How 2 ex-management consultants run a household
Mission-critical workstreams, baby!
My husband, Chris, met me when I was a baby—which is to say I was 22 and had become an adult like maybe one week before that. He was a newly minted MBA, four years my senior. We were part of the 2006 cohort of management consultants hired by IBM’s Global Business Strategy practice. The entire cohort went through an extended training program to learn consultant speak. That way when our baby faces showed up at Fortune 50 companies we’d at least sound like the $250 an hour experts we were billed as (2006 dollars!).
“Before we circle back on the mission-critical workstreams, let’s quickly touch base to ensure stakeholder alignment around our value-add initiatives. I know bandwidth is tight, but if we can just leverage a few quick wins and avoid boiling the ocean, we might actually move the needle. I’ll ping you the latest deck—don’t worry, it’s fully optimized for synergy. Let’s aim to get eyes on it by EOD.’’
Twenty years later, I’m a business school professor and this jargon has made its way into our household! There are so many parts of running a household that we treat like running a business. We do this because our family loves hobbies. We bike together, puzzle together, and play tennis together. Efficiently managing our household allows us to save time, giving us more opportunity to play!
Some background on the key players in our dual-income household:
Husband’s job: Work from home with travel a few times a quarter.
My job: 2 days teaching (inflexible), 2-3 days between campus/home (flexible hours).
Kids (ages 8 and 7): Both attend the same elementary school which is walking distance from our house.
After School Nanny: 4 days a week from 2-5pm with additional hours as needed
I’ll go through all the main categories of home and show how we either own a workstream, divide a workstream, outsource or eliminate. Before I jump in, please note, things that are fun for me, might not be fun for you! For example, I love organizing, you might not. You might love shopping and dressing your kids, I do not. The goal, in any healthy partnership—whether it’s marriage, business or friendship—is to feel fairness. Do we have it? You be the judge!
1. Finance
Chris has full ownership of every single thing related to money. Receiving bills/paying bills/home insurance/health insurance. Our taxes! Our savings! If AT&T charges us the wrong amount, he is on the phone. Everything from an HSA reimbursements to re-financing a mortgage to saving for retirement – he owns it.
BUT! I’m not clueless.
Annually: On Jan 2, we have a full-day finance strategy meeting to set goals for the year and our budget for each category of spend.
Quarterly: Review how we are tracking on our savings goals.
Monthly: Chris closes the monthly budget and shares our performance.
This works for us because I truly abhor all of the tasks listed above. Getting on the phone with AT&T makes me want to stab my eye out. I never forget how much mental load my husband carries by managing all of our finances.
My Mental Load: Zero.
2. Kid’s Childcare
From registering for camps to setting up playdates—I have full ownership of this workstream. For the last 8 years, I have made sure that the kids have supervision 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I’ll address extracurriculars separately. This one’s about Childcare.
Chris likes controlling the money, I like controlling the kids. There, I said it.
We have a ‘Cooley Kids’ Google calendar. It is shared between our after-school help, grandparents, Chris and me. It is my responsibility that the Google calendar reflects: the school calendar, work travel, night plans, game times, practices, birthday parties, weekend plans, playdates. That means I read (most of) the emails from school and Chris doesn’t have to.
Annually: Assess the current childcare business model (remember, both ex- consultants!) When should we graduate from a full-time nanny? When should we start pre-school? Should we do aftercare at our school? Those have all been decisions we made.
January: I make our camp and vacation schedule on a spreadsheet and complete registrations.
Monthly: Create a schedule that lists the days/hours we will need help and confirm coverage.
Weekly: Communicate the minutia to our after school caretaker/s (who needs to go where and with what stuff).
This works for us because I want to own childcare. It allows Chris to book travel or make plans freely because he trusts me to own the workstream, and it allows me to spend money freely because we’ve aligned on a budget.
My Mental Load: High.
3. Kids Extracurriculars (Sports)
Music didn’t work out for us, so we are down to sports. Chris is the de facto sports parent. From reading the emails to ordering uniforms to filling out registration forms—he owns it. I help with making sure the kids get to the activities (childcare or myself). To keep extracurriculars joyful, we do the things our kids are begging to go to AND that we can handle getting them to.
My Mental Load: Low.
4. Kids’ Doctor/Dentist Appointments
Being in a dual-income household is at its trickiest when you’re thrown the unexpected: fever, norovirus, snow day. That beautiful schedule you constructed becomes a tumbling Jenga tower. Quickly, you figure out which meetings to cancel and which deadlines to push. It’s those days, I roll my eyes at every productivity expert.
Here’s what we do:
Emergency Doctor: If it’s a teaching day for me, Chris makes the appointment and takes them. If it’s a non-teaching day, I do the same.
Annual Well-Visit: I schedule and take them so I can ask all the questions I’ve been keeping in my Notes.
Dentist: Two times a year and 5 minutes from our house, I assign whoever is available to take them.
My Mental Load: Medium.
5. House Maintenance
As an introvert and home body, home is my exhale. It’s the place where I control the noise, the stuff, the activity. I need help to maintain my home and thus I pay for help.
Cleaning: We have house cleaners that come every other week (I manage/pay).
Yard: We have yard people that come every week (I manage/pay).
Handiwork: (AC filters, lightbulbs replacement, hanging pictures, adding hooks, etc) – I DIY this and immensely enjoy it. Working with my hands grounds me and makes me feel human.
My Mental Load: Low.
6. Home Organization
My tolerance for clutter is non-existent. I need clean surfaces. That means I am decluttering and organizing All The Time. For me, the process is therapeutic and the end result makes my brain happy.
Bi-annual: Every June and December I declutter the entire home, room by room. It takes a few weeks, some days just 20 minutes a day, some days a few hours. Even with daily cleaning, I have to do two ‘purge and donate’ marathons. Having a decluttered home makes everything else run smoothly.
Weekly: On Sunday nights I return all the build-up in the mudroom, our home entry point, to the rightful places. I hang up all the clothes in my closet that I’ve carelessly thrown in a pile.
Daily: Put the main floor of the house ‘to bed’ so when I wake-up everything is reset.
My Mental Load: Medium
7. Household Inventory Manager
I own the mental load of what our household needs.
When something not-mission critical is close to running out, I make a note on my phone. Then when a mission-critical thing (paper towels, toilet paper, dish wash liquid, soap, toothpaste, etc) is close to running out, I use that as the impetus to shop. We use a combo of Costco, Target and Amazon Prime. I have a strong preference for Costco, Amazon is my last resort (packaging waste).
I know the mental load of “stuff we need” is a trigger issue in many households, but for dry goods where you can buy in bulk, I do not feel triggered. I bought laundry detergent at Costco on January 8. Five months later, we are still going strong.
My Mental Load: Low.
8. Kids Clothes
My kiddos need a new wardrobe every 6 months. Like literally every single thing will need to be replaced. I have a boy and girl, close in age, who wear the same size in clothing and shoes. Think of it like twins. There’s really no way to pass down a winter jacket.
I do a capsule wardrobe for each kid for the season ahead.
Spring: I bought 6 pairs of shorts and 10 shirts for my boy. Did the same thing for my girl. Everything is interchangeable and matches. After this re-stock, they are on their own to choose between the combination of shorts & shirts. That’s it.
Fall: I’ll do the same thing, except 6 pants, 10 long sleeves, 1 jacket.
Shoes: They each own one pair of sneakers. They wear them until the sneaker gets a hole or their feet grow out of them. Then they get a new pair. Because it’s just the one pair, each kid is accountable for their shoes at all times. (Wwe keep one back-up worn out pair for weird scenarios of wet shoes).
Summer: 1 pool sandal, 2 bathing suits for each.
Special Occasion: I won’t buy any dress-up clothes or dress shoes unless an event arises (i.e. Christmas or Easter).
My Mental Load: Low.
If you’ve gotten this far, you know there’s 2 massive things I’ve left off.
Food: Every household has a pain point.…
Laundry: Do I have ‘help’?
I’ll also share the most surprising thing I outsource and why the Fair Play system didn’t work for us. All that is behind the paywall in a judgement-free space for Paid Subscribers who make this Substack possible.