It was 9 PM & I was lying in bed trying to understand the subtypes of dyslexia.

Orthographic mapping. Orthographic processing. I kept reading the difference & I could not keep them straight.

They never taught me this. Not in fifteen years in classrooms. Not in my certification to teach students with dyslexia. And yet I had this nagging sense that whatever lives in the gap between those two terms was the thing—the reason my child hasn’t responded to years of dyslexia-specific reading instruction.

If anyone should feel equipped here, it’s me. I’m an educator. I ran reading intervention for years. I know what structured literacy is supposed to do & what it looks like when it’s working.

And still, lying there at 9 PM, unable to keep two terms straight, the pull was right where it always is: I don’t know this. So it must not be mine to figure out. Let the experts figure it out.

I’ve been advocating for my child’s health & developmental needs since they were 6 months old. It takes a kind of energy, mental bandwidth & patience I didn’t know I had until I had to find it.

And there have absolutely been times I chose to defer. To wait for something to take hold. To not be the overbearing parent—the one who’s also an intervention specialist, who would really prefer they collect & analyze the data more meaningfully than they do.

Because here’s the line I’ve had to walk: my role in that room isn’t expert. It’s mom. And those two things want different postures. The expert in me wants to run the assessment. The mom in me just wants someone to tell me they’ve got it.

So I’ve spent years learning when to let the second one win. The second one won easiest wherever I didn’t know the territory yet. Sometimes deferring was the right call. Sometimes it really was a season to wait & watch.

This wasn’t one of them.

I saw the same instinct most clearly somewhere other than my own life.

A friend sent me a voice memo last week about a job offer. She was thrilled & underneath the thrill was a lot she didn’t know how to navigate. She was leaving the public sector, where her whole career had run on fixed pay bands. She got what the scale said she got. Now, for the first time, someone was essentially asking what do you think you’re worth and she didn’t know how to answer, because she’d never had to.

She’s more than capable. And still, the unfamiliar showed up & her first instinct was to make herself smaller. To wonder if asking for more would make her look naïve, like she didn’t understand how things worked over there. There was a part of her ready to just accept the offer. To stay unexposed.

I didn’t need to become an expert in negotiation to help her. Neither did she. We sat down & worked through her actual situation—not generic advice, but the few things that mattered for her: her qualifications, the sector she was walking into, what someone with her background could credibly ask for & why. By the time we were done, she wasn’t guessing. She made her ask with a steadiness that wasn’t there before.

It isn’t a personal flaw, what she almost did. It’s what we were raised on. The moment something unfamiliar shows up, we shrink back to polite, deferential, careful—and call it being reasonable.

I know the pull because I was sitting in it that same week.

Even the educational psychologist doesn’t have the answers I’m looking for. She even told me, plainly, that she wasn’t the expert on the underlying perceptual & imagery processes that might explain why my child hadn’t responded to two structured literacy programs.

I could have left it there. Let her write dyslexia, cause unclear & accepted that the why was simply out of reach. That would have been the polite version. The reasonable one.

Instead I looked deeper & added a speech-language evaluation—because the 9 PM sroling had shown me which questions to ask.

I’m still in it. I don’t have the answer yet, & I won’t pretend I do. But we’re going to get the specificity we’ve been missing, not because I matched the credentials of the psychologist or the speech-language pathologist, but because I refused to let not having them be the reason I stopped asking.

It isn’t the edge of where we’re allowed to go. It’s just the edge of what we already know.

If there’s something like this in your life right now, a thing you keep circling but haven’t pushed on because it feels like it belongs to someone more qualified you don’t have to figure it out alone. That’s exactly what my 1:1 sessions are for.

And if you’re a paid subscriber, submissions are open this week for A Little Less Stuck, a reader-submitted essay series where you send me the thing you can’t get clear on & I work one through in a full essay—anonymized & free for everyone to read. Scroll down to this week’s voice memo for the details.

Talk soon,
Erin

P.S. I had more to say about the worry running underneath all of this…that pushing for more makes us too much. If you’re a paid subscriber, you can hear my thoughts below in this week’s voice memo. 👯‍♀️

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Yesterday morning, I opened up my Substack & saw, once again, the same flavor of popular articles recommended to me as usual…the effects of high cortisol on women…the life-changing magic of micro-dosing peptides...A piece on Botox & face-lifting…And another on eating out of habit versus eating when you are actually hungry.

So I switched over to Instagram for a second & the algorithm fed me its version of the same content—reels about healthy 15-min. recipes, being in the best shape of your life, even one about a book called Am I Autistic Or Am I Just German?

Which—okay. I laughed. It’s a funny title. And honestly it poignantly hit on something I’d been trying to work through that was eerily similar. (More on that in a minute.)

But every single thing in that scroll was a way of asking the same question—is there something wrong with me, & if so, what is it & what should I buy or do or take or screen for to fix it?

We have just grown so accustomed to pathologizing everything.

Just the day before, I’d had my own moment of reckoning. I’d recently gotten an email from my son’s English teacher that they were going to have a party celebrating their final writing project of the year. So I signed up to bring a snack, let Jason know about it & made sure to keep it top of mind.

The morning of the party, I dropped my son off at school, ran to Target to pick up the brownies I had ordered, met Jason for our usual coffee, lingered longer than we normally do because we had time to kill & then drove the fifteen minutes back over to the school for the party.

We rang the bell & the woman at the front desk asked what we were there for. I told her. She looked confused. She called over to her colleagues to see if they knew what we were talking about. Clearly I had the wrong date. I was so embarrassed.

There definitely wasn’t a party that day. There wasn’t even a party that week. The party was the following Tuesday.

Jason just looked at me, smiled, rolled his eyes & held the door open for me. He was generous about it. But the truth is, this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened & I was not as generous with myself.

Later that day, I was at my desk & I typed something about the experience into an AI chatbot. I keep forgetting things. What is going on with me?

Its one & only response was to suggest I drop $1.5k for an ADHD evaluation.

At first I was caught off guard. It wasn’t something I’d considered. But then again, ADHD is something often under-diagnosed in girls, especially in the 90’s. So…maybe?

But then, I was frustrated.

Because the more I thought about it the more I was certain that no, my concern is not one of life-long, undiagnosed neurodivergence.

Mine, in particular, is most certainly a matter of unprecedented societal expectations of women to perform on all cylinders.

And surely, SURELY, at some point cracks will show in the foundation under these circumstances. Because how much is one human expected to be able to do? And why is it that when they struggle to keep up that it means something about them rather than the system they're trying to operate under?

And the speed at which AI defaulted to the assumption that my human experience needed to be pathologized is the perfect encapsulation of exactly how engrained this pattern is in our culture.

We know AI is, at its core, a machine that operates on pattern recognition. And its mimicry of our cultural reflex—that the solution to the human response to inhuman conditions is always a protocol—is the tell.

If my forgetfulness is ADHD, the solution is medication & systems. If my forgetfulness is the predictable result of unprecedented cognitive & logistical load placed on one person, the solution is structural—redistribution, reduced load, changed expectations. One solution is mine to manage. The other implicates everyone around me & the culture that arranged this. The medical label is, among other things, a way of keeping the problem personal.

When a person is operating at unsustainable load, the cracks that appear are not symptoms of disorder. They’re evidence of a functional nervous system correctly signaling that the conditions are wrong. Misremembering the party date & time when you’re holding seventeen other things isn’t always ADHD. Sometimes it’s capacity math.

The container is full. Something gets dropped.

That’s physics, not psychiatry.

The woman is not the problem. The system imposing inhuman conditions on her and then diagnosing her response is the problem.

That’s Do I Have ADHD, Or Am I Just A Mom?

Talk soon,
Erin

PS. I had more to say about checking what AI & the internet tell you against the one thing no algorithm can know. If you’re a paid subscriber, you can hear my thoughts below in this week’s voice memo. 👯‍♀️

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I’m unlocking this for all readers—it felt like the right essay to share openly. Enjoy! 👯‍♀️

There’s a Sunday morning ritual that’s existed in our home for well over a decade. We go nowhere. We do nothing.

Jason brews coffee & turns some music on the stereo. I feed the kids & the dog. Then, we relax.

The kids usually choose to enjoy their screen time, and often so do Jason and I.

A few Sundays ago, the kids had hit their screen time limit, I’d collected their iPads, and I noticed they were lingering. And as if on cue, the chorus of Mom, I’m bored began.

As I reached for my coffee, I caught sight of Jason on his device, which prompted me to look down and notice my own in hand as well. I looked up at both kids & felt a little embarrassed.

Now, a year ago, the iPads would’ve kept them occupied well past that point. Last May was when it changed. Screen time for the kids was something they’d come to expect daily. And we saw the impact it had on their sleep, creative play & personal interests.

So Jason and I agreed — we’d cut screen time by 70% each week with one straightforward rule: screen time would be reserved for weekends only.

I’m not going to pretend it went smoothly to start. It didn’t. There was a certain ease to relying on screens to occupy the kids, see them content, and move through our own evening rhythms with fewer interruptions.

The first two weeks were the hardest. They pushed back every day and I had to hold my face neutral when I wanted to cave. It was uncomfortable to absorb my kids’ discomfort when I was the one who caused it.

And my kids were very clear about whose job it was to fix their boredom. Mine.

The decision I'd made for my kids became work I hadn't signed up for.

What I had to let go of was the belief that if my kids were bored, I wasn’t doing enough.

There’s a serious cultural norm that expects our children’s play has a certain aesthetic to it.

There’s a particular sentiment that when provided with an environment rich with wooden toys, art supplies, and dress-up clothes — preferably rotated and displayed thematically — our children will thrive, grow, and (most importantly) never be bored.

The American child is always in need of facilitation. Whether by screens, by parents, or by extracurriculars.

This didn't work for me. It didn't work for my kids either.

Play is the work of our children, and we’ve taken it away from them at every turn. And somehow managed to make it more work for us to own.

I couldn’t continue to save my kids from their boredom.

It was never my role to facilitate my children’s play. My role was to believe they’d figure it out.

Most days, they don’t ask for their screens. They have time to do their chores, their homework & play. They go outside. They find neighborhood kids to run around with. They build forts and design membership cards for it and set up play zones inside for music & Magnatiles. And I don’t ever facilitate that. They do.

As for that Sunday morning a few weeks back? They eventually wandered upstairs to the playroom. By the time I looked up, they’d been at it for hours.

Talk soon,
Erin

P.S. If you’re a paid subscriber, I dropped a voice note this week. It’s the part I almost didn’t write. Scroll down & hit play.

More from A Little Less

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

This is what every paid post looks like — the essay, audio version read by me & a voice memo with most personal thoughts. If you want this every week:

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I’ve decided it’s time for us to define the relationship.

I’ve been writing here for a while without ever really talking with you about what A Little Less looks like behind the scenes—what’s free, what’s paid & what I’m trying to build.

Here’s where I’ve landed:

Every essay will always be free to read. If you’re a mom who needs to hear these ideas, you should be able to read it without paying for the privilege.

That said, the essays take real time & real energy to produce. Paid subscriptions exist as patronage, not premium content. They’re a way for readers who want to support that work to do that.

Paid subscriptions are the reason this publication stays free for everyone to read.

It’s also what keeps it ad-free & sponsor-free. No one is selling you anything here & I’d like to keep it that way.

If you do choose to subscribe, here’s what’s added on top of the free experience:

• A voiceover of every essay, recorded by me. For the carpool line, the folded laundry, the quiet before anyone is up.

• A weekly voice memo at the bottom of each essay. These are unscripted, off the cuff, the personal details, the parts I can’t fit into the written essays, etc. Like hearing from a friend who’s in the thick of it alongside you, figuring it out in real time.

• Comment access for meaningful conversation between readers who are reading these essays with the same mindset & intention as you are.

The cost is $10 a month or $96 a year. Subscriptions can change as your needs change. You can stay free indefinitely. You can upgrade whenever it makes sense. You can step back. And every essay will include the option if it ever feels like the right time.

And for readers who want to support more meaningfully, there’s also a Founding Member tier at $200 a year. It’s not a higher-content tier—it’s a higher-relationship one. Founding Members receive a welcome card from me when they join, plus a few other small surprises throughout the year. If supporting the work of A Little Less matters a lot to you, this is the tier for you.

Subscribe now

And to those of you who are already paid subscribers — thank you. You’re the reason this stays the way it is.

Talk soon,
Erin

Friday morning, 7:42 AM. I needed to get out the door in less than 20 minutes so my son would be to school on time. I’d meant to get out of bed earlier today but once again I found myself dragging out of bed late once again.

And here I was, under the pressure of time still needing to make breakfasts, finish packing lunches & gather some snacks to toss into backpacks. and hopefully fast enough, because I also wanted to make sure I had time for my breakfast, too.

But instead? I’m catching myself in the act of once again over-functioning, staring down at the dirty water bottle in my hand that I picked up & started washing, as if that were the priority.

“Stop,” I told myself.

I turned toward the toaster to get back on track and as I open the pantry to grab the peanut butter jar, I can’t help but notice the nearly empty bag of bread with only the heels remaining & the expired Hawaiian rolls I’d meant to throw out days ago.

Everywhere I turned, it was a nearly active choice to disrupt this invasive form of programming that I survived on for years.

Maybe it’s because I’m a first-born. Maybe it was me internalizing that a “good girl” is constantly vigilant in noticing what needs doing. Or maybe the type a in me.

However you slice it, the truth is the same: over-functioning has only gotten me one outcome…more over-functioning.

I remember a conversation I once had with a friend shortly after having my second baby. I just couldn’t understand how my husband wasn’t inclined to co-manage all of the responsibilities added to our household since becoming parents. Honestly, I was dumbfounded at how it didn’t even seem to be an issue of not caring, but the stark reality that he was blissfully unaware of it. And in truth, I was proportionately unaware of my own over-functioning & how was compounding the problem further.

But what did click was the realization that I’d been waiting (for years at this point) for him to finally catch on & spontaneously jump in with both hands. That help wasn’t coming. And I was wasting so much effort trying to manage all of it myself in the meantime.

I didn’t fully metabolize it in the moment, but I see now that this was when I accepted that no one was coming to save me.

I was at a fork in the road: choose to continue over-functioning or choose to recalibrate.

I chose the latter. But I chose it in ways I thought I could exact more control over the outcome.

Household a disorganized mess? Kon Mari. Kids are a disaster at bedtime? A better routine. Not eating as well as I’d like? Subscribe to meal delivery.

But what I failed to see during this period somewhere in the middle, was that all I’d done was created more rigidity in my life that required even more of my time, energy & consistency in order to have the desired outcomes. I had inadvertently given myself more to manage, because if I didn’t follow through the whole system fell apart.

Glad you’re here! 👯‍♀️

A Little Less is for the mom who’s running her life well—tired of feeling like she isn’t. Subscribe below for access to every essay: past, present & future. No paywalls, no locked archive. Ever.

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Even a decade later, I’m still navigating what that looks like for me, but on the whole it’s been a near constant process of catching myself in micro moments, like I did on Friday morning, and choosing to reassure myself that just because something could be done doesn’t mean it should…at least, not right now.

It’s been a practice of unlearning. Of choosing differently for myself. It’s uncomfortable, inconvenient & effortful in some ironic way.

And it’s that way because my brain would much prefer the alternative. To do what’s familiar because that’s what’s safe.

But I choose instead to do the hard work of intentionality, overriding the default settings of over-functioning in favor of something greater. Because this isn’t about whether to “settle” for good enough, when it isn’t even settling at all. It’s a reclamation of self.

A choice of this is what’s good enough for me so that I can choose to use that capacity to pour my time, energy, creativity, talents & self into what I really would find more fulfilling & purposeful.

So I actively choose to put down the dirty water bottles, to walk away from the stale loaves of bread.

Not as an act of defiance or neglect. But as a choice to operate within my personal capacity & deciding what good enough looks like within those parameters. It is one of the most supportive choices I make for myself day after day.

Talk soon,
Erin

P.S. If you’re a paid subscriber, I dropped a voice note this week going deeper on what partnership actually looks like in our house…like why Fair Play wasn’t a fit for us, what I’ve learned about how Jason actually sees the household when I stop over-functioning. It’s a little longer than usual; I had a lot to say on this one. It’s at the bottom of the post, right below the essay voiceover — just scroll down & hit play. 👯‍♀️

More from A Little Less

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

Read more

🎧 Prefer to listen while you drive or fold laundry? I recorded an audio version—just tap the play button at the top of the post to listen in.

For months I had been trying to do the same handful of things — eat enough protein, take the supplements, move my body in the way that actually worked for me, sleep — and dropping at least one of them every single day.

Some days I’d nail the food and forget the supplements. Some days I’d get the workouts in and crash on sleep. The pieces individually weren’t hard. Holding all of them in my head at once, on top of everything else my brain was already running, was the thing I couldn’t do.

And I kept blaming myself for it.

I knew this stuff mattered to me. I’m thinking about perimenopause in a real way now. Longevity is on my mind in a way it wasn’t five years ago. I’m not trying to optimize for a certain look or body type. I’ve been trying to take care of myself in a way that will compound over the next few decades — and I just haven’t been able to get the basic pieces to fall into place all at the same time.

And the longer that this went on, the more I felt like I just wasn’t capable of caring for myself the way I cared for everyone else.

So one Sunday, instead of trying to remember it all again, I asked Claude to help me build a single one-page sheet I could actually follow. Not a generic protocol. Not someone else’s plan. Mine — based on what I care about right now, what fits my life, what would actually move the needle for me.

Twenty minutes later I had it. Training for the week, focus areas, daily tracking, weekly metrics. No hours of googling. No spreadsheet I was going to have to keep updating. I print a new one every Sunday and tape it inside my pantry door.

It is the first time I have stayed consistent with all of it at the same time.

That sheet was the first one. It wasn’t the last.

Glad you’re here! 👯‍♀️

A Little Less is for the mom who’s running her life well—tired of feeling like she isn’t. Subscribe below for access to every essay: past, present & future. No paywalls, no locked archive. Ever.

Subscribe for free →

There’s now a watering schedule for my houseplants taped inside the cabinet where I keep the watering can — which plants get water each week, which ones get fertilized, which ones to skip because they’re still drying out. I haven’t killed a plant since. More importantly, I am not running a houseplant calendar in my head.

There’s a planner on the fridge for my son, who got behind on his assignments and was drowning under what he needed to catch up on. We made it together — every missing assignment, every upcoming one, plenty of blank space for each weekday so he could decide what to tackle when. It changed our entire dynamic. I went from nagging him every afternoon to having an actual conversation. He went from spiraling to getting through it on his own.

There’s a step-by-step hair guide for my daughter in our bathroom — visuals included — because she wants to take care of her own curls now, and the routine I had been doing on her had eight steps that she couldn’t do without me standing there walking her through it.

None of this is optimization. None of it is a hack. None of it is a system that needs maintaining.

It’s the opposite of all of those things.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend this is some breakthrough productivity move. It is the smallest thing I have ever written about. I made some sheets. I taped them to some doors.

But here is what I think is actually going on underneath it.

There is a whole industry telling you that the answer to feeling like you’re failing at the things you care about is more discipline. A better routine. A new planner. A coach. A protocol. An expert who has figured it out and will sell you the system.

What that industry doesn’t account for is how much work it takes to even get to a system. The hours of research. The conflicting expert advice you have to parse. The threads, the articles, the version you have to piece together for yourself out of all of it. Then the actual physical making of the thing — the spreadsheet, the columns, the cell borders, the page margins. By the time you have something usable, you are already worn out. And now you have to maintain it.

The cheat sheets skip all of that. I describe what I want. It parses what I’ve read and considered and tried. It produces something I can print and use that afternoon. The whole thing takes the time of writing one really good email.

And none of the people selling you a system know you. They don’t know what’s in your cabinets. They don’t know what your kid is actually behind in, or what makes him spiral. They don’t know what your daughter has been trying to do on her own and where exactly she gets stuck. They don’t know which plants you have, or which window they sit in, or which routine you’ve been white-knuckling for two years.

So they sell you something generic, you try to bend your life around it, you fail at it, and you blame yourself.

What I am doing isn’t a system you should copy. It’s the opposite — it’s permission to stop looking for one.

There are things you care about. Probably more than a few of them. The plants you actually want to keep alive. The thing you have been trying to do for your health for two years. The kid who needs help getting un-buried from a school week. The version of your own routine you’ve been trying to remember and keep losing sight of.

You do not have to keep holding any of that in your head.

You get to put it on a piece of paper and look at it when you need to.

The brain you have been using to remember it all is needed for other things.

Talk soon,
Erin

PS—If you’re a paid subscriber, I dropped a voice note—about the difference between caring about an outcome and caring about the work of getting there—at the bottom of this post. 👯‍♀️

More from A Little Less

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

Read more

You’re standing in the supplement aisle at 9 PM on a Tuesday because someone on Instagram told you magnesium would fix the sleep thing, the anxiety thing & possibly the rage-at-5-PM thing. You are holding two bottles — one chelated, one glycinate — and you are genuinely trying to figure out which one the algorithm said was better. You are doing what you have been doing for years. Looking for the answer in someone else’s hands.

I know because I was that person. I’ve been that person more times than I can count.

Here’s what it looks like from the outside, if you could somehow watch yourself move through a single week:

Monday. The pediatrician hands you a developmental handout and circles two things your kid should be doing by now. You drive home wondering what you missed.

Tuesday. The OB tells you what you’re feeling is probably hormonal, that you’re too young for perimenopause, and suggests breath work & 120 grams of protein a day. You leave the appointment with more homework and no answers.

Wednesday. The parenting book on your nightstand — the one your friend said changed everything — contradicts the parenting book you read last month. One says hold the boundary. The other says soften it. Both have PhDs on the cover.

Thursday. The algorithm serves you a reel of a mom who wakes up at 5 AM, journals for twenty minutes, drinks something green & is doing a craft with her kids by 7:15. Her kitchen is clean. You watch it twice.

Friday. The school sends home a reading log, a nutrition worksheet & a reminder about the science fair. You’re now the project manager of 3 additional things nobody asked if you had capacity for.

Every single one of these sources means well. Not one of them knows your name. Not one of them has been inside your house at 6 PM when the dog is barking & someone needs help with long division & you haven’t sat down since 6 AM.

They don’t know your life. But somehow, you have been treating their advice like it outranks your own.

I taught for fifteen years. Eight of those were reading & math intervention — the work where you sit with one kid, or a small group, and figure out why the thing that works for everyone else is not working for them.

The curriculum exists. The research exists. The best-practice frameworks exist. And none of it matters until you figure out what works for the specific child in front of you, on this specific day, with whatever they are carrying when they walk through the door. Differentiated instruction is not a philosophy. It’s a Tuesday-morning practice of watching someone struggle and adjusting in real time because the system you’re supposed to be following does not know this kid. You do.

That was the version of me in those classrooms.

And then I had two babies, COVID happened, I left the classroom — and spent the first several years of motherhood doing the exact opposite of what I had spent fifteen years learning. Treating every pediatrician handout like a prescription I was supposed to fill. Every Instagram caption like a directive. Every book on my nightstand like the answer, if I could just get through it.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize the experts aren’t wrong. They are just not specific. They can’t be — they don’t know you.

You are not under-informed. I would bet everything you are over-advised.

A few years ago, my youngest wasn’t progressing in reading. The school ran a dyslexia screener & it was flagged. The school-based team isn’t qualified to diagnose dyslexia themselves, so they referred our family to a specialist. And on paper, that’s the right next step. That’s what you are supposed to do.

But something about that screener wasn’t sitting right with me. I have training in this — years of reading intervention work, including with dyslexic readers. And the piece the screener was missing was context. My child had been receiving gold-standard, research-backed curriculum designed specifically for dyslexic readers since preschool. If they had dyslexia, they would have been responding to that curriculum. They would have been making progress. They weren’t.

So instead of following the referral, I took her to an ophthalmologist — not for vision in the 20/20 sense, but for the brain-eye connection. And what we found was that my child was having to refocus their eyes 300 times to read 100 words. Their eyes weren’t tracking smoothly across the page. They were leapfrogging — skipping lines, losing their place, working three times as hard as they should have been for every single sentence.

It was vision therapy my child needed. Not a dyslexia diagnosis.

And if I had just followed the experts’ advice—if I had taken my child straight to the specialist they recommended—they very likely would have been labeled dyslexic, because their vision difficulties interfere with reading development in ways that look a lot like dyslexia on paper. They would have gotten the wrong support plan. And I never would have known why it wasn’t working.

This isn’t about dodging a diagnosis or a label. It’s about knowing — in my gut, with my own training & with years of watching my specific child — that what the experts were telling me wasn’t tracking. And my child wouldn’t have gotten the right help if I had just followed the school’s advice without questioning it.

You know your kids better than the pediatrician who sees them twice a year for fifteen minutes. You know what your kid will actually eat. You know what bedtime actually looks like in your house — not the version in the book with the dim lighting & the calm narration, but the real one with the stalling & the water requests & the third trip to the bathroom.

That’s not nothing. That’s ten years of knowing someone—or eight, or five, or two. And you have been handing that authority over, piece by piece, to people who have a credential & a framework but no idea what your actual Tuesday looks like.

You’re not doing it wrong. You’re doing it your way. And your way is the only version that was ever going to work inside your actual life to begin with. 💕

Thanks for reading. Truly. This publication is small on purpose, and the fact that you spent a few minutes of your day with me is not something I take for granted.

Talk soon,
Erin

PS—If you're a paid subscriber, I dropped a voice note about how I actually decide when to trust an expert & when to push back at the bottom of this post. 👯‍♀️

More from A Little Less:

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

Read more

An entire generation of moms was told that expertise, optimization, and better systems would make motherhood less hard. It didn’t. It made it harder, lonelier, and more expensive — and it convinced us the failure was personal.

We were duped.

And it’s time to stop believing that we aren’t doing enough. To stop looking for the system that will finally prove we are. And to start believing that we know — better than any expert — what we need, what matters, and what’s worth our effort.

But it’s easier said than done.

So this is where I share what doing it has actually looked like. What I’ve stopped doing. What I’ve gained. What I’ve been wrong about. What I’m learning along the way.

I’m not going to tell you how to do it better. I’m going to tell you what I stopped doing, and what happened when I did.

I didn’t become a mom so I could be the most efficient person in my life. I became a mom because I wanted to enrich the life I have with the people I’m building it with.

But things got off track & this is where I write about finding my way back to it.

I know you’re here because you’re on some sort of parallel path as mine. So there are a few ways to be a part of the conversation — pick what fits your life right now, knowing you can always adjust as that shifts.

The first costs nothing. Every essay arrives in your inbox, every week, free. No paywalls. No locked archives. No tier of better content waiting behind a wall. You’re here right now. And if reading along is the right version of what’s right for you today, then you’re exactly where you need to be.

The second is a paid subscription. It’s for the reader who wants more of my voice in her week — the essay read aloud, a short audio note from me, the kind of thing I’d send to a friend. Her support is what keeps every essay free for everyone else.

The third is founding membership. It’s the same as paid, plus a letter from me in the mail & a few small surprises throughout the year. It’s for the reader who wants to help keep this space ad-free & help more women find it.

Whichever version you choose is the right one.

Subscribe now

If you want to start reading before the next essay arrives, here are a few places to begin:

This is the essay where I walked away from a publication that promised to give moms answers & started writing one that trusts them to find their own.

This one’s on becoming the default parent without anyone asking & what I’ve been doing about it ever since.

This will give you a look at what mornings actually look like when you stop trying to make them productive.

If you want to know more about me

I wrote a longer piece here. The short version: for years I taught in public schools — and for the better part of a decade, I specialized in intervention, where instead of expecting each kid to fit a one-size-fits-all system, I got to meet them where they were. Now I can’t unsee how the same applies to mom life. So this is the space where I write my way through unlearning the hustle — and figuring out how to meet my own life the way I learned to meet the kids.

Don’t be a stranger

If an essay ever brings up anything for you, please know that you can hit reply to share your thoughts. It comes straight to me & I read everything. 🥰

I’m so glad you’re here.

Talk soon,
Erin

For the past few years, my youngest (who’d always been my best sleeper) was waking up four or five times a night. 🥵 I was probably more exhausted during that stretch than when my kids were newborns, because at least then I was getting a few hours at a time. During the regression, she was getting me up roughly every hour.

So mornings stopped being something I optimized for productivity. They became something I optimized for sleep. Any last bit of rest I could get so that I was able to function through our minimum viable morning routine became what mattered most.

That’s not what the internet tells you to do with your mornings. The internet tells you to protect them. Prioritize the quiet. Get up before your family. Make it non-negotiable.

And I used to do that. When I was teaching full-time and coming home to be the primary caregiver, finding time for myself was virtually impossible. So I started setting my alarm for 5, sometimes 5:30, and using that window before the house woke up to do whatever felt meaningful that day. Sometimes it was a workout. Sometimes it was just sitting in the dark with a cup of tea and my own thoughts. I didn’t structure it. But it was mine & that really mattered during that season of life.

And at the time, it really worked for me—because it had a purpose. I needed that time in order to get lunches packed, breakfast made, kids clothed, and everyone out the door by 6:45. The early wake-up wasn’t aspirational—it was functional. And because it was driven by something real, it actually felt good. Even motivating.

But when I stopped teaching five years ago, I kept doing it—not because I needed to, but because it was what I had always done. And what I found was that I started dreading it. I kept putting it off, and then I felt guilty—or something closer to shame — because I wasn’t making it happen. The thing that used to feel like freedom had become another obligation.

What finally broke the cycle was a simple recognition: just because I’ve always done something one way doesn’t mean I have to keep doing it that way.

Glad you’re here! 👯‍♀️

A Little Less is for the mom who’s running her life well—tired of feeling like she isn’t. Subscribe below for access to every essay: past, present & future. No paywalls, no locked archive. Ever.

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What made getting up early work for me was never the hour on the clock. It was that it was on my terms and it had purpose. Now my kids are at school every day and I’m at home. I can meditate when I want, fit in a workout, sit in silence. The things that matter to me naturally fit into other parts of my day. So forcing them into 5 AM stopped making sense.

I think that’s actually been the through line all along. I’ve always optimized my mornings for what I need. Not for a bunch of shoulds. I don’t drink the lemon water. I don’t always get outside just to get sunlight on my eyes. I don’t skip meditation and I don’t skip movement—but I find places to fit them into my day where they actually feel supportive rather than obligatory.

Now that my youngest is sleeping better, I’m coming back to a season where bringing a little more attention to my mornings feels important. But only because I’m working on making my nervous system more resilient—and one of the things I’m learning is how much it matters to get natural light for ten minutes when I first wake up.

I’m not going to sit here and say I make it happen every morning. I’m not going to say I always enjoy it. But because it’s driven by something that actually matters to me right now—wanting to be less reactive, wanting to not snap at my kids when they’re being loud and having fun playing together just because my body can’t tolerate it—I find myself doing it anyway.

Regardless of what season I’ve been in, I really believe in choosing a way of moving through your morning that is truly minimum viable. For me, that means identifying the absolute non-negotiables—the things that have to happen in order for my family to be set up for the day. And that list is honestly very short.

Part of that is because my kids are more independent now. They are responsible for their own minimum viable: getting up on time, getting dressed, brushing their teeth, brushing their hair, making sure their bags are packed. That’s it.

I’ve found that the more I expect of them, the more I have to manage. My 11-year-old has finally internalized the routine—get up, get dressed, brush teeth, do hair. I don’t have to prompt them anymore. But it took us almost 12 years to get here. My 9-year-old still needs prompting for most of it. Brushing hair, wiping their face after breakfast, brushing teeth, taking medicine. And the more I expect of them at this stage, the more I’m standing right next to them directing traffic. Which turns into frustration when they’re inevitably distracted. Which turns into this cycle of me repeating myself and losing patience that I don’t have time for and can’t afford—because there are other things I’m responsible for in that same window of time.

So by letting go of the ideal version of what my kids should be doing independently by this age, I’ve freed up so much of my own capacity. And it helps them feel more successful too, because they don’t have a mom who’s constantly pointing out what they’re doing wrong.

For my own minimum viable, it comes down to giving myself enough time to actually take care of myself. I’ve been through seasons where that looked like throwing on a fresh pair of sweatpants and walking out the door after brushing my teeth. That has genuinely been my absolute bare minimum.

Right now, I’m in a place where it feels really good to put on an outfit I feel good in. Not fancy. Not super styled. But I’ve been figuring out what kinds of outfit formulas are my go-tos, so I can lean into them without thinking much and still feel like myself at school drop-off. I make time to get dressed. I do a little bit of makeup after skincare, but we’re talking fast—five minutes. I shower at night so I don’t have to deal with it in the morning. I do a thorough skincare routine at night, so in the morning I’m just rinsing my face and putting on products.

If anyone wants to hear more about what that five-minute makeup routine actually looks like, or what my go-to outfits are—the ones that keep it to the bare minimum while still letting me pour a little back into myself—let me know in the comments. I’d be happy to share.

I also don’t take sole responsibility for the small stuff. If the kids are up and they’re free, I ask them to feed the dog or let him out. That’s a shared job in our house. I know some families work better with everyone having assigned roles. But in my family, keeping it loose is what works.

And I’ve gotten better at asking my husband for help. He’s had a career change and is home in the mornings now, which I’m really lucky to have. He is not one to necessarily take initiative when it comes to running the family. But I have no problems asking. And he is genuinely good at noticing when the dishes need doing and just doing it without me asking.

That’s not anything we formally agreed to. It’s about recognizing where help is needed and being comfortable asking for it. Not demanding it. Not expecting it. Not feeling resentful if it doesn’t get done. It’s more of a natural give and take. Where’s your capacity today? Is he in the middle of something? Is he free? How much do each of us have to give right now?

I’ve found that by not having a really structured morning routine—no long checklist of things that must get done—it’s allowed for a sense of ease. And I’m not going to say it’s perfect. But I am less stressed. The kids have a lot less back and forth with me. There’s a lot less time pressure. And time pressure is one of those things that really agitates me. So by lowering the expectations, I’ve naturally lowered the pressure, because there’s less we’re trying to cram into the same window.

My minimum viable for the kids in terms of food: make sure they have breakfast, pack a lunch and a snack, fill a water bottle. That’s it.

I don’t worry about the state of my kitchen. I put food away so it doesn’t go bad. But otherwise, the kitchen waits.

I don’t have a multi-step routine because it doesn’t work for my family. If there’s a day where I need more sleep and I sleep in, I need to know that everything can be done in 30 minutes or less—from the time I get out of bed to the time I’m in the car. Sometimes even faster.

And I’ve gotten so comfortable with this that if I’m pressed for time, my kids are not getting a gourmet lunch. Most days, yes—they get something fresh, whole foods, a variety. But if I’m pressed for time, I am not above grabbing a peanut butter and jelly from the freezer and tossing it in a lunchbox. My kids are fed. They won’t go hungry. That is fine with me. I have no guilt in that.

Same with breakfast. I try to give them something well-rounded, but if we all needed to prioritize sleep, a bowl of cereal fills the hole. It gives them some nutrition. It gets them out the door. And in Colorado, the kids can grab breakfast at school through the subsidized program—a piece of fruit, some juice, whatever’s available. So I try to really relieve myself of that pressure to make everything a 10 out of 10 every single morning. And be practical on the mornings where I have to be practical.

One last thing…I highly recommend a calm morning playlist on the kitchen speaker. I’ve been doing this for the past few months. As much as I love peace and quiet, I notice it keeps everyone moving. It keeps me feeling calm. It gives me something to focus on so I’m not reaching for my phone—which used to slow me down a lot. I set my phone to the side, don’t look at it, and the music kind of satisfies that part of my brain that’s looking for input.

They’re not optimized. They’re not aesthetic. They’re just honest about what we actually need to get through the door—and loose enough that when something goes sideways, we absorb it instead of falling apart.

Talk soon,
Erin

This post’s free. 👯‍♀️ Most weeks, the full essay is for paid subscribers only—the stuff I don’t share publicly. How I actually handle the hard parts, the specific decisions I’m making & the things I’ve stopped doing. Plus, audio versions recorded by me & a private comment section with the other women who are doing things differently.

Become a paid subscriber →

More from A Little Less:

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

There’s a version of me from not that long ago who would have handled last Tuesday very differently.

Jason was at band practice. The kids & I had just gotten home late from 2 hours at the dance studio. Everyone was tired, nobody was particularly cooperative & the kitchen was exactly as we had left it that morning.

A year ago, I would have been hollering at the kids to stop playing tag in the house while I scrambled to get something on the table. I would have been grumpy through the whole bedtime routine…not because I’m a bad mom, but because I already knew what was waiting for me on the other side of it. The kitchen. Still there. Still my problem. Dishes to scrape & stack, pans to hand wash, water bottles to clean out, counters to wipe down, food to put away, dishwasher to run…The night was hardly over the moment the kids’ lights went out. 😮‍💨

That is what I used to carry into bedtime. The dread of everything still left to do. And it made me impatient and overstimulated & not very fun to be around at 8pm—which then made me feel guilty on top of exhausted, which just made everything worse.

But lately I’ve been doing something different. This is what last Tuesday looked like…

I packed dinner before we left so the kids could eat in the car on the way home. That one change alone took the scramble completely off the table. We walked in, went through the bedtime routine, and I got everyone to sleep.

And then I looked at the kitchen.

Clutter on the island. Dishes in the sink. Counters not wiped.

And I went upstairs with the kids to bed.

That’s it. That’s the whole story.

I want to tell you what I thought was going to happen when I left it.

I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I thought I’d lie there thinking about it, doing the mental math of how much worse it would be in the morning, eventually getting back up to just handle it because the anticipation would be more exhausting than the doing.

What actually happened was I fell asleep almost immediately.

And in the morning, the kitchen was exactly as I had left it. A little messy. Completely manageable. Not the disaster I had built it into in my head. I put the kids’ clutter on the stairs, loaded the dishwasher, wiped the counters. It took maybe ten minutes. Nobody commented on it. Nobody suffered. The morning was fine.

The only thing that changed was that I had given myself back a sense of peace & manageability the night before.

Glad you’re here! 👯‍♀️

A Little Less is for the mom who’s running her life well—tired of feeling like she isn’t. Subscribe below for access to every essay: past, present & future. No paywalls, no locked archive. Ever.

Subscribe for free →

I’m not suggesting you never clean your kitchen. I clean mine most nights. But I used to clean it every night regardless of what the night had cost me—as if the kitchen had a claim on whatever I had left at the end of the day, no matter what.

It does not.

The dishes will be there in the morning. You will have more capacity in the morning. The kitchen does not care what time it gets clean. But you — you only get one version of Tuesday night. And you get to decide what you do with what is left of it.

Leaving the kitchen a mess is not a failure of standards. It is a decision about where your energy actually goes.

And sometimes the most intentional thing you can do is just go to bed.

Talk soon,
Erin

More from A Little Less:

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

Meet George, our family labradoodle. He’s the dog we got after the other dog that didn’t work out — the one we had to re-home, the one that was heartbreaking for everyone. So when we got George, I was determined. I researched the training. I learned the schedules, the desensitization, the right way to set him up for success. I did it out of love and care, not just for the dog but for my family’s peace of mind. The last thing I wanted was to rip another puppy out of my kids’ arms.

And somewhere in there, without anyone asking, without any conversation or agreement or assignment—I just became the person who handles the dog.

That’s what it means to be the default parent. Not the one who does the most. The one everyone assumes will handle it. All of it.

The food, the schedule, the walks, the vet appointments, the grooming, the boarding reservations made far enough in advance so we are not scrambling when we go out of town. I trained him. I’m the only one who reinforces the training. The family gets all the snuggles and the giggles and the antics. I get the logistics.

About six months in, I was out one evening and called my husband to ask him to feed George. And I had to tell him not just how much food to give him.

I had to tell him where we kept the food.

He didn’t even know where we kept the food.

I want to be really clear about something, because this is the part that took me a while to actually sit with.

That wasn’t his fault.

It wasn’t a reflection of him being lazy or checked out or unwilling. It was the completely logical outcome of me letting every single responsibility for this animal fall to me from day one. My family had been trained—by me—to expect that I was going to handle it. And because everything was handled, it wasn’t visible to anyone as a problem. If he doesn’t see a problem, it genuinely isn’t registering as an issue that needs his attention. The box is checked. Mom’s got it.

This is where default parent resentment lives. Not in one big moment. In the accumulation of a thousand small ones where you looked around & realized you were the only one keeping count.

I created that dynamic. Not on purpose. Not because I wanted to be a martyr. But because I stepped in at the beginning out of care and capability, and there was no expiration date on that. So it just became mine.

That is how most of it becomes mine.

Not because anyone asked. Not because there was a conversation where we divided up the responsibilities and I drew the short straw. It happens because something needs to happen, I am capable of handling it, and I handle it. And then I handle it again. And again. Until everyone, including me, just assumes that’s how it works.

The resentment, when it comes, doesn’t always announce itself.

Sometimes it’s the eye roll I cannot stop. Sometimes it’s the audible exhale when I’m already exhausted and I look over and my husband is scrolling on the couch while basketball plays in the background, and I have just picked up the kids, worked on homework, driven to practice, come home and cooked dinner, tried to get everyone to eat the food, cleaned up the kitchen, and I’m about to start bedtime. And he’s just sitting there. Because as far as he can see, everything is handled.

The box is checked.

I have to choose my battles. I can’t complain about everything. And I’ve learned that if it’s something I’ve always been able to handle, it’s not something he’s going to see as truly requiring his involvement. That’s partly a generational thing. He is solidly Gen X, I am solidly millennial & there’s only so much I can do to shift that as one person. So instead of trying to architect the perfectly equitable marriage that the experts describe, I’ve stopped trying to fight that battle and started working on something more practical.

I ask for what I need in the moment. Specifically. Articulately. Without letting it build.

“Can you handle the dishes? I’m going to go upstairs and get the kids ready for bed.”

“I’m exhausted. Can you do bedtime tonight? Those thirty minutes would make a big difference for me.”

It is effort. I won’t pretend it isn’t. But it’s working better than shooting daggers with my eyes and grumbling under my breath and then letting it explode into a conversation that doesn’t lead anywhere except short-term begrudging compliance.

Here is the thing nobody tells you about the invisible load conversation.

Every article, every post, every podcast episode eventually tells you to talk to your partner. Have the conversation. Redistribute the labor. And yes, fine, that’s true. But what they don’t talk about is your role in how it got here.

I chose to take it all on at the beginning because I wanted it done right. Because I was anxious. Because the last time something wasn’t done right, it was heartbreaking. Because I am capable, and my capability made me the path of least resistance, and I took that path willingly because it was faster and less stressful than watching someone else fumble through it.

And there is something uncomfortable underneath that, which is that being the one who holds everything together—it gave me something. Certainty, maybe. A sense of being needed. Control over the outcome. And I think a lot of us have some version of that, even if we would never say it out loud. Even if the weight of it is crushing us. The familiarity of it is its own kind of comfort.

But familiarity is not the same as sustainable. And I know what default parent burnout feels like because I have lived it—not as a breakdown but as a slow, quiet drain on everything I actually wanted to be present for.

Which means letting go of it isn’t just logistical. It’s a reconfiguration of something.

I’ve watched older moms struggle when their kids leave. Not because they’re weak, but because so much of their sense of self was wrapped up in managing everything for everyone that when the everything disappeared, they weren’t sure who they were anymore. Still managing their kids’ bank accounts and travel plans well into their twenties and thirties. I watch that and I think: I do not want that to be me. I don’t want to look up in fifteen years and realize I optimized myself right out of a life.

So. That’s the real reason I’m working on this.

Not because the labor needs to be distributed more equitably, though that is also true. But because I want to be a person, not just a system. I want to have the emotional bandwidth to actually be present with my family instead of just managing them. And I want my kids to grow up knowing how to contribute—how to be the kind of people who see what needs to happen and do it, without someone assigning it to them.

That is an intentional long game.

So, I want to be honest about where we actually are.

I am not trying to create a 50/50 split. That’s not my goal. My goal is to figure out where my real capacity ends—where the things I’m carrying start to cost me more than they give back—and to hand off the overflow. Not all of it. Just enough that I can move through my days without the low-grade hum of resentment that used to follow me everywhere.

Here is what that has looked like practically with the dog:

On weekends, picking up the yard and taking George for a neighborhood walk is the kids’ job now. Not my ask, not my reminder. Their job. I held that line and the pushback was honestly minimal—mostly because when I make the ask, I mean it, and my kids have learned that. When I’m running behind in the morning, I ask whoever is available to feed him or let him out. When his vet appointment falls on a day my calendar is full, I ask Jason to handle it.

It is not the dream scenario where everyone contributes equally and nobody keeps score. But it is real. And it is working.

With Jason, what has helped most is being specific in the moment instead of letting things accumulate. Last week I left for an appointment in the morning with the kitchen still a mess—on purpose. I did not clean it before I left. And I came home to a spotless kitchen. That does not always happen. But sometimes it does, because when something is visible and unhandled, he does step in. I have learned that about him. So occasionally I let things be visible.

There was also the situation with the laundry basket in my closet—someone had dumped it out looking for something and left it. I asked about it once. They said they’d handle it. I waited. I did not nag. I did not clean it up myself even though it would have taken twenty seconds and been so much easier. It took five days. But they handled it. And it has not happened since.

That is the trade I keep making. Short-term efficiency for long-term shift. It is slower. It is more uncomfortable. There are absolutely days when it feels like it would just be faster to do it myself.

But I didn’t come here to be the most efficient person in the house.

I came here to have a life alongside the people I’m building it with.

And slowly, imperfectly, that is what I’m working toward.

Talk soon,
Erin

More from A Little Less:

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

Read more

It’s been a week since my family & I came home from our trip to Disney World.

Was it fun? Yes.
Did we all come back exhausted? Yes.

And I’ll be honest, there was a version of me not that far back that would’ve ignored it.

Would’ve pushed through. Would’ve spent my entire Sunday aggressively unpacking suitcases the second they hit the hallway floor. Would’ve run three back-to-back loads of laundry while simultaneously panic-ordering groceries on my phone so the kids had balanced lunches packed for school.

Would’ve chosen to completely drain whatever battery I had left just to get my whole household caught up, organized & reset—because if I don’t, who else will?

But what did that get me? Nothing more than a deeper sense of exhaustion with a healthy dose of overwhelm to top it off.

For years, I let myself buy into the belief that this is just “how life is” (whatever that means). For a while, I even let myself believe, “Well, maybe if I just get ahead of it before we go out of town, it’ll be easier to get back on track.”

Excuse me, what?

I see now this is the game: to convince us women that we are so capable that we can always do more. We can synthesize, optimize & organize to cram every waking moment with anything else that crops up in this whack-a-mole game of mom life.

And we’re so hard on ourselves when we “fall short.” When is enough ever enough? The answer is never. Because The Capable Mom can always do more. 👯‍♀️

But I’ve unsubscribed. This isn’t the life I came here to live. It isn’t remotely close to what I want to put my time, energy or heart toward.

Glad you’re here! 👯‍♀️

A Little Less is for the mom who’s running her life well—tired of feeling like she isn’t. Subscribe below for access to every essay: past, present & future. No paywalls, no locked archive. Ever.

Subscribe for free →

So in the instance of our return from our recent trip, I chose to let life feel slow, a bit of a trudge uphill, like I was moving through mud for a few days.

I let my body feel tired as I adjusted to the time difference, rather than forcing myself to get up early. I let myself unpack suitcases over the course of a few days rather than a few hours. I let myself skip the grocery delivery the day we returned & took the time I needed to meal plan when I felt ready.

And more than anything, I let myself lead the way. I chose to spend my time on the things I was interested in because they felt good, nourishing & energizing to me.

I spent an hour browsing through a few cookbooks.

I taught myself how to make corn tortillas.

I read a few Substack posts on spring style (like this & this)

I took a nap one afternoon.

I chose a new route for my walk with the dog.

I researched how to revive my houseplants.

And in the process,

I didn’t abandon my responsibilities. I just chose to do them alongside what felt restorative to me.

I didn’t avoid catching up, I just spread it out so it felt more sustainable.

I didn’t act selfishly, I just supported my needs thoughtfully.

I didn’t fail to get back on track, I just prioritized an intuitive flow over an optimized one.

Family life has so many moving parts. And that life moves so fast. It’s understandable to default to the productivity standards Americans are so well-programmed to follow.

But these systems fail us. They cheat us of our human experience & trick us into believing they’re a noble cause. That’s how society has come to sustain itself, after all. If not for the very buy-in of mothers, these systems would surely begin to crumble. If not with this generation, surely with future ones.

But I’m here to say, my family is actually fine. Actually…better than fine. We had such a great first week back. It was low-stress, manageable, and even enjoyable.

Everything that truly needed to get done still got handled. The kids still had clean clothes for school & we managed to keep everyone fed just fine from whatever was already in the pantry. We all got to our school days, meetings, clubs & other commitments as planned without a hitch. Most importantly, everyone got what they needed—including me.

So whether you’re just wrapping up a family vacation or one is forthcoming, I hope you’ll save this post as your reminder that doing it differently is not only within the realm of possibility, but to your benefit when you choose it.

And that’s nothing to feel guilty about—ever.

Ok, talk soon…
Erin

More from A Little Less:

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

Read more

In digging through some of the research from Scholastic, 5 low-pressure ways to read with your child when they’re reluctant

By 7:30 PM, my voice is tired, my patience is thin & the absolute last thing I usually want to do is put on three different character voices to read a chapter book aloud. The evening routine is a heavy lift for exhausted parents.

So when our kids get older and can finally read on their own, we happily pass the baton. We relent. We use those 20 minutes to finally go stare at a wall.

But I saw a post on Instagram earlier this week from Libby Pingpank that really grabbed my attention. She shared that in 2015, Scholastic reported 40% of kids ages 6–11 wished their parents had kept reading aloud to them.

They don’t want a theatrical performance. They just want the connection.

I spent 15 years as a reading interventionist, so I know what the research says. Kids whose parents keep reading aloud past the primary grades build stronger vocabularies, longer attention spans, and better reading stamina. The drop-off in read-alouds happens right around the time kids shift from learning to read into reading to learn — which is arguably when they need us in the text with them the most.

I’m not here to re-teach you that.

What I want to say is the part that usually doesn’t get said. The gap between what I know as a reading interventionist and what I actually have the energy to do at 8 PM on a Tuesday is incredibly wide. Some nights I love it. Some nights my voice is fried and my patience is gone and the last thing I want to do is read another chapter about a magical forest.

Both of those things are true. And most of what’s written about reading aloud is written for the first version of me.

So I want to talk about the second version.

The reading log

The expectation that a tired family needs to sit down & strictly enforce a timed “30 minutes of reading” every single night is wild to me. It turns something that should be connecting into a high-pressure chore.

Here is my honest reality: I do not strictly enforce the nightly reading log. If a teacher’s expectation feels unreasonable for our current season of life, I let it go. I usually reach out to the teacher — who is almost always incredibly reasonable — and ask to compromise on a weekly signed planner instead of a nightly one. That way we can front-load our reading over the weekend when we actually have the time and space, and skip the Tuesday night battle entirely.

I also widen my definition of what “counts” as reading, considerably.

Audiobooks count. Period. There is a massive amount of comprehension and listening skill going into them. My kids listen to books on their Yoto players daily and we listen on Audible several times a week. It all counts.

Reading apps count. My kids love Vooks, Epic, & the library’s Hoopla subscription.

Karaoke counts. My daughter loves to practice singing on the Simply Sing app, which requires her to quickly read lyrics on the screen. That’s fluency practice.

Magazines count. My son especially loves Honest History—I can’t recommend it enough.

Me reading aloud to them counts. If my kids are interacting with text or narrative, I sign the log and we go to sleep.

Glad you’re here! 👯‍♀️

A Little Less is for the mom who’s running her life well—tired of feeling like she isn’t. Subscribe below for access to every essay: past, present & future. No paywalls, no locked archive. Ever.

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The pre-teen pushback

The biggest pushback in my house doesn’t happen when we are in a good book. It happens in the messy gap between books when they don’t know what to read next.

When we hit that wall, I’ve learned to rely on a few specific workarounds. If we start a book and they push back, my exact script is “Let’s just read one more chapter. If you’re still not loving it, we can completely quit.” Giving them the out usually lowers their defenses enough to keep going.

We also flip the book-before-movie order. We’re conditioned to think we have to read the book first, but watching the movie first actually helps kids process plot and characters more easily, which lowers the cognitive load when they pick up the book.

When we’re in a slump, I don’t force a novel. We fill the gap with the Guinness Book of World Records or informational texts about whatever is happening right now—the Olympics, a place we’re traveling to, etc.

And if sitting on the couch feels too much like schoolwork, we listen to the audiobook in the car on the way to school. We’ve been loving the new Harry Potter full-cast audiobooks. I’ll also put one on while they’re sketching or building with MagnaTiles.

The 8 PM nights when I have nothing left

Then there are the nights where the kids actually want to read, but my voice is fried and I am entirely phoning it in.

On those nights: if I have the energy to read but not the energy to manage their bodies, I let them quietly color or build Legos on the floor while I read aloud. If I need to go shorter, I reach for an informational text where we can just read one page. My kids love Honest History or Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. .

We also pull out a wordless picture book and make up the story as we go. Or a choose-your-own-adventure picture book like Endlessly Ever After, which is silly and different every time. When all else fails, we grab a book we’ve read a hundred times — like The Book with No Pictures or Little Red & the Very Hungry Lion. They require zero brain power and they usually end in laughs.

Some nights, I let the internet do the heavy lifting and we watch someone else read the book on YouTube.

You do not have to optimize bedtime. If you are reading the back of a cereal box together, or listening to an audiobook while driving to soccer practice, you are doing it right.

If your kid is actively resistant, this is going to take patience. It may take years. It is a practice of showing up, not a pressure cooker where it’s now or never.

What has worked best in our house is building positive associations. Our library trips usually include a stop at the ice cream shop next door. Wintry Saturdays are for mugs of cocoa and blankets on the couch. I ask what they’re reading at school. I share fun facts from magazines. Picture books and graphic novels are still reading, even for older kids — I used picture books constantly when I taught 8th grade. When they’re stuck on what to read next, a librarian recommendation or a stroll through the new-releases section can take the decision pressure off, which is honestly where most reading resistance lives anyway.

As a reading interventionist, I know all the statistics. I know exactly how much this matters for their development. But as a human mom, I also know that if you are looking at the clock at 8 PM and feeling the crushing weight of one more thing you are supposed to do, the absolute best thing you can do is lower the bar.

You do not have to put on a one-woman theatrical performance at bedtime to be a good parent. You do not have to read a perfectly curated, award-winning novel every single night. We have to stop letting the pressure to get our kids’ development exactly right ruin the actual time we have with them.

Sometimes reading aloud is just finding a quiet pocket of time, letting out a deep breath, and sharing a story. If your voice is fried, let an audiobook do the heavy lifting while you both just sit there. If everyone is cranky, close the book and try again tomorrow. Relieving yourself of the pressure to do it perfectly is a daily practice.

Talk soon,
Erin

My favorite read-alouds, by grade

If you want to start reading aloud again but staring at a library shelf or Amazon search bar takes too much energy, here are some of my favorites. Most of these are series, which is one of my top ways to keep read-alouds going—it makes it so much easier to choose the next book when my kids already love the characters.

If you want to start reading aloud again but staring at a library shelf or Amazon search bar takes too much cognitive energy, I’ve got you. Here are some of my favorite read-aloud’s by grade to take the decision fatigue completely off your plate..

Read Alouds for 1st/2nd Grade

1. Princess in Black

2. Zoey & Sassafras

3. Magic Treehouse

4. Mia Mayhem

5. Dragon Masters

6. Hand-Me-Down Magic

7. The Magnificent Makers

8. Ivy & Bean

9. Mr. Penguin

10. Hilde Cracks The Case

Read Alouds for 3rd/4th

1. Alvin Ho

2. A Boy Called Bat

3. Henry Huggins

4. Boxcar Children

5. Matilda

6. Mr. Lemoncello’s Library

7. The Family Under the Bridge

8. The Witches

9. The Wild Robot

10. Pax

Read Alouds for 5th/6th

1. Mysterious Benedict Society

2. The Swag is in the Socks

3. Harry Potter (I love the illustrated versions!)

4. The Goose Girl

5. The Phantom Tollbooth

6. Wonder

7. Stargirl

8. Spy School

9. Percy Jackson

10. Gregor the Overlander

Read Alouds for 7th/8th

Because my kids aren’t in these grades yet I haven’t read all of the titles, I’ve denoted any I haven’t read but are on my list to read with my middle schooler someday soon with an *asterisk

1. The Hunger Games

2. Divergent

3. The Maze Runner*

4. The Book Thief

5. Number the Stars

6. Dry*

7. Scythe*

8. We Dream of Space*

9. The City of Ember*

10. The Outsiders*

As you click through the links, you’ll see most of these are actually series, which is one of my top ways to keep read-alouds going with my kids—it makes it so much easier to choose the next book when they already love the characters, plot, writing style, etc.!

Don’t see your favorites on the list?

If there are books you’ve loved reading with your kids that I’m missing, I’d love to hear. Drop them in this note here! 👇 I’d love to hear your suggestions & I know other moms would, too. 🥰

More from A Little Less:

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

Read more

Welcome to The Sidebar—a monthly edit of the things I’ve chosen to keep. In a world that constantly pushes for “more,” this is a series on the practice of being selective. From the books on my nightstand to the links in my group chat, here is a peek at what actually made the cut in my life this past month.

The fact that this monthly wrap-up post for Feb isn’t hitting the stacks until mid-March isn’t lost on me. Time is flying by. It’s as if we doubled up the speed of time to make up for the absurdity of January’s crawling along.

Nevertheless, here we are. And I had so much I did want to say that I’m still going to share everything that was top of mind in the past few weeks since the last issue of The Sidebar.

Here’s exactly what’s been going on…

The drink everyone in line asks me about—

Jason & I meet up for coffee most mornings after we’ve dropped the kids off at their respective schools. It’s a great way to just spend a little time together, play a game of NYT’s Crossplay against one another & catch up before going on with our day.

That said, I’ve tried pretty much any coffee shop drink but the one I go back to time & again is never on any of the menus. Lately, I’ve had several people stop me to ask what’s in my mug & it’s always the same: a honey & cinnamon latte.

It’s so simple, clean & down right cozy. I personally ask for the baristas to go light on the honey & to steam the cinnamon into the milk but it would be good on the sweeter side & with cinnamon on top. With this combo, you really can’t go wrong. 👯‍♀️

My current cookbook rotation—

I shared so much last month about what I do to automate grocery shopping, streamline meal planning & get through nightly dinner prep, but I didn’t get a chance to share some of my favorite cookbooks. If you’re a paid subscriber, you already know that one of the ways I cut down on decision fatigue is to keep a max. of 5 go-to cookbooks that I plan from at any given time.

So here’s what’s currently on my shelf:

1. Cooking in Real Life by
   Whether it’s a weeknight dinner or hosting guests, this is pretty much my go-to cookbook for food that’s going to taste ridiculously good without the stress of something overcomplicated.
   

2. Nights and Weekends by
   This cookbook is designed so thoughtfully with options for delicious dinners that are no-fuss on (week)nights but then the option for great meals on your weekend. It just makes it so easy to navigate & the food is absolutely delicious.
   

3. Opa! by
   Okay, I’m real picky about my Greek cookbooks. There are only few that get my seal of approval. But Helena & Vikki have delivered in both of their Greek titles. If you’re interested in classic Greek recipes Opa! is great for family dinners but if you’re feeding a crowd, I’d be remiss to leave out Peináo. You can’t go wrong!
   

4. Scratch That by
   I originally grabbed Scratch That for the house in Palm Springs but loved it so much I bought a second copy to have back home. The recipes are just so easy, thoughtful & Alix’s energy just seems to radiate off the pages.
   

5. Milk Street Fast and Slow by
   If you have a pressure cooker, this is the cookbook you need. While I love the convenience of a pressure-cooker dinner I’ve found most recipes made for them just fall short. The flavors are usually good but the dishes overall can fall flat in complexity. But the team at Milk Street really figured out how to overcome that problem–every meal we’ve had has been downright delicious.

The kitchen gear actually worth having—

On the note of convenience in the kitchen, I thought it would be helpful to follow up our series on dinner with a few pieces of equipment I’ve realized I grab for time & again that really do make dinners that much easier. I also know that getting pieces like these can be an investment so knowing someone else relies on these workhorses on the weekly can be so helpful!

1. Breville Air Fryer—We’ve had this countertop oven for over a decade & we will never be without one. It’s PFOA-free & has the ability to function as a surround oven, convection oven, air fryer, dough proofer & dehydrator. It’s so much quicker & efficient to heat this up that I rarely use my gas range as a result.
   
   I’m not exaggerating when I say I use this daily. As it stands, my 4,000+ days of relying on this $350 oven have brought down the cost to 7¢/use. 😂
   
   I personally have the larger unit that’s considered their pro model. But if you’re looking for one a bit smaller, the original model comes in these super sophisticated colors like an olive tapenade or an almond. Stunning.
   

2. Staub 7-Qt. Cocotte—This is my newest kitchen investment & I’m kicking myself for putting it off for so long. I use it constantly. Compared to my Le Creuset, I get a much better sear on meat, the braising lid prevents food from drying out & the dark interior is so much easier to keep clean. The Staub Cocotte is amazing for braises, stews & breads and it’s a stunner that you can leave out on your range and use for everything. Also, Sur La Table is currently running a sale on these—do not miss this crazy low price if you’re thinking of getting one.
   

3. Instant Pot—I struggle to articulate why food just tastes better from the IP but it just does. Maybe it’s the fact that food takes a fraction of the time & is relatively hands-off but I think it’s also that while the food’s cooked fast, it doesn’t taste rushed. Under pressure, the flavors come together beautifully.
   
   This is my go-to for soups, stews & anytime I need a meal on the table but don’t have the capacity to stay in the kitchen all evening to make it happen.
   
   And in my opinion, you can get away with the basic 6 qt. model (which I have) but if I were buying a new one, I’d be getting this Rio Wide model…If you can spare the storage space, I think it give you a lot more surface area at the bottom which is what you really want for the saute or slow-cook features. Plus, the wider model has a bigger capacity which is perfect both for batching dinners for your family or feeding a crowd.
   

4. Mini Crock Pot—I actually ditched my full-sized Crock Pot when I got the Instant Pot & that was a mistake since I don’t have that Wide RIO model. I didn’t realize the IP slow cooker function only heats from the bottom whereas the Crock Pot warms the ceramic from all sides for a more even heat-source & cooking. This 2 qt. size is ridiculously affordable & perfect for either a single family dinner or awarm party dip/appetizer. Plus, it takes up virtually no space in the cabinet.
   

5. Rubbermaid Glass Containers—Okay, maybe not “gear” per se but worth noting because whenever people come over they ask where I got these glass storage containers because they’re the perfect mix between form & function. I appreciate that I can reheat food in these glass containers with peace of mind (sans lid) while also being really easy to keep clean, store compactly & ensure food stays fresh. It’s definitely worth grabbing a set!

Glad you’re here! 👯‍♀️

A Little Less is for the mom who’s running her life well—tired of feeling like she isn’t. Subscribe below for access to every essay: past, present & future. No paywalls, no locked archive. Ever.

Subscribe for free →

What I’ve been reading lately—

Okay unlike January where I read so many books, February was bone dry. I’ll say, though, that Theo & I tore through books 2 & 3 of The Hunger Games series. We did a mix of read aloud at bedtime & listening to the title on Audible on our way to/from school. We’re now making our way through the movies & have also started the first prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. I’d never read it before & we’re both enjoying it immensely.

Also, we’re heading out of town for spring break soon, so I wanted to grab a paperback to bring along for our pool days & I think I’ve landed on Workhorse: A Novel by Caroline Palmer. Set in the early 2000’s, the story follows editorial assistant Clo Harmon as she tries to work through the ranks at a top fashion magazine. It’s apparently an easy read, funny & a topic I love so I cannot wait to dive in.

Spring break prep—

I can’t believe spring break is basically here & I’ve been doing my level best to get our trip to Walt Disney World squared away. While I’ve more or less got the logistics figured out, I’ve also had to do my share of last-minute shopping. These were the missing pieces I needed to get—

1. Swimsuits—Funny enough, the kids continue to grow…so new swimsuits it was. I ordered Stella some options from Quince (I’ll link to their vacation shop here—there are so many cute styles!) & I grabbed Theo more of the swim trunks he loves (these are amazing for summer camp, too, because they easily double as shorts for the day & dry fast).
   

2. Functional sling bag—Full confession, I do own this bag already but it’s in a darker brown that I don’t love for spring/summer. So when I saw Everlane had re-released it in this amazing quartz color I grabbed for it. It’s actually the bag we always keep Epi-Pens & Zyrtec in because it’s one both Jason & I feel comfortable carrying around. Highly recommend.
   

3. Walking shoes—I was in dire need of new shoes especially ones that would support my feet all day long. So I am finally giving Hokas a try. These Clifton 10’s seemed to be the most reasonable (some are so substantial) that I think they’ll be great for all-day wear. Actually, Stella tried on a kid’s pair as well & thought they were the comfiest gyms shoes she’d tried on. Which reminds me, I grabbed her some new shoes at Rothy’s. If you haven’t checked out their kid’s options, it’s time to reconsider. They are highly, highly, highly washable & absolutely adorable.
   

4. Travel towels—I used to have some just like these from IKEA & lost them somewhere in the move. I swear by these, not even for travel specifically but they’re perfect for this trip. I used to keep one of these in the stroller for wiping off wet slides, cleaning off a messy picnic bench or protecting the kids’ legs from hot swings.

5. Water bottle with a built-in filter—The older I get, the lower my tolerance for drinking just any old water. I wish I weren’t this way. But drinking from plastic bottles is a thing of the past. And so is unfiltered water. So this option from Larq felt perfect. I especially appreciate the 17oz. option & that it has a carabiner clip to make it easy to tote around the parks (or hikes in the future).
   

6. Travel hand wipes—I’m just restocking these. We’ve used these fragrance-free, castile-soap hand wipes from Handzies for years. I keep them in the car, toss them in the kids’ lunch bags & definitely bring with me to theme parks. I know the individual packaging is a convenience thing but I really appreciate they’re never dried out & it’s easy to toss them into a bag or a pocket so that they’re always at the ready.

Okay, I think that sums up the past month or so! It’s been such a busy time with a lot of moving parts so I’m going to drop the posts from the past month below in case you’d like to catch up!

Talk soon,
Erin

This post’s free. 👯‍♀️ Most weeks, the full essay is for paid subscribers only—the stuff I don’t share publicly. How I actually handle the hard parts, the specific decisions I’m making & the things I’ve stopped doing. Plus, audio versions recorded by me & a private comment section with the other women who are doing things differently.

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From the past month:

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

For a while, I wrestled with this expectation that if we were going to go through all the effort to take the family out of town, it had to be the “perfect” trip to make it worth it. And by perfect, I guess I mean I felt like we all needed to enjoy ourselves, the kids still needed their familiar structure of naps and regular bedtimes, and we had to make every single moment count.

But over the years, I’ve realized those ideals were really just setting me up for frustration. I was coming home overwhelmed, stressed, and depleted.

Caitlin Murray actually said it so perfectly in this reel — distinguishing a “family trip” from a “vacation” was the piece I’d been missing in my expectations. Getting out of town with the kids doesn’t serve the same purpose as a vacation does. Shifting that mindset helped me move away from trying to enjoy a vacation while also caring for children.

A case study in that shift, for us, is Walt Disney World. It’s arguably the trip that comes with the highest amount of pressure to get your money’s worth, to make the best memories for your kids, and to choose the perfect attractions and restaurants that will keep everyone happy.

We did this trip a couple of years back, and I can safely say we did not tackle planning it the way all the blogs tell you to. And it’s exactly why we’re eagerly going back.

The biggest shift was how we defined success. The default expectation is that if you pay that much for a park ticket, you have to go from rope drop to fireworks to make it worth it. We knew that would make everyone miserable. So success for us meant explicitly planning to leave the park by 1:00 PM. We’d go back to the hotel, get in the pool, take showers, and eat an early dinner. Then we’d stack our Lightning Lane passes for the evening and head back in — well-rested, with big rides waiting for us. We spent almost as much time leaving the parks as we did inside them, entirely by design.

I also had to do a lot of unlearning around managing everyone’s emotions. I used to feel like I had to prevent my kids from having big feelings just because we were on a trip. But a meltdown in Fantasyland is just a meltdown in a different place than home. It’s not my job to force the magic. Building in that massive chunk of daily downtime meant we weren’t constantly putting out fires with emotionally exhausted kids.

Jason and I also got extremely clear on our morning roles ahead of time. He handled booking the Minnie Vans and getting the brown-bag breakfasts together. I handled getting the kids dressed and their shoes on. We split the invisible labor so I wasn’t the default person holding the whole morning together.

And I opted out of the planning noise entirely. You can so easily get sucked into a spiral of Disney tips and tricks looking for the perfect strategy. I chose one trusted resource — Ali at Wish Upon a Planner — and blocked out the rest of the internet.

Finally, I skipped the performance of the trip. No matching family wardrobe. I bought myself a hat and saved myself the stress of managing the coordinated orders. I took the same approach with photos — I refused to force tired kids to stand in the heat and smile. I just grabbed video of us walking around and pulled stills from them later.

Glad you’re here! 👯‍♀️

A Little Less is for the mom who’s running her life well—tired of feeling like she isn’t. Subscribe below for access to every essay: past, present & future. No paywalls, no locked archive. Ever.

Subscribe for free →

The logistics followed from the mindset. I stopped stressing about where we’d eat every meal. We found we didn’t actually save money on the Disney meal plan, so instead I had a Target order delivered to the hotel at the start of the trip with easy breakfast stuff and snacks. I packed little brown-bag breakfasts the kids could eat in line while we were waiting for rope drop. Between the intermittent snacking and sharing a quick-service lunch, we never found ourselves starving. Which meant the second time around I didn’t book so many sit-down meals. I focused on just one proper restaurant meal a day, which freed up so much time because we weren’t constantly scrambling to make a reservation.

For characters, I didn’t want to spend time waiting around in the hot sun. So we used that one sit-down meal a day to do character dining — like lunch in Cinderella’s Castle. The characters come to your table in the air conditioning, the kids get their photos and autographs, and it sets a really clear expectation: these are your opportunities. Then you’re not constantly chasing them down for the rest of the trip.

For souvenirs, I consolidated. Every ride exits into a gift shop, and I’ve seen families give their kids a daily dollar amount to spend, but that gets exhausting to manage and you’re still fielding questions every time. We do the pin exchange instead. The kids brought their trading pins from a previous trip, and you can trade them at shops, at hotels, and with Cast Members. It gives them the excitement of getting something new without me having to shell out money at every turn or constantly say no.

The phone piece was the biggest one for me. Disney basically requires you to be on your phone constantly right now. I tried to plan a loose order of the rides I wanted to go on before we even got there, which helped me stay off my phone in the moment because I already knew roughly how I wanted to move through the park. But the real thing that made the difference was paying for a third-party app. Last time I used Standby Skipper, and this year I plan on using Thrill Data. I spend a few minutes in the morning plugging in the rides I want, and once we check into a Lightning Lane, the app finds the next ride for us in the background. Doing that manually in real time is a lot to manage, and the app was honestly the only reason I wasn’t glued to my screen all day.

On parks, we bought the Park Hopper pass, but I realized you can absolutely get by without it if you want to save the money. There isn’t a whole lot to ride in Animal Kingdom, so it’s a quick day. Hollywood Studios is really the only park where we felt like we needed to stay longer to check the boxes. For the rest of it, we just split Magic Kingdom and Epcot — morning in the park, afternoon at the hotel resting, evening back in the same park with stacked passes ready.

None of this is really about theme parks. Whether you’re navigating Disney World, going on a standard family road trip, or just trying to manage a busy weekend at home, the only way you actually get to enjoy the life you’re managing is by protecting your energy.

You don’t have to adopt any of what I just described. I just hope seeing the breakdown gives you permission to build margin into your own plans. If bailing on a dining reservation so you can go sit by the pool is what keeps everyone intact, bail on the reservation.

A trip with kids is still going to be exhausting. There will always be tired feet, overstimulation, and moments where things fall apart. But remembering the difference between a family trip and a vacation changes the entire metric for success. Dropping the pressure to make every single second magical or perfect actually gives you the space to just exist there together. If you have to bail on your plans by noon because everyone is tapped out, you didn’t fail the trip. You just honored your family’s capacity.

And honestly, that is the only real way to make the effort worth it.

Talk soon,
Erin

More from A Little Less:

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

It’s 5:00 PM. You have the groceries. You have the plan. But now you actually have to stand in the kitchen and cook while the rest of the house is loud, tired & completely melting down around you.

The mental labor of keeping our families fed is exhausting. But the overwhelm of dinnertime is what usually breaks us.

It’s not just the physical act of chopping and stirring. It’s the constant background noise of kids asking, “Is dinner ready yet?” It’s the invisible stress of hoping they actually eat what you make so they don’t ask for a snack the moment you tuck them into bed. It’s the heavy, looming dread of knowing that once the meal is finally over, you are still on the hook to clean up the kitchen before you turn around and start up the kids’ bedtime routine.

The internet usually tells us to just prep harder on Sundays, buy a better gadget, or find a more efficient routine. I’m not interested in finding ways to fit more into my day. I want to find ways to get what needs to happen done with as little friction as possible, so I can free up my energy for what actually matters to me.

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What’s hard about dinner usually isn’t the cooking. It’s trying to cook while managing noise, complaints, and the cleanup clock in the back of your head. So here is what I’ve learned about that specific hour, in my house, over a lot of 5 PMs.

On noise: if my house feels really overwhelming, I put in my Loop earplugs. I can still hear my family, I can still have a conversation, everything is just a little quieter. Some nights that alone is what gets me through dinner prep. Other nights, if I notice myself picking up my phone every thirty seconds, I play music on the kitchen speaker — not because I love cooking to music, but because it gives my brain something to focus on that isn’t my phone. Managing the sensory input around me has turned out to matter more than managing anything in the pot.

On timing: just because we eat dinner in the evening doesn’t mean I have to cook it in the evening. Since I left teaching, I’ve noticed I have more flexibility in when I prep. Sometimes I’ll do my mise en place earlier in the day — chopping vegetables, making a sauce — so the actual dinner hour is just assembly. Sometimes I’ll start a crockpot meal at lunchtime. And sometimes, if I know tomorrow is going to be hard, I’ll make the whole thing the day before. The assumption that dinner prep has to happen right before dinner was one of the most unhelpful defaults I was carrying.

On the “I’m hungry” complaints that start at 4:45: I put out a plate. Fruit, veggies, almond crackers, cashews — healthy things I have no problem with the kids filling up on. It’s easier to feed a kid who isn’t hangry, and they’re often more willing to eat these foods as snacks than they would be as a side on their dinner plate. The complaints stop because they’re already eating. The question of whether they’ll touch what I’m cooking matters less because they’re not going to bed hungry either way.

On taking the pressure off the actual meal: when we sit down, I make sure the kids’ plates always have two or three sure-fire items on them — things I know they’ll eat. That way if the main dish isn’t their favorite, there’s no drama. They have options to fill up on, and they’re invited to try other flavors and textures without the pressure of having to finish. It’s taken the battle out of dinner for us.

On family dinner nights: I don’t try to do a “proper” sit-down meal every single night. I meal plan according to what we have going on, which means dinner on a Tuesday with soccer practice looks very different from dinner on a Friday when we’re all home. The nights we’re all home are the ones where we treat dinner as a shared family effort — the whole family contributes. Someone sets the table, someone gets drinks, someone clears plates, someone puts away leftovers. It’s taken some of the weight off me, and it’s also made those dinners feel less like a chore and more like something we’re doing together. Funnily enough, the kids are also more cooperative on these nights because they have breathing room — no rush to get to an activity, no pressure to eat quickly.

On the nights I have nothing left: sometimes Jason cleans up the kitchen while I get bedtime rolling. But on the nights it’s just me, I’m not above putting the food away, rinsing the plates, and leaving the rest until morning. The dishes will be there. My capacity won’t be, if I spend the last bit of it scrubbing a pan.

This is really about working within your real energy, not stretching yourself thin just because you’re capable of stretching. I’ve found that doing less in the kitchen has actually let me accomplish more — specifically, holding onto a little more calm in my evenings and a little more patience for my kids.

As you think about your own 5 PM, it might help to notice where your actual friction is coming from. Is it the noise? The timing? The hangry kids? The cleanup? You don’t have to overhaul your whole routine. Pick one friction point and make one small change there. Not a whole system. Just one thing that would make 5 PM feel a little less like a battle.

Talk soon,
Erin

More from A Little Less:

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

There used to be a time when cooking grounded me. It felt creative. Relaxing. Something I chose to do at the end of a long day.

But somewhere between late work nights, after-school activities and the pressure to make meals everyone would actually eat, it stopped feeling like a reprieve & started feeling like one more decision I didn’t have the energy to make.

And I feel like that’s the part about meal planning that there isn’t enough conversation about. Because it’s not just the act of cooking that wears us down, it’s the constant mental load behind it. The planning, the second-guessing, the pressure to get the “right” meal on the table.

What used to feel enjoyable can quietly turn into a daily task you want no part in — but have to do anyway.

For a long time, I thought the answer was to just get better at meal planning. Find better recipes. Be more organized. Spend more time upfront so the week would magically feel easier.

But eventually I realized the problem wasn’t that I didn’t know how to plan. It was that I was trying to keep up with a version of planning that didn’t fit my real life anymore.

I was over-planning. Over-shopping. Over-thinking. And then feeling frustrated when I couldn’t keep up with something I had created myself.

So instead of throwing everything out, I started paying attention to what was actually working & slowly letting the rest go.

What that turned into isn’t a strict meal planning system. It’s more like a framework that actually fits my current life — my schedule, my energy, my kids’ preferences, my own capacity.

I stopped searching for new recipes every week. I stopped forcing elaborate plans that looked great on paper but fell apart by Wednesday. I started choosing meals from sources I already knew would be low-stress, easy to make & delicious. If something requires ingredients I don’t normally keep or energy I don’t realistically have, it’s not making the cut anymore.

That shift has changed a lot. There’s a little enjoyment back in my cooking because I’m not trying to perform at a level that doesn’t match the season I’m in. Our family wastes less food because I’m not over-planning. And the 4 PM dread isn’t there the way it used to be, because I’m not starting the evening with a plan I don’t actually want to follow.

Before I walk you through what this looks like in practice, I want to be clear about what it isn’t. This isn’t a complicated system. This isn’t a heavy project on the front end. And it definitely isn’t about turning Sundays into a marathon prep session.

It’s just a few guidelines that have helped me adjust my planning so it works with real life, not against it.

If you’ve been feeling weirdly resentful about meal planning lately, I think this is why. It’s not that you can’t do it — it’s that the version you’re trying to keep up with asks too much.

You don’t need more recipes. You need fewer decisions. And an approach that actually fits your real week.

Glad you’re here! 👯‍♀️

A Little Less is for the mom who’s running her life well—tired of feeling like she isn’t. Subscribe below for access to every essay: past, present & future. No paywalls, no locked archive. Ever.

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In practice, the shift came down to four things.

First, I looked at my actual week — not the week I wished I had. The whole family running around town on Monday nights means Monday dinner is something pre-packed we can eat on the go. Thursdays when activities wrap up earlier means dinner can be something I make in 20 minutes. Fridays when we’re all home are when I’ll make something that takes a little more time, because I can and because I want to. Matching dinner to the shape of the night is what made the planning start to hold.

Second, I stopped planning every week. I used to plan dinners weekly and it was a whole production — finding the time, getting into the headspace, the weekly shop, the daily prep. Half the time I was over-planning anyway and food got wasted. So I shifted to planning monthly. Twelve times a year instead of fifty-two. That alone made it feel manageable and honestly validated why I’d been struggling so much before. It also lets me plan more seasonally, choosing dishes for the month that fit what’s in season. And when life gets chaotic and I cook less than expected, I just push meals further into the month — or into the next one — instead of starting over from scratch.

Third, I keep fewer options on purpose. Part of what made meal planning so overwhelming was the sheer volume of choices — cookbooks, blogs, saved Instagram posts. Too many ideas was the thing slowing me down. So now I limit my inputs. I keep five cookbooks on my kitchen shelf that I rotate through, mostly weeknight-friendly meals and family favorites. I keep a running list of shortcut dinners in Apple Reminders — if I grab a Trader Joe’s meatball calzone for the freezer, it goes on the list. So does leftover short-rib ragu. Those are my low-prep nights. And on activity nights, I just don’t plan to cook. Either I pack dinner for the kids so bedtime is easy when we get home, or we’re eating leftovers.

Fourth, I made the plan visible. I used to rely on a paper calendar, which inevitably got food on it or went missing right when I needed it. I tried Google Calendar, but it felt clunky. Our family uses a Hearth Display now, which has a meal-planning tab — everyone can see what’s for dinner without having to ask me, I can link directly to recipes, and it’s easy to reschedule when plans change. The tool matters less than the principle: the plan is more useful when it’s somewhere the whole family can see it.

I’m not sharing this because I think my exact approach will work perfectly for you.

What changed things for me wasn’t a perfect plan. It was noticing where my old approach was asking too much of me and adjusting it without starting over from scratch.

Talk soon,
Erin

More from A Little Less:

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

More from A Little Less:

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

If you’ve ever stared into an open fridge at 4:00 PM and felt a wave of absolute dread, you know that the hardest part of grocery shopping isn’t the driving or the paying.

It’s the thinking.

It’s the mental gymnastics. Did I use the last of the cumin? Did the kids actually eat the yogurt I bought last week? It’s the act of inventing the wheel, from scratch, every single week.

The average trip to the grocery store takes 46 minutes. And honestly, I’d argue that’s conservative. I know for me, it’s 30 minutes just to get to and from my store. Do that twice a week and we’re talking at least two hours spent just buying food. And that doesn’t account for the invisible labor: the list-making, the inventory checking, the constant mental tab of “what are we out of?”

We have to stop treating our kitchens like art studios where we create something new every week, and start treating them like a wardrobe.

The goal isn’t to walk into your kitchen hoping for inspiration. The goal is a reliable uniform — focusing on inventory management so you don’t have to wait for inspiration to strike in order to get your family fed.

The logical place to start is with the meal plan. Pick the meals, write the list, go to the store. That’s how we’ve all been taught.

But I’ve flipped it. The old way forces you to invent a new meal plan every week, which then forces you to generate an entire grocery list from scratch. That is exhausting — and frustrating when you inevitably forget something as obvious as the 2% milk.

My approach starts with the 80% you buy on repeat. The staples, the snacks, the basics. That’s your base layer. When that’s handled, meal planning stops feeling like a weekly reinvention project and starts feeling like a smaller decision.

If you take nothing else from this post, let it be this: you’re not “bad at groceries.” You’re just managing too much of it in your head. If you can find one way to streamline even part of it, you’ll be surprised how much headspace comes back.

Why I don’t feel guilty about grocery services

For a long time, I told myself grocery delivery was a luxury. I felt like I should be doing it myself to save money. But when I actually ran the numbers, the opposite was true.

I use Target 360 and Amazon Prime for our staples. Here’s what those memberships cost me:

• Amazon Prime: $139/year

• Target 360: $99/year

• Total Cost: $5.36/week

That’s less than the cost of one latte a week to have someone else do the heavy lifting of shopping for my groceries and bring them to my doorstep.

But here’s what actually made me stop feeling guilty—what those memberships saved me last year:

• Amazon Prime Visa ($0 annual fee 5% cash back at Whole Foods/Amazon!): $1,735.51

• Prime-Member Exclusive Deals: $616.00

• Target 360 Savings: $561.04

• Total Value: $2,912.55

That doesn’t just pay for the memberships. It effectively puts about $150 back in my pocket every single month.

So if you’ve been holding onto the guilt that you “should” be shopping the aisles, let it go. The math says you can stay home — or at the very least, keep the kids in the car while you swing through the drive-up line.

Glad you’re here! 👯‍♀️

A Little Less is for the mom who’s running her life well—tired of feeling like she isn’t. Subscribe below for access to every essay: past, present & future. No paywalls, no locked archive. Ever.

Subscribe for free →

My automated list

So the how is figured out. But what about the what?

I don’t use the “Favorites” list in the grocery apps (I shop at multiple places, which breaks that system). I don’t use a paper list (I inevitably leave it on the counter). I use Apple Reminders.

What makes it work is that I don’t start from scratch each week. I have a Master List inside Reminders with every recurring item we buy — the 80% base layer — categorized by aisle and saved as a template. The minute I finish shopping, I generate a fresh list from that template for the next week. That list is my brain-dump zone. When we randomly run out of soy sauce on Tuesday, I ask Siri to add it so I don’t have to hold it in my head.

When I’m ready to do the next grocery run, I open the list — which is now a mix of the base layer plus whatever I added during the week — and scan it. I delete what we don’t actually need (swipe left on the detergent if we still have plenty) and add the specific ingredients for the week’s dinners. That’s the 20%.

The reason this is better than a running list: it eliminates ghost ingredients. If I bought capers for a recipe three weeks ago, I don’t want to see “capers” on my list forever. By generating a fresh list from the template every week, I only see the essentials plus exactly what I need.

It turns a 20-minute inventory check into a 30-second tap.

One extra tip

If you want to take this one step further, you can remove the friction of searching for specific products. For the items where I’m brand-loyal—my specific protein powder, the non-toxic dish soap, the diapers that don’t leak—I add the direct URL into the Notes section of the template entry. When the list populates, the link is right there. I tap it, add to cart, and swipe back to the Reminders app. No searching, no scrolling.

Use my master template

Setting up the master list is the most time-consuming part. So I did it for you.

I’ve created a Master Grocery List Template in Apple Reminders. It’s pre-categorized by aisle and pre-loaded with 60+ foundational items most families buy — produce, proteins, pantry staples, household. It’s brand-agnostic (no specific product links), so you can use it as your skeleton and customize from there.

To install: tap the link on your iPhone or MacBook, click “Add List,” and start customizing. Add your specific items, delete what you don’t eat, paste your own links in the notes if you want to speed things up later. When you’re done, tap the three dots at the top of the list and select “Save As Template.”

A tiny next step I’d recommend: once you’ve downloaded it, do one inventory sweep of your house to check off what you already have. Then next time you need to shop, don’t ask yourself “what do we need?” Just look at the list and restock your basics.

I’m not sharing any of this because I think my exact setup will work perfectly for you. I’m sharing it because I wasted years treating grocery shopping like a weekly puzzle I had to solve from scratch. The shift wasn’t finding a better system. It was realizing I didn’t need to be generating most of it in the first place.

If any of this gives you even an hour of your weekend back, that’s the whole point.

Talk soon,
Erin

More from A Little Less:

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.

🎧 Prefer to listen while you drive or fold laundry? I recorded an audio version—just tap the play button at the top of the post to listen in.

The cognitive labor of keeping our families fed is exhausting.

It’s not just the actual time spent cooking. It’s the constant nature of it. As soon as you finish feeding your kids their last meal or snack, it’s time to turn around and do it all again in a few hours’ time. Decide what to feed them. Prep it. Get them to eat it. Clean it up. Then start over.

And while cramming more into every minute of the day is an American ideal, I’m not interested in fitting more into my day. I want to find ways to handle what needs to happen with less friction, so I can free up what’s left of my energy for what actually matters to me.

I can’t imagine I’m the only one feeling this way.

When I looked at survey data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the numbers weren’t surprising but they were validating. The average trip to the grocery store takes 46 minutes. For me, that’s 30 minutes just to get to and from my store. Do that twice a week — hello, poor planning — and you’re at two hours a week just buying food. That’s before you add in making the lists, prepping meals, and cleaning up afterward, which accounts for at least another eight hours a week.

And none of that accounts for the invisible stress of getting our kids to eat, offering healthy choices, and helping them build a good relationship with food.

The cumulative weight of all of that is real. It’s not just you.

Glad you’re here! 👯‍♀️

A Little Less is for the mom who’s running her life well—tired of feeling like she isn’t. Subscribe below for access to every essay: past, present & future. No paywalls, no locked archive. Ever.

Subscribe for free →

The question I kept coming back to was how to do enough — enough planning, enough intention, enough consistency — without burning myself out. Because the whole reason meal planning had started to feel like a grind was that I’d been trying to keep up with a version of it that was asking too much of me. The recipes I wasn’t getting to. The grocery runs I kept having to redo. The 4 PM dread of figuring out what to make. The Sunday prep sessions I told myself I’d do and then didn’t. All of it had become a weekly reminder of falling short at something I used to like.

So I stopped trying to fix the system and started paying attention to where the weight was actually coming from.

A lot of it was me doing everything from scratch every week. Re-inventing the grocery list. Re-deciding the meal plan. Re-cleaning the same kitchen at the end of the night with no one else helping. Each piece of it individually is small. Stacked together, they’re crushing.

What I’ve been doing instead is pulling the parts of the kitchen rhythm that don’t actually need to change week to week and letting them run on their own. The staples I always buy. The meals that are already working. The shortcut dinners I can lean on when the week goes sideways. When the 80% that stays the same is handled, the 20% that does change becomes manageable. It stops feeling like a full reinvention and starts feeling like one small weekly decision.

It’s not a system. It’s not a plan I’m selling you. It’s just what’s left after I stopped trying to be good at something I was never going to be good at in the form everyone was prescribing.

And I’ll be honest — the biggest shift wasn’t logistical. It was giving myself permission to stop treating the kitchen like a performance. I’m not running a restaurant. I don’t have a food photographer. My kids are going to eat what they eat, and the whole family is going to be fed regardless of whether I cooked something new or heated up leftovers for the third time this week.

The real question isn’t how to do it all better. It’s how to do less of what was never working anyway.

Talk soon,
Erin

More from A Little Less:

New here?

I’m Erin—a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. And this is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know about it instead.

If you want to understand what A Little Less is all about, I think you’ll appreciate this post.

And if you already know you want to be part of the conversation, you can just drop your email below to start receiving essays like these straight to your inbox every Sunday. 👯‍♀️

This essay—and every essay—is free for every reader because our paid subscribers & founding members keep it that way. 🤍 I’m deeply grateful for their support.