Shannon Wilkinson: 00:00:00

Hey there. Welcome to getting to Good Enough. I'm Shannon Wilkinson.

Janine Adams: 00:00:10

And I'm Janine Adams. We're here for practical and fun conversations about living with more ease and way less stress.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:00:17

Yep. We're all about embracing progress over perfection. So grab a tasty beverage and let's get started. Hey, Janine.

Janine Adams: 00:00:26

Hey, Shannon. How are you?

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:00:28

I'm good. How are you doing?

Janine Adams: 00:00:30

I'm good. It's so nice to be able to say those words again every week.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:00:34

I know. I'm loving it so much.

Janine Adams: 00:00:38

Yeah. Lucky us.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:00:40

I know, I know. And you know, it's good that we just had this platform available to us to be able to pick up again and do this. And, um, apparently, based on our.

Our really low bar, we are enjoying this and helping at least one other person.

Janine Adams: 00:01:04

Right. Therefore we are successful.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:01:07

Can we rule? Today we wanted to talk about Good Enough hosting.

Janine Adams: 00:01:17

Right. About not stressing about having people over or having people stay at your house, which is even more stressful than having people over.

But, yeah, I actually had three house guests in July. I think that's true. Yeah. Which is perhaps unprecedented in my whole life.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:01:37

Right. Well, you had a. You had a big event that you were celebrating.

Janine Adams: 00:01:42

Right. Had. And had a college friend in at the beginning of July. Another one for the big event.

And then another friend from my first job who happened to be in town. And she actually stayed in a different apartment in our building. But she was hanging. We were hanging.

And believe me, she could tell you, I did not overstress about that. She was the third of the string. And it's like I said, let's walk to Whole Foods and find some lunch. That's how that went. And it was great.

It was just fine. We both got what we wanted for lunch and worked out just fine.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:02:13

Yeah. Yeah. I just had the opportunity to spend some time with college friends in la and it took a little convincing on my friend.

But to really say my whole goal is to just spend time with the two of you, spend time with your family. There are lots of fun things to do in la and maybe someday we'll do some of them. I mean, I lived there, so I don't.

I'm not feeling like I'm really missing out. Um, but we didn't have. We didn't need to over schedule our time together. Like we. The.

The purpose of our trip was to see Bridget Everett live, which was phenomenal. And I mean, she's amazing. And it's a.

Janine Adams: 00:03:07

Her.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:03:08

What she does, she does sort of a comedic cabaret act. Um, and it's completely 100% over the top. And so enjoy. So much fun. Yeah, it's very. It is in the faces of some people up front.

Like, you gotta know what you're getting into if you're sitting in the front row or on an aisle because it's interactive. There was whipped cream involved.

Janine Adams: 00:03:41

Oh, my God.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:03:43

Yeah.

But so then, you know, one of my friends hadn't seen the third season of one of my favorite shows ever, Somebody Somewhere, which stars Bridget Everett. And so the. Our last day together, we had a long. Oh, no, it wasn't our last day. It was Saturday.

It was our middle day together, and we spent all afternoon binging the third season of Somebody Somewhere, which was absolutely delightful.

Janine Adams: 00:04:15

Sounds like a perfect weekend to me.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:04:17

Yeah. Yeah, it was so much fun. We ate good food. We did have some star sightings, which is always fun in la. And we went to some really great restaurants.

We also ate in. And it was. Was just nice, like, making sure that she wasn't stressed about hosting us.

Janine Adams: 00:04:37

Yeah.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:04:38

Yep.

Janine Adams: 00:04:39

Well, I'm the same way. I mean, I love not doing anything when I visit someone.

All I want to do, you know, I mean, I sometimes make you take me places in Portland when I come, because there's shopping that I like to do in Portland, but really I just want to sit around and talk.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:04:55

Yeah.

Janine Adams: 00:04:56

And so. And so that's the thing. If you're the host, it might be nice to know that is true of your guests.

It might may or may not be true, but you don't have to come up with the perfect options for sightseeing or the perfect food. I mean, it's kind of nice to know what hot beverage they like in the morning. So you can provide the caffeine if caffeine is required.

You're an easy house guest because you don't require caffeine in the morning.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:05:25

Yeah, but.

Janine Adams: 00:05:27

But really, everyone's more comfortable when the host is comfortable. Right, right. And if the host is stressing out, then.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:05:35

Yeah, then it's less fun as a guest. And maybe that's a good thing to remember when you're hosting.

Is it, like, the more relaxed you can be, the easier it will be for your guest, the more pleasant the experience will be for your guest.

Janine Adams: 00:05:53

Yeah, Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah. I just had three friends over to play a game last night, two nights ago, and the invitation was for cocktails, game and takeout.

So expectations were set and we ordered in and the food took solid twice as long as they said it would. That was okay. It was at the end of the evening, and it was really fun and casual and we had a good time.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:06:25

Right. Well. And I've enjoyed some of your regular game nights, and it's so much fun.

And, like, people aren't coming, I mean, unless they've been promised that Barry's gonna cook, that they're not expecting a gourmet meal. I mean, that's not why I wanna spend time with my friends.

Janine Adams: 00:06:46

Right, Right. Yeah. Unless it's an invitation for a gourmet meal. Right. And then in our case, Barry, what did make the cocktails. So that was good. And.

And he met their expectations.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:06:58

I do express. Expect a craft cocktail when. Yeah, when Barry's bartending.

Janine Adams: 00:07:04

Right, Exactly. If I'm bartending, you'll get a nice glass of wine. Or. Yes. Maybe not even that nice a glass of wine.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:07:11

You'll get a glass of whatever wine is open. Open, and you'll be happy. And I would be happy. And I am happy, because I'm getting to enjoy a glass of wine with you.

Janine Adams: 00:07:22

Exactly. That's the point. And then with the house, with people spending the night, that's another level of. Of stress. But, you know, setting some.

Like in our case.

Well, when we lived in our old house, we didn't have the guest room cleaned regularly by the cleaners because the house was so big and we didn't use it. So. So I would have them clean it the time before.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:07:52

The cleaners, not the guests.

Janine Adams: 00:07:55

Right. Although, remember that one time you got in early and I hadn't vacuumed? Do you remember this?

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:08:00

Vaguely.

Janine Adams: 00:08:02

Yeah. It was mortifying. Like, I was about to vacuum and you said, oh, we just landed. I'm like, oh, I have to go pick you up at the airport.

And I think, I don't know, maybe I never vacuumed.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:08:12

I don't remember.

Janine Adams: 00:08:13

Maybe knowing you, you probably vacuumed.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:08:16

I have no recollection.

I mean, I sort of have a vague recollection of you sort of being stressed out that you weren't able to do something that you wanted to do before I got there. No memory of a floor needing to be vacuumed, which is really. Disproves the point.

Janine Adams: 00:08:34

Exactly.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:08:35

I'm not there for the clean house.

Janine Adams: 00:08:38

That's right. And this is a dozen years later. And I. Or probably more than that. And I still remember it. I still remember the mortification. So I should get.

I'm just gonna thank you for telling me you don't remember. I'll let it go.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:08:50

Yeah. And I'm not just saying that I. I Honestly, I don't remember. And it doesn't. It doesn't matter.

I mean, but you know, I've stressed out the same way, like, oh, I wasn't able to do this, or I couldn't do that before you or someone else arrived. And then I'm like, whenever.

Janine Adams: 00:09:09

Right. Not what they're here for matters. Yeah, that's not what they're here for.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:09:14

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to remember, but I think it's so true.

And you know, if, if, like, if I visited you and there was something like that, that need to be done, I would help you. I would rather help you do it than have you stress out ahead of time trying to do something.

Janine Adams: 00:09:36

Yeah, Right. Thank you. That makes me think about how all the things you did when you stayed with me after Barry's surgery.

And I also just thought of some of my organizing clients and. Do you know who Flylady is? Yeah. Yeah. So her. She's a. I don't know if she.

Even if she's still around, but she used to advise people with messy homes on how to keep their homes clean. And she talked about chaos, can't have anybody over syndrome. And how I think I was this way at one point where I wouldn't want.

I would be afraid someone would drop by and. And I have to, like, pick up the, I don't know, wrappers by the tv.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:10:16

Right.

Janine Adams: 00:10:16

Or whatever was. I was embarrassed by. And what I learned in my life and then as an organizer is, yeah, people don't care.

But also, you can probably pick up most people give you a little notice, and you can probably, in 10 or 15 minutes, whip your place into shape so that it's not embarrassing. Yeah.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:10:35

Yeah. Didn't we have a product once, the Quick Clutter Fix?

Janine Adams: 00:10:42

Clutter Fix. We did, yeah.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:10:44

And it was sort of a 15 minute thing of how to kind of quickly declutter a space when you needed a clear space.

Janine Adams: 00:10:57

That's right. I had forgotten about that. Was it an audio with a printed.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:11:03

I believe it was. It's probably something that we could make available again if that's useful to people.

Janine Adams: 00:11:11

Yeah, maybe so. I'm sure we could resurrect it from the archives.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:11:17

Yeah, I'm sure. It's probably so dated we might want to listen to it again.

But for sure we have a. I think we have a one pager that went along with it that we could make available to people.

Janine Adams: 00:11:32

Yeah, we could put that. Stick that in the show notes.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:11:34

Yeah.

Janine Adams: 00:11:35

I can't believe I forgot about that.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:11:37

Yeah, but it's just, as I recall, a quick way for a situation like this. Like you have company coming and you need to clear clutter. And it's a way to do it that lets you get it done without.

Like I would be prone to do falling into. Instead of a 15 minute, you know, let's tidy things real quickly, you know, a three hour.

I like have pulled everything out of my closet and right now things are worse than when I started.

Janine Adams: 00:12:10

And then the doorbell rings, right?

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:12:18

Yeah.

It's funny that we have really close friends in the neighborhood that will sometimes drop by, but people don't really drop by the way they used to say before the Internet and cell phones. I remember when I was a kid and like someone would turn into the driveway and my mom would be like, oh, pick up the papers.

Because also we had newspapers and did.

Janine Adams: 00:12:48

You get more than one paper every day or is it.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:12:51

No, I think it was that there might be more than a day's paper hanging around that, you know, in various stages of having been read. And, and. And that was more of a kind of a fill in for like, you know, do a quick pickup of everything.

Janine Adams: 00:13:10

The papers.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:13:11

Yeah.

Janine Adams: 00:13:12

It's true that the houses, our houses are less cluttered than when we got a daily paper back then. There was always. There were always. My parents got two papers a day.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:13:21

Oh my gosh.

Janine Adams: 00:13:22

So I know, right? The Walla Walla paper was huge and the Spokane paper, which was slightly less small, but they each got to do a crossword puzzle.

My mom got the morning and my dad got the. They wrote morning and evening papers, so they each got to do a crossword puzzle. But yeah, that was always a thing was to pick up the papers.

I'm remembering that now. Yeah.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:13:42

Yeah. You know, it's funny thinking about this.

For a long time I had on sort of my goal list, like, you know, how I wanted to be living my life to have a guest ready home where I didn't have to get stressed out and do a bunch of stuff if someone was coming over that it was just sort of ready. And I hadn't really realized it, but my house is pretty guest ready most of the time.

Like someone could drop in or, you know, someone could say, I'm gonna be in town tomorrow and I could easily welcome them in without feeling stressed about it. And that's. That's a big deal.

Janine Adams: 00:14:27

Yeah, that's excellent. That's living. That's living with ease, isn't it? And that's about just sort of.

You have your routine of putting your bed, your house to bed every night, and you're just that little picking up. And also maybe a little. I don't know about. For you, but for me, anyway, lowering of my standards a little bit. Like, it's. I'm just.

Don't get embarrassed like I used to. But I also think maybe I'm. Maybe in the apartment, there's. We have less stuff, so it's a little easier.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:14:58

It has taken some time of.

Of decluttering and organizing and, you know, making sure that everything has a place so it's easy to put it back in its place and getting in the habit of doing that. And as my husband likes to say, the job isn't done until the tools are put away. And, you know, sort of.

Janine Adams: 00:15:20

Your husband's adorable. He's so cute. I am going to try to remember that. That's excellent. I think. I don't know what Barry would say if I said that to him, but I might try it.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:15:31

Well, it's really funny. For years he'd say, the job isn't done until the tools are put away. And he goes, that's my dad saying. And I thought that he was saying that.

That's what his dad always said.

Janine Adams: 00:15:44

Yeah, that's what I figured you meant.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:15:46

No, that was the phrase that he wanted to be what our kids, as they went off into their lives, like, oh, my dad always said, the job's not done till the tools are put away.

Janine Adams: 00:15:59

Any idea whether they say that?

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:16:01

They do. They mostly say it like, sort of jokingly.

Janine Adams: 00:16:06

But it's stuck. Yeah, it's stuck. That's excellent. So I like that. I like that. That's a great. I mean, it's great for like, kitchen cleaning up.

And when I write postcards to voters, I have this whole thing that comes out that I actually am good about putting away every time because otherwise it's just a big mess. But yeah, the key is, is like you said, having a place to put it away. Right, right.

That's for me, that's where actually where I was able to get from messy to less messy because I had a place. And then.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:16:39

Right.

Janine Adams: 00:16:40

Try to create the habit of putting.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:16:42

Stuff away and you don't have to get there overnight. It took me a long time of. Of sort of sort of setting that goal for myself to be there. And.

And it's still like, you know, yesterday I was doing a big yard project and I was done and I did not want to put everything away, and I was really tempted to not do that. And then I said, in my head. And Mike will be so happy. I don't think I even told him that I said this in my head. Job's not done until you.

The tools are put away. And I put everything away. And then. And then it allowed me to relax fully after having done it.

We redid our backyard, and so it's not uncommon to have someone walk through the. The walkway on the side of our house where I had intended to leave all of my tools.

And then I would have to feel like apologizing and making sure someone doesn't trip and all.

And I didn't have to worry about it because I put everything away, rolled up the hose, and it was all clear should someone happen by, and I want to show them the backyard.

Janine Adams: 00:17:56

There you go. You can show off your yard. I mean, that's great. Yeah.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:18:01

Yeah, I like it.

Janine Adams: 00:18:02

And you could apply that axiom to your desk at the end of the workday, could you not?

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:18:06

I certainly could. You're really helping me figure out what needs to be in place for me to clear off my desk at the end of the day.

Janine Adams: 00:18:16

It's such a rewarding morning when you do it, so.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:18:19

I know. I know.

Janine Adams: 00:18:21

Your future self will thank you.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:18:23

Oh, yeah, because right now, my future self curses her past self. Like, why didn't you put this away?

Janine Adams: 00:18:32

Come on. How am I supposed to get to work? There's crap all over the place. Right.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:18:38

But all of this, like, feeds into this. This idea of making it easy on yourself to be a good host, you know, it is. It's lowering your expectations. But that doesn't mean.

That doesn't have to mean, you know, like, not caring if your house is dirty or messy or whatever.

It just means not worrying about the stuff that doesn't matter and reminding yourself what really matters, which is the connection with the people who are coming over.

Janine Adams: 00:19:15

Right.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:19:16

And also making it easy so it's not stressful. So putting things away as you go and making sure you have a home for things. In our guest room, I put the sheets. There's a storage.

Like a storage drawer under the bed, and I put the sheets for the bed in that storage drawer instead of where the rest of our sheets are. So it's super easy to change the linens. Yeah. And often I will, because we have overnight guests so infrequently.

I feel like if I put clean sheets on and then I don't have someone stay for three months, I would need to change them again. I will often leave the dirty sheets. I mean, you know, they're not Dirty, but they use sheets on the bed until it's. Until I have a guest coming.

Janine Adams: 00:20:10

That's exactly what I did, too, when I had a guest room. Yeah. Two things popped into my mind while you were talking. One, if you make it easy on yourself, you're more likely to have the pleasure of hosting.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:20:23

Right. So that's.

Janine Adams: 00:20:24

That, that's nice. And two, if you're a person who loves going that extra mile, that's okay, too.

So I like my friend Denise, who's the most amazing host, and she's just loves providing all the things and I love being a guest at her house, but. So I don't want to. I know she listens to the podcast. I don't want her to feel like her efforts are in vain because they are not. But.

So it's great to do that. But if you're not that person, just making your guests comfortable is what it's all about.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:20:57

Yeah. Yeah. And. And I think that's it. It's doing whatever part of that makes you happy and letting go of the rest. So. Yeah.

You know, if it feels stressful, what part of that can you let go of?

Janine Adams: 00:21:17

Right. Rather than rejecting, rather than rejecting hosting altogether because it's stressful.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:21:24

Right.

Janine Adams: 00:21:24

You can make it less stressful.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:21:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's. That's great. And I, I always feel well cared for it as a guest in your home.

Janine Adams: 00:21:38

Oh, Shannon, thank you very much. So that's very sweet. And, and of course that maybe it's not of course, but I feel the same way at your house.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:21:47

Well, that's wonderful. And you know, we are, we are not elevating the standards in, in how we're hosting, so.

Janine Adams: 00:21:55

Right, exactly.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:22:00

So we would love to hear from you, our listeners. Do you enjoy hosting?

Do you feel like you can't host, you can't have guests over, whether it's, you know, for an afternoon or a dinner or overnight because of how you feel like your home looks or whatever. You can let us know on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube at getting to Good Enough.

You can send us an email@gettingtogoodenoughmail.com or you can let us hear your delightful voice and leave us a message at 413-424-GTGE. Thanks for joining us on Getting to Good Enough. We hope you heard something that makes your life just a little bit easier.

If you did, leave us a review or share this with someone who's looking for their own version of Good Enough.

Janine Adams: 00:22:55

Thanks for listening. See you soon.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:23:06

And that's it.

Janine Adams: 00:23:09

Hope to hear from you.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:23:10

Yeah. We need to go back. I guess I need to just say our old tagline. Because I like it. Yeah.

Janine Adams: 00:23:16

Say it.

Shannon Wilkinson: 00:23:16

Yeah. So for now, we hope that good enough is getting easier for you.

Janine Adams: 00:23:25

Yeah.