you could see me right now, like I am, I'm crying. I'm like wiping away tears

Tia: I can't believe like what, what a pivot that was. Pivot!

Amber: We could not have scripted this better if we tried.

Tia: Do not, if you take anything

Tia: do not meal plan with Clyde. Join Planning Collective instead. You'll get lovely recipes like Amber and the rest of the community

Tia: Oh, okay. I need to pause and collect myself Okay. All right, well, that is all for today. If you liked today's episode, which how could you not after that? You can show your support by telling your friends or leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If we got the slightest giggle out of you, please go leave a five-star review. We're a new podcast. We need the reviews, man. That's how we get known. Anyway, on to you, Amber

Amber: Questions about the show or suggestions for future episodes, you can send us an email at heymonicapodcast@gmail.com. All show notes and links are available at heymonicapodcast.com. Oh, and hey, are you following us on Instagram? Hey Monica Podcast on Instagram

Tia: Amber supports individuals exhausted by dieting who want to improve their relationship with food and body. You can learn more and book a free connection call at wholeyounutrition.com. also hosts a virtual community and co-working space dedicated to planning realistic, satisfying, and nourishing meals like that delicious couscous recipe she just mentioned Find more and join the collective at mealplanningcollective.com.

Amber: Tia helps busy professionals with kids who have amazing systems at work but no energy left to create organized game and craft systems at home. You can book a free consultation call at roomforserenity.com or get organizing tips and tricks from her on Instagram. Her Instagram handle is @room_for, that's F-O-R, _serenity.

Tia: Hi, Monica