00:04:43.080I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the answer because I, you know, I pride myself on being a parent that embraces mess that we've got.
00:04:53.220The whole front room of our house is a craft area.0.99
00:04:56.720But I'm also the person who says no glitter in my damn house.0.97
00:05:01.080I have three things I don't want in my house.0.99
00:17:43.940What do I not share about as Tidy Dad?
00:17:46.140What role do I want my children to play?1.00
00:17:49.100What role does my wife want to play? Because that's always the question, because I have a largely female audience, that it's about 93% female, 7% male.0.97
00:18:00.120That's what I was going to ask you. Yeah. So it's mostly women who are your audience.
00:18:06.380It's interesting because when I share my vulnerability of my mental health struggles and what it was like when I became a parent and my head and my heart were completely rewired, I had this huge mental health crisis at work.
00:18:22.740I stepped down from my school admin job. I returned to teaching. And when I started to tell
00:18:28.060that story, that's when women really started to gravitate because they said, you know, I went
00:18:35.600through something very similar or my partner or my spouse went through something similar. Or,
00:18:43.200you know, we don't hear a lot of men saying, I really don't want to pursue this career track
00:18:49.820because I want to spend more time with my kids and be home.
00:18:53.860Like, it was sort of at that flashpoint in time
00:18:58.860where everyone was sort of questioning, you know, our identity.
00:19:04.220This was, again, it's going back to like the height of the 2020 pandemic,
00:19:08.460which really sort of shifted everything for everyone.
00:19:12.520But what I still find is that, you know,
00:19:15.700we live in a small 750-square-foot apartment.
00:19:18.460I don't have a beautiful, all-white exterior. I don't drive a fancy car. I drive a 2000 Chevy Malibu. Yes, we have a little cottage in the Poconos, but I don't live a life of extravagance that many influencers project to the world.
00:19:40.080And I have been at influencer events. I'm sure that you have been at influencer events and you can tell the type as soon as they walk in the room. And it's not to judge, but I don't know for me why I still teach, which is the often question that I get is like, I have to be grounded in reality when this world of tidy dad becomes my whole identity and vocation.
00:20:10.080I just feel like I may lose something of myself in the process.
00:20:37.300because it largely takes place at an influencing conference and i i wrote there's only one dad
00:20:44.800influencer his name is at single dad dan oh my gosh i know i know and because when i went to
00:20:50.500one of these conferences there was one dad influencer there and he was a single dad
00:20:53.700influencer uh and you're just i think you're this is gonna make you just laugh out loud okay good
00:21:00.280one of the lines that i put in the book that i heard at an influencer conference
00:21:04.900was a woman who is a mom, a very specific mom, mental health, mental load influencer.
00:21:16.460And she said, I have a million followers now. I don't know who is friends with me and who is
00:21:23.380friends with me from my followers. And I was like, that's just sad. Like, I would never want my life
00:21:29.380to get to that point. I've covered celebrities for so long. I get it. But also, so much of it
00:21:34.900felt very inauthentic too because i i know a lot of influencers that are just they rent fake houses
00:21:42.060to do their reels in it's not there and you can always tell the bathroom for their nighttime
00:21:46.220routines because you can't see a toilet there's never a toilet in these bathrooms uh and and it
00:21:52.180does it makes people feel bad about themselves what i love about your content is it's taking
00:21:55.940place in your real house okay i just want to see and i think we have a warped idea of what people's
00:22:01.860real spaces look like too, because we only see these pristine, gorgeous spaces. And your ass1.00
00:22:08.960looks gorgeous, but it looks normal gorgeous. Like my very tidy friend who has excellent taste1.00
00:22:16.360and not some celebrity who's unattainable. And I think that there are certain things that I've
00:22:25.280had to learn to do in order to protect. And again, it's like, you know, mental health is something
00:22:33.920that I talk about as Tidy Dad, because there are moments where I do have extreme sort of anxiety.
00:22:41.260There are even parts to being Tidy Dad that I've had to really become fiercely protective of,
00:22:47.480because, you know, I had this moment a couple of years ago where I was reading an article
00:22:52.800and someone was talking about their like red people on reddit and what they were saying about
00:22:58.980them and i was like oh my gosh like i wonder if i i was like i wonder if i'm on reddit and i sort
00:23:05.140of said it like i don't really know what reddit is i wonder if people are like talking about tidy
00:23:09.400dad and i discovered you know i did this like six hour deep dive on the most hurtful awful
00:23:19.040things that people would say about me it was this parent snark sort of reddit forum they decided
00:23:27.560the moderators that they would do some polls on tidy dad because i'm popping up so much of whether
00:23:33.480they wanted a separate sort of thread about me um you know people i it's when i there was sort
00:23:45.240of that flip that switch that I have felt very naive up until that point. And, you know, those
00:23:50.160points in time where you're like, I can never go back. And, you know, as an author, like you can't
00:23:55.440go into the reviews. You can't. No, no, you can't. But I do sometimes. I do. I did the other day for
00:24:01.280this podcast and there were some ones that were so nasty that it's a good reminder because I used to
00:24:08.960I used to look at them all the time. I never read a book review. There's no reason. There's no
00:24:14.620And so from that point on, you know, I allowed myself the really the grief cycle because I was like, what I'm trying to do is help. I'm trying to show my life. But then there was this moment of reflection of like, have I given up too much of myself to this audience? Have I told too many stories? What, you know, what do I need to do?
00:24:42.020So since then, I've had to sort of create a safety plan for myself. And it's interesting because there are things that I never look at on social media and even like my email subscribers and newsletters. Like I don't look at the actual follower count, something I never look at.
00:25:00.200I never go to the side of Instagram where you can see the number of likes or the number
00:41:21.360So I did this 30 items for 30 day challenge because I was sort of inspired to see, because I don't ever sort of fixate on the numbers, but I was like, will this actually make a difference to me?
00:41:35.240And so I emptied everything out of my closet.
00:41:38.000I put the 30 items back in and then put everything underneath the bed. And I was like, you cannot touch this for 30 days. Yeah. The fascinating thing was that I realized, I mean, athleisure is here to stay. It like rules the world. Yeah. But I realized that I really focused on like, you know, weekend going out clothes, my work clothes and like church clothes. And I did not put enough in my 30 items that like had elastic.
00:42:05.540interesting but that but i did not allow myself like five days in i was like oh my gosh i am
00:42:13.720constantly in these khaki pants and i just really wish that i had put in a pair of joggers but for
00:42:18.780that entire month i did not allow myself to go underneath the bed that it was a natural consequence
00:42:24.340i was like you didn't think of it after this experiment you are going to make sure that you
00:42:29.400have those items, but it was, it was fascinating. Then when I like sort of unearthed the items that
00:42:35.920I didn't choose, I ended up getting rid of a pretty solid percentage of them because I was
00:42:41.560like, I just, there was a reason why I didn't choose it in the first place. And I think that
00:42:47.320when you interrogate why you didn't choose the item and really think about fabric and fit and
00:42:54.120feel, that's when you can begin to transfer those decision-making skills to other more consequential
00:43:02.180things. Even like your husband's question of like, what am I actually going to do? What do I actually
00:43:08.080want from a new job? What do I want from the home where we're living or the lifestyle that we have?
00:43:14.540So I encourage you to try it. Oh no, I'm going to do this. This is a new project for me.
00:43:21.800The other thing was, you know, in high school algebra where you have to calculate the like total combinations of things, that is what was revealing.
00:43:31.120Because when I looked at the number of shirts times the number of pants times the number of sweaters and you calculate out like what are the actual if I wore every single thing in my wardrobe, what's the actual number of outfit combinations that I could make?
00:43:47.440that it's like if you have a year's worth of new outfit combinations like you probably have
00:43:53.560too much you're probably doing okay yeah yes that was that was interesting but my closet is what
00:44:02.260started tidy dad that was my very first post was showing because my closet is 14 inches wide
00:44:08.720and six and a half feet tall and people were like every year it's my like yearly look back
00:44:15.860of like how tidy dad started and every year people are shocked but i'm like i have just enough like
00:44:23.340everything fits and right life will go on like it's gonna be okay it's gonna be okay when you
00:44:32.520did the 30-day challenge did it also kind of deter you from buying new things too i find that when i
00:44:39.700put things away and then i break when i bring them back out it's kind of like i got something new
00:44:43.580because it wasn't in front of me all the time.
00:44:46.180It gives me that same kind of dopamine hit that I would have got from shopping.
00:45:02.400So like you sort of enter that stage of life and maybe this is just like peak adulthood where you're really questioning like the feel of your cardigan sweater
00:45:11.560and like what you really are looking for in the buttons on your pants or like if you have those
00:45:16.860pants that the zipper is constantly falling down it's like you begin to look for the actual quality
00:45:24.600of items when you're not focused on quantity like the whole h&m culture even the whole
00:45:32.220amazon haul which is the like latest thing from amazon influencers and what they're trying to do
00:45:40.660with all of this sort of like fast fashion like I have no way to keep up with it all
00:45:46.620but yet my female audience they really want that from my wife they're like can you please show off1.00
00:45:55.140your wife's capsule can we please see what's in all of your drawer all of her drawers can we please
00:46:01.360see and and I'm like my wife doesn't want to show that and that is okay and that is okay but but I
00:46:09.580will show you mine and if you get your partner to adopt my like capsule wardrobe mentality maybe it
00:46:16.280would yield you more closet space so so yeah exactly exactly that well that brings me to
00:46:23.060i could talk to you all day tyler you have to come back uh but that brings me to what is going0.87
00:46:27.580to be my last question for you how do you set boundaries uh for having your wife in your videos
00:46:34.240for having your kids in your videos especially as the kids have gotten older right they have a lot
00:46:38.540more opinions about how they feel um about being presented to the public how how has this evolved
00:46:44.700for you yeah so you know from what i see from influencers even that i follow you know kids are
00:46:53.920really tricky it's a really tricky thing because kids like to see kids kids do funny things kids
00:47:01.440say funny things. But from the start, there were boundaries that I set, which was I can share all
00:47:10.680of my vulnerabilities. I can share personal information about myself, but I don't share
00:47:17.780the struggles of my wife. And I do not share personal information about my children. I don't
00:47:26.000share struggles that they're having in school if they have any sort of special learning needs I
00:47:32.340don't share when my kids are sick I see so many influencers who are like sick day and like that
00:47:39.660poor kid is like clearly fatigued but they're doing it for some sort of emotional reaction
00:47:47.640from their audience or like the I see you mama or like me too like people often ask me they're like
00:47:54.380do your kids just never get sick what are all of your tricks and i'm like you're just not telling
00:47:59.680you but you don't but i don't tell you um so i've had this very clear and it continues to
00:48:09.160i continue to add to it but it's like what are the stories that i will tell and then what are
00:48:14.480the stories that i will not tell and there are things like um you know my kids don't talk on
00:48:23.120And like, I mean, there's sometimes around and like the back of my stories, but like, I don't have them directly talk to the camera and to the audience.
00:48:34.460You know, we have sort of learned how we delay sharing things.
00:48:41.620So like when we're out and about in New York City showing off our adventures, like I am not out live blogging and vlogging and showing people what's unfolding.
00:48:52.360Last week, we took a vacation to Madrid as a family, and I was off for the entire week.
00:48:59.000I showed people some of what we did when we came back, but I'm like, I see so many influencers
00:49:05.780who you can tell are working the entire vacation by showing everything that they're doing.
00:49:21.560But if I'm not living this out myself, the audience can clearly see through that. And the work that I'm trying to do, I think, actually becomes somewhat undermined.
00:49:33.780mm-hmm yeah i absolutely agree i mean how
00:49:37.940how i have my kids in in my social media changes dependent on platform depends on
00:49:47.600it's it changes almost every day right and i just for me it's always been an ongoing conversation
00:49:56.420and i you know i don't i don't like to attack anyone for what they do but i do i do like to
00:50:02.520talk and hear about how other people do it and people who aren't influencers too it's just you
00:50:07.380know my friend down the street who has 200 followers i'm like what do you put on instagram
00:50:10.660like of your kids how do you yeah you feel about about their images being out there or talking
00:50:15.920about personal stuff or talking about your marriage i mean although i will say i talk about
00:50:20.960my marriage a lot and uh my husband knows very well who we married and so you know he he doesn't
00:50:28.740get as much of a say in it uh as my kids do and will uh but he he knew what he was in for i wrote
00:50:36.960a whole book on how to be married people like he knew this and but i do think we're we're everyone
00:50:43.380not just influencers are entering this really fine line now between public persona and private
00:50:49.420persona yes and i think that you know it's something that i'm always wrestling with and i
00:50:57.040remember i had i had gone up to boston to do this it was to do the segment with nbc boston it was my
00:51:04.700first like stand-up sort of product demonstration of like showing all of these tips and i walked
00:51:11.220into the host and her name is maria sansone and she said something very quickly to me but it's
00:51:16.440one of those things where someone will say something and they don't know that it has such
00:51:21.160power but it just continues to resonate with you and she had just published a cookbook and i think
00:51:26.740she was referring to her writing, but she was like, make sure that you keep some of the stories
00:51:32.980back for you. Like you don't have to tell every single story. And that still resonates with me
00:51:42.880that I don't have to share every facet of my life. And like right now, one of my self-care
00:51:50.660experiments is I've just started working with a personal trainer. He's like this nutrition. He's
00:51:56.060like this online guy and he's a he's an influencer doing personal training and he was like you know
00:52:02.240do you want to pay me or do you want to do some sort of exchange or like and I said I actually
00:52:08.840don't want to have to tell this story to people unless I'm ready to tell the story like I want
00:52:15.600to just do this for me and me paying you the money one it's like accountability because I'm
00:52:22.420actually paying for something. Oh yeah. No, I think you have to, you have, you always have to
00:52:25.860pay for the gym and the personal trainer, right? Yeah. But two, like, I don't want to have to take
00:52:31.240people on this journey in this way that then becomes sort of like self-serving. So obviously
00:52:39.640I share recipes that I'm doing, things that I'm trying, how I'm going up for a run. Those are
00:52:44.640sort of natural parts of me, but I'm learning what to hold back. And the other thing I'll say
00:52:49.080on this is that my wife and children are always presented positively. They are always that I always
00:52:57.120show them in their best because I have seen influencers who run platforms based on their
00:53:05.160children's tantrums or the disagreements that they're having with their spouse or making it
00:53:13.900where the people that they live with are this other. And I just think that's very, that's just
00:53:21.380not, that's just not me. Yeah. And I will be vulnerable about myself all day long in certain
00:53:28.360categories, but I don't have to tell the full story because this is not a 24 seven live stream.
00:53:36.100I have to be a normal person. Right. Yes. You have to be a normal person too. And I think we should
00:53:42.140want our influencers to be normal people too is the thing right yeah because i don't know i feel
00:53:50.080like what i try to be is a mirror for people where they don't see an exact reflection back like the
00:53:59.100goal isn't to mirror exactly what i'm doing but for them to see themselves in some of the struggles
00:54:05.360that I try to highlight, or the tips that I'm sharing, or what it is that I'm working on,
00:54:14.040what self-care experiment I'm sort of tackling. But it is the strangest... I was describing this
00:54:21.020to someone, and I think you'll relate to this as an author, that you've put something that's
00:54:27.520so deeply personal to yourself out into the world, and it never gets fully reciprocated back.
00:54:35.360You know, that like with your husband, with your kids, with your family, with friends,
00:54:39.220there's this like two-way relationship where you're giving something and they're giving