Why We Feel Like There Are Not Enough Adults to Complete All the Household Tasks

Every once in a while I come to you with a state of the American household update. And how can I do this? Like, who gives me the authority to do this? Nobody. Nobody. So just take this with a hill of salt if you want to, but I think that we should have more people who are in the household space making these declarations of what it's like to live in an American household. Now I'm going to speak more broadly to people who live in other countries' households as well, but really I'm speaking to American households because that is my perspective as American household family member. So my name is Lisa Woodruff. I'm the founder and creator over at Organize 365. I recently got a PhD in psychology, and I am now doctor of the home. I have been studying, organizing, writing podcasts, writing books. Creating courses about what it means to truly get our homes organized and eventually run them like the economic entity that they are. The American household is responsible for 68% of the U.S. GDP, which means that we are responsible for the American economy. And one of the things that I've been thinking about for a while is that we seem to have this shortage of workers And specifically in industry, we have a shortage of leaders. And I've been thinking about this for a couple of years, even before COVID but, you know, in the last 5, 6 years for sure. Like, there just seems to be this, this missing group of leaders in the world. And, uh, I was trying to figure out where they went or why we couldn't find them, and I think I finally figured it out. So if you look around, it's kind of comical almost. All of the current and former United States presidents are in their 80s, like early 80s, late 70s, early 80s. They were not all 80 when they were president, although some were, but they're now all like the same age. It's kind of odd. And probably a decade, maybe 15 years ago, I read the book Generations by Neil Howe and William Strauss. And they talk about how there are these cyclical generations. A generation is roughly 20 years of a lifespan, and that there are certain generations that tend to hold power and certain generations that don't tend to get their chance at leadership, especially at the United States presidency. I am Gen X, and all of these men who are in their late 70s, early 80s are the baby boomer generation. And historically in the United States, the Gen X generation that keeps cycling through every 80 years usually doesn't produce a president. So when we stop having 80-year-olds be presidents of the United States, we're going to drop down to millennials. So that's something I learned a long time ago that I thought was interesting and, um, has borne out over the entire 250 years that America has been a country. And I just love looking for patterns and noticing different things like that. So I had that in the back of my head. So as I was thinking like, where are all of the leaders? And I see in the United States presidency we don't have any Gen X leaders. I was like, yeah, but what about in industry as well? You know, amongst entrepreneurs or small business owners, there is a buzz and a conversation about how many of the business owners and many of the leaders of businesses are baby boomers. They're not Gen Xers. And I was like, that's just odd because I mean, we're scrappy, we're leaders, like we know how to get things done. Like Gen Xers, you want something done, give it to a Gen Xer, we will get it. Like we will figure out a way. We probably won't even ask you any questions and all of a sudden it'll be done. We will get it done. But I was, um, so I was thinking about that and then there's this other thing that I was thinking about and these 2 things came together and came into this podcast. So the other thing I was thinking about was in general The population. So back when I was in college, I went to China and I went there on an exchange program. I went with a bunch of principals of schools and owners of daycare centers, and then I was in college. I still don't even know how I got on the list, but I went and it was a diplomatic exchange, and I was there and went through different schools and met with different people in China, and I actually ate in the Great Hall of the People. They had a big reception for us. It's kind of a pretty fancy thing. I don't know how I got to go. And at that time when I was there and you were in Beijing, there were like 2 lines of cars and like a gajillion lines of bicycles. There were just so many people in Beijing, and I remember really thinking a lot about how many people were in that country and just the sheer humanity that was within that one country. And also, I've had a couple of friends who have adopted children from China, so I followed them as they've gone over and and adopted their children, what the— what their week was like when they adopted the children. And I know that for a long period of time, China had a one-child policy. Like, their country was getting too big, too populated, and so they had this law that you could only have one child. Now, if you lived in a farm, I think you could have 2, but this is why a lot of Americans adopted Chinese children, was because they ended up getting put up for adoption because you could only have one child in that country. And I didn't think much about it until recently when India became a higher populous country than Beijing. And the population of Beijing is falling very, very quickly because for, I think it's been like 30, maybe even 40 years, they've had this one-child policy. Well, now they don't have a lot of children, and so their population overall is declining. Also, I've been hearing about how Japan has the same problem. They never had a one-child policy, but they have more older people than they have younger people. And they have a negative population going on in Japan. And I was like, this is very interesting. I read another book a couple of years ago that said all except for 5 countries are declining in population, and the only reason the United States is not declining in population is because of immigration. And I was like, this is interesting. So a couple weeks ago, I went and I found a documentary about this population decline that's really global. And I thought maybe that explains why there aren't as many Gen X. So now I'm going to show you my little nerdy thinking. Okay, the oldest generation right now that is under 100 is the Silent Generation. They are 81 to 98 years old, and there are 13.7 million of them. The Baby Boomers, which are the largest population, are between the ages of 62 to 80. And there are 64.4 million baby boomers in that age group. Next is me. I am Gen X. We are between the ages of 46 and 61, and there are 65 million of us. Gen Millennials are the next generation, and they are between the ages of 30 and 45, and there are 74 million of them. Generation Z is 14 to 29 years old, and there are 72 million of them. Alpha generation is still being born. There are 50 million of them, and they are between the ages of 1 and 13. Okay, just even reading those numbers, um, and I'll just do them in order. We have 13.7 million people over 80. Then it is 64 million baby boomers, 65 million Gen X. Right there should tell you we have a problem, that we are the same number. We should be a— Gen X should be a bigger number to support the baby boomers, but we're almost the same number of people. 74 million millennials, that's good. 72 million Gen X, that's good. And then we have 50 million alpha, and they will not be as big as the other generations. Okay, so then I was thinking, well, where are all these— where did all these people go? So I did this other math, and I went through my family, and I was like, well, is this— is this loss of number of people per generation true in my family? So I went through my mom's family. My mom and her sister both each had 2 children, so 2 people had 4 children. I had 2 children. My sister had no children. So now we're down to 2 children. My aunt's children had 3 children and 1 child, so 4. So 2 people had 4 children, had 6 grandchildren. This should be 8. We're missing 2 people here. My dad is 1 of 6, so my dad's parents had 6 children. This is good. We're starting with a good number. My dad had 2 kids. His first sister had 2 kids. Yeah, his oldest sister had 2 kids. The next one had none. The next one had 2 kids, and the next one had 3 kids, and then the next one had 5 kids. So now we're up to 13 kids. So 6 children had 13 kids. We aren't at replacement value because we lost 1 kid. Of those 13 kids, when I go through my, um, Cousins. I don't know all of them. Only 8 children, 8 to 11 children were born of those 13 children. So that's even less than on my mom's family. If you start doing this and you start thinking about, you're like, oh, people who don't have children change the number in your family tree. So when I listened to this documentary, what they realized was people who have children, they're still having on average 2 children. So if I just look at my cousins who had children, yeah, we all had an average of 2. Some had 3, some had 1, but on average all had 2. It's the people who don't have children at all that are changing the demographics of the world, and this is happening all throughout the world, which I'll talk to you about in a minute. And not everyone has children— doesn't have children by choice. Like, I never got pregnant. My children are adopted, so I was not able to get pregnant. So sometimes you're not able to get pregnant. Sometimes the opportunity to get married passes when you're fertile. Like, there's just a lot of reasons why people are not having children, but it's pretty much a worldwide phenomenon that people Are not necessarily having children, even if they want to have children. Why does this matter, Lisa? Other than you're a nerd and you like to share information. Well, there's a lot to that. Why it matters is because this is really impacting our households in a couple of ways that I don't think people are really thinking about yet. Yes, we're thinking about that we have a large aging population. Yes, when you talk about Japan and even everywhere around the world, there is a loneliness epidemic, especially as people are. Aging. But I think there is an even bigger problem that we aren't thinking about. Not just that there aren't enough people to care for the people who are aging, we don't have enough people in the workforce also to be running all the leadership and the things that need to be done there as well. And we saw this in COVID. So when COVID happened, and this has been well documented in the media, women stepped back from the workforce to care for their family and friends because that's what we do. They tried to balance both, and if they couldn't balance both, they stepped away from the workforce and they stepped into family care and management. What I think is actually happening is much bigger than COVID. I think COVID just shone a really big spotlight on something that's always been happening to women who are in the workforce, but even more so now because of generational dynamics. So Because there aren't as many of us, because there are equal number of Gen X and baby boomers. This is horrifying to me, it's horrifying to me. Like, you think of my dad, my dad had 5 siblings to support his parents and to support each other, and then of those siblings, there aren't even enough children. You see what I'm saying? Like, there's just, there's just not a lot of children to take care of their parents. The other thing that wasn't mentioned in that documentary that I just know anecdotally is that there's a lot more divorce now than there used to be. So for example, you know, my sister and I, um, our parents are divorced and they didn't remarry. But had they remarried, sometimes you end up like— I have a friend who it's her and her sister and there are 4 parents because their parents got divorced and they both got remarried. So it's like inverse math. Instead of 2 parents having 2 kids to take care of. Now it's the 2 kids taking care of 4 parents because of remarriage. Um, and this person in particular, same thing happened with her husband's family, so it's actually 2 of them taking care of 8 parents. You see what I'm saying? Like, the math kind of gets crazy. And I'm saying this because it is a lot of our lived experiences that it just seems like There is a lot of load on Gen X. Now, millennials are a little bit bigger in numbers than Gen X, but not by much. You know, an extra 14 million, that's great. It's just, you know, the math ain't gonna math, as my younger cousins say, when we get further. Because even though there are more of them, you know, 20% more, it's not like there's double of them. So this is still Going to be an issue because we've got these generations that are all the same size. There's not like a bigger base supporting a smaller base as we grow up. Also, we're living longer because medicine is keeping us healthier and it's keeping us older. So now these stacked generations, um, you know, the older generation is living longer and longer and really relying on the lower base in order to help them. I can't solve all of these problems. You're probably like, wow, Lisa, normally I listen to your podcast, it's like Ooh, my friend Lisa, and what's she gonna learn? You're like, wow, I really wish I hadn't known this information. But I think this is important for us to know it because I think it explains why a lot of us in midlife, especially those of us 30 to 60 right now, are just feeling like we are sinking in quicksand. It's different. It appears to be different than when other generations have gone through menopause, and it seems to be hitting this generation so much harder. And so I've been thinking like, People have been going through menopause forever. I mean, it's like ever, and books have been written about it, but not like today. And often, I mean, like I'm drinking all the water, I'm doing all the hormones, I have all the supplements, I'm talking to AI like it's my job. I'm doing all those things. I'm eating all the healthy foods. I wore one of those continuous glucose monitors for three days, and my sugar never spiked ever except for right before I had breakfast. And I was like, okay, well clearly I'm eating pretty clean. If I can't even get the thing to register that I'm having. More sugar. That wouldn't have been the case in the past when I was eating all fast food and drinking full leaded Coca-Cola, but it is the case now. Like, I am doing hashtag all the things, and I feel like I am stretched like this rubber band that has been stretched so long that if you pull it any longer, it's just gonna pop, right? And I just think that's how many of us are feeling in adulthood, period. And so I think You know, I think back on my childhood and I think about observing adults and grandparents and other things, and caregiving is really hard. The caregiving as a parent and caregiving, uh, for someone who is older or who is ill, it's just really hard. And I could see how caregiving has taken a toll on my grandmother or other people, you know, when you're caring for someone who's older than you, not just in the parenting stage. But it seems like to me, and you tell me what you hear, but it seems like to me there's a lot of caregiving going on, more so than I remember observing as a child or in my 20s and 30s. Could be that I just didn't see it, could be. But I think that the amount of caregiving that is going on is more and is longer in duration. So let's see what my notes were. Um, oh, so I was going to tell you about different countries. So Japan was actually the first country to start noticing this declining population. China is declining the fastest because of that one-child policy, and Europe has been declining over the past 20 years, with Italy being the first to really be taking a lot of the decline. Um, so this is a worldwide problem. The United States is not seeing it as much because I mentioned immigration, but we are seeing like this stacked— we have these stacked generations as opposed to the declining generation. So, uh, the first thought that I had, the reason why I started thinking about this was I was wondering where all the leaders were. Where were the young Gen X leaders, not only that could take over the presidency of the United States, but also step in as a CEO in some of these bigger companies or are starting entrepreneurial companies? And that's when I realized, oh, there's just not as many of us. Because you have to realize that a lot of baby boomers have already passed. Like, even though they're still very young, baby boomers are 62 to 80. I mean, a percentage of them have already passed. So that was some math I was looking at. In 2005 were the most baby boomers ever, and that was 78 million. 78 million. And we're currently at 64 million. So 14 million baby boomers have already passed. Gen Xers never going to hit 78 million. You see, there's a smaller number of us to support the baby boomers. All right, so why does this matter? Why is this the state of the American household? Well, I think it's the state of the American household because it involves people and they live in a household. And so we need to start thinking about our households and how we could see how these market— these— this population is going to impact the market, but how is it going to impact our economics? And the first one is there is just more load. I think when you have a one-to-one match of a Gen Xer to a baby boomer and a millennial to a Gen Xer and a Gen Z to a millennial, like when it's one-to-one to one-to-one, then the load is just heavier. Like the load falls on one person. It's not like the load is falling on 2, 3, 4, 5 people. It's following directly down like a stack. And so there is nothing to spread this load out. Even if you're in a family where there are 3 of you children to 2 parents, you probably have an aunt that has no children, and so then you're gonna step in and you're gonna support that aunt, or vice versa. So this load— I think the load on Gen X and on Millennials is more— well, for a fact, it's more than it was on Baby Boomers. I do think the load on Gen X, on Millennials, on Gen Z is going to be equal because there is no pyramid anymore. We are just in this Silo of people. And so as one generation needs support, they're falling directly down on the next generation with no extra capacity. So that is a fact. It's just a fact. So if you feel like you're carrying more load maybe than your parents did, I'm here to tell you, you are. Like, factually, mathematically, you are. That's number one. Number 2, we are living longer. So, so we're carrying more load and the load is just getting taller and taller. It's kind of compounding on us. Has not been the case that I've seen yet in my own family. In one of my families, the generations are every like 22 years. So women got out of college, got married at 22, and had babies. And in the other family, they tend to delay a little bit in having the children. And so those generations are spread out just a little bit more. But regardless, I haven't seen it yet, but I know it's coming where you will have a great-grandmother and a grandmother that both need care by a parent who probably also has children and grandchildren. So we're going to get to the point where you don't just have 4 generations alive, you have 5, and that middle generation is going to be caring for the great-grandmother or the mother, the grandmother and the mother, and then child and grandchild. I currently, we have mother, us, and then child and grandchildren. I mean, my mom is really healthy. She will definitely live a long time, possibly to see her great-grandchildren, because I have a grandchild that's already 5. So there is a good possibility of that. Third thing, and why I bring this to you— now we're going to get into the positive, normal Lisa stuff. If this is your first podcast or video, normally I give you great actionable solutions and make you feel really empowered about what we're doing in our households. Um, and I think this is true. What Organized 365 teaches you about running households and being a household manager and stepping into the CEO role in your household is going to become essential. Not optional, but essential, because we must think differently about our households going forward. Everything that we learned about how baby boomers ran things Is not going to work for Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. And if you go back to the Silent Generation, the Silent Generation, they were in school during the Great Depression. They had— they were the parents of the Baby Boomers, so they didn't have a lot of children. My grandmother was the Silent Generation. She said to me, you know, they got a lot of attention in schools because there was a bigger generation before her, and so there was a lot more pupil attention when she was in school because she was a very small generation. And then that is the generation that had the baby boomers. They went to school, the Great Depression, they went off to war, they came back, and then they had children and the economy boomed. So small generation had a big generation, and when I think back to how my grandmother talks about growing up, not the depression part, but when I think back to that generation, that is more like how we are running our houses now. The whole economy, the whole world has changed for baby boomers. Subdivisions happened because of baby boomers. How we did things, you know, 2-car families, all these things happened because of baby boomers because they were just such a huge generation. And as the baby boomer generation has gone through every stage of life, they have totally changed everything, and they will continue to do so as they go into retirement and beyond. Now, one of the things I've noticed about baby boomers is that they're not retiring. I mean, case in point with the presidency. There are many baby boomers in their 80s that are, you know, approaching 80 that have not quit. They are still working. They didn't, you know, retire and go off and play golf the rest of their life. So they are changing how long we work. Again, they're changing everything. The only observation I have about that is every single generation after them is smaller. And so we are in their wake. And can we change things? Of course we could change things. But as far as how we run our households, what our houses look like, and that, um, it will be different. And we won't make as much change just because we won't have the capacity to make as much change because we're carrying so much caregiving load. So here are the things that I am— it's one thing I'm exploring and 3 things I'm prioritizing. With this knowledge. The one thing I'm exploring is AI. Not a lot, but a little. I now can finally see how AI is going to become essential because things that we used to solve in the past by just having more people, uh, and more brute strength to do things is going to become not possible. So the more things that we can automate Delegate or delete will allow us to conserve our capacity and our talent for the things we're uniquely gifted and created to do. And while that may have been a luxury in the past, I think that is going to become essential. So like, silly example, but you guys, I finally got my robot to work, my vacuum robot. I talked about how my smart tools are not very smart. I finally moved it to a new location. I even figured out how to remap it. That was a whole day, and it is vacuuming, and I am going to start putting it on a schedule. So the first floor of our house is going to get vacuumed on a schedule. I know, I know, welcome to the new millennia, Lisa. But now I realize that when Black Friday is coming up— and oh my goodness, you guys are really going to want to listen to my Black Friday podcast that's going to come up, I'm going to tell you how to double your money— I'm definitely going to get a robot for the second floor of our house. I haven't done that before because didn't really need it, but now I'm going to get a robot on the second floor of our house, map it, program it, and I'm going to stop thinking about vacuuming. Vacuuming is going to become a thing that is done automatically, and I just have to check my robots. How can we take some of these things that we know are our responsibility that we need to do, and how can we use automations in order to help those? Another silly example, everything needs charging now. Everything's— I went to assemble something the other day, and I have 2 different electric screwdrivers, and they were both dead. Our Ring doorbell camera also was, you know, down to like 10% battery. You gotta unplug that. When do I have time to plug it in? How do I remember? I'm like, okay, when we do planning days, I'm charging everything. I'm just gonna get a big old list of things and I'm gonna charge them that Friday, and then Sunday everything's gonna go back. So whatever needs to be charged, detangled, whatever, I'm gonna be doing that 3 times a year. Like, how can we systematically put in place as much of these automations at home like you would in business And then how do we have a good maintenance or charging or resetting system for those automations? So that's one thing that I'm doing that we can all do. Next, I am really embracing my house as a refuge and no longer worrying about the resale value of my house. I mean, I've lived there 30 years, probably gonna live there 30 more, so it doesn't really matter. Also, a lot of the upgrades I put in, I mean, they're pretty cool upgrades. So what do I mean by that? First of all, when we had COVID and we all got sent home to our rooms, there is a statistic I have at home that shares that we didn't all leave. Like, I'm not spending as much time outside of my home as I did before COVID As a matter of fact, before COVID I was already starting to do more and more things in my household, but it takes a lot to get me to go out. I do go out, but I mean, I like my house. And I like hanging out in my house, and stats will show we all are spending a lot more time at home than we used to. I think number one, we got used to our homes. Number 2, we added in functionality in our homes that we like. And number 3, the thing that I think people aren't really talking about is we're under a lot of load, and it takes a lot to go out and do other things at night, and money to go out and do all these. So we're at home not only because it's more convenient, because we need to recharge. Like, we need to recharge. And so when you think about your household, And the place where you're supposed to be recharging, what can help you with that? Like, if you have this extra load of caring for people younger than you or older than you or even yourself— we'll get to that in a minute— what would help you in your household? So right now I'm putting in a wall unit that's going to function as a home office, you know, a home office for running the home, not for running this job, but for running a home. And it's going in a loft that we've never used for any good purpose. I don't know why I didn't think about this before, but I just kept thinking, I really want a home office, I really want a home office. We don't have a room, we don't have this. Well, I don't actually need the office to work in. I need the storage, I need the organization. And so it's less than $1,000. I'm going to put this unit on the wall and fill it all up, and it's going to have everything that I need in it. What are some small wins that you can make at home that would actually make your life so much easier? Vacuum robots, yes, but also like, is everything organized the way you need it to be now, or did you organize your house when you first moved into it in your 20s and now you're in your 60s and going, this isn't working anymore? Like, every 5 years you need to kind of refresh how you use your house, how you use the spaces, how you designate those different rooms, those different drawers, those different cabinets, what's in there. And how you keep up with that. So really embrace organizing your house to support you so that you can have more capacity to support other people. Next, planning. Planning time. We need more planning time now than I think we have ever needed, ever. And I can't figure out how now in my 50s that we need— I need more planning than I did in my 40s or 30s or 20s. Like, I'm the most independent I've been. I'm not in a caregiving relationship. I'm I'm not taking care of my children or grandchildren or parents right now, so I'm as free as I'm ever going to be, and yet I spend so much time planning. I think that's for a couple reasons. One, there's a lot of complexity and a lot of things I want to do. I need to plan my time with my— all of my different family members, my work, my working out, and then whatever I do that lights me up. And in order to do those things, I need to have a lot of plans. I need to have a lot of, you know, making sure my calendar matches my friends' calendars when I want to hang out with them, that I'm available for any of the school things I want to go to for my grandchildren. My husband and I could take a trip here and there, you know, that I have all the work things on my calendar, but then all of the things that support those things that are on my calendar. Once it's on my calendar, am I prepared for the event when we're going to have the event? Do I have the clothing that I need for that event? Can I follow up with a thank you note or any of those other things? So planning, planning our calendars, planning our lives, and then strategic planning. Like you wake up, I'm 54. Next time I wake up, I'll probably be 65. Like, I mean, we just tend to plan our, our days and our weeks and they just spiral down. The next thing you know, you're years and years and years older. And have you accomplished the things you want to do both personally and professionally? That all happens through planning. So that, that time to plan for yourself, that time to plan for your business. And I like to say, well, I don't like to say, but I know it's true. When these unexpected caregiving times come, and they will come, and they are usually long, the amount of organization and planning skills that you have at the start of that caregiving experience is what carries you through the whole entire experience. Can you become more organized and more planned during a caregiving experience? It's difficult. It's really difficult because caregiving takes a lot of time, takes a lot of emotion out of you, and then if you also need to earn an income at the same time and then care for yourself, like, it's just exhausting. And so what I find for most people, and myself included, that whenever anything happens— mother-in-law falls, someone gets sick, you get the flu, whatever it is— From that moment until that crisis is resolved, whatever level of organization you have in your home, whatever planning you have, you can maintain those systems. They'll start to decline through the caregiving process, but you can maintain that level of organization and that level of planning through that caregiving season. But it's really hard to uplevel the amount of organization. Or planning that you have. So it's really critical that you support your future self by being as organized and planned as you can so you have that increased capacity. And finally, the thing that I want to say is that I am really prioritizing myself, um, because we are responsible for the care of many people, and including ourselves, and our health and our longevity and our increased capacity is a gift. It is a gift to our family, it's a gift to our friends, our families that are younger and older and of our same age, our same generation. The healthier that you are in every way— spiritually, emotionally, physically, every way— the more you are able to support those that are in need around you. And I'm not a person that used to work out. I'm not a person that used to eat healthy. When I started getting the PhD at the age of 50, I had gotten rid of drinking Coca-Cola and I was drinking more water, but that's as far as I got. I got off of fast food pretty much while I was doing the PhD and I gained another 12 pounds. I was like, that's it, when the PhD is over, I will get healthy. Let me just tell you, it's not that easy. It's not that easy. But I am working out now, Pilates 3 days a week, weight training once a week. I eat pretty healthy. I plan all my supplements, I plan all of my meals, which takes quite a bit of time, but I know it is the greatest gift I can give myself and it's the greatest gift I can give my family that I am not someone currently who needs care. Now, it's not a silver bullet. I mean, I may need care, obviously I'm a human, but as much as I am able, I am prioritizing my health and I'm also prioritizing my happiness. So I go on adult field trips all the time. I take myself on adult field trips, little trips, listen to podcasts, listen to audiobooks, go out with my girlfriends, and I schedule those things on the calendar. And for a long time when I was in the caregiving of parenting and starting this business, I didn't do those things. And I didn't have, you know, a girls' night out, and I didn't do any travel, and I wasn't doing any working out. I was Working and then caregiving, and then working and then caregiving, and working and caregiving. And when I'm in a season like that again, I mean, I don't know if I'll ever be in a season like that again because I know that if I don't take care of myself, then how good am I to others? And I'm not in that situation yet, so I don't know. But finding a way to be able to take care of myself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Is now a priority for me that it wasn't in my 30s and in my 40s. So all that to say, we're gonna make it, you guys. It's gonna be fine. We're gonna be— we're gonna make it. But we are in a different— if you're feeling like this doesn't seem like it was for my parents, it doesn't seem like it was for my grandparents, I'm here to kind of say I think we're right. This is not what it's like for our Baby boomer parents or silent generation parents, and the millennial experience is different than the Gen X experience is different than the Gen Z experience. Every generation has a little bit different experience, but as far as this caregiving load and capacity, I think that the baby boomers were the last generation to truly have the ability to kind of share that caregiving load, and that Gen Xers. Millennials, Gen Z—we all are going to kind of feel this compounded load. The only examples that I could think of where you're not going to feel that way is if you come from a very large family and your family is continuing to have a lot of children. I know a couple of families that way, and they have a lot of ability to share that caregiving load. But I know many, many more families that don't have any siblings. Or don't have any children, and they are carrying even more load than just a 1-to-1 load. They're carrying, you know, 2 on top of 1 or 3 on top of 1 because they didn't have children or they are an only child. And so there's— it's across the board. We're at a 1-to-1 match. So if you've got extra caregiving capacity, there's another family that has like negative caregiving capacity. So that is the state of the American household right now. The load is heavier, I believe. Than it has been in past generations, and the load is not going away. And because the load is not going away, and I think this goes back to my dissertation about this load, this caregiving load, the invisible load, like the conversations we're having about how heavy the household is, what can we do about that? We can't have more kids. We can't, like, we can't expand the amount of population that we have in our generation. But what we can do is we can automate whatever we can automate and create systems. We can go ahead and organize our physical spaces for the households that we're running, not what we think people on Instagram will be doing or what we saw our parents doing, but how are we actually using our households and how does that best support us? We can plan. Planning multiplies time. It is the only thing that multiplies time. When you take time to make the grocery list and then you go to the grocery store, it happens faster. Automate that. Just have them deliver it. Um, but you know that it is faster if there are 80% of the things that you order every single week from the grocery store. Figure out how to automate that 80% and add the extra 20% later. So those automa— automa— automations, systematizations that you have of those regular things that we have to do in housework all of the time, do that. Uh, when we've been in a caregiving relationship, create an email for whoever you're caregiving for. Great. I've got a separate email and figure out what that password is going to be. I use a different email and password whenever we're in a caregiving relationship. So then we've got that separate email inbox because then you're usually running two households. You get the idea. But most of all, take care of yourself too. Caregiving is a long, long season. In parenting, you know, it's 18 years or more. We don't know how long it's going to be when you're caring for a spouse, a sibling, a parent, or yourself. It could be a couple of weeks. It could be a decade. We have no idea. Yeah. So when we don't know how long the caregiving is going to be, what are the handful of things that really help support you mentally, physically, emotionally, relationally? How can those still happen even when you're in a caregiving relationship, even if they have to be different? So like for myself personally, I go to a Pilates class, I go to a strength training class. I love it. I love the gym I go to. I love everything about it. And I was thinking, well, what if you couldn't, Lisa? Like, what if you needed to be home with somebody 24/7 who was in a caregiving relationship? What would you do? I thought, okay, well, when you're in a caregiving relationship at home with somebody, you're usually not sitting right by their bed the whole time. I probably would transition to an online exercise course of some kind. I need accountability and sign up for that course and try to do that as much as possible. You know, I would do— instead of being able to travel and do field trips, what would I do? I'd probably have a list of documentaries and things like that so I could travel in my mind even if I couldn't travel personally. There are things that you can find and you can do that will take care of you in different ways and in different seasons. And look around and see if there are any respite opportunities for you where people could come in and stay with your loved ones so you can get out and do things that are really going to fill you up so that you have more capacity to help those around you. Interested to see or hear what you guys have to say about this conversation, if this is something you've been thinking about as well. Once I watched the documentary and people were— started to realize, oh wow, this really is the thing, is I've kind of been noticing it coming for more than a decade. Now I'm like, oh, I think we're kind of hitting the tipping point of this. Crowdsourcing ideas together is really going to help as well. Like, what are you doing that is working? How can we get tips for other people? When you're in a caregiving relationship, you're in your home more. How can you make your home function for you? Don't worry about what it was designed for. Don't worry about what other people are doing. How can you make this house function and help you with this load that we all have? All right. It's the end of this State of the American Home. Hopefully I won't have another one of these for a little bit of time, but I do like to bring these to you and have us thinking differently, thinking critically about how we're running our households, what our role is in the households, and how we can support each other.