Hey guys! Thanks for stopping by for the transcript of Episode #173. If you’d rather listen to this episode than read 8,000 words, you can click the player below or learn how to get our podcasts on your phone (for free) here.
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[Intro music starts]
John: I’m John.
Sherry: And I’m Sherry.
John: We like home stuff.
Sherry: We like talking.
John: And we like the occasional game show sound effect. So welcome to Young House Love Has A Podcast, where we have deep and not so deep conversations about DIY, design, and life at home.
Sherry: If you’ve wondered about the money side of our move and recent home sales, today we’re answering some of your most asked questions. Also, a series of unfortunate toilet-related events and a home milestone that’s making lots of people cry.
[Intro music ends]
John: We said last week on the podcast that this was going to be the week that we are moving, the first week of May.
Sherry: Famous last words.
John: Yeah, no sooner did we say that then we found out that it’s not going to happen. We’re actually probably going to move next week, the second week of May, if all goes right.
Sherry: Yeah. Now, I’m like, “I don’t know when I’m moving.” I’m just going to wait by the phone for the call. At some point someone’s going to say, “It’s ready. Come on down.” Because we can only blame the floors for this delay, guys. Something so surprising happened. Even the floor refinisher was like, “I’ve never seen this before.” The pine floors at the Florida house, as he was sanding them down, started to look a little strange to him, and he realized that at some point in this house’s history someone had patched some areas, but not with the same flooring.
So, the entire downstairs we knew was regular pine, and the entire upstairs is heart pine. But I think at the point at which someone made the upstairs heart pine, the downstairs was patched with heart pine in a few random spots.
John: Yeah, maybe this isn’t the first time they’ve had to patch because of water issues.
Sherry: Yes.
John: But we talked it through with the contractor and the flooring guy, and because we were just going to be using a clear sealer on the floors (like we weren’t staining it a color) they concluded that there was no way we were going to be able to hide the difference in the flooring material. So the only solution was to actually take those heart pine patches out and patch it with matching regular pine.
Sherry: Right, and the funny thing is he had already sourced some matching pine for the gaps in the floor. Remember, we had holes in the floor that we had to fill when we bought the house – but little did our floor guy know at that point that he should have sourced double that amount and he could have fixed these striped portions that later came to light. But it is all going to be patched and look beautiful when we clear seal it, they’re going to be lovely. Knock on all the wood, I have to do it or I’m worried it’s not going to work (*knocking sound*)
John: You did that last episode and it didn’t work.
Sherry: Okay, well I’m doing it again (*laughing*) The point is it took about four extra days, which pushed us over into a different week, like it rolled us over on the calendar. But, obviously, we don’t want to move in with striped floors in certain areas. It just had to be done.
John: Well, and at some point our contractor thought he was going to be able to make up some time. But we just keep having these little things pop up like a recent debacle with the toilet. Who would have ever thought a toilet would cause these many issues. We have this favorite toilet that we just put in our bathroom here, and we’re installing it again in our Florida house. And so we’ve ordered it plenty of times.
Sherry: Yeah, so it’s a two-piece toilet. It has a tank on the top and a bowl on the bottom, and then you add the seat. This time we found it all together – sold with all three pieces (sometimes it comes with a seat, sometimes it doesn’t). But we found it the cheapest this time at Home Depot, we put in the order, we mailed it to the contractor, he installed it. Then he said, “Oh, my gosh, you won’t believe this. But they gave us the wrong seat.” He sent a picture and it was so funny, it looked like a bulldog with an underbite, because the toilet has an elongated bowl, but the seat was like a round, shorter seat.
Sherry: So, if you could picture a toilet seat that doesn’t even fully cover the mouth of the toilet bowl, that’s what it looked like. We all laughed about it. It looked so funny.
John: It had like a little pouty lip.
Sherry: It really did, and he was like, “No biggie. My guy’s going to go back to Depot. We’ll figure it out.” But then, the next day I got another text and it was like, “Oh, my gosh, a different part of the toilet is wrong, too.” He said he hadn’t seen it in person, but when he saw it in person, he noticed after his plumber installed the toilet that the bowl of the toilet was like a cream color instead of white like the tank. So, not only did they send us the wrong toilet seat, they also sent us the wrong toilet bowl color.
John: I think everyone was so distracted by the toilet seat issue that they didn’t notice that the color of the tank and the bowl were slightly off.
Sherry: Yes, it was like a cream color. I was like, “Nooooo.” He was like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m getting so frustrated by this. This should have been like a half hour job.” Like John and I can install a toilet. We don’t even really need him to install the toilet except that we want a functional bathroom the minute we arrive, because we anticipate our kids running in after a long car ride and needing to use the toilet.
John: Well, and then on top of that, when the plumber went to go back and get another toilet bowl from Home Depot, it was suddenly out of stock and back-ordered for like a month! So we had to go source it elsewhere online to get it delivered. So it was like this whole thing that shouldn’t have been a thing.
Sherry: Yeah, it was two days ago. The toilet arrived today from the place we ordered it online. So they shipped it super fast. I didn’t even pay expedited shipping. They had a lot on hand, so it wasn’t back-ordered everywhere, which I’m really excited about because I would have been so upset if it was like, “Okay, you can’t have your favorite toilet.” I’d be like, “But there’s no other toilet I love.” (*laughing*)
John: Imagine if the stores were all out of hand sanitizer, wipes…
Sherry: …toilet paper, and this specific toilet (*laughing*).
Sherry: But we found it. We’re so excited. As of, I think, this afternoon they’re installing it and all shall be well. That was not a super long delay. It just kind of felt like an extra fire drill.
John: Right. So, yes, it is disappointing that our move has gotten pushed back and there seem to be these last little things that are just keeping us from getting to the finish line. But I guess the good news is that even though we have to spend an additional week here in Richmond in sort of our “glamping” thing in our house, where we don’t have all of our stuff or most of our furniture, and we’re just kind of living bare bones. But we’re a week into living like this, and it hasn’t been that bad really.
John: Again, we have beds, we kept enough kitchen stuff that we can cook meals, and then we’ll just bring that stuff in the car with us. So, it could be worse for sure.
Sherry: Yeah I was going to say that there are a few things I miss that if I could do this all over again, I would’ve just left them. Like our cutting board. Multiple times a day I go to use it. We have a little plastic one in a drawer, but I just loved our big wood one that was out on the counter. I didn’t realize how much I used it. So I would have just kept that – big deal. I could have stored it in the car and driven it there. The other thing I really miss, which doesn’t make any sense to have because it was too much work, was our entire junk drawer. I never realized how often I swing open that drawer and grab any of a thousand things. I need a highlighter, I needed scissors, and now that drawer is fully empty. Remember, we packed up our whole kitchen and left like a pot and a pan, and not even the cutting board. (*laughing*)
John: I think what you miss about the junk drawer is not its absence, because we did keep some essentials from the junk drawer, but they’re now in a big Ziploc bag, and so it is so annoying to get them out because they’re all buried under stuff. So, I think there’s a reason why people don’t have a junk bag. They have a junk drawer.
Sherry: I agree. It’s a very inefficient storage system. We just thought it’d be like a week or two, now it’s going to be three. At this point no one knows what day it is anyway. What’s one more week?
John: Right. True. Although, it is funny that in all of this, our move date has been pushed back, but our POD arrived to Florida early. It’s not at our property. It’s at like the warehouse in Florida. But if you remember, the people at PODS had told us it would be around two weeks or so for it to travel from our original location to our new location. Because not only are they just literally going, in this case, from Virginia to Florida, but they have to go from our house to our local warehouse, and then from the local warehouse to the Florida warehouse, and then from the Florida warehouse to our home in Florida. So, there are multiple stops and that’s why they say you should expect at least two weeks for the travel.
Sherry: Yeah, and they also just have two days a week they will deliver pods to houses in our new county. So if you miss it and it’s like a Sunday, you can’t get it again until the next Wednesday or something. So keeping that in mind we were like, “Man, it might be two and a half weeks.” So, it was a huge hilarious surprise when we checked the status. You know how you can watch your pizza delivery go – like it’ll say “being prepared” and then “out for delivery.” This was like that. You can go on the PODS website and it’s like… “Florida! It has made it to Florida!” And we were like, what?!
John: Yes. It made it to their Florida warehouse in two days. So we could have had it delivered to our home in Florida a week ago. So, our pod is really ahead of us on this move.
Sherry: Yeah, the pod is just living its best life in Florida and we’re like, “When can we get there? Just waiting by the phone…”
John: I have to stop myself from thinking like, if I had known all these things, I would have done this differently. Because we couldn’t have known, (like we never could have anticipated this flooring delay, we didn’t know the pod would be so fast, etc) – but had we known, we could have kept our things here for a couple more weeks to time it a bit better.
Sherry: Yeah. I’m actually happy that we got the packing out of the way though! That was a big thing weighing on me. One interesting thing that John and I have noticed, and we both noticed it, was… I don’t know if you guys saw the post we did last week on the blog. But it was a video tour that we took right before the showings of our house. So every room was fully decorated. John walked around with a camera and filmed a little tour, and we put that up in a post so you guys can have a walkthrough of the final “after tour” of our house.
Sherry: The funny thing now is that when we put the video in the post, obviously, we watched it and John adds music to it and all that.
John: I should point out that video was taken the first week of March.
Sherry: Yeah, there are no leaves on the trees outside, which is so funny to me because now it’s so green here.
John: Yeah. So our house hasn’t really looked that full for two months, and right now, post packing, it looks very empty. So when we watched that video together last week, the contrast between what we’re living with versus what was in that video was very severe.
Sherry: I know, I was like, “The house looks so full.” I was almost grossed out by all the stuff in the house. I know I really loved it at the time, but I think your eyes adjust so quickly. Now that our house is basically half full, and has been for the last few weeks, it’s so weird to watch the video of it all full because it almost feels too full. Like our eyes have fully adjusted to this house being a lot less packed, and I don’t know, I kind of liked the airy feeling without stuff everywhere. Like I’m hoping our new house can feel less full too. I don’t want it to look unfinished or half done, but I like the blank surfaces and the breathing room.
John: Yeah. I think the video felt a little cluttered to me. I was like, “Wow, we had a lot of stuff in that room.” We had really filled every surface, and I don’t think it was necessarily bad. I wouldn’t be sad if our Florida house ended up having that vibe over time, like if it felt like it was full and cozy and all those things. Not cluttered, but I think the house did look very good when we sold it. It just feels overwhelmed with stuff now that we’ve adjusted to it being so empty.
It also gives me comfort for the earlier weeks and months that we live in Florida, because it’s going to be empty for a while as we furnish it and figure out the place for everything and get art on the walls. We know that’s going to be a process, and I think I was a little bit nervous about the discomfort of that stage. We’ve been in this house for so long where it’s felt comfortable and everything had its place, and things were feeling finished, that I wasn’t exactly looking forward to that time that we’re entering in the Florida house where it’s not going to be that way for a while. So I think realizing that actually living here in this unfinished kind of empty state is okay made me feel more comfortable about being in that state in Florida for a while.
Sherry: Yeah, I was actually thinking that I think it’s really good timing because I did a lot of downsizing before we packed the pod. If I had five vases, I picked my two favorite and I left some here, and I gave some to friends. Whatever I could do to downsize has happened once, but I’m renewed in my commitment to that because I love the blank surfaces, and I love the minimalistic, clean, easy breezy feeling. So I think if we land at the Florida house and it feels like, “Oh, I still have too many things” there might be just a second wave of decluttering. Because I’m like re-invigorated and remotivated to get to that place. Where we can just dash out and go have fun – and not be like “oh I have to organize my vase drawer.” (*laughing*)
We all save too many vases, guys. We get them for free and then we’re like, “Oh, I got this bouquet and it came with this clear vase. Why not save it?” But we always use the same dang vase. We have a favorite and we have ones we never touch. Get rid of the ones you don’t touch.
John: Let the record state, as we were packing I said, “I think we have more vases than we need.”
Sherry: (*laughing*) The irony is that I kept one here because I was going to give it to the new homeowner. I put a big branch in it on the counter and then I said to John, “Uh oh, I think I have to bring this vase because I like it so much. (*laughing*) I will carry it on my lap like a baby.”
John: That’s what you say to everything. I say “We don’t have room for it.” and you’re like “I’ll just put it on my lap.” Sherry’s going to have a very full lap for 13 hours on the drive to Florida.
Sherry: Guys don’t doubt me. If I set my mind to something, I will do it.
John: Says the person who has to pee nonstop.
Sherry: That’s why I bought the pee bags.
John: You’ll just keep one under the vase?
Sherry: Yeah.
John: That’s what the vase is for!
Sherry: I have the vase for that. Multitasking. (*laughing*)
John: Gross.
Sherry: I know you come here for the potty humor and we deliver.
John: Well, next up, I have what could either be a can we just talk about, or a game. I wasn’t sure what I should qualify it as. What do you suggest?
Sherry: Me?
John: Yes.
Sherry: John has told me nothing about this, guys. He said, “I’m going to spring it on you on the podcast.” Let’s call it a game.
[retro game music plays]
John: Okay. What if I said, “Can we just talk about this game?“…. No reaction?
Sherry: It’s a dad joke. I expect nothing less.
John: Okay, thank you. Well, this is a one question game, that’s why it wasn’t much of a game.
Sherry: Okay, so I either get an A or an F?
John: Exactly. There was a survey done by Zillow last year and their conclusion was that more than a third of Americans do this while selling their home.
Sherry: Oh, I don’t get multiple choice? Or I do?
John: I want to play this like you did it last week.
Sherry: Okay. Just a willy nilly quiz. (*laughing*)
John: See if you can fill in the blanks. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll give you some options.
Sherry: Okay. What was the percentage again?
John: I think it’s actually 36%.
Sherry: They do “this”?
John: Yes. Do blank while selling their home.
Sherry: What about decluttering?
John: Noooope.
Sherry: That sounded like I’m a little bit close?
John: No, I just wasn’t sure if I should give you a better clue than “noooope”.
Sherry: I think you should give me a better clue because I’m out of ideas.
John: How about this? It’s an emotion.
Sherry: Oh, they cry?
John: Yes!
Sherry: That makes me sad.
John: Well, they said they did a survey about the home selling process and found that it was one of the most stressful experiences that people go through, second only to a breakup.
Sherry: So their distinction is selling, not buying, right? We have certainly found that buying feels a lot less stressful than selling.
John: Yes, and this was specifically about selling. They said that people found selling more stressful than planning a wedding, getting fired, or becoming a parent.
Sherry: Wow. Yeah. Our first house sale was hard. That was a hard situation.
John: I was going to say, I think we probably fall into this category, at least you, I’m not much of a crier.
Sherry: I cried over the duplex falling through with our friends and just like everything going belly up after almost the entire 30 days right before the closing. It just felt so sad.
John: Well, it says 20% of people shed tears five times or more.
Sherry: Oh, I don’t know if I did it five times.
John: I think you might’ve fallen into that category for our first home sale.
Sherry: Our first home sale was so hard, guys, so hard. But we were just crying over frustration of buyer and realtor demands, because we were selling by owner.
John: Yes.
Sherry: But the other party was buying with a realtor.
John: Yes, and the realtor was a very, let me choose my word kindly…
Sherry: Well, she advocated for the buyer.
John: I was going to say, bulldog, which is who you want on your side as a realtor, but being on the receiving end of that, especially when it was our first time selling a home, it was hard to be the recipient of that energy.
Sherry: Yes.
John: One of the things that made our first sale so stressful was that it was kind of domino sale with the purchase of our second house. So we couldn’t buy our second house until the closing for our first house happened. Then it was the same for the people that we were buying the second house from. They were purchasing a third house in the chain and they couldn’t close on their house until they sold their house to us.
So it felt like we had a lot of pressure on our shoulders to make sure the sale of our first house worked out, because our house was the first sale in the chain. We had to make that happen in order for everyone else to get what they wanted. So there was a lot to juggle. There were a lot of demands we had to meet that we weren’t sure were totally reasonable, but we wanted the second house so badly. We wanted the other people to have their house. It was a tough situation to be in.
Sherry: Then John hit a mailbox with the truck in the snow on our moving day. Just on top of everything else.
John: Yup, then I drove into a ditch with our moving truck. That was probably the fifth set of tears. It probably pushed us over the brink right then.
Sherry: Oh, my gosh, I was loopy by that point (*laughing*)
John: But I think you’re right that the majority of these tears not being because of the emotions of missing the house itself or leaving the house. It’s because of the stress of the process. The survey said that 70% of people were stressed by the uncertainty of the sale price. 69% were stressed about selling it within a desired timeframe, and 65% were stressed over the offer falling through. Another 65% were people who were stressed about fixing up their home for sale.
Sherry: Right. I would add a huge category to that, which is stress about showings. Showings are so stressful. If you have kids and a dog, or even just a house that you have to pick up every time someone decides to traipse through and look at it. Then over time they look at it and they don’t offer, you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m scrambling every time the phone rings to get the house ready. Someone’s walking through, it might not even result in an offer.” I know all about it guys. It can be really grating.
So, I think it totally tracks that people feel frustration in selling. It’s a very hard thing to do. At one point we were selling three houses, not that long ago, maybe two months ago. I remember when all of this pandemic stuff was starting it just felt like “this will never go through. Like we will never get to the point where we just have one house.”
John: Yes.
Sherry: That’s why still to this day, I am so grateful. If you’re out there going through that right now, we feel for you, and we totally can appreciate that. It’s like one of the harder things to do.
John: Yes, and now, according to this survey, you can feel comfortable if you have to cry over it to release some of that stress because it’s normal. A third of people cry during the home selling process and 20% cry five times or more.
Sherry: If you’re going to cry once, what’s five times? Just to keep it going.
John: Just nonstop tears to the entire thing.
Sherry: Just like a solid cry for about a month till closing (*laughing*)
John: Right. That’s the way to do it.
Sherry: Next, for the main segment of the podcast… John likes to define each of these segments. I just kind of ramble on and who knows where I’ll end up. But I do know that the main segment is a question we receive so so often. It’s usually a private email or DM. It’s like something nobody wants to ask publicly, but everyone is really wondering about this. So just due to popular demand, like tons and tons of requests to talk about this, we thought we would address the financial aspects of selling the three houses. So John’s going to read someone’s question now because I am rambling.(*laughing*)
John: Right, I was like, “Should I say this person’s name now?” You said a lot of people were asking privately.
Sherry: Well, her name’s Anna, but how many people are named Anna?
John: Oh, geez. Now, Anna knows it’s her. Okay. So Anna asked this question very nicely. She wrote: “How is this move impacting you financially? Is the cost of buying a Florida home more because of the area/proximity to the beach? Are you simplifying in hopes of spending less/saving more in other areas or retiring early? Interested in whatever you’re comfortable sharing. Thanks. Heart emoji.”
Sherry: Yes, so sweet. I love it when people say “whatever you feel comfortable talking about,” because we don’t always talk about everything. I always tell people, I’ll tell the entire internet things I’ll tell my whole family at a dinner table, but if I won’t tell my whole family something, I’m not going to tell the whole internet that.
John: Yes, because money can be an uncomfortable topic and we definitely have boundaries about what we’ll tell the whole world just for privacy reasons, but here’s the gist of it.
Yes. The real estate in Florida is more expensive, at least in the area in which we bought, because it’s so close to the beach. But the cost of that house was in no way equal to the combined cost of all three houses we sold. It actually was comparable in cost to what we sold our primary home here in Richmond for…
Sherry: Well, it was $150,000 more, so comparable might be a sketchy term to use, but by no means was it the cost of all three houses added up – just the cost of our Richmond house plus about $150,000.
John: Right. So we could have taken the combined funds from our three house sales in Virginia and bought a larger house in Florida if we wanted. But as Anna implied in her question, our goal here is simplifying. It’s not about accumulating more or bigger. You guys know we intentionally purchased a smaller house. I mean, yes, we’re getting a house about half the size of this one and it’s more expensive than this one. So clearly the cost per square foot is quite different in Florida.
Sherry: But I think the thing that’s really nice is, and we’ve shared this with you guys before, is it episode 58?
John: I don’t know.
Sherry: We’ll put it in the show notes. In episode (*mumbles an inaudible number*), we talked about how we paid off this house. So the greatest thing we ever did is that since we bought our first house, was that 15 years ago? 14 years ago?
John: 14 years ago.
Sherry: 14 years ago. Since then, we’ve been overpaying our mortgage whenever we can. We got 15-year mortgages, which are faster to pay down. We’ve only ever owned one car. We make certain sacrifices to try to put money into the house, where it could have been put into like fancier cars, or more than one car, or fancier vacations for our family. So by paying off this house, it meant that everything we got in the sale of this house could roll over towards the Florida house’s mortgage. And it basically left us with $150,000 beyond that, that was still outstanding on the mortgage.
Sherry: And once the duplex and the pink house closed, we had funds that we could use to pay down the rest of the Florida house’s mortgage. So we now own the Florida house completely outright, which feels really good. We don’t take that for granted. We’ve worked towards that for a long time, and we’re really grateful for it. And we also had some funds beyond that which we put into two categories…
John: Yeah. So, category one is that we’re using some of those excess funds to go towards the renovations of the Florida house. Like I said a moment ago, we looked at some more expensive houses, but that would have left us less room to make improvements, to furnish it, to decorate it. And we knew that we wanted a space that we could put our stamp on. So it was nice to find something that was a little less expensive and under the budget of what we could have afforded, so that we have this cushion to use on renovations, and furnishings, and decorating.
That I think has been kind of our MO in all of our house sales, is to buy under our means. Instead of financially stretching yourself when you buy a home to actually purchase something that’s cheaper than you’re approved for, so that you have that cushion and you have that extra room to spend money (whether it is on the house, or on other things, or towards savings). So we’ve always tried to do that, and Florida was no exception. We bought a house that we knew he could afford without stretching.
So it left us those extra funds to, again, use for a category one, which are renovations. Then, category two is sort of all the general savings slash smart things to do as an adult type things. Put money in your retirement fund, put things in your kid’s college fund. Those are things we had been doing over the last few years best we could. But I will be honest, we’ve been mostly financially focused on the renovations out in Cape Charles, the beach house and the duplex.
Those things have taken a lot of our energy and a lot of our financial energy over the last three years, so it feels good to now be in a place where we can level out our spending a bit more. Of course we are going to have renovation costs still ahead of us in the Florida house, but it doesn’t feel as all-consuming as the renovations on multiple houses out in Cape Charles.
Sherry: Yeah, I think the easiest way to describe it would be that it feels a lot more financially minimized. It’s cheaper to carry one smaller house instead of four, because the duplex was two houses (we were paying double utilities, double taxes, all that stuff).
John: Yeah, and I think those are the sorts of decisions that drove us, actually, to make this move. We were not only trying to simplify our stuff, and our space, and our stresses. But we did want this to be a financially simplifying decision as well, where we were only having to carry the financials of one house. Whether that’s utilities, maintenance, all those things.
I think if you guys heard our episode last fall, where we talked to Tanja Hester, and I’ll link it in the show notes if you missed it. She was someone who retired early, and I know Anna asked if this was part of some retire early scheme. It’s not. I don’t think that’s a particular goal of ours, but we are looking to just be financially secure, which is something I think everyone wants, especially these days. So I think one kind of switch we had in our thinking is that probably for most of our adult lives, I would say, we were kind of operating on, I don’t know if this would be considered “the American dream approach,” but this idea that if you accumulate more, if you earn more, if you own more, that’s your path to success, That’s your path to “wealth” or whatever.
Sherry: Right. Or, at least financial security, like “the more houses I have, the better off financially I’ll be.”
John: Yeah, I think we literally thought that when we were buying the duplex. We pictured the duplex as maybe the first in a chain of rental properties we would go on to own, and that would be our safety net, or our college fund, or something like that. I think we thought the accumulation of more was how we check that box of financial security. But in talking to Tanja, we also heard this idea that another path to financial security is to desire less, or to spend less, or to need less. I think that really flipped a switch in our thinking because that is true. You don’t need to accumulate more if your needs don’t become more.
Sherry: Right. I think another way to look at it was if you add up the square footage of this house, and the pink house, and the duplex, it’s 7,000 square feet.
John: Give or take.
Sherry: Yeah so that was all space that we were paying taxes on. We were maintaining it, we were paying for insurance, and paying utilities for all of it. We were heating and cooling that duplex in the off season when no one was in it. By contrast – in selling those three houses and just buying one smaller house in Florida, we’ve gone from 7,000 square feet to 1400 square feet. We’ve gone from owning around an acre and a half of land, to 0.1 acres of land. So, in all aspects of yard work, paperwork, money, stress, all of it, we feel like not only are we downsizing and simplifying our objects, but it feels like we’re taking things off the cafeteria tray of life. We’re really simplifying what we have to do.
John: Oh, that beautiful “cafeteria tray of life.”
Sherry: (*laughing*) Put it on a T-shirt. Maybe a bumper sticker.
John: So, I think that hopefully gives you a little bit of a peek into the financial side of this decision that we made. It was certainly intentional, both for all the minimizing and simplifying reasons we’ve talked about, but also for the financial reasons. And we’ll put some of the things we referenced in the show notes at younghouselove.com/podcast, like our episode about how we paid off our mortgage, and also that conversation we had with Tanja Hester.
Sherry: Okay, but now we’re going to talk about what we’re digging. I am digging something that is… a rainbow delight in my life.
John: Sherry never thinks these through ahead of time.
Sherry: (*laughing*) I just let my mouth kind of roam. I just figure it out as each word comes out. Right now, I don’t even know where my mouth is going.
John: (*laughing*)
Sherry: But this week I’m digging a delightful rainbow vitamin organizer. I have to give everyone at home kudos because you’re the ones who kept saying, “Why don’t you have a pill case for your vitamins?” I was like, “I don’t know. Who am I? A grandma. I don’t know about these pill cases.”
John: Ooh, burn, grandmas.
Sherry: I just didn’t understand how it would help me. Like, I’m a grown woman. I can open each vitamin and pop it, and I take supplements because I have a kidney thing that goes on, and we both take multivitamins and vitamin C and stuff. And I was like, “Big deal. I open a few containers every morning. It takes me a minute.” BUT… this totally falls under the sticking points things we’ve talked about, or feeling extra efficient. Now, I spend the same amount of time I would take opening them each morning for one dose, but I do seven days in a row for myself and seven days in a row for John, because the pill organizer has 14 slots.
Sherry: It has a week on one side and a week on the other side, and with a Sharpie, I just drew an S on my side and a J on John’s side, so we can tell which side is whose vitamins, and it is just delightful. Every morning I pushed the button. I wish I had it in front of me, because you would hear this satisfying sound. You click the button and just one separated compartment opens up and it’s flip-a-flip-a-flip.
John: I love how you’re describing what a pill container does for people.
Sherry: Guys, plus it’s a rainbow. It’s a ROYGBIV delicious little looking thing. It fits all of my vitamins. It’s not teeny for just one pill. It’s good sized and I will put it in the show notes. It’s ten dollars and fifty cents or something like that. It has made my mornings feel super efficient. I love it for traveling because now I don’t have to bring all the bottles. I just have this one thing with everything in it. It totally falls under didn’t think I needed it until I had it, and now I’m just singing the praises to you on my podcast, because it has changed my mornings.
John: You could just take the Lisa Rinna approach and do a big Ziploc bag…
Sherry: I really appreciate your reference point, John.
John: I do what I can.
Sherry: Is he a keeper guys or what?
John: Who is really a keeper is what I’m digging this week. Another John, John Krasinski from The Office.
Sherry: He is a keeper.
John: Have you guys been watching the YouTube series he has started during the pandemic called Some Good News or SGN? It’s like a new show he produces from his home. His daughters made the logo, they colored on poster board. It’s very homemade looking in a super charming way, and I guess there are like five or six episodes now. I’ll put some of them in the show notes, but he just treats it like a news show where he’s sharing uplifting stories. People who are doing awesome essential work. People who are finding fun ways to stay connected or show appreciation or love for one another.
It’s just a very charming, uplifting family friendly little YouTube series. I think each episode is around 15 minutes. We’ve watched a few with our kids, some on our own, and I would say it’s escalating each week in terms of what he takes on and the production value. Like he threw an internet prom for all of the teenagers who are not getting their proms this year.
Sherry: It was so sweet. Yeah, I like that he’s like, “Oh, that could be hard to do in a week from home. I’ll do it.” He’s game for all these big things. He has also had some really big stars on it, and they’re like Skyping in from home, which is fun to see. Like you said, the production quality is good, you can hear everyone, but it’s very homemade looking. Nobody is in a studio and that’s why we love it.
John: Well, and just like finding literally as he calls it, “Some Good News” to read (because a lot of the news out there is not fun to read), not only is it entertaining – but to hear some of these stories and get sort of an injection of positivity is really nice. And like Sherry said, he’s getting these celebrities involved now. He did a segment in a recent episode where he was getting people’s quarantine recipes, like their favorite chili that they make, or their “quaran-tini” recipe. Then, he surprised the people who had these recipes go viral with a celebrity chef who made their recipe. So, there was a woman who had made pierogis, I think.
Sherry: Yes, and Martha Stewart pops onto Skype and is like, “I loved your pierogis.” The woman’s like crying. It’s just, it’s so cute. That episode was great too because they raised like $3 million for restaurant workers who are out of work right now. It’s such a great mission and such a sweetly executed and lovable way to do it. Also, I won’t spoil it, but I really like the bottom half of his wardrobe in every episode.
John: It’s what I’m wearing right now.
Sherry: (*laughing*)
[outro music begins]
Sherry: Thanks for listening to Young House Love Has A Podcast.
John: Even though we’re not in Florida yet, we’re going to go ahead and share some renovation progress pictures from our contractor on the blog this week so you can see how things have been evolving. So stay tuned for that on Wednesday!
Sherry: Yes, and keep telling us what you do while you listen. Like Suzanne on Instagram who listened while donating her plasma to help others fight COVID-19.
John: Speaking of which, if you want to be like Suzanne, Tom Hanks, or the other plasma donors out there, there’s more information on sites like FDA.gov and RedCross.org.
Sherry: And here’s a weird segue, over at younghouselove.com/podcast we have things like a photo of the sanded not-so-perfect floors in our Florida house, and that toilet with the underbite.
John: Yeah, and in that picture of the toilet, you can see a sneak peek of our newly tiled floors.
Sherry: Shiny, shiny.
John: Actually, dusty, dusty.
Sherry: Later.
John: Bye.
[outro music ends]
*This transcript was edited for clarity & readability*
