Life Hacks: Making life easier one tip at a time

If there’s anything we love it’s something that makes life a little easier. And while there’s certainly isn’t a shortage of life hack advice on the internetz, both good and WTF, our standing rule remains: a good hack works for YOU. This week, we share some of our tried-and-true make-life-easy tips (Stasha is ALL about the baskets) as well as some ideas from around the web (Cheryl is ALL about saving money and time). We also talk about different levels of comfort, what works for one and not for the other, and the granddaddy of them all, how to keep other people’s opinions out of your decisions.  

So, grab a glass, fill it with something refreshing, and have a good time with us as we serve up some good ideas.


Cheryl's Strawberry  Moonshine with champagne for bubbly

 Buy some Strawberry Moonshine. Pour into a glass. Top with Champaign.

Stasha’s Bay Breeze

https://www.thespruceeats.com/bay-breeze-recipe-761000

 1.5 - 2 ounces vodka (I used Titos handmade) 

• 3 ounces pineapple juice
• 3 ounces cranberry juice
• Lime wedge, for garnish

 Pour all liquids into a tall glass over ice. Garnish with the lime or slice of pineapple. 

 I also topped mine with pineapple sparkling water to make it lighter and more of a punch.

Stasha mentioned a very entertaining guy on YouTube who "reviews" various life hacks. Well worth the watch!

Khaby Lame (a Senegalese-Italian youtuber) is hilarious.


Cheryl also mentioned a list of tech hacks she found for the show notes. Here ya go!

Tech hacks

• -When online shopping, begin but don’t end the checkout process stores will often send a coupon to complete the sale
• -To get price drop alerts for Amazon use camelcamelcamel.com
• -Pricegeek.com shows you the fair market price for products
• -Sumopaint.com is a free version of photo shop
• -Want to convert a YouTube video use gifyoutube.com
• -Howlongtoreadthis.com to estimate a book’s reading length 
• -Add a fake email address to your contact list, if a bot sends out spam you’ll get an undeliverable mail notice
• -HaveIbeenpwned.com to check if your email address has been compromised 
• -Accountkiller.com to delete popular online accounts
• -Use private or incognito browsing mode to search for products or tickets
• -Wornontv.net sells clothing worn by actors
• -Get faster airport internet without paying by adding .jpg at the end of your search
• -Hotelwifitest.com- ranks hotels with fast or free internet
• -Skiplagged.com finds hidden city flights for up to 80% off
• -Set @@ as a key bord shortcut to never have to enter your email address again
• -Need to call a number anonymously? *67 before the phone #
• -Betterexplained.com to explain hard math equations
• -Documentaryheaven.com for all things documentary
• -Agoodmovietowatch.com for highly rated little-known movies to watch

Transcript

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Stasha Boyd  00:01 

Hi there, I'm Stasha. 

Cheryl Stuller  00:03 

I'm Cheryl. 

Stasha Boyd  00:04 

And between us 

Cheryl Stuller  00:05 

we have four kids, 

Stasha Boyd  00:06 

three businesses, 

Cheryl Stuller  00:07 

two husbands and one goal. 

Stasha Boyd  00:09 

To get to The Point of the Matter. There's a lot of crappy hacks out there. Hacks have a single purpose, and that's to make your life easier, not to make somebody else's life easier, or some, whatever, if you're gonna, like, listen to a hack or look something up, it's like, is this something that's actually gonna work for you? If it is, then that's a good life hack. If it's not, or if it's something you're not going to do. Hell no, don't do that thing. Don't, don't make your own life harder. 

Cheryl Stuller  00:41 

But if you see somebody that's doing something that you admire, or would like to achieve, or whatever, just say, Hey, how are you getting that done? Or where did you get that? Or, you know, be willing to ask and get information from people too. 

Stasha Boyd  00:59 

Here we are Cheryl. We are back at it once again. 

Cheryl Stuller  01:03 

Hi Stasha, how are you? How has your week been? 

Stasha Boyd  01:06 

Well, I got to tell you so my week has finally been a little bit better than it had been. Um, just because Okay, we got the guy to come out to give us the, to look at the roof. So we can get the roof repaired. And we're going to go ahead and do the the roof on the house and while we're at it, we need a new roof here on the our garage apartment. So we're gonna get, get a discount if we do both of those at one time. The AC is working gloriously here in our office garage apartment. So I'm so happy about that. Let's see what else has gone on this week. Anything good, bad or indifferent? Mostly, it's been a very uneventful week. So uneventful has been fine. 

Cheryl Stuller  01:44 

That's been a good week, then. Yes, I agree. Well, my grandson had a soccer tournament this weekend that I went to. So that was fun to get back into that and, you know, brings back old times of all three, three, the three of my younger kids all played travel soccer. So we were always trying to navigate every single weekend and going to different tournaments and everything. So it brought back memories. 

Stasha Boyd  02:10 

Yeah, I saw a picture of him on Facebook today that your daughter had posted. And it's like he is still just the greatest kid. I don't know. Where did this kid come from? He's like this like little perfect specimen of awesomeness that's just out there. And I am glad that I am on your daughter's Facebook so I can see those pictures. They're fabulous. 

Cheryl Stuller  02:29 

Yeah, he's a cool kid. I have to say. 

Stasha Boyd  02:31 

Yeah. Oh, my gosh, I did not fix my beverage. I didn't fix my beverage for tonight. Oh, oh my gosh, do you have yours? 

Cheryl Stuller  02:40 

I do. So I went really hardcore tonight, I have strawberry moonshine. 

Stasha Boyd  02:46 

 Oh, my gosh.  

Cheryl Stuller  02:48 

And I put a little bit of champagne in it to cut it a little bit because it's it's like and give it a little bubbly, so. 

Stasha Boyd  02:58 

Well you talk for one second, I've got my fixins right here. I'm just going to grab them. And I'm going to mix mine up right in front of us. So hang on. 

Cheryl Stuller  03:05 

Okay, and I'm not, I'm going to talk about what we're going to talk about today. And we're going to talk about life hacks. So what do we do in our life that makes things a little bit easier that maybe we can share with you guys. And then I found some on the internet that I really liked that I'm going to start trying that I didn't know about. So that's what we're going to talk about today.  

Stasha Boyd  03:29 

Perfect. Um, and my little beverage of choice that I'll be mixing up as we're talking here. It's basically a Bay Breeze. And a Bay Breeze is vodka, pineapple juice, cranberry juice, and if you want to kick it up a little bit, you can either add champagne, sparkling water or something like that, because I wanted to keep it light. It's light on the vodka. The sparkling water is a pineapple flavored sparkling water and just a little bit of cranberry. Yeah, yeah, easy peasy one. So yeah, okay, so the life hacks thing. Here's, here's my thing about life hacks. First of all, I hate the term life hacks. Didn't we used to just call them tips, tricks, didn't we used to call them things that were like, okay, here's how to not make your life so freakin hard all the time. Here's, here can make your life a little bit easier. Let's do this. Good ideas, perhaps. But okay, fine life hacks. But I look at a life hack as anything that makes your life, your day, a little bit easier, makes it easier to do something good for yourself, makes it easier to do something good for other people. And faster. And when I was researching this, I gotta tell you, Cheryl, there's a whole bunch of bullshit out there when it comes to some life hacks. One of them that I read on this one list. I swear to God, it says as a life hack. Replace your parents' throw rugs with wall to wall carpeting so they don't trip. 

Cheryl Stuller  04:55 

Oh my goodness. Here we go back into the advice column where you're making it harder, not easier. 

Stasha Boyd  05:02 

And life hacks are not about somebody else's house. Could you imagine me going into my Mama's house and saying, you know what, Mama, I know you have all these beautiful $20,000, $30,000 hardwood floors, but I'm gonna go ahead and rip all that out and we're going to put in some wall to wall carpeting for you. Holy shit, what kind of dumb ass is that? So yeah, that was, I saw that as a colossally crappy idea. 

Cheryl Stuller  05:25 

That is a crappy idea. It's better to have the throw rugs or not the throw rugs, but like the area rugs, and they make the, so here's a hack. They make, and I have them here at this house, they have the washable rugs. This is 9 by 11. And you can throw it in the washer or a laundry mat. It's, it's thin and the corners are sticky. So you can wash it, if you have a house or high traffic area where you're going to have a lot of people in and out. That's a great way to have the color and the feel of a rug, and yet not have to do one of the carpet machines on it, you can just throw it in the washer.  

Stasha Boyd  06:07 

That is a good idea. Because we have in our house, we have a lot of little tiny, little, I like my floors to be hard. I like to have tile floors and wood floors and things like that, because we do have pets, and we'll talk about that in a bit. But if you have that we also live, we like to garden so we have a big yard, you track a lot of dirt in and out. So I like to have things that I can sweep that don't have to be vacuumed. That's big for me. And then the little throw rugs I always feel like I can catch dirt anywhere and then just throw the little ones into the washer too. Or like you said take them down to the laundromat. Or honest to god, you can get some of those things so cheap that it's like if it becomes you know, a pain or it's too dirty, you know, toss it out, spend 10 bucks and go get yourself another one. 

Cheryl Stuller  06:53 

Yeah, absolutely. My friend, my best friend, her dog right now is getting old and he keeps vomiting on this rug. And she's like, I'm not going to replace it because he keeps throwing up on it. So I'm just gonna wait until he's gone and then I'll replace it and she just does the little carpet cleaner thing.  

Stasha Boyd  07:13 

Yeah, well and we had that too. We had an older, one of our older dogs and again, one of my things about, you know me I am an absolute animal lover, animal advocate. And when, when your dog or your pet or whatever gets older, that's when they need you the most, that's when things are going to start happening to them and so for me, you know when Steyr especially was getting a lot older and he was having all sorts of you know, he would have continence issues, he would be throwing up, things of that nature. Just because he was an old dog, he was more sensitive, you know, like an old person their bladder gets you know, a little more sensitive. I got myself like a little emergency hand cleaner thing and one thing is to use baby diapers or pads, menstrual pads or something like that because they soak up a lot of moisture really quickly. And then to have your spray bottle, you know, just keep them everywhere around the house. So then nothing sits. As soon as it happens, it's cleaned up. Life hack ladies, don't let things wait. 

Cheryl Stuller  08:07 

You do you have to get to that quickly for sure. 

Stasha Boyd  08:12 

But anyway, go ahead. So do you want to go with your first one or shall I go with mine? 

Cheryl Stuller  08:17 

I'm going to go with I and I've been doing this for years. I put a little, you can get foundation that has SPF in it which I would recommend. Neutrogena makes a brand that has SPF in it. And then I always mix a little bit of lotion, I use lubriderm and it has SPF in it too. And what that does is it makes the foundation go easier onto your skin, it's smoother, it spreads easier, it's not as cakey or thick so it's lighter. And then it has the SPF in it and it saves how much foundation you use as well. You use less foundation because you're putting a little dab of lotion in with it. 

Stasha Boyd  09:00 

What kind of, and why is it, why is that important for you? To put like, you know, whatever the, to mix them all together, not just make it smoother. Is there some reason that is it morning routine is it, are you concerned about cancer? 

Cheryl Stuller  09:11 

Well, my skin is so light that I found that when I just use the foundation, it didn't go on evenly. I would have darker splotches and lighter splotches. So when I added in the lotion and made it creamier and easier to spread, it just looks more even and it doesn't get cakey or flaky. So I really like that hack. 

Stasha Boyd  09:36 

And for me my, my make up, my number one makeup hack is to come up with what's like the quick and dirty routine. Because I can easily spend, you know, half an hour doing my face if I feel like it, but most days I don't feel like it. So I have a good concealer that I like. Now I always put on foundation separately and I always use a primer but then I have a um, concealer. And I just do under my eyes, top of my nose, tip of my chin. I have my makeup sponge, I blend that in. I hit like my, my cheeks and my brows with just a little bit of blush, put on some mascara, and I'm done whole thing takes five minutes. 

Cheryl Stuller  10:18 

Yeah, me too. I'm really quick on my makeup. Exactly. I don't like to spend a lot of time either. 

Stasha Boyd  10:24 

I like to spend time when I'm actually getting gussied up. I don't want to spend, and like we said before, for the ladies who may not have heard this before. My husband and I work from home and have worked from home for 20 something for 20 years. For me, I think it's important to get up and go to work. So I get up in the morning and I get dressed for work. If I'm going to go to work, I get dressed, I put on my clothes, I put on my makeup, I go to work. But I don't want to spend half an hour putting on makeup that only he or I are going to see. At the same time, I think it's important to actually put a face on if you're going to be, you know, put your, put your best face forward if you're going to work. So I like a five minute routine. 

Cheryl Stuller  11:05 

I'm with you on that. I agree. 

Stasha Boyd  11:07 

I would add one more hack to like the beauty routine. I buy these makeup remover cloths at Big Lots. The brand is called Epielle. I think almost every Big Lots carries them. The thing that makes it so cool. I've been using them for a gazillion years. My skin is fine, right? Nothing wrong with these things. But they're so cheap. It's like a pack of 100 is a buck.  And so I keep them you know, I use them all the time. And because we have a small bathroom with a little pedestal sink in the morning, it's like I clean my face again with my regular cleanser and whatever. And then I take it and I just kind of set it there on the counter. And after I brush my teeth and after I do my hair and after I do everything else, I take that thing. And I wipe the sink and everything up. And I just throw it in the trash.  

Cheryl Stuller  11:55 

So double duty for you.  

Stasha Boyd  11:57 

Right because at that point is gonna go in the trash anyway. So ladies, if you are a person who uses a makeup remover thing, last thing before you leave that bathroom, take that bad boy, wipe that sink off, wipe it out and throw it in the trash and your sink will stay a lot cleaner a lot easier. 

Cheryl Stuller  12:14 

Yeah, cuz makeup you know, it kind of stains the sink a little bit if you're not careful.  

Stasha Boyd  12:18 

Yeah, absolutely.  

Cheryl Stuller  12:20 

And then the very best moisturizer I have ever used is Cetaphil, let me put this where you can see it. Cetaphil and it's the tub. So it's the the thicker moisturizer, it gets rid of crepey skin, under eyes, you know, or around your eyes where you have the wrinkles, it helps with that because it's just really heavy with the moisturizer. Now I can pull that off because I have drier skin. If you have oily skin that might not be good for you. But for me with with drier skin, this is awesome. I love it. I use it over my whole body and it lasts the whole day too. It doesn't dry you out, you don't like in four hours you're going to be dried out again.  

Stasha Boyd  13:07 

And so you just have generally dry skin all over? 

Cheryl Stuller  13:11 

Not dry just normal to dry with patches or something. It's more about the wrinkles. I mean, I just think this really helps with the wrinkles and it smooths and kind of plumps out your skin because it's so, it's thicker. So it's really great for lasting the whole day and not getting dry and crepey looking by the end of the day. 

Stasha Boyd  13:35 

And since this is a podcast and so somebody not might not have been able to see that for the YouTube viewers but it's the letter C E T A, fil or phil? 

Cheryl Stuller  13:47 

P H I L  

Stasha Boyd  13:49 

P H I L. And it comes in like a big tub kind of thing. I think you can get stuff like that at Target, Walmart, anywhere.  And for me, it's like when it comes to stuff like you know, I because my thing is like I know people who have like these multi $100 makeup moisturizing routines and they'll tell you, oh my gosh, if you don't use this particular brand or that particular brand, you're gonna get a whole lot of wrinkles and blah, blah blah. It's like ladies, here's what you need. All you need is a routine that you can stick to, whatever it is that you can afford, that's not going to set you back too far. And that you're willing to do. It's like, for me, it's like and some people hate to hear this, but I wash my face. 

Cheryl Stuller  13:51 

Oh, I do too.   

Stasha Boyd  13:52 

That's what I mean. End. I don't do anything else. All I do is I use my little, my makeup remover. Um, and then I usually have like, sometimes I'll use, I don't usually use soap but I'll have like just whatever face cleanser is in the bargain bin thing over at Big Lots or whatever. That's what I clean my face with. I don't moisturize at night I don't do anything special to my eyes or lips. I don't do anything like that. And so the, and for folks again, who can't see me, I do not have very many wrinkles on my 55 year old skin. 

Cheryl Stuller  15:09 

You have gorgeous skin, gorgeous skin. 

Stasha Boyd  15:12 

So for the ladies to keep in mind, do your thing. But do keep in mind that a lot of makeup routines are genetics, skincare routines, are genetics. So you know, if you've got, if your skin in your family, you mean look at your mama, look at your family members, if they have premature like or had trouble with wrinkly skin, then absolutely man, you get yourself a routine and you stick to it. If you're like my family, my mother is in her 80s and still doesn't look like it. It's like it is important to do the basics. Don't think you're immune from shit. And when I'm in the morning, when I put my face on, I always make sure I put on sunscreen on my face, interestingly enough, because I always put it on my face. And I would forget this part of my chest. Mm hmm. That little sparkle spot right there. Or there it is. 

Cheryl Stuller  16:03 

Yeah, 

Stasha Boyd  16:04 

That's, I started getting a spot there. And I had to go in and get tested for skin cancer and the doctor's like you know, girl, you should have put some sunscreen on your chest back when you were 13, 14 years old. I'm like, please, no 13 or 14 year old kid was going to put their sunscreen on their chest. 

Cheryl Stuller  16:19 

Oh my god we used baby oil in the sun.  

Stasha Boyd  16:22 

Oh my God,  

Cheryl Stuller  16:22 

That's when we used baby oil and sun-in, in our hair. And we literally laid out like that all the time. I used to drive the tractor in a bikini with baby oil on and sun-in in my hair. 

Stasha Boyd  16:37 

And some people used lemon juice. It's like there's sun-in and then there's lemon juice.  But anyway, so that's, that's one of the hacks but I do think that you know, anything, I think it is important to both look good. It's also important to take care of your skin. So any life hack for women out there who's going to make that process more enjoyable for you and easier for you. That's what the hack is. And for me part of my life hack is I have my I have a stand up desk type for my makeup table and a mirror over it. And it's pretty and I have a little candle there. I can light my candles. I can, it's a it's an easy space. I have everything within arm's reach right where I can pick it up and put it back down. So I make the routine pleasant. I'm not trying to crowd into a hot sweaty bathroom. I'm not trying to compete with space with somebody else. I don't have crap all in my bathroom for my makeup and everything. It has its own spot. And I actually use an old jewelry case I have like one of the three level jewelry cases. I put everything in there. All nice and contained.  

Cheryl Stuller  17:44 

That's a great idea. Um and I keep sunscreen, I keep a spray bottle of sunscreen like the not the lotion but the spray and wipes in my car. When I go do my five miles I spray that on my chest everything, face because at that point I don't have makeup on so I keep that in my car so that it's always handy and I don't forget it. And there's no excuse to not put it on. 

Stasha Boyd  18:15 

We keep, we keep some in our car. We keep it by our back door there's like a stash that we keep by the back door and again folks we keep in mind that we live in Florida so my husband I are in Florida. Um we keep, we keep it in our car we keep it in our bag. We keep a little bottle of it that and also bug spray in our golf cart. And that's something else too I'd say like is a good life hack. If there's something that you know that you might need, get multiple bits of it and keep it everywhere. Don't have like your single stash for like we were talking about sunscreen and just have one bottle that's just stuffed in a closet somewhere. Sunscreen's important. Put some in a little bag or put something in something and a little go bag or a little like you know road bag and keep it where you're gonna need it. 

Cheryl Stuller  19:05 

Yeah and moms know this, we we shop at Sam's and Costco because we can get everything in bulk and it's usually cheaper too if you go to like Walgreens or Target or CVS it's more expensive at those places. So if you can make you know a once a month trip to Costco or Sam's, you're gonna save money. 

Stasha Boyd  19:25 

Yeah, I will caution on this though because I know a lot of people who are who don't have a lot of money and they don't shop at those places because you have to, you do buy in bulk. But you have to buy so much of it so your per unit cost goes way down. But you don't, if you know if you, if you only have like a $70 for your weekly grocery budget allotment, or $100 for your weekly grocery allotment, you can't spend $13 on two supersized tubs of mayonnaise, you know. So in those cases for those folks, I recommend going to like I said, go to the place, the Dollar Store and Big Lots. Honey, those are great spots to go, especially if you're looking at getting smaller sizes of something. Because or the other thing to do is at those at the Dollar Stores and Big Lots to get the little, the little bottles, the little clear bottles, and then just refill those, then buy yourself your one big thing of lotion or moisturizer, or sunscreen or whatever, and put it in the little bottles and put those all the places you need them to be. 

Cheryl Stuller  20:29 

Yeah, one of the websites that I looked at my supermarket.com gathers the lowest prices for groceries for you, if you shop online. Online, if you go to that website, it'll give you the lowest prices that you can pull from. So if you're a savvy shopper, that's a good way to do it as well. If you're on a budget like that. 

Stasha Boyd  20:53 

Do you use that one? Do you ever like used that kind of online shopping thing? 

Cheryl Stuller  20:56 

No, I don't I haven't gotten to the online stuff. Um, and I know my girlfriend goes to the grocery store like every day do you do this? Do you go to the grocery store every day to get your evening meal stuff? Or do you plan ahead and grab everything you need and make one trip? 

Stasha Boyd  21:14 

Oh, I'm a, I'm a plan, plan ahead gal. And actually, that's one of my, my life hacks that I have mentioned down here someplace. Um, I'm not sure. Oh, for me, it's like the the weekly and monthly planning habit. It's like, develop a weekly and monthly planning habit. And so for me, what I do, and I'm not fancy about it at all, um, every Sunday morning, drinking my coffee, I will be sitting there and sometimes it will be Saturday, you know, usually it's Sunday. And I just have a piece of notebook paper, piece of like regular paper like this, I turn it sideways, horizontal. And across the top I write Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, draw myself some little lines. And then I kind of go through, okay, breakfast, lunch, dinner, write those things out. And we use a meal service. And I'll talk about that in a second. We get like three home chef kind of meals a week, which I love. And then I fill everything else in. And then I'll make a note there of you know, is there any night that we're going to be out or we have something going on. And I kind of look at that, and then I make my grocery list. So I only go to the grocery store once a week. Um, and I was I was that way before COVID. I'm certainly that way now. But when we were growing up, we went to the grocery store once a month. And I remember we'd be going to that grocery store with two big baskets of groceries, because we'd stock up for the whole the whole month. So I'm kind of like just personality wise, I am absolutely against these daily trips to a store, it drives me absolutely bonkers. 

Cheryl Stuller  22:41 

I can't do that. Yeah, I feel like I can't do that. Well, one of the hacks was and this would work for me. Because I'm traveling between two places, it's really hard to keep in your mind what you need, from one place to the other. And oftentimes, I'll buy the same thing that I didn't really need. So the hack was to take a picture of what's in your refrigerator and in your pantry and you have that with you. So you're not, if you don't like making lists or that's not going to work for you, because you're not at that location. If you take a picture, you can quickly refer to it and see, you can visually see what you have and what you don't. And then you're not repeat buying or you you buy what you need based on what you see.  

Stasha Boyd  23:26 

And you, do you do that now?  

Cheryl Stuller  23:27 

I'm going to I think that's an awesome idea. 

Stasha Boyd  23:31 

I think we're hitting on a theme here. You're like looking at hacks that you want to try and I'm like okay, here's the ones that work for me. 

Cheryl Stuller  23:38 

Well I do have some that already work for me, but with the around the cooking thing, you know, I don't like to cook, I really don't like going to the grocery store. So that is going to be great for me and I'm very visual. So that'll and you know, trying to keep up with a list, you know, that's hard too, so that that's going to work for me and I'm going to start doing that. 

Stasha Boyd  23:58 

Well on that I'll give you two things because one of the things again, that's on my hacks list, and I do this all the time. I learned how and I think we've learned this kind of with The Point of the Matter is my phone photos, I am making folders. So if you have an iPhone and even if you have an Android there's some way to take pictures and then to create little folders. So for example, like all of my makeup, I have a folder on my phone that has all the makeup that I use front and back so I can see exactly what the bottle is what the thing is called what my favorite eyeshadow shade is, etc. So if I'm out of something and I need to go to the store and get it or I'm going to order online or whatever, I can just open up that folder and say okay, well watch what's my shade of wash that I use. Oh it's this. What's my brand, what's my shade and it's right there. I also use it for grocery lists. I also use it for reminders, parking. Whenever we go someplace to park it's like if I get out of the car, I take a picture of the the place we parked cuz I always have this with me. You know, um, and so learning how to use your phone and also using the share the share albums feature of feature of it. So like my mom and I have a shared folder that we use. So if I need to, like send her something, it's like, okay, mom, I scanned this document, I put it in that folder, and it's there for you. So, because I tried to make a hack that makes my life easier. That is, this is the easiest thing I've ever learned how to do. Learn how to use your phones at your phone and your album holders. 

Cheryl Stuller  25:32 

Yeah, because you think you're going to remember something and you really don't, you've got so much going on. And so many things we have to keep track of I do the same thing. I have this mascara that I really like because I have really sensitive eyes. Yeah, it's called Perversion. And you can get it at like Ulta beauty. You can't get it at Target or anything. But it's it's such a good mascara. And it's really good for sensitive eyes. 

Stasha Boyd  25:58 

Yeah, I'm an Almay girl, when it comes to mascara, I'm the same way it's like I have I need a mascara that's not going to run. But that comes off easily when I use my makeup remover wipes on it. And that does. And they have it in a super black, which I like. And again, it makes it super easy. So that one I can get at pretty much any you know, you know, Target or wherever like that that makes it easy. I'll also order some of that stuff online. I just kind of keep it handy. By the way, ladies, the other thing too with your mascara. Replace that shit. Oh my god. If you keep a sharpie handy when you buy it, and I do this for a lot of my makeup, it's like when I buy it and I take it out of the package I write on the side of it when I bought it with my Sharpie. So keep a sharpie at your makeup table. I also keep a sharpie in my kitchen. Because say for example, I open up some a box of chicken broth like I made when you guys were here for dinner that night. I didn't use all of it. I write the date I opened it on top of it and stick it in the refrigerator. I hate things like that shit going bad. 

Cheryl Stuller  27:07 

If it smells good, it's good. If it doesn't, it's bad.  

Stasha Boyd  27:10 

Well, I can I guess I got a pretty good sniffer too. I can smell things as well. But some stuff it's like I'll look at I'm like going like, How long has that been in here? I just don't want to use it anymore. It's like, okay, no, I'm not doing that. I have, one of my big ones. And I think this is like a like a life hack for. The reason behind it. And you and I've talked about this before is I believe that you have to have some kind of like peace and cohesion in your house. And for me that is provided by baskets. If I go to Goodwill, if I'm at Big Lots, and I don't care if they're like plastic baskets, or they're like nice little cute baskets or whatever, I have baskets, and mainly like in my, all of my bathroom closets, everything like that. I corral things with baskets. So these folks who like try and make everything so neat that it's like oh, they try to keep things super, super neat. I'm not going to be that person, I pile things up, I need the piles to be organized. So for example, in my, my closet upstairs, I have one basket that's labeled medicine stuff. And then I have another basket that's labeled skincare stuff, I have one that's labeled hair stuff. So basically, if you try to put something away, everything just goes in the basket, I don't have to put it into nice little type place,  just the basket is fine. And then I have baskets that you know kind of live at the bottom of the stairs or live at the top of the stairs. So something has to go up or down, just drop it in the basket. And the next time you go up and down, take it back and forth. When you do things like that part of anything with any hack is is this going to make it easier for me. And for folks who are super hyper organized and can put all of their little stuff in all of these little you know places and containers, rock on with your bad self. I am not going to do that. I am not going to feel bad for not doing that. There's nothing wrong with me for not doing that. I just know that my level is containment. 

Cheryl Stuller  29:11 

And that is a good way to do it. I totally agree in my in my closet that has all of that stuff. I use baskets as well to keep organized because I'm a very I have to be organized and decluttered. I don't function well when my house doesn't function well. So everything has a place and everything is in its place. And the way I stay organized is um, like if you do laundry and you put it in the dryer, you get it out of the dryer and fold it up and then you put it away like you complete all the steps to put things back in its place so that it doesn't get overwhelming. I know for a lot of people, they'll do laundry and then they don't fold it up right away and it lands on a couch or it stays in the dryer. I that's very hard to, for me to comprehend that, but just because it builds up, you know, and then you're getting further and further behind. 

Stasha Boyd  30:12 

I would say that, 

Cheryl Stuller  30:15 

Well, I would say to stay organized, just stay on top of things by, if you use a dish, put it in the dishwasher or wash it, you know, don't leave it, don't wait on it, get it done, and move on with your day. 

Stasha Boyd  30:29 

And I would say it's like, kind of, I look at that kind of stuff kind of a bit on a sliding Comfort Scale. If you're the kind of person that seeing anything out of space at all, would make you tense or make it unpleasant for you, then yeah, man, you've got to figure out a way to solve that problem so that you so you don't see those things. Then they're the people who are so comfortable with things being so sloppy and so slovenly, it's like okay, folks, there's stuff growing here. You know, if you're living by yourself in your own house where your your your roaches might not be bothering the neighbors, then well shit, knock yourself out. But all right, whatevs. I think for most of us, though, that you have to figure out where your comfort level with a little bit of chaos is and how you're gonna control it. So like for us we do, I don't fold everything, as soon as I take it out of the dryer, fuck no. Or as soon as it's dry. But what we do, going back to like the kind of the basket containment system, we have like the three, we have three dirty clothes hamper basket, things that line up that fit right in this little nook, right beside the washer and dryer, everything goes in there before it's washed. Then we have our three drying baskets. So when something comes out, if it's in the dryer and go into a basket, the basket, if it stays there, then the next person that comes in, you know, that's got a minute it's making the bed or whatever, that person folds whatever's in that particular basket. We do have a thing where every once in a while we do get a little bit behind and the baskets kind of migrate into the bedroom and sit on the fire fireplace hearth. And then it's like, you know, we'll walk in there going, Oh, I don't want to I don't I don't want to I don't want to fold that tonight. It's we'll do it in the morning in the morning is fine. But it's contained in the basket. Now when you run out of baskets, now you're done. Now you got to get, now you got to fold it you have no choice. But for us. That's that's our comfort level. It's not in me ever, ever to worry about things still being in a dryer. 

Cheryl Stuller  32:25 

Okay. Yeah, yeah, we're opposite on that. 

Stasha Boyd  32:29 

But I think that's the thing a lot of people are, it's like just trying to figure out where that, cause it's like, it's not like we don't have clean clothes. It's not like we don't know where the clothes are. Now Mike has, at one point in our marriage, he has suggested, I think it's been several times that if we ever build another house, we're just going to have one room, that is nothing but washers and dryers. And then it's like you just okay, the whites are always either in this washer, or they're always in that dryer, and we're gonna get rid of all the closets because there's gonna be no need for them. Everything lives in the washer and the dryer. It's not gonna happen.  

Cheryl Stuller  33:03 

Um, alright, so because I am into fashion, there's a great website called wornontv.com. And if you are watching a show, and you really like the clothes that somebody is wearing male or female, you can go to that website. And a lot of times after the actor wears it, it doesn't go back to the designer or the store, it gets put on this website, and you can purchase it. I've gotten several cool things off of doing that.  

Stasha Boyd  33:37 

How cool is that?  

Cheryl Stuller  33:38 

Yeah, it's very cool.  

Stasha Boyd  33:39 

What's the name of the website again?  

Cheryl Stuller  33:41 

So it's worn w o r n on tv.net. 

Stasha Boyd  33:45 

Okay. And as usual, we will have this and probably a bunch of other things that we don't get to on the show notes. So those will all be in there. Trying to think of like any websites that I use as a hack, and I can't think of anything that I really use as a hack. Because you know, most of the stuff that I do is going to be for work, work related. It's research related, it's finding things out pretty quickly kind of deal. Oh, I'll tell you what, your here's a life hack that I think a lot of people should adopt. If you're actually trying to research something medical or legal or something where you're really trying to find out the real information. If you go to Google. And before you type in whatever you're looking for, type the words Google Scholar, Google Scholar, and then type in what you're looking for. And what will happen is it takes you to a secondary Google website, but all it does is look through looks through academic journals, legal journals, things of that nature. So for example, if I'm doing research somebody is like saying, do your research on ivermectin do your research on you know, some legal thing going on? When I do that, it pulls up the actual studies that were done. So when I say I read the study, I mean, I read the study. And the reason I know that is because, again, going back to our work, we do a lot of work with major academic institutions and things of that nature. So I need to make sure that if I'm citing a source, it's right, and it's correct. So that's an easy way to do it. And for a person who's not used to reading medical journals, or legal journals, a lot of folks find them to be very intimidating. Here's my life, here's my hack, about reading things that are intimidating. Ignore the hard words, read it, read it once and ignore the hard words. If you keep reading pretty soon, you're going to kind of get a gist of it. And then kind of go back and read it again. Some of it will make more sense. Law journals, especially is like legal papers. What they'll do is they'll have citations in the middle of things, and people have a hard time reading them because they're going I don't even know what that means. I'm like, then don't fucking read it, read the words you recognize. And you will put together a perfectly comprehensible sentence. Now will you be a law scholar when you're done reading it? No. And I never claimed to be, but I do get a better gist of what somebody is talking about than I would if I went to seeing a journalist, a journal magazine or something, their interpretation of that document, I can at least look at it with my own eyes. 

Cheryl Stuller  36:31 

And I always keep a little Webster dictionary beside my bed, or I'll grab it and put it beside my computer, if I'm looking up stuff like that, where I really want to understand what the word is, if it's new to me, that's a good hack too. 

Stasha Boyd  36:48 

And pretty much anything online. If you just hold your finger on a word, it's like if there's a word, you just hold your finger on the word, it's gonna or your cursor, if you're on your computer, it will bring up either a definition or it's going to ask if you want to look it up. And once that, and you can look it up that way. Or sometimes I'll just look up a synonym. It's like if the definition is still kind of confusing me, I'll just look up a, say okay what's this word? What else does this word mean? And that's an easy one to do. Also, because that's one of the things that people will say, Oh, my God, Stasha, you're so well read, you know, you know, you do all this, I'm like A I do read like a fiend. That is true, always been that way. Um, but I try to make sure that the sources that I'm reading, I recognize the difference between entertainment, a reputable journalistic source and an actual source. And the difference between a primary source and a secondary source. A primary source is you're looking at the actual document. So a primary source is, somebody says, Well, you know, in the such and such a letter, Thomas, or Thomas Jefferson once something said something. I'm like, Okay, I'll go find the letter. And I have to read the whole letter to find the quote, that's a primary source, a secondary source is Here's a quote from Thomas Jefferson. That's a secondary. And that's how you start learning. And once you kind of understand the difference between those two things, it makes it so much easier to spot bullshit. 

Cheryl Stuller  38:08 

It's so telling that I'm talking about worn on TV dot net. That's, that's what I would look up and you're talking about Thomas Jefferson and the letter that he wrote, Oh, my God. We are very different that way, anytime I need to know something intellectual, I'll say Stasha what do you think about this? Because I know you've already done the research. 

Stasha Boyd  38:30 

I wish more people were like you Cheryl. I wish they were. 

Cheryl Stuller  38:34 

I wish more people were like you.  

Stasha Boyd  38:37 

Well, but here's the thing, though, I think it's what, I'm the same way though, about fitness. I'm also the same way about you know, organizing, you know, cleaning in a household amount the same way about looking at how you kind of like put your business and work together. So it's not I think it's just different types of knowledge. And also things that interest you. There's, here's, here's another life hack for folks. Enjoy the things that interest you. And then if it's something that's not really interesting to you, but it's interesting to somebody else, rely on that person for their interest. 

Cheryl Stuller  39:09 

That's what I do with you Chica. 

Stasha Boyd  39:14 

Another one actually, we talked about this a second ago and I was gonna jump on it about was it about the closets? Oh, well, you were talking about fitness here is one of my fitness ones. And what I'm holding up ladies and gentlemen is a silver Yeti mug. Big one big Yeti mug. And one of the things about being healthy and fit, whether it's your skin, whether it's your weight, whatever it is, water, drink water, drink a lot of water. So from one of my hacks is I have a favorite mug. I have my favorite Yeti and it's like it's almost like a wooby I carry this thing with me all the time. If I can't find it, I get very upset. I've had so many because I have lost them in the past. But every morning I get up. I fill this thing up. Ice and water first. And then I just drink it throughout the day. And I refill it whenever I want to. And I always have this water with me. And if I'm going somewhere, it'll be in the car, I take it, I always make sure that the bass fits into my car holder. Um, but the key to it for me is making sure that it's your favorite. Not just a lot of folks it's like, so I'm emotionally attached to my water mug. So I always have it with me. And a lot of folks are told to drink water, drink water, drink water, but they have it in their head. Well, I don't like water, or I've got to find a water glass. I've got to wash this. I've got to wash that. Make it easier on yourself. Attach something emotional to the process. 

Cheryl Stuller  40:45 

Do you know how much water you're supposed to drink? Do you know what the formula is? 

Stasha Boyd  40:50 

I've always heard it's 64 ounces. But for me, I just go by you know, is my urine pale yellow. 

Cheryl Stuller  40:56 

So it's half your body weight in ounces per day. And that's with just normal regular activity. Of course, if you're in the hot sun, or you're working out, that's you're going to up that a little bit. But you want to shoot for at the minimum half your body weight in ounces per day.  

Stasha Boyd  41:15 

That would be a lot of water for me.  

Cheryl Stuller  41:17 

Because we're 75% water. Yeah. 

Stasha Boyd  41:21 

And I would say for anybody you know, that's that's listening to that one. All the I mean, I've heard 64 ounces. I've heard like the half of the body weight, all these different things. The one that I can that is absolutely true for you. And if it cannot fail, is if your urine is pale yellow. Not clear. Clear is not good either. That means you're drinking too much. But if it's pale yellow, you're good. If it's dark yellow, you're not good. Go drink a glass of water. Better yet drink two. If it's getting like super dark, then go to the doctor. Yeah, I think that's that's the thing is I can't so you have, you have a built in dipstick for whether or not you are drinking enough water. 

Cheryl Stuller  42:06 

Yeah, I take vitamins though. And so my urine is really bright, bright yellow for quite a while. So I, for me the half my body weight in ounces works for me. 

Stasha Boyd  42:18 

What's that? Which, which vitamin does that, which vitamin has that effect? 

Cheryl Stuller  42:22 

I take a lot of vitamins. I take like five different vitamins. But I also don't get sick. So yeah, the thing I'm hoping it's because of that. 

Stasha Boyd  42:35 

Well, my mother in law, I swear to God, the woman takes $1,000 worth of vitamins, you know, a day. But I'm exaggerating ladies and gents. She does not. But, but no, she's very committed to her vitamin regimen. She's very healthy, she's 91 years old. And she has her morning, afternoon and evening ones. You know, I'm of two minds. I think at some point, it's sort of like, okay, it can be very expensive urine or it can also have benefits. For people who are doing their vitamins though. Here's another life hack with using that photo thing. Take a picture of your of all of your vitamins and medicines that you take or do like I do put them in an album folder on your thing, because when you do go to the doctor, you need to let them know all the vitamins that you're taking. Because some vitamins will affect medicines the same way, you know, or you could be taking too many. It's like you can overdose on iron. So if you're taking a multivitamin of the has a high iron amount in it, and then you take a separate vitamin that also has iron in it. If you get too much iron, that's bad for you. So make sure that you're, that whenever you go to the doctor always know what you're taking. And again, I am not going to remember so for both menopause brain and just my brain in general, pictures are where it's at. 

Cheryl Stuller  43:51 

Okay, here's a fun one for a lot of people who use Amazon. And I know a lot of people who do. If you are if there's a product that you tend to go to all the time and get or you're watching a product and you want to get notifications about when the price drops. Go to camelcamelcamel.com and it will send you alerts for any product that you're watching on Amazon and it will tell you when the price goes down. 

Stasha Boyd  44:19 

I have not heard of that. 

Cheryl Stuller  44:20 

I know. Me either. I love it. 

Stasha Boyd  44:26 

Try these things out and come back and report back and tell us if they actually work. 

Cheryl Stuller  44:29 

I am. Especially my son's, like every day they are getting packages from Amazon. So I'm going to tell them about this to make sure that they're getting, because I'm all about a deal. You know, I want a discount I want a deal, I always ask, you know so here's another hack when you online shop and I've done I have done this. You know how you go to a new website that you want to buy. So you're you're looking at like Zappos.com, for instance, and you're looking for running shoes, and they immediately pop up, give me your email address and you'll get a 15% off code. Well, you may not want them sending you a bunch of emails, because you don't know if they have what you want. Right? So if they if they do end up having what you want, so I x out of that I don't I don't give I'm very careful about where I send out my email. Go if you find something and you go to buy it, go through the checkout process, but don't complete it. And then you'll get that code back for you to type in without having to have the email given up right off the bat.  

Stasha Boyd  45:41 

Oh, okay. That's interesting.  

Cheryl Stuller  45:44 

Yeah, and I have done that. And that works. 

Stasha Boyd  45:46 

Okay, well, that's actually a good one, I actually have a dummy email account. It's like a, because a lot of places, they're always asking you for your email asking you for your email. And those are the lists that are going to be sold to everybody and their brother. And the next thing you know, you're getting like, you know, ads for Viagra and you know, Pornhub. So I have a dummy email account. And that's the one I give out for those things. And honestly, every once in a while, you just got to go in there and just shut it down and make yourself a new one. Because it, it will become a cesspool. It's amazing how much crap people will send to these, but have a have a dummy. And you can set up a Gmail account, you can set up a, you know, anything. And it can be on pretty much any words you want any any front end app. And just let that be the one that you hand out. Now, if you want one that's specifically for ads, like places that you go to, you know, you can have one that's your ads, and you can actually make it you know, fbads@gmail.com, you know, or something like that you can make it whatever you want it to be. And then if you're at a store that you do like where you do, you want to get their ads, like Ulta, I like getting my ads from Ulta, you can use that one. And that way you get into their system, but you're not messing up either your actual email that you want to use, you're not opening that up to all sorts of stuff. So create a dummy, a dummy email account. 

Cheryl Stuller  47:05 

That's a great idea. And they also recommend you creating a dummy email account that you put in your contact list that you don't use for anything. Except if a bot sends out spam, you'll get an undeliverable mail notice, and you'll know that, you know, your email has been used for that purpose. So you can check your other email addresses. 

Stasha Boyd  47:27 

So that's like for a hack. So if somebody says, something hacks you, and it's like sending out an email to all of your- 

Cheryl Stuller  47:32 

All of your contacts, then you'll know because sometimes you never know, you know how on Facebook, you'll you'll get this message from your friend that says my facebook account has been hacked, don't accept any messages for me. Well, this will give you a heads up that that has happened without you having to hear from it from all of your friends. 

Stasha Boyd  47:52 

Okay, all right. 

Cheryl Stuller  47:54 

I thought that was a good one. 

Stasha Boyd  47:55 

That is, that does sound pretty good. Because I hate this. I hate it when you get I mean, I haven't been hacked very often. That's something else folks, just as a general life thing. Don't click on, don't open anything from somebody that you unless you were in sales, and you have like these Super duper high end, you know, protectors or things on your on your email, don't open anything from anybody you don't know. And here's the thing, even if it looks official, even because I'll get something from Amazon, it's like, oh, you know, we need to see such and such click on this link here to straighten straighten it out. I'm like, Ah, I'm gonna go open up Amazon. And I'm going to go through to my account. And I'm going to look and see if there's a notice in there. I don't open things, even if it looks official, I go to the other one. And that's something else. Oh, here's another hack too for people on finances. One of the things that if you know for a fact that you're not going to be opening up credit cards, or houses or whatever, you can go to the three credit reporting agencies, and you can put a freeze on your credit. And basically what that does is it just makes it where nobody can, nobody can ping your credit for any reason, they can't steal your credit, they can't get into your credit. And when you do that, you go to Experian, TransUnion, and I forgot the third one, but there's only three of them, Experian, TransUnion, Equifax, you go to each one of those, you put in your information, you put a freeze on and then you'll get a code back. And then you take that information and you put it wherever you store your, your passwords. I use a password manager on my phone kind of deal. But freeze it. And that way, you don't have to worry about people stealing your information. They can't, they can't get into your account anyway because it's frozen. Now if you do decide you're going to go out and buy a car or something, then absolutely you go in you put you temporarily lift the freeze. You can make it good for a certain number of days, you can make it good for a certain vendor, you can say only this vendor can check my my credit. And that is a huge one. So that's that's a very important hack. 

Cheryl Stuller  49:54 

That is a good one. 

Stasha Boyd  49:56 

I had two other things I think I had on our hacks here that I wanted of the like, the and what I went back to like the the house cleanliness, because, you know, listeners if you haven't figured this out, Cheryl and I have different standards, quite frankly, I still think mine are good. I wouldn't be I'm not embarrassed if anybody comes over to my house, my house is clean and neat. It's just not like Cheryl. 

Cheryl Stuller  50:17 

Nobody is like me. Yeah, I'm very comfortable. 

Stasha Boyd  50:22 

Well, but I have though is I have a dump zone. Because I know when I walk in the back door, and I have purses, and I have stuff that I'm sitting down, and we've got bills or letters or whatever, that's got to go back and forth. So I have this zone, some people might have a mud room or something. But I have this little zone and right by the back door, where that is the dump zone. I am not worried ever about that thing being into a mess until I just can't stand it anymore. And then I straighten it up. And or if people are coming over I'll straighten it up. Usually if it's if it's good guests, if it's like the regular average guests I don't, but because I know me, I know that if I don't have that, it will end up migrating into the house somewhere. This way, I keep whatever that stuff is corralled by the back door. And it doesn't show up, you know, me walking into the dining room and setting it on the dining table. Yeah, I think most people kind of know if they're like the kind of person who's going to put everything away as soon as they walk in the back door? Or if they're going to kind of drop things and spot the spot. If you're a drop things person, create yourself a drop spot. 

Cheryl Stuller  51:35 

Yeah. All right. So what do we want our listeners to take away from today? 

Stasha Boyd  51:41 

I would say it's actually a similar thing to last time when we were talking about advice. It's like, there's a lot of crappy hacks out there, hacks have a single purpose. And that's to make your life easier, not to make somebody else's life easier, or to some whatever, if you're going to like, listen to a hacker look something up is like is this something that's actually going to work for you? If it is, then that's a good life hack. If it's not, or if it's something you're not going to do. Hello, don't turn that thing. Don't, don't make your own life harder. Look for things that make it easier. And Lord recognize some of these stupid life hacks. Because some of them you're like, Oh, my, this one guy on the on the internet. And I have to find him. He has like the most neutral expression, and he does some of these life hacks. And then he just kind of looks at the camera with an expression like, so. That was it. It was like- 

Cheryl Stuller  52:31 

He makes fun of it.  

Stasha Boyd  52:33 

Yes, you would love him.  

Cheryl Stuller  52:34 

I would love him, 

Stasha Boyd  52:35 

I'll find him and put him in the notes. 

Cheryl Stuller  52:38 

And I would say, just like with advice, I'm, like you said kind of do what works for you. But if you see somebody that's doing something that you admire, or would like to achieve, or whatever, just say, Hey, how are you getting that done? Or where did you get that or, you know, be willing to ask and get information from people too. 

Stasha Boyd  53:04 

Yeah, I would agree. And I think that's the other thing too, also understand that you know, you don't, you're not going to be good at everything. And you don't have to be, it's like, if there's something that somebody else is good at that you have no interest in being good at, ask them for help, or ask them for advice, you know, let them be a guide, and they a teacher to you. Um, but you don't have to be as quote unquote, perfect as they are. 

Cheryl Stuller  53:29 

No, you do for you. 

Stasha Boyd  53:31 

Yeah, that is, but that is always I think probably the top of my life hacks is like, and I even say this with the people ask my advice on something. At the end of it, I'll say, you asked me what I think and you asked for my advice. If anything resonates with you, then take it. If anything doesn't resonate, and doesn't feel right with you, then just ignore that crap. You know, it's like, just take it as the ramblings of a well intentioned person. Because nobody, you don't have to take anybody's advice if it doesn't fit you. 

Cheryl Stuller  54:01 

And so we had some other life hacks that we didn't talk about, but we will put them in the show notes that are good. Especially on the tech side. So we'll put those in show notes and then be you know, email us back or comment back and tell us some of your life hacks so we can learn from you guys. 

Stasha Boyd  54:21 

Absolutely. And the only other thing that we have right now is what's our topic, Cheryl? 

Cheryl Stuller  54:27 

I don't know what our topic is. 

Stasha Boyd  54:29 

I know why you don't know, because we don't know, we didn't we didn't pick one for some reason, I looked at our notes and there's nothing there. So ladies, our next our next topic is a surprise. 

Cheryl Stuller  54:41 

And if there's something that our warrior, I can never say that freakin word, warrior queens, want us to talk about that now would be a good time to put that in the comments as well. 

Stasha Boyd  54:53 

Absolutely. I think we'll also do a solicitation on Facebook and Instagram for that. So we'll we'll see if we can come up with something. So everybody, thank you so much. Thank you again for joining us. By the way, this is our 20th episode Cheryl. Twenty. All right, everybody. Thank you guys for being with us this long we appreciate you so very much. 

Cheryl Stuller  55:12 

Have a great week, everybody.