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020: Organising holidays
528 Plays5 years ago
This episode will help make planning and preparing for your holiday more efficient so you can get away smoothly and make the most of your time away
While many of the listener survey respondents didn’t feel that booking holidays was life admin, Dinah and Mia firmly believe it qualifies, given all the research, comparing, booking, planning, communicating and organisation involved.
This episode includes a heap of hacks in four areas relating to holidays: planning, booking, preparing and enjoying a holiday.
Mia and Dinah give tips on planning a holiday including:
- booking in advance and taking into consideration public holiday opportunities
- setting a budget and saving to meet your goal
- websites to use to assess the impact of timing on costs
- how to efficiently plan trips with friends and family.
They discuss tips to do with:
- Using frequent flyer points
- using travel insurance provided with credit card accounts
- Using boutique travel agencies that really know your destination
- storing all your holiday booking info.
When preparing for a holiday Mia and Dinah talk about all the hacks they use to make leaving the house as stress-free as possible including:
- Packing Lists and other To Do Lists
- packing techniques
- Making the most of the facilities in a hotel
- How to remember all the things you need to do before you head out
- Getting activities for your kids organised before you leave.
While on holiday they discuss Dinah’s hack of giving an allowance to her kids at the beginning of the holiday.
LIFE ADMIN HIGHS OF THE WEEK- Dinah talks about finally embracing Siri to add to reminders on her phone
- Mia talks about reserving library books online to encourage her to read more and foster her daughter's reading habit
- Dinah talks about the hassles or returning internet shopping including her dread of the post office
- The Art of Travel - Alain de Botton
- Point hacks website - website on how to earn and make the most of frequent flyer points
- Seat Guru website - website to find the best seat on planes
- Life Admin Life Hacks episode on Scheduling
- Life Admin Life Hacks episode on To Do Lists
- Life Admin Life Hacks episode on Shared Cloud Storage - Going Paperless
- Tripit - App to store travel itineraries
- Lonely Pets Club - Pet Sitting Service
Please head to the Life Admin Life Hacks Facebook page to connect with listeners and share your thoughts, questions or suggestions.
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Transcript
Energy Efficiency Tips by Georgia Power
00:00:00
Speaker
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Introduction to Life Admin Podcast
00:00:30
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips, and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money, and improve your household harmony. I'm Dinah Rae Roberts, an operations manager who loves having at least one holiday always booked to have something to look forward to. I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer, and I love nothing better than a change of scene.
00:00:57
Speaker
This set will help make planning and preparing for your holiday more efficient and save you money. Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks.
Evolution of Holiday Planning
00:01:06
Speaker
I am actually old enough to remember booking my first holidays as an adult, which involved going to the travel agent and getting some brochures and then just going back and leaving it to the travel agent to book it all for them. And I must admit, it was a little bit easier then.
00:01:24
Speaker
Absolutely, I have fond memories of going into STA travel with my little student card and saying I want to go to Thailand and this is what I'm thinking of going and then you just get
00:01:34
Speaker
You know, you go back a week later and they've got an itinerary and made the bookings and do you miss the travel agent? The immediacy of doing it yourself outweigh the convenience of someone else doing it for you. You know, I think their research says that it does save you some money, but I do think there's still a place for travel agents if you're really busy.
Understanding Holiday Planning as Life Admin
00:01:52
Speaker
So only 45% of our survey respondents considered booking a holiday life admin, which really surprised me.
00:01:59
Speaker
65% was solely responsible for organizing holidays, while for 28% it's a shared task. And I could only interpret this to mean that because it's kind of a pleasant activity, people don't feel like it's a drag, and so they don't think it's life admin.
00:02:17
Speaker
But in our household, I'm the one that makes holidays happen. And I think that even though I find this a joyous thing to do, it's definitely life admin because there can be quite a lot of research.
Avoiding Holiday Planning Stress
00:02:28
Speaker
I'm comparing places, prices and booking and planning. So this communication that has to happen. There's definitely a lot of organization involved.
00:02:37
Speaker
Now, I love having holidays to look forward to, but I also really need to do quite a lot of work to plan it in advance. Otherwise, it can be so stressful if you don't really do all of the admin and get organized. You sort of leave it to the last minute, leaving the house. You can actually take the first few days of your holiday to recover from the trauma of actually getting out the tour.
00:03:02
Speaker
I know. Those people who work themselves to death trying to get the loose ends tied up before they go on holiday and literally probably take three days of the holiday just to get their adrenaline levels down. I have definitely been there.
00:03:18
Speaker
I think to organize a great holiday you need a little bit of self-awareness and know what kinds of holidays you like because there are some people who think nothing better than going camping for other people that sounds like an utter drag. You know if you've got a physical activity holiday or a nature adventure or a flop and drop where you're lined by a pool with a cocktail or some kind of urban adventure where you're going to a city and you're sitting in galleries and going to museums
00:03:44
Speaker
or maybe you just need a romantic holiday, or a staycation, or a road trip, or a treat. Like, really have a think about what kinds of holidays work for you.
00:03:54
Speaker
And also think about what things spoil a holiday for you, because it's nothing worse than planning and saving and taking time out of work, going on holiday, and there's these little pain points that happen. So for some people, it's like the airport stress them out, getting to the airport, going through the lines, the baggage, everything about it stresses them out. Or you might just panic about the time. You might want to be back getting bored.
00:04:20
Speaker
Some people find that they've overscheduled their holiday. They don't have enough privacy or solitude on the holiday. They can't actually get away from the people that they're with. You might not have enough downtime. You might be stuck out with the tourist crowds. You might not like eating out all the time. And these are things you need to plan into your holiday as well and understand, okay, so how are you going to avoid these things? Are there things you can organize?
00:04:46
Speaker
Or are there ways that you can just reset your expectations so that you can make your holiday worthwhile because they are precious, precious little things.
Choosing Travel Companions
00:04:56
Speaker
And I think another one to think about is who you should go on holiday with, because obviously there's your own immediate family, your partner and your children. But often people do go on holidays with friends or with other family.
00:05:09
Speaker
and really thinking about whether you want to use all of your holidays doing that or whether you want to have some of your holidays with just your own immediate family or even with just your partner.
00:05:19
Speaker
or just yourself. You know, I've taken quite a few holidays when I've just gone by myself. I went up to Queensland one time where I was really just going up there to do like a paddy dive course and I went by myself and it was blissful. But by the end of it, I actually got a little bit bored and I realised, you know, a couple of days
00:05:39
Speaker
by myself would have been fine topping and tailing a family holiday, because I did miss sharing some of my experiences with other people and, you know, being able to reminisce or notice something and talk about it at the time. So, yeah, it's good to know yourself. There's a great book, The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton. He's a sort of pop philosopher.
00:06:02
Speaker
And the book is really well written, talks about why we should go on holiday and how we could be more fulfilled doing so. It sort of dares to ask the question, what's the point of travel on holidays and how can you get the most out of your journey so that you come back and you really do feel like you've had some kind of rejuvenating, fun experience?
Top Hacks for Holiday Planning
00:06:23
Speaker
So this app, we're going to focus on four areas, yeah?
00:06:27
Speaker
Yeah, so I think there are four areas we're gonna give our top hacks in. Planning, so where and when to go, actually booking the holiday, once you've booked preparing to go on holiday and once you're on holiday. So planning, Mia, what's your thoughts on planning?
00:06:42
Speaker
Well let me just say I've always admired how far in advance you plan. Like I remember talking to you once about the fact that you had spent the weekend with a big year calendar out in front of you and your husband and you had planned
00:06:59
Speaker
every long weekend, you talked about the school holidays, you knew what you were doing. And it's so exciting to be able to know what's in the pipeline. Sometimes there's long weekends, there's public holidays to sneak up on you and you don't realize till the Thursday that you've got a long weekend and you're like, oh my God, opportunity wasted. Yeah. So we really have got, and we've got a few traditions of specific long weekends that we spend with specific people.
00:07:26
Speaker
doing a camping trip or a house trip. And those are the really great things to look forward to. And because we know they're going to happen every year, it's really easy to schedule them in and to make sure that we get planning as soon as possible so we can go and get the best deal that we can.
00:07:42
Speaker
I remember on the Gretchen Rubin happiness podcast one of her happiness tips was recommending a default holiday where you have the same type of holiday in the same place at the same time of view with the same people and you just lock it in. So I guess I like to plan at the start of a year
00:07:58
Speaker
and take advantage of the long lead time to get better prices and choice and just have a bit more flexibility. And I do love the fact that then you can anticipate it and look forward to for months, weeks or months. So I do sort of do a scan, check the dates of the long weekends and public holidays and the school holidays. And sometimes our school gives out the curriculum days in advance as well, days where the kids don't have to go to school and they can often be on a long weekend or next to a public holiday. So it gives us extra time.
00:08:28
Speaker
I also use things like Google Flights and Skyscanner to see airfare trends and that way I can track cheap flights to my preferred destinations. So if I put in, you know, I want to go to Fiji and it will give me a graph that shows me month by month what the prices do.
00:08:49
Speaker
for fares to Fiji. And I can think, OK, well, I can see that flights that leave on a Monday are usually cheaper. It all slumps down in September. So maybe I'll go then I'll get a good deal. And then, of course, you can just sign up to alert so that when airfares go on sale for the various airlines, you're getting the good deals.
Involving Children in Holiday Planning
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, I've also used that I'm using my frequent flight points to sort of optimize how I use them for flights.
00:09:17
Speaker
And I've recently started looking at, there's a website called pointhacks.com.au which has got really good tips on both how to earn and use your frequent flyer points. So we try and use our frequent flyer points for one holiday a year to get our flights, which obviously is really good from a cost perspective. And we also do have a rough annual budget in mind when we're thinking about booking holidays.
00:09:42
Speaker
I guess that also gives us some incentive to save so that we know that that's what the money's for. And it makes saving easier when you've got a goal, particularly for a big holiday. We've got a big five-week overseas holiday plan this year. And it does make it easier to say, oh, actually we won't go out for dinner because we've got this big trip at the end of the year.
00:10:01
Speaker
We're particularly starting to involve the kids more and more about some of the decisions because if you take them on a holiday somewhere that they don't want to go as they get older it can actually ruin your experience. We have been really involving them both in deciding where we're going to go but also what we're going to do when we get there. We also have a lot of holidays where we're involving other people so some of my husband's family lives overseas
00:10:28
Speaker
And so often when we're doing an overseas trip, it's involving others does make things more complicated because you're trying to work around other people's dates. And so one of the things we've done for two of the more recent holidays we've had involving others is set up a WhatsApp group quite early in the process so that everyone can share their own plans about what they're wanting to do. And it's a really good collaborative way of finally getting decisions about when we're all going to be together and when
00:10:57
Speaker
how that's all going to happen. Yeah great. So when your booking trips, do you tend to make all the bookings? How does it play out in your household? So I probably do do most of the legwork but actually when we've been doing some of these longer trips, so two years ago we went to Africa on a big trip and this year we're going to America and to England,
00:11:21
Speaker
And so how we've decided to divide this up is we really divide the booking responsibilities of specific destinations. So on our on our trip that we're doing now, I'm organizing the little Paris stopover and whereas my husband's going to organize the skiing part when we're going skiing in Colorado. So I think that's really good in terms of we've booked the flights together and agreed where we're going to go.
00:11:45
Speaker
But in particular locations, we're each taking care of part of the holiday, which really divides up the responsibilities. One thing I keep in mind when booking is if I want to use frequent flyer points, really need to book a year out and be flexible about the dates. So you might not exclusively be able to go within school holidays. And I found if you do it over the phone, you have a much better chance of actually finding available flights.
00:12:10
Speaker
The sales reps from the airlines will work a bit harder to find you flights so you can all travel together and use up all your points in a wise way.
00:12:19
Speaker
I've also found when I'm booking that often my credit card includes travel insurance. So in the past when I've had to buy extra travel insurance, now I find that I'm booking for my entire family, both the accommodation and the flights and travel insurance is part of that. And we always have to remember to print out or write down, take a photo of the phone number and the live chat to call the travel insurance when you're overseas.
00:12:47
Speaker
Have you used the Seat Guru website to look at the different seats on flights? No, I've never used that. So what do you use that for, Mia?
00:12:55
Speaker
seat guru you can put in the flight number and it will tell you for that model plane and that the best seats to get and the seats to avoid so if you don't want a seat that's near the toilets or you want a seat that's not got some kind of obstructed view or got one of those weird black boxes at your feet that's got some kind of communications boxy thing in it it just has all those little tips so are you one of those people that likes to book their travel and accommodation
00:13:25
Speaker
the first place they stay and then kind of book as they go or do you like lock it all down before you leave the house? I definitely lock it all down before I leave the house. I definitely wasn't like that when I was younger but I think when you've got kids the thought of not knowing where you're gonna sleep that night it just it's just too much stress for me. I definitely know myself and I know that that's not enjoyable so I definitely
00:13:52
Speaker
look at every night's accommodation. We might not know exactly what activities we're going to do every day, but we usually have a general idea, too, of every destination we're going, of what things we're going to want to do while we're there, even if it's just we're going here and all we're going to do is hang out on the beach and go swimming. We really know that in advance. What about
Apps and Services for Travel Organization
00:14:12
Speaker
you, Mia? Do you like to book everything before you go?
00:14:15
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. I don't want to be doing any kind of work on the holiday if it's just working out which hotel we're going to next. I do like to contact friends and get their recommendations for restaurants or attractions, anything they want to recommend. As soon as I booked the trip, I asked people, you know, what shall I see or where should we eat? And then either make reservations for those things,
00:14:37
Speaker
or I buy tickets in advance. Sometimes I've sent a list to the concierge. If we're staying at a hotel, I'll send the list to the concierge so that they can make the reservations and just prepare an itinerary for you. And then when you check in, they're like, tonight you're going to dinner here. And then we have a driver organizing your visit to this attraction, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's brilliant.
00:15:01
Speaker
That is brilliant. And if you're sort of going a bit more down market and Airbnb-ing it, you can use some boutique travel agencies that can do similar things, usually for quite a minimal charge. We've used one when we've been in Bali who's organized drivers and day trips for us. And actually I'm using a
00:15:23
Speaker
travel agent who charges a per day fee if you don't stay in a Disney hotel, but for our trip to Orlando, who actually optimizes your time within the theme parks. So they had a called glass slipper concierge, which I found quite amusing. And they will actually plan out your whole Orlando theme park experience for a small fee, which really, you know, to make the most of that big investment, I definitely think is worth it.
00:15:49
Speaker
So do they tell you which ride to go on and then where to go next? Yeah, so they talk to you about your ages of your children and what they're into and then they tell you which theme parks you should go to and which tickets you should buy and which order you should do the rides in. Oh my gosh.
00:16:06
Speaker
how you skip the queues and how you sort of make the most of your time so you know where you're going, what nights you should go to entertainment, at what park. They also will make restaurant reservations for you because in those theme parks there's specific places you might want to eat at Harry Potter World or if you have younger children you might want to have lunch with the princesses.
00:16:31
Speaker
I'm finding that they really can optimise what's, you know, it's going to be quite an investment in that week of being in Florida. So we might as well make the most of it. So using those basic... That could be your job, like being a Disney specialist and you just know these theme parks inside out and where to eat.
00:16:48
Speaker
It's got to be some dream job for someone. I think it's also unlike longer trips like you're taking. I do like to sort of mix up, not that I've been on a long enough trip for a while, but mix up hotel stays with Airbnb or apartment stays so you can cook for yourself and do some laundry. And if kids can access toys and playgrounds and you've got more room to flop and a bit more privacy, you can just sort of quieten the pace for a minute.
00:17:15
Speaker
Let everyone get a bit grounded. OK, so once you've made all your bookings, where are you storing it all? Are you printing out itineraries so you've got hard copy evidence of your bookings? I can't imagine that you're doing the paper thing these days. Definitely not. So I'm really using the Google Drive that I've set up for our all of our admin paperwork. It's great, particularly when my husband and I are both booking parts of the holiday because we both save the documents into the same shared folder.
00:17:44
Speaker
So it really makes it easy for us to access the information as the trip goes on. I have heard of some people using an app called TripIt where you can send the documents, your travel bookings to the app and it populates the itinerary for you, but I've never tried it myself.
Packing and Preparing for Holidays
00:18:00
Speaker
I haven't. I haven't had journeys that have been complicated enough to require an app.
00:18:05
Speaker
I don't need to rectify that. But yes, I've had the same thing that you just, as the emails come through from your airline or your accommodation or wherever, you can forward it to the app and you can book things like Uber or like ride sharing and rental cars within the app and so forth. So what do you do to prepare? The holiday's booked, you've got your dates, you know what you're doing, what do you do next?
00:18:29
Speaker
So you're the one who actually got me into this in terms of making standardized to-do lists or lists within my to-do list app that have both packing lists, but also preparing for holiday lists. And I really start to, as soon as I've booked the flights, I'm really populating one of those sets of lists or template lists for this particular trip, particularly for the preparation list, not so much the packing list.
00:18:57
Speaker
So that I'm really getting on to things like making sure we've got visas and thinking about booking our dog into a kennel or organizing someone to look after her really early as soon as we've booked the holiday so that I don't leave it all to the last minute. I do have packing lists for different types of holidays. So there's like a beach list, an overseas list, a camping list, a ski list, covers all the clothes and shoes but all the
00:19:24
Speaker
all the equipment and books and tech you might need. And on that list I've just added traveling with a power board.
00:19:33
Speaker
because we get to places and there's never enough PowerPoints or they're always in weird spots and we need to charge all our devices every night and people fight and cry if they can't have 100% and they wake up in the morning. Yeah, and I also have a departure list for leaving the house to deal with plants and animals and mail and security and remember to empty out the pantry and the bins and stuff.
00:19:56
Speaker
And then, yeah, a prep list. I want to notify my bank that I'm going away. If I'm going somewhere slightly dodgy, I might sign up on that DFAT Smart Traveller website. I usually share my itinerary with someone and think about what money options I'm going to need. And I probably start packing about a week out if we're taking
00:20:16
Speaker
ship somewhere for more than a couple of days, put the bag somewhere out of the way so I can start adding items spontaneously and mark them off the list as I go.
00:20:27
Speaker
Yeah, I find the prep list is probably the most important list for me. And I always add things to it for every holiday because I learn new lessons. So a few things that I've added to the list recently are downloading the Google Maps for the destination that we're going to so that you don't have to be able to access Wi-Fi.
00:20:46
Speaker
Making sure I cancel our newspaper delivery, we still get our papers delivered on the weekends. So often in the past, I've forgotten to do that, which is just a pain. And also finding someone to look after our indoor plants so that they don't die, particularly if we're going for a long holiday over the summer.
00:21:06
Speaker
We have used a service called Lonely Pets Club, where they come and they'll visit the pet, they'll give it a feed and a cuddle and take it for a walk if it needs walking. And they'll also water your plants and collect your mail. So there are services like that that, you know, do all those things for you. If you don't have a lovely neighbour or relative. Yeah.
00:21:27
Speaker
And one thing I've also done is I have saved all of our passports into our password manager. So in last pass, you can save secure documents. So as soon as I've booked flights, I often just take a quick glance at those passports just to make sure that the expiry dates are all good, because I've heard so many stories of people booking holidays and then realizing a few days before their passports aren't going to be valid for the trip or one of their children's passports expiring.
00:21:56
Speaker
Yes, that'll be referring to me this time. Might be. Yeah. We took a trip spontaneous last minute booking to Mauritius and three days before we're going to leave, I got my kids passports out. My daughter's passport had expired and I nearly cried. I've never
00:22:17
Speaker
I've never screamed on a phone like I did to my husband, like, we've got to get to the passport office like now. But you know what? They turned around with no fuss when we got to the passport office. This is a total non-secretary. When we got to the passport office, there was someone that was leaving on a flight that night who needed a passport. So, you know, we had three whole days. It felt quite luxurious. He's throwing off money at the problem. They will find you a passport.
00:22:46
Speaker
Anywho, that is now obviously on my list of things to check.
Traveling with Children
00:22:50
Speaker
Other little chips I try to follow is we pretty much have toiletry kits for everyone in the house that we don't unpack ever. There's just toothbrushes and conditioner and hair elastics and whatever people need so that we can just grab them and go. I think in terms of keeping the kids organized in the past, we've hired things at the destination that they might need. When they were littler, it was things like prams and high chairs, but even if we think they're going to need
00:23:15
Speaker
specific groceries, you know, things that they want to eat or if we can tee up like a gaming console or something. We book that all ahead. So it's waiting for us at the destination, especially if we're going like to a holiday house somewhere local or staying in an apartment somewhere and we can know we can go online and do some grocery shopping. So I've got some food when we don't have to go shopping as the first task. It's always pleasant.
00:23:41
Speaker
And I also use the packing lists to really involve the kids so that they really get involved in the packing process and they have their own suitcase so that they can be carrying their own luggage and sharing the load. Where we've had
00:23:58
Speaker
larger suitcases so that they haven't been able to fit all of their clothes in a small wheelie. We've used color-coded packing cells so that they can find their own belongings within a larger shared suitcase and know that in the little blue packing cell is where their underwear is or where their t-shirts are so that they can easily find them and also know where that they need to go back to if they're putting things away. Another really good tip is
00:24:25
Speaker
If you're having one overnight stay, so often when we've done a road trip, like a long road trip, we've driven to Queensland a couple of times and we're staying just one night. I have one bag that's just got everyone's pyjamas and toiletries and one change of clothes in it. So when we get to a one night overnight stay, we don't have to unpack all of the luggage and then repack it all. We just have to use that one suitcase. Yeah, clever. Do you offer kids pack lots of different activities in their luggage? Like are they putting
00:24:55
Speaker
heaps of books and lego sets, what are they taking with them? Books is definitely a big one for us so we're carrying a lot of books and so particularly my son I make him carry them himself in a backpack because otherwise he will bring 20. But we also take card games which are great for us and when they were little I used to always have
00:25:20
Speaker
some paper and some pencils or textures which you can use for drawing or for you know tic-tac-toe or any sorts of games and having that slipped into your backpack is really helpful. I'm a big fan of audiobooks. I either download audiobooks to a phone or a tablet. Sometimes I find them on iTunes or Spotify but our library also uses the BorrowBox app
00:25:44
Speaker
where you can borrow audio books and stream them on your phone. There's always Lego traveling with us. And I usually get those creator three-in-one sets. I'll buy a new one if we're going somewhere for a lengthy period of time. So they can make three different things out of the one box. We'll just bring some Lego from home. And yeah, there's always activity books and novels and comics in the backpacks as well. So my kids tend to take a backpack and a little wheelie case.
00:26:12
Speaker
And the other thing that we've started doing is using the download feature on Netflix. So each of the kids has an iPad to use when we're traveling and you can download a whole bunch of TV series and movies so they can watch them even if you're not connected to Wi-Fi. Yeah, that's brilliant to know.
00:26:35
Speaker
And I've got that on my prep list. And so it's a really, it's a good prompt, you know, a few days before to make sure you've really thought about doing that because you don't want to be doing it the morning you're heading to the airport. Yeah. So once you're on holiday, is there anything that you're doing when you're actually on holiday that's, you know, a bit more than the admin front?
00:26:55
Speaker
OK, that's not really admin, but one of the things that we've done a few times now, and we'll definitely be doing it on our next big trip, is we agree at the beginning of the holiday that the children have an allowance. It might be $50 or it might even be more if it's a long holiday. And we give that to them for them to buy whatever souvenirs they want, gifts for their friends or any treats.
00:27:19
Speaker
that might be food that they want to buy outside of meals. And it really just stops them asking you all the time, can I have this? Can I buy that? Can I buy this? It teaches them a little bit of budgeting. And it also, it's the children's characters play it in different ways. My daughter tends to buy gifts for all of her friends using the money. And my son brings the money home to spend the game on his Xbox.
00:27:44
Speaker
But I feel like that's much better than being pestered all the time in every, you know, attraction gift shop, whether they can buy a tacky souvenir. Oh, yeah. My son was all about the shark tooth necklace, the last place we went, asked every day, could I have a shark tooth necklace? Oh, my God, if you must. And my daughter, yeah, she just wanted to buy little bangles and things to give to people at school. Funny.
00:28:10
Speaker
I don't know where that shark tooth necklace is now. It was like a, you know, a must have item that has never been seen again. Brilliant. Well, I look forward to planning upcoming holidays and using some of these tips to have the ultimate holiday.
Life Admin Hacks for Everyday Efficiency
00:28:28
Speaker
Dana, talk me now through your life admin high of the week.
00:28:33
Speaker
I've been inspired again by you Mia, cause I've seen you a few times using Siri to add things to notes or reminders. And I've started to use Siri more and more, particularly to remember specific things as I'm getting ready to go out of the house or on the weekends to remind me to do something. So, and I've really got my husband into it as well. It makes a big difference just to sort of make sure you don't forget those small little tasks. And you Mia, a life admin high.
00:29:02
Speaker
Yeah, I'm so glad that I can help with my wonderful example of having my children look like that. Okay, I'm just going to do a shout out to something really nerdy, which is reserving library books online. I just love it. I love the fact that I can get on there and search up an author that one of my kids has fallen in love with, find all the books, reserve them all, and be notified when they're ready to collect at my library.
00:29:32
Speaker
So the kids have been devouring books lately, and if they find an author that they like, they just want to read everything they've ever written. So we've been getting all the Dr. Seusses, all the Reina Telgemeier. She's a, she likes graphic novels.
00:29:47
Speaker
for tween audiences and it's made me read more non-fiction books because I wouldn't necessarily buy non-fiction books but I love getting them from the library and motivate to read them much quicker because I don't have to return them on time. So for people who don't find themselves getting inspired when they just sort of turn up at the library or would like to read more but don't want to spend the money but want to find good books
00:30:14
Speaker
You can reserve them and they'll tell you when to collect them. Diana, have you have you had a life admin low?
Overcoming Online Shopping Challenges
00:30:21
Speaker
I have actually. So I, you know, I really don't go shopping for myself ever except using the Internet.
00:30:29
Speaker
And I have a couple of brands that I might go to and I took a risk with one of my brands and bought something. And even when I was buying it, I thought this is probably not going to fit. And of course, it doesn't fit right. And so I need to return it. You've only got, I think, 14 days to return it. I used to always have a little bunch of parcel packs, those prepaid ones at home. You can buy them in a 10 pack at the post office.
00:30:54
Speaker
because I really hate going to the post office. I don't know why, just the thought of standing in that queue I find incredibly irritating. I think I've only got a few days left. If I don't return this pair of trousers that I've bought, they're not going to be able to be returned. So I really have to motivate myself on Monday. Okay. Just maybe need to find a different post office that doesn't have such a bad queue and you'll work it out. You'll work it out. I have a power tool.
00:31:24
Speaker
And I guess, again, it's something that's just so familiar, but I've gone next
Smart Commuting with Google Maps
00:31:28
Speaker
level.
00:31:28
Speaker
with my Google Maps using my Apple CarPlay hands-free car kit thingy. So the Google Maps has way better in-car navigation than the actual in-car navigation in my car. With Google Maps, I've set up the commute function. I put in my work address, my home address, I put in the school, and it calculates the best route and travel times as soon as I get in the car to go to work or go to home.
00:31:55
Speaker
And what I like is that you can actually set the time you want to arrive at work or leave work and turn on notifications and it'll tell you in advance if there's any delays or disruptions. So I know whether I can just leave at my normal time or whether I need to leave a bit earlier.
00:32:12
Speaker
And because I work in an area where there's about four different ways I can drive and they have very different levels of traffic given the chaos of Melbourne traffic on any given day, it's very useful to be able to just jump in the car, quickly see which of the routes I'm taking today and save myself, you know, 15 or 20 minutes of delays and anger. Now, I've saved a whole bunch of frequently visited places in there and given them labels.
00:32:40
Speaker
So I can use the Siri voice command in the car and just say, work, you know, give me the route for work and it will take me there and show me what kind of time I can expect and get those directions and those travel times. So it was worth spending five minutes configuring it to get this commute just as efficient as possible and as pleasant as possible.
00:33:03
Speaker
It is a really good example of spending five minutes to save loads of time down the track, so great hack. And it's bizarre just knowing how, because I find Google Maps very accurate in terms of arrival times, just knowing, even if I know it's going to be 15 minutes longer than normal, knowing that in advance just sets my expectation. And I'm like, fine, I'll settle into a podcast and I know I'm going to be 15 minutes later than normal, but
00:33:31
Speaker
It's such a pleasant way to go about it than just being in the frustrated traffic and kind of panicking and thinking, why is this taking so long? It's really changed my stress levels with commuting. Yeah, it's really good to know how long it's going to take because I often do phone calls in the car, too. So if you know it's going to be a longer time, you can ring someone to catch up that you've been wanting to and really make the most of what can otherwise be
Podcast Hiatus and Season Recap
00:33:58
Speaker
dead time.
00:33:58
Speaker
I just want to mention now that we're going on hiatus to rejuvenate and prepare for the next season, which we'll publish later in 2019. We're going to take a few weeks out. We hope you'll use the time to explore the archive and put some ideas into action. And perhaps you can tell some friends to get onto this life admin life hacks thing. So they're all caught up.
00:34:18
Speaker
in season three launches. If you miss us, you can always swing by the Facebook page for any updates, but we're going to take a bit of time out and come back with some fresh ideas and fresh material later in the year. So we hope you enjoyed this episode about holiday hacks and we hope they'll make your next holiday cheaper and quicker to organize. Our top hacks are plan your holiday dates well in advance so you can make the most of long weekends and get better deals.
00:34:46
Speaker
Store all your travel booking information in your shared cloud storage drive and set up lists for packing, preparing and leaving the house and edit them over the time to make it easier to remember all the things to get away and enjoy your holiday. If you'd like to join us on our life admin journey, please head to our Facebook page, life admin life hacks to follow us and share your thoughts on what we're doing and feel free to post any comments or certainly post suggestions that we might be able to use. We hope to see you there.
00:35:16
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks.com. If you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love or review us in your podcasting app.