The Simple Show

Hard to believe, but the holidays are almost here—and with that, a roadtrip to see faraway family might be on your horizon. This gives Tsh and co-host Stephanie an excuse to talk about their favorite thing: family travel. In this episode, they share their best tips for roadtripping with kiddos: what to do beforehand, how to handle the adventure on the road, and ways to stay sane while you're visiting family in their home. Links From This Episode:Follow The Simple Show on InstagramStephanie on InstagramTsh on Twitter and InstagramBattery jump starterCar rooftop bagOutdoorsy, for renting RVs and travel trailersRoadside America appGet the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle until tomorrow!New York Times recipe for an Old FashionedYogi Chai Rooibos, Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice, and Trader Joe's Harvest Blend teasPrevious episodes on travel: Summer Roadtrips, Christmas on the Road, Packing Light, and The World's Best/Most Cities

It’s all well and good to talk about why reading matters, what makes for great books, and how to increase our attention spans—but what about simply ways to make reading more enjoyable? That’s the topic of this week’s episode: how Tsh and co-host Haley—certified book nerds—make one of their favorite hobbies work for them. They're moms, wives, friends, and writers, and yet they make time to read books. If you love to read and wished you had more time for it, or if you want to love to read but aren’t sure how to make it a thing in your life, this episode is for you. Links From This Episode:Follow The Simple Show on InstagramHaleys blog, Carrots for MichaelmasHaley on Instagram and TwitterTsh on Instagram and TwitterLes MiserablesBrothers KaramazovLibrivoxAudiobook version of the Bible – Old and New Testament11/22/63The Sun Also RisesElsewhereHead here to sign up for a free Audible trial and get a free book!

You'd think there wouldn't be much to talk about when it comes to cleaning—we all have to do it, end of story. But really, it's much more do-able, efficient, and maybe even enjoyable (? okay, not so much) when we do what works for us, not what we "should" do. Kendra and Tsh talk about cleaning: how they do it, how they don't do it, and things they've learned that work for them. Plus, Kendra talks about her genius idea for cleaning and decluttering a super-smart way: The Swap! Be encouraged that there's no one right way to clean—but there is a right way for you. Links From This Episode:The Simple Show on InstagramKendra’s blog + podcast, The Lazy Genius CollectiveKendra on InstagramTsh on Instagram and TwitterCome to the NestFest!Organized Simplicity, my first bookLoop schedulingSimple Show ep. 60, on living with a messyThe Lazy Genius Podcast ep. 32, on cleaning the kitchenKendra's genius idea, The Swap!Tsh's basic all-purpose cleaner: 1 part distilled vinegar + 2 parts water + 20 drops essential oil of your choice. Shake. Done.Or, use Grove Collaborative and get green cleaners at a solid price

A few weeks ago, Tsh talked to Max Lucado, the prolific author and long-time pastor. This was right after Hurricane Irma, and with both of them being in central Texas, Hurricane Harvey was heavy on their minds. Now, more events have happened - Hurricane Maria, the Las Vegas shootings, and more… And sad to say, who knows what else is around the corner. In this bonus episode, Tsh talks with Max about how to handle feeling anxious*, especially in troubling times like these. With pastoral comfort and wisdom, he shares how he’s feeling in light of everything. Perhaps it’ll encourage you, too? For Max’s new book, Anxious For Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World, head to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local bookseller. * This is different than clinically-diagnosed anxiety. If you’re feeling the symptoms of this, please reach out to a friend and a trained professional.

We all know we're supposed to do it, and we know there's a million ways to do it. But how to make it work when life feels full and you're less than enthusiastic about the prospect? For Tsh and co-host Erin, it's all about mindset—how to look at exercise in the first place. (In fact, Tsh doesn't even like calling it exercise.) Maybe it's a personality thing, but they're pretty chill when it comes to numbers, measurements, perfectionism, or competition. They just like moving their bodies because it makes them feel better throughout the day. In this episode, Tsh and Erin talk about how we make it work in the fullness of their days, and how they even make it something they look forward to. Head to thesimpleshow.com and look for episode 96 for the show notes, or use the links below:Follow The Simple Show on InstagramErin's blog, Design for MankindErin on Instagram and TwitterTsh (me) on Instagram and TwitterCamp GladiatorPomodoro MethodYoga With AdrienneAaptivCheck out Alison Lumbatis' Style Challenges and her blogJoin me at Nest Fest on October 21 in Charlotte, North Carolina!The Genius Blogger's Toolkit: available now till October 9!

There are so many great after-school activities for our kiddos, but we can't say yes to everything. How do we choose? And how do we balance tapping into the fantastic resources of sports, music, arts, and life skills while still having plenty of free time to just... be a kid? What if it's a great option for an individual child in our family, but it negatively affects the whole clan? When you have multiple schedules to wrangle, how do you handle the spinning plates of extracurriculars without becoming the Parent Taxi, throwing family dinner by the wayside, and generally becoming a basketcase of a person? These are the issues co-host Stephanie and I talk about in this episode: choosing how to help our kids get involved in extracurriculars, while still fostering plenty of free time for play and rest.

We’ve all been there: you settle in with a big book or a longer article, and you just can’t seem to concentrate. Your brain flits from topic to topic, refusing to settle down and focus. The inability to consume longer-form content is becoming an actual problem in our modern era of smartphones, screens everywhere, and billions of quick soundbite-sized content thrown at us every second. Tsh and co-host Haley talk about keeping brains sharp, eyes focused in a world of memes, GIFs, and tweets. Then, a new short series called How You Do You. Links From This Episode:The Simple Show on InstagramHaley's blog, Carrots for MichaelmasHaley's podcast, Fountains of CarrotsHaley on Twitter and InstagramTsh on Twitter and InstagramTsh's Alarm clockMercury extension for ChromeLonger-form podcasts: Constitutional, Longform, The Liturgists, OverdueThe Chronicles of NarniaKristin LavransdatterThe Turquoise Table, by Kristin Schell

Dates are great—sometimes. But when you add up things like babysitting and eating out, plus the challenge of finding the right time on the calendar... sitting on the couch with Netflix and a killer dessert feels just as special. In this episode, Tsh talks with co-host Kendra Adachi about dating their spouses. What works for them right now as parents with full calendars, tired bodies, and limited funds? They love their men, but dating them looks differently than when they were younger and tied down to fewer responsibilities. They say no to classic dating, but they also say yes to lots of creativity—Netflix, sure, but also game nights, neighborhood walks, front porch mornings, and afternoon outings can be killer. Let's celebrate the small ways to spend time with our Special Someones. Links From This Episode:The Simple Show on InstagramKendra's blog + podcast, The Lazy Genius CollectiveKendra on InstagramTsh on Instagram and TwitterThe 7 date night mistakes you didn't know you were makingIn defense of skipping date nightPodcast episode: The Lazy Genius Does Date NightThe 5 Love Languages testMy second book, Notes From a Blue BikeThe Simple Collective Facebook groupFrom New York Times, the Sullivan Street bread recipe....and watch Tsh's video series, The Honest Truth About Simple Living!

Sometimes it's hard to make time for friends as an adult. And draining. And potentially awkward. But also completely worth it. In this episode, Tsh talks with co-host Erin Loechner about friendships—how do they make time for the life-giving people in our life? How do they make sure we're a good friend back? How do they set healthy boundaries in these relationships? They talk about what it means to invite other people into their lives, even when it's messy and inconvenient. Because the crazier life gets, the more meaningful those friendships become. For links to this episode, head to thesimpleshow.com and look for episode 92, or head here:Follow the podcast on Instagram!Get 5 Quick Things, the weekly email you can read in under a minuteErin's blog, Design For MankindErin on Twitter and InstagramTsh on Twitter and InstagramAn easy ice cream tip for entertainingOur summer hospitality episodeThe real definition of a mentorOn making friends and partial solutionsVoxerHighly Sensitive Person (HSP) testTurkish çayMercemek (Turkish lentil soup)Okonomiyaki (Japanese savory pancake)Milk Carton Kids live from Lincoln Theater, on Tiny Desk, and on Spotify

This episode isn’t about any particular educational method—it’s about how we parents go about deciding what’s best for our individual kiddos and our collectives families. Stephanie homeschools her kids, and we send our kids to a three-day hybrid school—and we’ve also done almost every type of school under the sun. They all have their plusses and minuses, and we’re grateful for them all! Let’s talk about how we decide what’s best for a particular season of life. Learning loves, learning challenges, limits, freedoms, and particular preferences… deciding how to best help your kids learn is more art than science. The beauty of that is there’s no one perfect way to do this—but there’s a thousand good ways. For links in this episode, head to thesimpleshow.com and look for episode 91, or check this list:Read-Aloud RevivalAudibleTeaching TextbooksMath-U-SeeEvan MoorSequential SpellingStory of the WorldActon AcademyFollow Stephanie on InstagramFollow Tsh on Twitter and InstagramFollow the new Simple Show Instagram account!

Chickens, canning, farmer’s markets, and prepackaged food from the grocery store. There’s a place for all of it… and also a place to not make it our thing, guilt-free. It’s all good. We know we’re “supposed” to eat local, but what does that look like in the real world? In the spirit of our no/yes season, Tsh and Haley go back and forth and share what they let go of in the name of sanity, even if they'd love to have the time/money/freedom/ability to do [insert local-eating habit here]. But they have managed to do a few things alright in this department, so they talk about those, too. For show notes, head to thesimpleshow.com and look for episode 90, or check the list below.Follow the new Simple Show Instagram account!Sign up for a CSAFind a local farmer's marketWendell Berry's The Art of the Commonplace: Agrarian EssaysMichael Pollan's booksHaleys blog, Carrots for MichaelmasHaley on Instagram and TwitterTsh on Instagram and Twitter

There are so. many. things. to watch these days. How do you choose what to see with your precious few viewing hours? That’s the topic of this episode… How to not be overwhelmed by the onslaught of entertainment choices we have. They say it’s the Golden Age of television—there’s more than any one person can watch. If you don’t want to spend your life in front of a screen, yet you do enjoy the occasional movie and TV show, how do you watch what you want to watch without it becoming an addiction, a time suck, or an attempt in futility? Co-host Kendra Adachi, smart lady of pop culture (among many other things), joins Tsh for this chat. It's a fun way to start this season of essentialism. Thanks to sponsor KIND Bars! Sign up for a free sample box; all you have to pay is shipping. Head here, then use the code SIMPLE to get your box free. And thanks to sponsor, Aaptiv, a fitness app that’s like Netflix for your body! To get 30 days free when you sign up—head here, and use the code theartofsimple.

It’s a new season of The Simple Show! In this episode, we'll pull back the curtain on what we’ll be talking about for awhile. Our days are spent making thousands of decisions, and a bit at a time, it’s from the choices we make that we carve out a life. What we say yes and no to matters, possibly more than anything else. Most of our decisions don’t involve black or white decisions. They lie in the gray. They look like deciding between all good things. They look like distinguishing what’s good from what’s best. Saying no to the 99% of life that’s not for us so we can say yes! to the part that is. Are we great at living this out in our lives? Hell to the no. But we’re sure as ready to give it a try. And we want to talk about it. My three co-hosts are back: Stephanie Langford, Erin Loechner, and Haley Stewart, and we’re also welcoming a fourth! Kendra Adachi is sliding into Simple Show rotation, and I couldn’t be happier about this line-up. Welcome to a new season of The Simple Show!  For links in this episode, head to thesimpleshow.com and look for episode 88, or click below: Follow The Simple Show's new Instagram account! Essentialism, by Greg McKeown The Gap, spoken by Ira Glass Sign up for 5 Quick Things, the weekly, under-a-minute email Fill out a quick, two-minute survey—thank you kindly! Big thanks to sponsor Prep Dish, a healthy meal-planning service that emails you a plan each week. The Simple Show listeners get a two-week free trial—go to prepdish.com/simple and use the code SIMPLE. Also, big thanks to sponsor ShipStation, the easiest way to manage and ship orders all from one place, where you can create labels for all the top carriers. Try ShipStation free for 30 days AND get an additional month free with the promo code SIMPLE. Go to shipstation.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in simple.    

We start our new season of The Simple Show in the next episode, and it's gonna be fantastic. But today I've got a conversation I don't want you to miss. My friend (and AoS writer) Brooke McAlary recently announced she's quitting Jackrabbit, the podcast network she helped found—and when she did, I thought, Hmm.... I could use a good chat with her. So, we poured ourselves some coffee and hit record. We're 8,400 miles away—she's in Sydney, and I'm here in Central Texas. (If you read At Home, it's her house we stayed in for our Christmas down under.) My own work shift was on my mind, so together, we talk about what it looks like to quit something good in favor of something better. We talk about why we need to know our why, and why we need regular reminders of it.   For links to this episode, head to thesimpleshow.com and look for episode 87, or check the list below. Links From This Episode: Brooke's podcast, Slow Your Home Her announcement about quitting Jackrabbit Her thoughts on JOMO Pre-order Brooke's book, Destination: Simple My book, At Home in the World Big thanks to this episode’s sponsor, Aaptiv, a fitness app that’s like Netflix for your body—now with a maternity program! They’re giving you guys 30 days free when you sign up—head here, and use the code theartofsimple.

It's the last episode of our summer series, Women's Work! Tsh talks with Liz Vice, a singer-songwriter. She’s a gospel, soul, and R&B artist from Portland, Oregon who loves story telling—she’s gone from behind the scenes in the film and video world to right behind the mic. It was a line of work she got into accidentally—growing up, she always thought she’d be in film, not in music. Liz talks about the heart behind what she does—what motivates her, the risks she’s taken moving across the country, why she’s choosing to record on her terms, even with its limits. She’s got the heart and soul of a preacher, so you just might find yourself saying “amen” a few times in this episode. For show notes in this episode, head to thesimpleshow.com and look for episode 86, or check the list below. Links From This Episode Liz Vice On Spotify, Instagram, and Twitter A sampling of Liz's music Listen to the whole Women's Work series Big thanks to this episode’s sponsor, Aaptiv, a fitness app that’s like Netflix for your body—now with a maternity program! They’re giving you guys 30 days free when you sign up—head here, and use the code theartofsimple.