Episode #118: Life Hacks!
Welcome back! Grace and Alvina share their favorite life hacks in the categories of food, home, work, children, and more.
“How have you been?”
Alvina is still recovering and catching up from her wedding and vacation. She has been getting into editing mode and gearing up for the Focus Meeting in 2022.
Grace has not been feeling great because Hazel brought home a bug from camp. However, it is NOT COVID, just a run of the mill bug. One of the silver linings of covid was not getting any colds!
Grace mentioned the book club that she started with her daughter and her friends, “Reading to Chickens”. They are now reading the Serpent’s Secret by Sayantani DasGupta. One parent of the group suggested that they start to talk to the girls about puberty because it is in a small group and in a safe way. They are going to read Celebrate Your Body and The Care and Keeping of You, an “American Girl Book”.
LIFE HACKS!
Grace and Alvina shared some life hacks on a previous episode but decided it would be great to have an entire show about life hacks. They made a call out on social media to ask people to share their own life hacks. They organized some of them (they weren’t able to share them all!) into five different categories: FOOD, WORK, HOME, KIDS, & MISCELLANEOUS.
FOOD:
Alvina’s: freeze clementines into a frozen treat. Clementine popsicles!
Arrive to a buffet between breakfast and lunch to get the best of both worlds!
Place a slice of bread between two cookies to keep them soft.
When making any biscuit or scones and have to work with cold butter….freeze, it grate it, then spread it apart and place back into the freezer.
Cut pizza with scissors.
KID STUFF:
When at the theater, bring small plastic cups, buy the big tub of popcorn and scoop it all into little cups.
Placing a baby formula bottle in a large thermos will keep contents fresh for a long time.
Using Piddle Pad under bedsheets when dealing with bed wetting.
WORK HACKS:
If you have to check email on vacation, set outlook to working offline so you don’t get new emails. Also, turn off all notifications on your phone.
Having a DONE list not just a To-DO list.
Grace: Be sure to carry a cord/plug organizer. People were always impressed with that!
Grab some porcelain plates as extra pallets.
Setting a timer to take breaks while working.
HOME:
Baking soda and blue dawn take out every stain.
How to put a duvet cover on using the “California Roll”.
How to clean a sanitize your microwave without scrubbing.
Rub hands with butter to take off tree sap and wash hands with sugar for slug slime to come off
MISCELLANEOUS:
Grace: Whenever I have parked a car in the airport garage, I take a photo of where I parked the car, the floor #, and also take a photo of the closest elevator near the parking spot just to stay safe.
Listen to audio books and podcasts while multi-tasking and getting other things accomplished.
Literally freeze your credit card to prevent yourself from using them.
Lay your running/workout clothes out the night before so you’re ready to go in the morning sluggish mode.
Make Google spreadsheet of family member’s dietary needs.
Write down key intentions and goals for the day and at the end of the day, write down ten things you’re grateful for and ten great things that happened that day. Set goals and intentions on the first of each month.
Spiders dislike lemon and citrus. Spray Lemon Pledge where spiders go.
Wearing peppermint and lavender during mosquito months.
Saying, “I can help you in a minute” helps others find the answer quickly themselves.
Just say, “No” or “I will think about it” instead of saying YES right off the bat.
Don’t work for jerks.
Make a packing list of essentials to always have.
Avoid bringing important/sentimental/valuable things on your trip incase you lose them.
Don’t separate your laundry clothes into darks and whites.
When reading at night, if your book character goes to sleep, you all go to sleep too.
THANK YOU for these AMAZING life hacks!
Fortune Cookie Segment: Publishing News!
Alvina’s “return to office” plan for work starts in September. They will be required to go into work two days a week and there are four full-time weeks out of the year that can be used to work remotely.
Gratefuls:
Alvina is grateful for her 18- year old cat and her Peleton bike! Grace is grateful for her first travel for work trip that is happening in January 2022. She is grateful that people are still interested in seeing her. Since Hazel doesn’t have camp this week, Grace has been appreciating the morning time she has with her to do some fun and sweet activities….recognizing that soon she will be a tween and then a teenager and may not want to really hang out with her anymore!
Thank you for tuning in! Thank you to Hachette Audio, Little Brown Books for Young Readers, and Alex at Pacyworks Studio for producing and editing this podcast. Be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and tell a friend about us. (Use the hashtag #bookfriendsforever.)
You can find Alvina @Planetalvina on Twitter and TikTok and @Alvinaling on Instagram
You can find Grace @Pacylin on Twitter and Instagram and @gracelinauthor on TikTok and @authorgracelin on Facebook
Don’t Forget!
*If you’re a patron, don’t forget to check out this week’s Random Questions feed! Grace Lin with Christina Diaz Gonzalez answer, What’s invisible but you wish people could see? Click here to listen! If you’re not a patron already, join today!
