Jessica's Friday Five: Decluttering decor & research on household equity

Hi Reader,

It's Friday! If you're like me, it's hard to track what day of the week it is during this between-holiday time of year. I've learned the hard way as a small business owner that it's easy to forget to take days off during times like this, so I specifically planned out which days I would be working and not working during the few weeks where my kids are home for winter break. It's been lovely to not have to decide and re-decide whether to work on a given day - I'm just following my plan and grateful for the past mistakes that helped me learn to do this planning in the first place.

Scroll to the bottom and vote for which charity we should donate to this quarter!

Before we get to the tips, you can see here the things we bought this month, including a tool to figure out why our oven seems to be cooking too hot, the puzzle board I should have purchased a decade ago, a butt cream spreader for my friend who is about to have twins, and a few additions to our emergency kit.

1. Decluttering Decorations: If you have any winter, Christmas, or Hannukah decor that you did not even put out this year, here's your permission slip to go ahead and donate it so that someone else can enjoy it. I'm taking this advice myself after realizing some things stayed in our "Christmas decor" box the entire season. We do VVA pickups about once a month in our home to make donating easy (because I know it's easy to drive around with a bag of donations in your trunk for months on end).​
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2. Most Popular Blogs of 2024: Here are the topics from my blog that y'all were most interested in this year. The 5th most popular was My Favorite Books for Work, coming in 4th was Jessica’s Tool Recommendations For Professionals, in 3rd place was Decide Once Digest, 2nd place went to Why every professional needs a "polish week" once a year, and the most popular blog of all this year was How to Get a Free Stanley Tumbler.
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3. Vision Board Templates: If you'd like to make a visual to represent the kind of year you want to have in 2025, I love a good vision board. You can use Canva (the free version) to make a pretty great vision board without cutting up magazines like we might have done years ago if you'd prefer. Here's a set of free templates I made for you so that you can drop in the images that you want and then turn yours into a printout, a computer background, a phone background, or whatever you want.
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4. Surprisingly Eligible FSA Health Items: If you have flexible spending account (FSA) dollars to spend before Dec 31, this list has some surprisingly eligible items that you might not have on your radar, like pimple patches, heating pads, skin care items, light therapy masks, and more. Anything you buy on that site is FSA-eligible, which makes it so easy. If you can't figure out what you need, consider getting items for expecting parents you know, sunscreen to donate to a summer camp, or fix up a first aid kit for a classroom teacher.
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5. New Research on Household Equity: USC is out with research showing that, in most households with a female and male parent present, mothers are doing it all…or almost all of it. Overall, mothers reported greater responsibility than their partners for the cognitive labor of 29 out of 30 tasks and the physical household labor for 28 out of 30 tasks. Taking out the garbage was the only task for which male partners were responsible for both the cognitive (planning) and physical labor (execution), and home maintenance was the only other task for which partners were responsible for the physical labor. The research also showed that the The Fair Play Method can be an effective tool for creating more domestic labor equity, improving mental health and overall relationship quality. Hit reply if you want to bring a Fair Play workshop to your company or community group. I'm a certified facilitator and would love to partner with you to support your people.

VOTE: Which charity should we donate to? As you might know, I donate 100% of the commissions I receive from Amazon when anyone buys through one of my links (you can always start your shopping here to generate donations!). From the last two months, we have $459 to donate. Should we give to World Central Kitchen (first to the frontlines providing fresh meals in response to crises) or Room to Read (creating a world free from illiteracy and gender inequality through education)? Vote below, and I'll make our donation next week!

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