Splurge Monday’s Workwear Report: Lieigh Cashmere Dolman Cardigan
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Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.
A neutral cardigan is a must-have for those chilly almost-spring mornings. This cashmere number from SRG has a gorgeous defined waist that makes this sweater feel a little extra special.
Pair it with your favorite trousers for an easy, polished look.
The sweater is $550 at Revolve and comes in sizes XXS-XL.
Looking for something for wearing at home instead? These are some of our favorite WFH cardigans:
Sales of note for 5/1:
- Ann Taylor – Friends of Ann Event, 40% off your purchase PLUS $50 off $200! Readers love this popover blouse, and their suiting is also in the sale.
- Boden – 15% off new styles with code
- Brooklinen – 25% off sitewide (ends 5/1) — we have and love these sateen sheets
- Evereve – All tops on sale
- Express – $39+ Summer Styles
- Hatch – $15 off one of our favorite alarm clocks with code LETMOMSLEEP15
- J.Crew – Up to 30% off wear-now styles
- J.Crew Factory – Up to 60% off everything, and extra 60% off clearance
- Lands' End – 40% off sitewide – lots of ponte dresses come down under $25, and this packable raincoat in gingham is too cute
- Loft – 60% off florals and 50% off your purchase
- M.M.LaFleur – End of season sale. Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off.
- Nordstrom – 1500+ new women's markdowns
- Sephora – Hair deals daily – today 5/1 up to 50% off dae, Verb, PATTERN by Tracee Ellis Ross, and BaBylissPro products
- Talbots – 40% off one item and 30% off your entire purchase
- TOCCIN – Use code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off!
- Vivrelle – Looking to own less stuff but still try trends? Use code CORPORETTE for a free month, and borrow high-end designer clothes and bags!
Catching up on the weekend thread, I just discovered Alex Mill. I did not realize people paid $350 for canvas totes, I can’t imagine the profit margins on those bags. Now I feel like I’m accidentally super trendy because I sewed myself a custom canvas tote (with a bajillion pockets and features.)
$ 350? That’s crazy. On the other hand I like it when natural fibers are trending. It’s really easy to find lower cost alternatives.
Yes. Some of us spend money on things.
I spend money on things that will last, but not on canvas bags that will immediately get dirty and be impossible to clean.
Canvas is actually really easy to clean with a basic understanding of chemistry.
That said the price is still too high, you could have GOT certified cotton and ethical (30/h) north American labor and still make a healthy profit, which this bag is neither.
Good for you.
Obviously. The comment is more about the things and whether they’re actually worth the price or just a status symbol–which, if this, why a canvas tote? I think people expect that this type of purchase will be judged.
I think there is a weird reverse snobbery on this stuff. I’m sure everyone here buys things someone else would find unnecessarily expensive. If it makes you happy, who cares? It’s such a weird flex to “discover” a mid priced brand and decide to judge people who buy it.
A brand that sells a $350 canvas bag is “mid priced brand”? Wow.
Yes, on a site that routinely features $5,000 purses, it is. Maybe you aren’t the target audience for this place.
Sure, Anonymous.
They know designer stuff exists and rich people are paying several thousands of dollars for bags and shoes with crazy markups. But they’d rather attack people doing slightly better than them by acting totally outraged at a spendy tote bag. Kind of like how the working class maga folks are resentful of everyone who went to college and has a decent job rather than the actual billionaires.
No one is outraged but you. I don’t care if you spend your money on dumb stuff, but don’t lie to yourself that it’s a reasonable purchase.
LOL nothing screams self-confidence and contentment like implying someone is poor, excluding and othering them for purportedly being too poor, and/or accusing them of being poorer than you and resentful for it. Babe no one resents you, no one attacked you, and no one is outraged over a bag.
No one called you poor but you babe. It’s not my bag. But if people you don’t know spending three hundred bucks gets you this upset it’s probably a you problem.
Imagine needing to boost yourself by fantasizing that other people are mad at your spending habits. I feel sad for you.
Wow, and I thought I was splurging when I paid $50 each for hand-made canvas totes w/ pockets for my 20-something dd’s for Christmas!
No, you didn’t. That’s barely not poverty wages if it was handmade in the US.
Shrug. I don’t really care for canvas totes, but I love Alex Mill. The quality of everything I’ve bought there is superb. The company has real, actual people there that will help you with sizing and questions. My Alex Mill cashmere sweater and a winter jacket are two of the most worn and loved items in my closet.
Are the canvas totes like a Hermes keychain or something? The “cheap” item that allows you to carry the brand name?
Ha! That’s just it.
Planning a spring break trip to London with husband, 11 year old, and 8 year old. We will be there for seven days and i am trying to figure out which activities to prioritize and book in advance between Stonehenge, Greenwich, and the Harry Potter experience or all?! Will we have time to do all of them? Is the Harry Potter experience worth it or can we see some of that stuff in the city? Is Stonehenge worth it? I hear you can no longer get very close and it will be very crowded, but it also seems like we should see it if we’re all the way over there.
We are definitely planning to visit the Tower of London, take a double decker bus tour, and see a show or two.
Help!
FWIW I never really feel pressure to do everything in London because almost every flight I take to Europe conencts through Heathrow. I like one activity a day personally, anything more than that feels like work.
Harry Potter studio tour is 100% worth it if you or the kids are fans. Although if spring break means this month or next month, it may be sold out. It sells out a month or two in advance. The stuff in the city is mostly just shops and doesn’t compare.
I don’t think Stonehenge is worth it, especially with only 7 days in London. There’s a ton to do with kids that age in London.
+1 to all of this. And I’m not a theme park, Disney type at all. Stonehenge is a snoozer and HP is amazing.
+1
Book Harry Potter today if you can! Also nothing needs pre-booking for Greenwich.
My other family members were super HP fans, I liked it fine but it’s not my favorite thing. Still, we all loved the HP studio tour. The exhibition is thoughtful and complex, plus it’s sweet to see kids (and adults) from all over the world who are SO delighted to be there.
Caveat that I don’t have children and don’t know anything about Harry Potter but I have been to Stonehenge and Greenwich. To be honest I found Greenwich boring… Stonehenge is cool but a bit of a trip.
I would try the Eye! And Borough market.
HP is 100% worth it but look into tickets, like, yesterday.
Add the London T-nsport Museum.
For getting out of the city and into nature, we enjoyed renting bikes and riding around the Hampton Court grounds before & after a tour of the palace.
Maybe we missed part of the London Transport Museum, but my similarly aged kids found it directed to a younger age.
We recommend the London Science Museum and Natural History Museum.
They also loved The Play That Goes Wrong if your kids are into slapstick humor.
+1 to Walnut. I took an 8 year old to London last summer and it felt like she was aging out of the tr-sport museum. It’s really geared towards preschoolers and wouldn’t be on my short list of things to do with 11 & 8 yos.
oh good to know. A friend’s 8yo loved it, but YMMV!
Mine enjoyed it and it was a block from our hotel so I don’t regret popping in at all, but it definitely felt like she was past the peak age for it, and isn’t something I’d suggest for a tween.
I personally loved the Transport Museum as an adult, but I am one of those nerds who reads the display descriptions and finds all kinds of maps so interesting.
My 8 year old (at the time) loved it, too.
We went when my now-adult children were in 7th and 9th grades. We toured Windsor Castle and walked around the town, which was a big hit.
If your kids already have some knowledge of WWII, take them to the Churchill War Rooms. Incredibly great, under-recommended museum in London, IMHO. Even if the kids don’t know much history yet, the War Rooms are set up as the actual rooms were–so they see how people worked, slept, etc.
Hampton Court is one of my favorites, the Tower of London is a must, and find one of the many hotels or restaurants that are at your price/formality point and have proper afternoon tea!
I’ll chip in with the Imperial War Museum as another WW1/WW2 option. We were in the neighborhood one afternoon and ended up staying until in closed.
+1 – My 10 year old son who is super into history loved the Imperial War Museum.
+1 for the Imperial War Museum.
-1 for Hampton Court, I found that one a dull and generic European castle, go to Windsor instead!
As someone who goes out of her way to go to the Churchill War Rooms every time I visit (because I have the sense of history that lets me imagine what took place all those years ago), would young kids be in a place to understand it?
11 is not that young! 8 is probably a little young for it, although I think there are some kids that age who have the background needed. My kids were pretty aware of WWII by age 8, but we’re Jewish so they learn about some parts of WWII at a younger age than most.
Kew Gardens is really great (and has a lovely cafe for lunch), and I second the Churchill war rooms.
For something a bit different, my kids always enjoy bocce, pétanque, and any sort of lawn game when we’re out and about. I’ve been to Boulebar South Bank and the mid-day vibe would be perfectly family friendly if the weather is nice.
We took the Tube to the RAF museum. It’s on the outskirts of town & it was not busy. Local families were there with kids. You walk outside to get into the different hangars. Very touching yo see how very young their pilots were. We enjoyed seeing all the different planes.
I appreciated seeing Stonehenge. My favorite thing to do is get lunch at Harrods and eat it at Hyde Park. Saint James Park is also a good walk. If you have to pick between the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert, do the Victoria and Albert–less crowded. I had no idea there was a Harry Potter experience, so will look that up, though a few years ago I made it a point to find stop 9 3/4 :)
So fun! I echo the recommendations for the Churchill War Rooms, and this is probably a know your kid situation, but the WWI exhibit at the Imperial War Museum was incredible, I still think about it years later. If you can’t get tix for the HP Studios or you just want more HP, we did a HP filming location bus tour around London several years ago and had a blast. Stonehenge was underwhelming, although maybe worth it if you combine with a trip out to Bath. I think there is enough in central London to keep you busy for months, so I would probably skip it unless your kids are asking to go. I would also do an afternoon tea, such a fun London experience.
I absolutely recommend the Harry Potter experience! We did see Stonehenge and enjoyed it, but we were traveling from Cardiff back to London so it was on the way. I don’t know that we would have prioritized it otherwise if it meant losing much of a day in London. My kids were similar ages when we went and they enjoyed Kew Gardens, the Tower, the Eye, and the changing of the guard. They also enjoyed the Natural History Museum. We did a tea bus tour, which was great because we got the experience (more or less) of a high tea but with lots of things to see which kept the kids engaged.
Have you been to Universal in Florida? My Harry Potter fan thought Universal was a better experience, but he’s 14 so a bit older than your kids. (Highly recommend if you haven’t been though.)
Stonehenge – it was bucket list for me and I’m so glad I went, but no one else in the family was impressed. We took a private car and that was also probably unnecessary. You can’t get very close but I felt like you could still appreciate the stones without getting close.
Tower of London was a disappointment but is a must do anyway. (Instead of seeing the jewels it’s like you’re wathcing a documentary about the jewels.) If you can we did High Tea at Aqua Shard — it’s Peter Pan themed and was perfect for the first day where we landed and were completely turned around in terms of timing. It was our most expensive meal though.
My 14 year old adored the British Museum; I wish we’d spent more time there. We also took a private car tour around London, which I thought would be good because I wasn’t sure what to expect from my youngest in terms of energy and cooperation, but if you do it do it like day 1 or 2 while you’re still exhausted anyway.
i took my kids at about that age. we did the harry potter studio museum which is a whole day with travel time and we loved it. also did tower of london (have a picture of my guys in cage on my desk from that trip actually). also did the Elgin marbles at the british museum because my kids both liked percy jackson and like international intrigue.
a show is a great idea. we also went to churchill’s war rooms but my older son is really interested in politics and history, not sure if it would hold the attention of most 11 year olds but he enjoyed.
we also built in a lot of time to just be, strolled through harrods, had cream tea, got knickerbocker glories (which we knew from harry potter) at an ice cream truck. it was also unusually warm when we went and i have a picture of them sitting in a fountain in hyde park.
unless there is a reason that they might specifically be interested i think stonehenge is a lot of work to get to and isn’t anything special. i love london and it’s a great trip with kids. enjoy!
i have been england a lot and spent my junior year there and have never been to greenwich.
we took a night train to inverness to see loch ness and that was really the hit of the trip, they loved the night train and while we didn’t see nessie they really got a kick out of it.
I live in London and have never been to Stonehenge if that gives you a sense of how worthwhile a trip the locals view it as! I would prioritise doing more of the central London sights or something like Bath/Windsor/Hampton Court rather than Stonehenge personally.
I always recommend taking the Uber Boat by Thames Clippers that goes down the Thames to Greenwich using your Oyster card and doing the time zones museum. It’s a lovely, unique way to see London and a manageable, short museum. Greenwich is beautiful and full of nice pubs and the kids can stand with one foot on either side of the Greenwich Meridien. I also second the War Rooms, it also allows beautiful walks through the park to Buckingham Palace. Peter Pan statute in Kensington garden was a hit with out kids, as well. Trafalgar Square was great and St. Martin-in-the Field has this very cool (cheap) lunch in their Cafe in the Crypt which is actually good food and a very cool experience with a nice societal responsibility lesson worked in. “Original brick-vaulted ceilings and historic tombstones lining the floor provide the backdrop to a daily changing menu of freshly prepared food, sustainably sourced whenever possible, and is great value for money for all to enjoy.”
We visited London in January 2024 with my then 8-year old, who’s very curious and interested in all things history, technology, transport etc etc.
I second the recommendation for Greenwich. The time zone museum is fantastic, it has all sorts of interesting artefacts regarding navigation and timekeeping (there is not ONE meridian, but they changed over time! telescopes! how do you make a pendulum clock go accurately on a boat!).
The park downhill is nice, too.
Also in Greenwich is the National Maritime Museum, which is free and has everything regarding ships you could ever want to see. Excellent playground next to it, as well, and the cafe terrasse makes for a nice lunch or coffee break (food is ok, it’s England, after all).
Also in Greenwich is the Cutty Sark clipper, which in itself is very interesting.
We had one of these Go City 6 day all inclusive passes. Pricy, but since it was January we wanted something that included a lot of museums, so we could pop into a museum if it was too cold or rainy outside. We were lucky and it was very cold but sunny, so we bundled up and walked a lot, but made good use of the pass.
Also not to miss: the Shard – try to go an hour or so before sunset and have a drink at the top.
Do a tea if you can! Even when its touristy its fun for everyone. I like Fortnum and Mason.
There are so many fun themed teas too. We’re going in May and we have F + M as our “classic” tea but we’re also doing the Willy Wonka tea and the Science Tea as well. There’s also Paddington, Peppa, HP, Peter Pan, etc… basically any character you can think of that’s remotely British there’s a themed tea for it in London.
You only need to book HP.
I wouldn’t go to Stonehenge for a short trip, and you don’t need to prebook Greenwich this far ahead, you’re alright to book the same week, if you need tickets for a specific slot.
We spent about a month in London for my husband’s work when our daughter was 12. Some experiences there really stuck and are on her list of most memorable experiences 10+ years later:
-She was a serious English-style rider, so we arranged for her to ride in St. James Park with a horse/instructor from a nearby stable. The horse guards happened to be parading while she and the teacher trotted by. They formally parted ranks and allowed dd/teacher to ride through. She was and remains on a high about that.
-Natural History Museum was fun and has beautiful architecture and stonework. Go early to avoid the school crowds.
-Play/tour of the Globe
-Nighttime walking tour focused on Jack the Ripper. She was very into it, especially the idea that a doctor could have been the Ripper. There are lots of other day and night walking tours, depending on the kids’ interests and stamina.
My children were the same age group and loved the story of the fire of London. I took them to the monument and they still talk about it today. It’s something you can do as a side note to another activity such as borough market and globe theatre. My child still talks about the huge cookie a vendor gave him. It was the size of my head!
https://www.themonument.org.uk/
I have a blank wall in my house and I have no idea how to fill it. I’ve been in the house for 7 years.
No idea if this makes sense but to get a sense of how prominent this blank space is: Basically my front door opens to my living room, with the front door at the far right side of the living room. Walk straight in to the house and directly in front of you is a 1.5x width doorway in to my kitchen. The left flank of the doorway is the far wall of the living room (running parallel to the front of the house, facing the entrance of the house) is a blank, and decently sized wall – I’ll guess it’s about 8 feet long. On the other end of the wall is 2x wide entry in to my dining room. So this wall is also “framed” by two door ways.
It’s so large that a single print doesn’t seem right, so maybe two or three? But it’s also so in-your-face when you walk in that nothing has struck me enough that it feels worthy for this spot. HELP. What do I do? It needs to not be blank forever. I do dream of a full first floor reno when my youngest goes to K (2.5 years) that will rearrange all of this layout. But until then, and if that ever happens, I need to fill it with something thoughtful. FWIW ceiling height is…. 9’? It’s a 1960s home in the northeast, so no huge ceilings in case that matters.
What is the furniture situation in this room? My ideas are different if there is a sofa along this wall rather than a bookcase, for instance.
There are two arm chairs on this wall with a small round side table between them. This wall faces the wall that is on the front of the house, which has a large bow window (5-ish feet long). So there is a lot of light. There is an off-white sofa (that needs replacing – off white + dog + kids ruined it) in front of the bow window that faces this blank wall.
What are the architectural style and decor of your home like? The answer is going to be different for an MCM house vs a colonial.
If it is midcentury I bet OP could find some sort of interesting metal sculpture thing with like starburst elements at a vintage mall
It’s was originally a 1960s multi level that has been modified over the years. The front door is in the middle of the physical structure but at the far right end of the “ground floor.” Multi level being different than split level in that you enter at grade, and the living room, kitchen and main living spaces are all at grade. You go down half a flight to a lower living space and up a half flight (and then a second half flight) to bedrooms.
Multi level is not design style.
Sorry – missed the decor part. Decor is….. busy family, two little kids and a messy dog, I say in jest but also not really. Transitional may be the best description if I really had to put a word on it. Walnut hard floors and warm tones throughout.
Wallpaper in a fun pattern, add a mirror and a table below it.
Yes — this is exactly what I was thinking.
+1 if you haven’t found art you love for this wall by now, you probably wont. Cool wallpaper, somewhere to put keys and a plant + a mirror sounds like exactly the right plan.
+2
I’m not sure I’m understanding the layout correctly, but this seems like a great spot for a console table or cabinet, a lamp and either a large mirror or wall art. I’d personally do a triptych of paintings, but you could also just do a large abstract painting, maybe 4’x6’?
I’m struck that there’s no info in your post about what you like, what kind of art or objects you like to look at, what the style or decor or colors of the rooms are, etc. It sounds like you need inspiration — do you have any photos of rooms or walls that you like, that could help give you a starting place?
If over a sofa or console table, maybe a large mirror in the middle, and on either side, something slightly smaller scale – art, plates, etc.
Alternative, if there’s space, is tall bookcases.
I would go with bookcases. Pottery barn has a great line of modular bookcases so you can mix and match drawers/open shelving.
Yes, this is where we used to have bookcases filled with books etc…
I like the suggestion of wallpaper, but another alternative is simply filling it with lots of art. Either do a grouping of three (or more!) of the same size and shape, or a gallery wall? I would love to fill up a large space with lots of pieces. It’s a great way to use stuff that perhaps isn’t remarkable by itself but together makes a big impact. I’d recommend putting a credenza or buffet beneath it unless you want to go all the way to the floor.
With lots of light, can you do a fabulous plant?
I’m not a fan of a giant mirror if it is going to turn your room into a blazing inferno of reflected bow window sun, nor of wallpaper that will fade oddly or artwork that will be damaged if there is a unfiltered sunlight beating on it all day. But those issues can also be mitigated with window treatments, so if they speak to you go for it.
Yes, agree mirror is not it given the light that comes through that giant window (we’re south facing). I should have mentioned that detail in the original post. That’s why I keep coming back to art of some kind.
Definitely digging the wallpaper idea, which ever occurred to me. Is it weird there’s no wallpaper anywhere else in the house? This would be a unique feature to this room.
I do not think that would be weird–using it there would make it an accent wall if you like that concept. For the wallpaper, you can also go with a tone that is in the same family as the paint on the other walls or textured if you want less of a contrast for artwork. If you like wood, another idea would be a wooden wall sculpture or carving.
In our house we have no other wallpaper except in one bathroom and one accent wall, like your situation. Our 2nd living room wallpaper wall is not a loud busy pattern, but an interesting texture with a neutral color. Everyone is drawn to it, and walks up to it and touches it.
Few thoughts:
– bold wallpaper just on that wall, possibly with a large mirror behind it.
– We’ve gotten some absolutely huge paintings at estate sales for $100-$1000, definitely check out some of those and see if anything appeals.
– console table + gallery wall
For large spaces I recommend rugs as wall hangings! They can make beautiful art. There are lots of beautiful Moroccan rugs for sale on Etsy/similar platforms.
What about a large, decorative mirror that compliments your decor?
1) Do a small gallery wall with at least three good sized pieces, one of which has oval or rounded frame.
2) A high quality wall hanging of a world map.
For a gallery wall you can do a mix of shapes and textures, but try to have something that connects the pieces. An example: Let’s say you get a woodcut graphic print of a landscape in dark greens, black and orange from a local gallery, and you get it framed with an off-white passepartout (white-white will make your white couch look even more worn) and a deep oak or mahogany frame. Maybe you can find a nice antique botanical print that could work in an oval golden frame, or some reasonable vintage no-name oil paintings at a thrift store or local auction house that can tie in with the colours and add texture. Mix textures and shapes. Do do precicion, and don’t do all squares and rectangles with no softer edges, since your shape is a box between other boxes.
Your choices doesn’t have to be the most amazing art choices, but if you find something locally that you enjoy looking at, “thanks, it’s a local artist” is a perfectly good answer to why something has been chosen.
Here are some successfull examples from Apartment Therapy:
https://cdn.apartmenttherapy.info/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto:eco,c_fit,w_730,h_487/at%2Fhouse%20tours%2F2024%2Fseptember%2Fnnedinma-o%2Ftours-austin-nnedinma-o-46
https://cdn.apartmenttherapy.info/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto:eco,c_fit,w_730,h_484/at%2Fhouse%20tours%2F2021-08%2FSophia%20A%20-%20Oakland%2Fsophia_2
https://cdn.apartmenttherapy.info/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto:eco,c_fit,w_730,h_974/at%2Fhouse%20tours%2F2020-07%2FLilly%2FIMG_8240
https://cdn.apartmenttherapy.info/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto:eco,c_fit,w_730,h_730/at%2Farchive%2Fcc6cf57210902ad1bf8c31bee2f8b75ee6e7392f
I have a big leaning mirror in my entryway. I ordered it off Etsy. And was able to pick the frame style, color and size.
I destroyed my teakettle (and my stovetop) in an accident this weekend and am in the market for a new one. I previously had a stovetop kettle, but should I get an electric one instead?
Appreciate any comments on the difference between stovetop or electric kettles and recommendations for either!
MacKenzie Childs, they’re the best.
Gawd, they’re so cute. I do not need one, but I want one. That mocha color would look so good in my kitchen.
The mocha is SO CUTE!!
I’ve had gas stoves in my last few places. Electric kettles can run on renewables and you avoid indoor air pollution. With an induction cooktop, I’d go back to a stovetop kettle, and I like their look.
An important bit of context for Europeans raving about electric kettles is that their grid voltage makes electric kettles much faster than the US setup.
While I don’t have an induction stove to compare against, electric kettles even on the US grid are still significantly faster at heating water than gas or electric range kettles. We actually use our electric kettle to heat water to a boil, then dump it into the pot on the stove when we need to boil water for pasta or potatoes. So much faster.
This is exactly what we do, as well!
Thank you for finally explaining why my US kettles always seem so slow.
+1 I feel like a lightbulb just went off in my head
I feel this way about European hair dryers. No matter what, they ALWAYS work better in Europe than at home!
OMG is that why some hair takes so long to dry? I read comments here of people drying their hair for 30+ minutes and cannot wrap my head around it – my hair takes 2-3 minutes, but I do have European voltage…
12:26 – maybe that but also porosity.
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/beauty/hair/a62444645/hair-porosity-explained/
I would say my hair dries in about 60-70% of the time in Europe that it takes in the US, and the result is better – smoother, longer-lasting.
oh, and this is after taking into account hard vs. softness of the water!
Yup which is why my bucket list item is to have 220v plugs in my renovated home in the bathroom and kitchen.
In the meantime I use an electric kettle by Krups which is at least 30 years old. Braun also make excellent kettles. Do not recommend the glass ones as the water cools very quickly. My krups was $100 years ago. Definitely worth it.
I love my electric kettle, and it’s one of the few things that has a permanent place on the prized counter space in my tiny kitchen. I have the Hamilton Beach illuminated glass kettle and it’s been great for the last 5 years or so, but they’re cheap and hard to mess up, so I wouldn’t get too worked up about any one particular make/model.
I had this one (Hamilton Beach) from 2018-2025. It went kaput and I replaced with oxo’s version. I prefer glass because I can see that there’s not mildew or whatever.
You should never have mold in a kettle. To prevent limescale I recommend a kettle descaler ball. This is very similar to the one I have. https://a.co/d/0aAQfuiw
I’ve always preferred electric because I don’t want a stovetop one taking up space on my stove. I’m always taking things in and out of the oven and don’t have enough counter space near the oven for multiple sheet pans and cooling racks, so I need the stove space for hot pans. An electric one still takes up space, but it can be tucked out of the way. It’s also much faster.
+1. Either you have to move your stovetop kettle out of the way every time you cook or it will get covered in grease.
I have an electric and it’s great–much faster than stovetop in my opinion. Not entirely sure what brand it is so no specific recommendation.
Switched from stovetop to electric a few years ago and while stovetop is by far “cuter,” the electric is a lot easier!
I don’t know why turning on an electric kettle seems so much easier than turning on the stove, but I agree!
you can set it to specific temperatures (great for tea or French press coffee) and it automatically turns off when it’s at temp — so unlike a stove, if you get distracted, it is truly NBD.
Electric. They shut off before they run dry. You can buy one that heats water to different temperatures (reg, a green tea setting). They shut off before they run dry.
I love my Breville electric kettle. It heats water faster than even an induction stovetop, and you can set the precise temperature.
I have a glass kettle with different temperature settings, depending on whether you are making coffee, green, herbal, or black tea, which I really like.
Electric ones are SO FAST. The stovetop ones are adorable, but I never use mine anymore because the electric version is so much better.
Also, we have a cheapy Hamilton Beach and it works great. I wouldn’t spend big money on this purchase.
+1 My Hamilton Beach from 2010 is still going strong.
I have an electric kettle where you can select the temperature. I like that feature a lot.
I think Costco still has a nice electric kettle that can hold specific temperatures. To me this is an unnecessary but nice upgrade from stovetop, especially since I drink coffee and DH drinks a variety of fancy teas that are optimally brewed at different temps.
My husband ruined so many cute stovetop tea kettles over the years. Electric is the way to go for us. We have a Kitchenaid kettle that works fine but makes a very annoying, dweeby “bweeeep” sound and was way overpriced for what it is. We only bought this one because we had a gift card; I not spend Kitchenaid money on an electric kettle.
If you are into fancy coffee, consider a gooseneck kettle for more control when making pour overs. The spout on ours is rather blunt and imprecise for that purpose.
If you drink tea (and different kinds of tea like green/white) then no question, electric kettle. We got the Cuisinart PerfecTemp with 6 preset temperatures. I also used it all the time this summer when cutting flowers that need a boiling treatment like dahlias.
Electric kettle is faster, and there’s a variety of sizes and looks to choose from. I also use it to speed up pasta.
Among other wonderful qualities, my induction stove is way faster at heating water than my electric kettle. When my electric kettle dies, I’ll replace with a stovetop kettle. If I had a gas or electric stove, I’d stick with an electric kettle.
I love my electric kettle – I used a stovetop kettle for years until a roommate had one and I saw how much faster it is. Mine is a super basic Hamilton Beach one I’ve had for 13 years and works fine so I won’t replace it. But I really want a Smeg! They are pretty and I like that you can set the temperature the water will heat to.
I had a houseguest almost burn down the house once by leaving the kettle on the stove, so I vote electric for safety reasons and also because they’re so much faster.
I saved my parents’ house from a similar fate when, as a 35 year old adult, I stopped at their place in the middle of the day to pick up a serving platter. Happened to be a few miles away for work, swung by during lunch, opened the door to a stench, and saw a melted kettle.
I bought them an electric kettle for Christmas.
We bought my MIL an egg cooker for Christmas after seeing how often she got distracted and forgot them on the stove!
FWIW, an aunt who is VERY into tea – she travels with her own kettle and pot – uses an electric kettle that allows her to set the temperature for the type of tea.
A friend’s kindergarten-aged child was recently diagnosed with leukemia. They’re said that food is too tricky for now, given side effects and other considerations. Any suggestions on how to support? I thought just cash in fives and tens for hospital parking, but I’m not sure beyond that.
This is someone who I’m friendly enough with to bring a meal over post-baby, but not incredibly close with, for what that’s worth.
How awful, I can’t imagine. I’d give them a Doordash or ubereats gift card, since they still need to eat and it gives them greater flexibility than bringing food.
Food delivery services are great if the family already uses them, but can be difficult if not – the websites default to fast food/junk food type places, and they’re not easy to navigate if you’re not accustomed, particularly if there are special food needs.
Since I suspect there will be a lot of waiting room time and bored at home time coming up, what about books and games for the child?
I haven’t dealt with this situation, but a friend’s spouse has a chronic illness that sometimes requires extended hospitalization. Basically anything you feel comfortable with offering to lighten the mental load is helpful.
If they have other children, take the children for a day or an evening.
Pick up anything from the school to take it to them on a regular basis.
If they have a home where there’s outdoor maintenance (lawn care, yard cleanup, raking, snow shoveling etc), offer to help arrange for that.
If you feel close enough, offer to do a couple loads of laundry (sheets and towels), or grab stuff for them on your next Costco run.
If you know their phone types, grab a few extra 10′ charging cables for them (hospital outlets are often in inconvenient places).
Offer to meet a parent at the hospital for a walk around the block or a cup of coffee.
I fortunately have not been in this situation with my children, but I have done a lot of caretaking for my parents, and this is precisely the kind of thing that felt like a salve to my soul.
The parents still need to eat. I would drop off a gift bag filled with candy bars, protein bars and other 200-400 calorie wrapped things they can put in their bag and eat at the hospital. And, in the know your friends vein, you could also put in some mini bottles of liquor. Add a note that says, some snacks for when you forget to eat (and, for just in case).
We had a friend whose daughter recently had leukemia, although she was a tween. They did do a meal train but if they aren’t doing that, I agree on a Doordash gift card. We also brought gifts for the kid and her siblings. Don’t forget the siblings if there are any – the sick kid is likely getting inundated with gifts but people will forget about the siblings, and they need entertainment and distraction too. Our friend’s daughter is in remission now and doing great – I hope it will be a similar story for your friends!
Do you live close? Do they have a pet? I’ve volunteered to be the go-to pet sitter/walker/tender in a similar situation. Stuck at the hospital but Fluffy needs to be fed and walked? I’ll be on it or find someone who can. Maybe you don’t know them well enough for that, but I really like to volunteer for something specific that they might not think to ask for.
You could also gift card and suggest putting it to a dog walking service or Rover if you don’t live close and they have a pet. Dealing right now with my hospitalized mom and am so grateful she only has a cat instead of a dog because juggling would be so, so much harder (my husband is looking after my dog while I’m away and so I think of it often). I can handle dirty clothes and eating takeout but juggling a pet is a whole other league of stress.
I would do an Uber gift card, which can be used for UberEats or rides to the hospital when they don’t feel like driving.
I also appreciated food gifts (eg baskets of snacks) because I had a lot of visitors when I was sick and it was nice to have something easy to put out.
We had this exact experience several years ago, when my friend’s first-grader was diagnosed with leukemia. (He’s now a very healthy 7th grader, for what it’s worth.)
Things that were helpful: uber eats/doordash gift cards; snacks for parents and other visitors; lego sets, books, and other things for the kid to do. It doesn’t sound likeyou’re close enough to the family for this, but if there are other kids or tasks outside the hospital, that’s really useful. For example, I took over the carpooling for the family’s older daughter’s sports practices.
If you know which hospital they are being treated at, gift cards to coffee shops and/or fast casual chains nearby are great because the parents will be spending a lot of time there and hospital cafeteria food loses its limited charm quickly.
If you’re already thinking cash, then I encourage you to go that route. You’re absolutely right that hospital parking and food on the go adds up. I hated the mental effort of remembering to use up a gift card and I abhorred all of the fees on food delivery apps.
My go to these days is to just ask people for their venmo and send over $100.
I am opening myself up here to potentially really helpful and/or really critical responses, so here goes.
I am mid-40s and have hit a point where I am so tired of taking care of my children. That’s the clickbait.
The rest of it: I work full-time outside the home, I have three kids from teen to tween, they are amazing, I love them, and I enjoy (even when it’s very difficult and requires every last ounce of patience and emotional maturity I have) emotionally supporting them, seeing them succeed or get better, helping them through struggles, watching their friendships grow, etc.
But I am so sick of making them food, buying them clothes, telling them to clean up, driving them everywhere, reminding them of table manners, asking them to help around the house, reminding them to do their regular chores, packing their lunches, asking them about homework, have they done those things they were supposed to do for their chosen activity? Blah blah blah. Just, the physical mechanics of taking care of them. Like, this weekend, I was so grateful we had so many leftovers because there was just no way I could bring myself to cook a full meal for them at any time of day. And I know natural consequences are a thing, and I do let that work in some instances, but sometimes they just don’t care about the consequences. Which probably means the issues aren’t significant enough for me to be nagging over. But I have a right to have an enjoyable home life too, which means not being saddled with a messy cluttered house which requires me to monitor everyone’s participation in running the house at all times.
Is this just midlife mom burnout and it too shall pass?
And yes I do get my kids to cook and do various things independently–but like, only after I remind them or prompt them–I swear on a weekend it would never occur to them to eat lunch unless I told them to make themselves lunch or made it for them.
I recognize that part of my hangup about this is that I view part of my job as a parent to raise functional adults, and especially with my oldest I’m like, when are you going to finally learn this crap because you only have a few more years at home and I refuse to be your helicopter mom or backup brain forever? But my oldest is still young. I get it.
I’ve tried so hard over the years to change myself to be less of a Type-A control freak, ease up, in the hopes that what I actually do nag them about will get done because I’m nagging them much less. But eventually the resentment builds. I have stopped nagging them about cleaning up so much, letting go what probably doesn’t matter in the moment. But then they can’t find things and they expect me to know, or I am unhappy when I come home because it’s not a relaxing space for me when there is so much clutter around.
When I try to talk to my mom about it, she says “but you’ll miss this when it’s gone and your house is empty”. I’m sure I will, but she’s not really listening to me or letting me vent. It just feels dismissive of my current experience without any real support, suggestions, or . . . . I don’t know.
Um, same age, same age of kids, and I could’ve written every single word of this. They are amazing kids, and I truly love spending time with them. It’s just the minutia of daily life that gets so old sometimes.
+1. You didn’t mention if you have a partner but I had a huge fight with my husband this weekend about this. He seems to think any and all logistics, coordination, emotional support, and executive function training for our kids either will ‘just happen’ (ha!) or are my default area to oversee and he’ll do what I need him to if I just ‘give him a list’ (flames! flames on the side of my face!). I am just so.so.tired.
My new mantra is ‘we are a family, we all live in this space, we all need to take care of this space’. Everyone cleans up after weeknight meals, and we also pack up school bags/do a quick tidy. At least 2-3 nights a week dinner is leftovers/pizza/takeout. On the weekends our older kid comes grocery shopping and helps meal plan, younger kid unloads groceries. We set timers for weekend lunches. We have a dry erase board with chores and will not allow phone/tv/screen time until those are done. I still feel like a drill sergeant but they are doing the actual work and with my older one I’m offloading the mental load slowly but surely.
Piggybacking on this, we basically force the kids to do resets on Wednesday nights and Sundays. Pick up your room, put your laundry in the basket, pick up all the things you’ve left around the house. On Sunday, get your stuff ready for Monday morning. They grumble, but it does help some.
I like the idea of setting timers for lunches, as my kids would graze all day and never eat a real meal if I let them.
Heehee -appreciate “flames! flames on the side of my face…” and agree with the rest, too. Solidarity!
Sorry if I missed it but are you a single parent or is there another parent in the picture?
OP–I’m happily married and my husband is a really fantastic dad in so many ways and does as much as he can (really) given that he has a bigger more demanding higher paying job than I do . . . which is also kinda why I’m frustrated that I feel this way because while I sometimes want to fight with him about how I feel so overburdened, when I can manage to look at it objectively, not emotionally, he does do enough. So why do I STILL feel this way, I tell myself? What is my problem?
If you can, I’d really suggest individual therapy. A lot of my stress/angst around kid logistics was the very real understanding that if anything goes ‘wrong’ all blame will inevitably fall on me, not my husband. He didn’t get that, but my working mom therapist does, and it allows me to unpack/talk through how much of that is real and what I can start to drop/offload in a way that feels good for me/our family.
Can you unload the feeling that you need to accept “blame?” If things get dropped, can’t you just say “whoops” and move on?
OP–but I’m actually going to add another thought here. My husband is a great dad, and it is ok for kids to have different parenting styles, but due to his own experiences as a latchkey kid, he is very intent on being a present parent in ways that sometimes enable my kids. For example, he would never dream of letting a Saturday when we’re all at home pass without making lunch for all the kids. While as sometimes, when he’s busy and I’m busy or burned out, I’m like, they can make lunch, or they’ll eat when they are hungry, in an effort to make them more independent, and he looks at me like I’m some kind of negligent momstser (kidding, mostly).
This sounds a bit sweet. It sounds like you both are doing your best, and also both have high expectations of yourselves. Good luck :)
Solidarity. I have one kid (one and done) and the hardest part for me BY FAR (and I don’t have the easiest kid) is meals. I already don’t care for cooking. I DETEST meal prepping. It’s all so much harder now. So many logistics every. single. day. of. my. life. So much mental labor, so much “wait, I was going to give him ___ , but apparently we’re out. I’ll add it to the list. Wait, while I’m making another store trip, I should check on ___. Then for tonight, the plan is ___, but I better have a back-up plan because of the picky phase and it better not be yogurt because he already had that this am. Ugh, I don’t know what else we have…” I literally don’t know how any of you with older/multiple kids handle meals because it is soul-sucking. There is so much to love about parenting; preparing meals isn’t on that list for me.
I’m hoping to get in another ski day and a whitewater rafting trip this summer to “reset” the grind a little bit. Could you find something like that that gets you out of the house and unreachable?
I have a business trip next week. Four days away from home, no cooking, no laundry, and being around other adults sounds like Disneyland right now.
The mealtime logistics have gotten much more complicated with a teen who has after-school activities and his own schedule to maintain. Especially since I still insist on eating together whenever possible. Also, he’s picky. Also, I’m in perimenopause and can’t eat things that I used to. It’s just a joy!
Different poster, late 40s, 2 kids teen & tween and also agree. It’s kind of comical right now how dinner comes as a surprise to me every day?
Stop nagging your oldest though – they either have absorbed what you’ve taught (your standards for cleanliness) or not, and it’s better that college isn’t their first time not being nagged. If they’re going to be a slob at least you can set ground rules like washing sheets on a regular basis, no wet towels, things like that.
I could also have written this. I love my kids and I try not to nag but I looked at their floors this weekend and felt despair engulf me. One kid insisted last week that he wasn’t hungry and so refused to eat dinner until he was so hungry he was crying (not a new behavior, and a dinner he likes). It wears a person down.
Is there a way to fill up your own cup, so you can be resilient? Being a parent is a long-term stressor, so find ways to cope and escape a little. A great dinner at a restaurant, a walk with a friend, a fun audiobook, even doing a puzzle can be a source of satisfaction to remind you of the joy in life. I honestly pray during the difficult moments, because parenting takes more strength than I have, and I do feel this truly helps, but everyone is different.
Is there another adult? Reading this my first question was, where is their other parent? Some of this can be kicked over to them.
And geez, some of it should be kicked to the kids. I just don’t understand why you need to be preparing meals like lunch on a weekend for a kid. Are teenagers. Making peanut butter jelly sandwiches nothing else if they’re not hungry, they’ll figure it out when they are.
I love cooking and I hate hate hate the drudgery of daily meal planning and prep. I recently saw a meme that was “the world is burning but my kids still need to eat every few hours” and yeahhhh that hit hard.
Since your kids are tween+, can they take on some of the meal prep? Assign each one a night to be in charge of dinner and tell them you need grocery lists from them by Friday night. You buy the ingredients and are available for consult, but this is their thing. Make it regular so they get better at it.
Meal memes are what get me through. I love the ones showing an absolutely destroyed kitchen with the caption “when you spend 73.50 on speciality ingredients and it uses every pot in the kitchen and tastes worse than takeout.”
I wish I had suggestions. Regarding the clutter: all of their clutter goes in their bedrooms. That’s the best I have for that. Dishes get washed immediately.
This might be a terrible idea: can you have them put, eg, “make lunch” in their phones as a repeating reminder every Friday and Saturday?
They can make their own lunches and do their own laundry. You do not need to remind them to do those things. They will learn if they don’t happen and that is fine. Let them fail.
You don’t have to remind them to do homework either. At some point, my mother didn’t. It was fine. Sometimes I didn’t do it. One time, in 9th grade, I got an F for a quarter in a major subject. My parents did nothing about that even though I was a A student. I just had to decide how to fix it.
Can you rely on meal kits for dinners some nights? Either the kind they mail you or the kind you get at the grocery store? Pretty much every store has something like this. And frozen meals are food.
My mother started assigning us chores weekly. They didn’t have to be done at a particular time, but by bedtime on Sunday or something. (We were “activity kids” with practice or classes or meetings pretty much every night of the week, and lots and lots of homework, so this happened on weekends.) No allowance if not done.
But yeah, there is a reason some people don’t have kids. This grind is a lot, esp if you have multiple across several years. Maybe figure out how to take a solo vacation/staycation soon. Can the kids stay with friends for two nights? Have someone stay with the kids while you leave?
I agree with letting them fail as long as you teach the skills they need to execute on their own. During middle school I complained that my mom didn’t do laundry often enough. In response she taped an instruction sheet to the wall of our laundry room with the washer and dryer settings for various loads. Similarly, she showed us how to cook a few quick, low mess pantry meals. Anything left in common areas after a certain time of night got thrown into a junk bin that we had to sift through. If our phone was dead because the charger isn’t where we left it oh well.
My HS report cards had a lot of Cs and Ds. My parents didn’t intervene and I figured it out. I managed to graduate undergrad and grad school. Let them own their success and failures.
You can’t get into college on SAT scores alone these days.
I am the commented who posted above about getting one F. You couldn’t get into college on SAT scores alone back in my day, either. I overall got good grades, was a 3-season athlete, and president of everything. And when I got an F for the quarter, I figured out how to get As for the other 3 and how to buy No-Doz and pull an all-nighter before the final. No parents involved. Just sayin’.
I’m C’s and D’s. I had decent SAT’s and figured out that my strength would have to be being “well rounded.” I also played two sports, both of which I captained, was VP (never ever President) of multiple clubs, and worked two jobs. But I was also never in danger of going to a top-tier school.
I’m definitely using this comment the next time there’s a discussion about where to hire from. There’s been an increasing number of us at work who have been pushing against hiring at “top” schools because the hires may be very book smart but seem to lack all problem solving skills.
I have so much sympathy, been there done that. Why friend, are you packing their lunches…They can do that. They can make a meatloaf & wrap potatoes in foil. So many things can be offloaded to them directly. As to their rooms…closing the door is the pathway to sanity. Ground rule, common areas of the house stay neat. Period. I was a single parent to 2 male athletes, those teens did eat! They also cooked regularly, prepped their own lunches, and had specific rotating house chores from very early on. I did not remind them of things, because then it became my job aka my resentment. They are college grads now, fully employed, grown and flown in their own respective apartments as fully self supporting adults who know how to adult.
You can go on strike. The kids will figure it out. Your relationship with them will be okay.
If your kids are teens and teens and don’t have a disability, it’s really not your job to do all of this. They can feed themselves. They can clean. They can take responsibility for homework and activities. You will probably have to drive them, at least for now, and clean enough of the common spaces to not make yourself miserable, but otherwise, start to back off and it will still be a lot less work. If they mess up, they can face the consequences. How else do you expect them to learn?
Same stage of life, and same frustrations, with a 13- and 16-year-old. We’ve had some success with a very specific chore chart. It is broken down by kid, day of the week, and time of the day (before and after school, before bed). There are different expectations – both have to do laundry from wash through folding/putting away, for example, but for making dinner , my younger child just needs to tell me what he wants to make by Sunday evening, whereas my older son also needs to give me a list of ingredients that we don’t have so I can order the groceries (which is also a task on the chart!).
It is still a lot of work for me and my husband to stay on top of everything, but when we ARE on top of it, it takes a lot off of our shoulders. I can check the chart and see immediately what has/hasn’t been done. We both travel frequently, and it makes everything easier for the parent staying at home. I’m also figuring out what is / isn’t currently in my kids’ abilities. As much as I’d like to have each kid make a meal each week, that only works in the summer. During the school year it is substantially easier for me to just make the meals, but I have the kids do the meal plans each week from a set of recipes that we’ve all agreed on.
It sucks to be so regimented, but our lives have a lot of moving parts, and this is what works for us.
Your kids forget to eat lunch and there’s food in the fridge? Sounds like their problem. Your kids don’t know where something is, you don’t either, and they want to find it? Sounds like their problem. The phrases, “Okay, what are you going to do about that?” and “How are you going to solve that problem?” are your friends.
They need to experience consequences at low-stakes things so they know how to handle challenge, adversity, and self-care when the stakes are higher. As another poster said, they need to learn how to manage their lives without being nagged BEFORE they get to college. It sounds like you are making it very easy for them to rely on you to be their backup brain. Make it harder.
These last two sentence are it exactly. Another person said “go on strike” and that’s also correct.
As long as you aren’t snide about it, you can go on strike.
Maybe a terrible idea: white board with various chores and requests. Each time a kid (any kid, doesn’t matter) asks you for something like finding their shoes, or you need to nag about lunch or clothes or picking up, a tally mark goes next to that item. At the end of two weeks, have a household meeting. Tell them that you love them. Explain that whether or not you are physically able to keep going like this, your brain is an organ that also gets fatigued, and you cannot mentally continue to nag them (checks tally board) 83 times per week. Show them how it all adds up.
Then set the new ground rules. Clutter is in their rooms only. Everyone has to clean up dishes. Everyone has a meal night. You no longer help to look for lost items. If someone can’t find ice skates before skating, and that delays departure by more than ten minutes, no hockey practice.
OP–thanks, I do actually use those two phrases quite a bit, and started to really lean into those phrases probably about six months ago. I just have to remember to say it, basically, ALLLLL the time. I’m retraining myself all the time too, as well as them.
I have three teens and I understand this so much. I have tried to let go of some of it. For example, I don’t care if their room is a mess or when they do their laundry. If they run out of clean clothes, that’s not my problem. They are now in a good routine of doing laundry on Saturdays.
I make dinner 2 times a week, my husband cooks 2 days, and we always get takeout or go out one day a week, we have one day of leftovers, and we have one day of “fend for yourself” which means eat cereal or make a sandwich or whatever. I don’t make breakfast or lunch on the weekend. We have plenty of food that they can fix themselves. If they are hungry, they will find something to eat.
Everyone has to gather their stuff from downstairs every night or it will get thrown away. They also have chores they have to do or they lose privileges. We don’t remind them to do things, but do have to follow through on consequences which can be hard.
Once they can drive, it helps a lot! I was tired of driving to a million different activities and tried to set up good carpool exchanges but it still requires me to do a lot of driving. Now that 2 of my teens can drive, I hardly ever have to drive anyone anywhere. The older ones help shuttle the younger one around too.
Some of this is just life with kids, but you can absolutely expect them to contribute to running the household.
Having a teen driver has honestly been a game changer. I can tell a difference in my mental load, and it’s only been a few months. It also means that we don’t have to nag him about being on time, because guess what? You’re late? It’s your fault.
I am still in the parenting toddlers stage, but when I read this I honestly thought about the “fair play” system. I have some big beef with it, but it sounds like you have the problems that the book is trying to solve: living with people who are capable but either don’t understand or don’t care enough to do things around the house. Like, you guys need to establish some shared standards that you can agree to and have people be responsible for. You’re probably going to have to lighten up in some areas (if they choose not to eat lunch they get to be hungry) and get people on board with others (clear walkways, counters regularly cleared of clutter). This will suck because your house will not be as clean as you want it to be, and you’ll need to take time to be somewhere else or in a part of the house that you can require to be clean so you can decompress. But I think that learning to relax even when your house is an important parenting skill.
I think it’s really, really common to feel this way! My first thought was to wonder if you’re a single parent. If not, you definitely need to offload some of this oversight to your spouse. Maybe look at the Fair Play cards that can be helpful with fully shifting some things to someone else – and then, this is key, you have to let it go even if they drop the ball!
Also think about what you can shift completely to the kids. Are they doing their own laundry? They definitely could be at those ages. Can you put them in charge of dinner one night a week? Do they have landing places for their stuff to help cut down on clutter? I know that won’t solve the problem – my kids loved to dump their stuff on the kitchen table even though each one had a cubby in the mudroom – but it’s a step in the right direction. At least when you tell them to pick it up there’s somewhere for it to go.
Hang in there. It will get better eventually. One day one of them will come home from college for the summer and suddenly clean up after themselves regularly because living with roommates gave them some perspective. To be fair, some of them take longer to get this than others, but even the more reluctant one is showing signs of improvement!
I have six kids from high school to preschool, so take this with a grain of salt since we all know my standards have lowered with each child…
You said you’re all for natural consequences but then go on to say that you remind them and or make them lunch or else they wouldn’t. So, maybe they don’t eat lunch? And they learn they get hungry and they either need to make it for themselves or help prep dinner so it’s ready earlier. I stopped making lunch on weekends for anyone over 8 years old a long time ago and it just seems to free up everyone’s day (and my mental load).
One other thing that helps me is that I always have a living room or sitting area set aside that is off limits to clutter, toys, backpacks, etc. It is my relax area that I can read a book or drink my coffee without looking at a mess. Once that area is established, it is well known that anything that lands in there WILL end up in the garbage or outside, no exceptions. It doesn’t take long for that rule to sink in and every day it gives me space to be at peace.
Otherwise, solidarity. My oldest goes off to college in a few months and we are trying to hit all the “how to be a good roommate” lessons hard right now. It may seem like these days with kids will go on forever, but I’m on the short downhill slide and would love just a little more time.
Regarding the clutter and picking up: I saw a woman on Instagram recently who just stopped picking up after her family for, like, a week. And because the family was generally well-meaning, they ended up stepping up.
This is why I think it’s harder to be a working mom to teens than it is to be a working mom to preschoolers. They need so much scaffolding to get them to learn to be adults.
Do they need all of this scaffolding, or has modern American middle class parenting convinced us all that they do?
I manage a complicated, bureaucratic application process at my institution (which while not Ivy League, is still an elite institution). As I sit down with students to review their final submissions, I always ask them, “How was your experience putting your application together?” And almost all of them say it was hard–it requires “adulting” skills more than academic skills. For the first time basically ever, I had a student this past fall shrug and say, “It was easy.” I asked her why. She told me that starting in high school, her parents told her it was time to be in charge of her own life logistics. That they did a lot less for her than her friends’ parents did. She said she was pretty annoyed at the time, but the older she got, the more she appreciated it–because she knew how to do things for herself, and she saw how badly so many of her friends were flailing.
This is such a good story, and example!
Right, but SOMEONE still had to teach her how to do life logistics. As someone raised by boomer parents who really did just ‘let us figure it out’ (with no guidance but lots of punishment) I refuse to let my kids flail with zero support to teach them ‘grit’. That middle portion of ‘ok, here is how to make a grocery list, stick to a budget, do your laundry, etc. etc. etc takes so much more mental time and energy than you might think.
But this is a choice you are making. A lot of us are in that age demographic where we were latchkey kids or left to flail by boomer parents. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that. I would have had zero tolerance for being “taught” how to make a grocery list. I learned to cook and do laundry (and how to parallel park) by watching others and figuring it out. The flailing is part of the learning. Why would you deny your kid the chance to grow?
No one taught me how to make a grocery list. It isn’t rocket science. I figured it out. Unless your kid is a complete moron, they will, too.
This. I sure didn’t receive much guidance from my Boomer parents, just admonition when I did it wrong. I don’t want to do that to my own kids, and teaching those skills takes time and effort!
I’m sensing that some of us were just fine being admonished by our parents When we did something wrong (this is me–I do not care that you are yelling at me) and some of you really took it hard and are shielding your kids, maybe too much, because you remember. Make sure, however you are parenting, that you are parenting the kids you actually have, not who you were as a child.
Literally no one ever taught me how to make a grocery list. I just watched my mom do it, got dragged to the store, and was forced to help in the kitchen until I knew enough basics to not light anything on fire. Then I got to college and figured out how to implement it in my life. Some things do not have to be as complicated as high achieving middle class women with anxiety disorders make them. (I know this because I am one.)
And sure, some kids and teens will need more support. I am talking here about your “average” kid who is neurotypical, competent academically, not disabled, etc. They can figure out how to do their own laundry if you show them once. I promise you. I’m not saying let your kid starve or flunk out of high school. I’m saying let them ruin a load of whites if they left a red sock in it, or not have their preferred outfit clean and folded in their drawer on Monday morning if they don’t do their own laundry.
As the OP said, holding the line and enforcing consequences does take its own kind of mental energy. However, so does the helicopter mom pathway. One of them is more likely to result in a functional adult who is capable of handling adversity and problem-solving, though.
I started teaching/requiring my kid to do things for herself when she was in preschool. She ended up having ADHD and anxiety, and literally could not do college applications on her own. The thought of even opening up the Common App stressed her out so much that she just avoided it. I had to hire a college counselor to break down the process and shepherd her through it. The fact that if she didn’t fill out the applications she wouldn’t go to college didn’t motivate her; it paralyzed her.
I get that that feels like too big a natural consequence to just ignore, but I don’t know how your daughter will manage the next stressful thing in college without getting her anxiety treated adequately.
Yeah. We all have some paralysis, and then we take a deep breath and break it down in our minds and do it. I’m worried you took this lesson away from her and she’ll freak out again, but when she’s alone at college.
It sounds like your daughter needed support around college admissions. Fine, we all need help sometimes.
However: What did she learn from that experience that will allow her to better manage stressful application processes in the future? What’s her game plan for her job applications? Grad school apps? Study abroad? Research positions?
If she’s still in college, time for her to start figuring it out. (PS. The answer is not “Mom does them for her.” You’d think I wouldn’t have to say this. However.)
I am the mom who hired the college consultant, and actually my daughter has managed multiple rounds of summer and academic-year job applications, study abroad applications, and the competitive application process for her major very successfully with zero parental intervention. I have never communicated with anyone at the college about anything. I told her not to grant me parental access to any records but the billing system, which I only need so I can pay.
The scaffolding on college applications helped her learn to break down and organize this type of process, and gave her confidence in her ability to do it herself. Some kids can’t just be thrown in to the deep end to sink or swim if you ever want them to be able to swim.
Sympathy. Stuff like this makes me realize how type b I am. It wouldn’t even occur to me not to make my family help.
There needs to be a default of no clutter in the kitchen and living room when you get home. They can do that. It’s probably backpacks and coats and the random detritus of the day. Once they figure out how to put that away once they can do it daily. Their rooms can be cluttered; who cares? They will mess it up but they’ll get better.
Dinners need to be assigned out a few nights a week. They can prep a salad and a sheet pan meal even if you don’t want them preheating an oven. And Saturday can be a choose your own no cook lunch. I’m fine with fruit yogurt cheese and crackers. I am not making lunch for high schoolers on Saturdays. My fourth grader can pull off pb and j. I’m sure your kids can. If it’s unsuccessful they can make a list for the next time I’m at the store. If they forget to eat they’ll be hungry by 3 or they might just eat a big dinner. Both are ok.
Of course none of this works if you are the kids need hot lunches or fancy dinners. I’m not doing that but I’m also not loosing my mind or feeling resentful.
i think part of what the OP is saying is also the mental load of either reminding people to put stuff away, or to enforce the consequences (whatever that might be in your family). it still actually takes work/mental load to let your kids fail and face the consequences and at least for me, i have to be in the right mindset to listen to the fall out.
OP–Yes, thank you, this exactly. I will keep coming back to this thread today and I hope it helps other people but I just have to say—I was really at a low point this weekend (no thanks, also, to perimenopause hormonal swings, I’m sure) and I felt like this was a place I could come to dump this all out.
Quite literally every single response thus far has made me feel better in one way or another. Thank you!
I’m really glad you’ve found this to be helpful. You clearly care a lot about your kids, and modern middle class American parenting expectations are enough to drive anyone around the bend.
I don’t think all people feel mental load the same way. What you describe isn’t a barrier to me. So your advice might be different than mine–you have to let the kids fail, even if you find it mentally taxing–this, along with keeping them alive, is the core part of your job. Not cleaning or lunches.
i agree that it is a core part of the job, but you are right that not everyone feels the mental load the same way and to some people, myself including, it is extremely mentally taxing. it is also very hard at least for me bc i have twins and one has ADHD and so for that kiddo the amount of scaffolding required is much more than for the other twin, and while they are two different people and we very much focus on the idea that things dont have to be equal to be fair, the mental gymnastics makes it more tiring
Yes, it’s this. It’s a fair point that we all probably need to do less, but it’s also true that it’s not like you flip a switch and they suddenly figure out and don’t try to involve you in their drama.
Do you remember your mom freaking out at you over something minor when you were the same age? Mine threw a laundry basket on the floor and stormed out. Anyway, now I think I understand why she did (and I’m so close to doing that to my 13 & 15 year old).
For me, once my older kid got to HS, I felt like a countdown to “must be a functional college student [if not adult]” started and suddenly I feel like I’ve failed to get there.
But at the same time, I realize that (probably?) they’ll learn from mistakes as they continue to grow into adults, and that in college they’ll likely have some “failures” that will actually benefit them in the long term.
So, you’re not wrong. Lots of us feel this way. But hopefully everything will turn out OK.
Honestly, my parents freaking out had a bigger impact on me stepping up than any gentle reminder ever did. Sometimes kids have to see you lose it to connect some dots.
I agree with this to an extent. I still remember the few times adults yelled at me, and it was like a light blinked on in my head signaling: “Oh this was a major problem.” I don’t endorse yelling at kids but I do think they can be clueless about how they impact people.
Also, I learned my kids are way more capable than I realized. We learned this through a hard experience–my MIL had an emergency and had to be taken to the hospital. However, we were getting ready to host a milestone birthday party for her when this happened and had family traveling in from out-of-town. I yelled vague instructions at my kids for finishing up party prep as I ran out of the house–which included cleaning and frosting a cake lol as well as picking up the food we ordered and setting up. My oldest took charge, the younger ones did what she told them to do, and they ended up hosting the party until we finished at the hospital. (My MIL insisted the party continue since people had traveled. She was able to make it towards the end). The kids even cleaned up after. I was so proud of them and our family who we don’t see often said multiple times what great helpers they were. It took a family emergency to see that they really are very capable!
That’s a great story.
I know I’m a bit late to the thread, but two things in the comments struck me: 1. You don’t feel a need to make lunch on the weekends, but latchkey dh is horrified if you don’t (when he’s not available to do so). My dh and I both dealt with different low-key childhood trauma, and we both have things we find really important to do for our kids as a result. But we get that the other parent doesn’t. So dh needs to learn that he feels better when he makes lunch for the kids (or whatever else), but that it’s not something they need and it’s just fine if you don’t. And that’s a thing for you to work through with him. 2. Don’t dismiss how (peri) menopause might be playing into this, and talk about that with a doctor. I was a whole big mess when going through menopause, and it colored my feelings about my family in ways I didn’t even realize until I was through it. Other than that, I echo other commenters’ opinion that there’s a lot you can let go, and I’ll add that weekend meal planning (including when dh or kids are responsible for something, or everybody just eats sandwiches), might be your friend.
Whoa, I feel this so hard.
We just started what we are calling BAT with our teen – Basic Adulting Training. We have a family contract with pre agreed upon consequences – for instance, bring your instrument home on the weekend or you lose phone privileges. And since I have a 14yo boy, you have to run a mile if you fart at the dinner table…. BAT includes choosing a recipe, creating a shopping list, doing the shopping and cooking for one meal a week. Doing one load of laundry a week and it must include the school gym uniform. Etc. I realized that it is easier, if more aggravating, to do this all myself, but I’m handicapping my child from becoming a fully functional adult if I don’t hold him accountable.
I am right here with you. My kids are 7/10/13 and based on your age i’m guessing yours are close too. Here is what has changed the game for me:
#1: I am their family. I am their mom. I am not their maid, chef, or servant. We are all a family that lives in this house. Obviously, DH and I are the adults but we’ve given them all more responsibility and just generally made this “family responsibilities” not “mom or dad.” Things like dishes, meal planning, general clutter cleaning. My kids do it now and before I was RAGE doing it.
#2: find ways to really enjoy this time. For me, it was planning 1:1 trips with the kids over free weekends, taking up skiing as a family and really leaning into it, doing some of their extracurriculars with them (eg. signing up to coach a sport or lead a troop). Go to their games. Get mani/pedis together. Plan fun get togethers with them for their friends. I took my middle and 2 friends to a broadway show a few weeks ago and it was an absolute BLAST watching a little group of 10 year olds LOVE the theatre. Like your mom said, you WILL miss it, but you won’t miss waiting on them hand and food. You will miss the fun. So have it.
#3: bond with each kid over something different. The game changed when I stopped trying to drag all 3 kids + DH to everything. Oldest and I ski. Middle and I do theatre stuff. Youngest does All The Sports and I coach him in 2 of them.
Solidarity. My kids are around the same age. I let my kids cook for themselves/fend for themselves on the weekends for breakfast and lunch. The other thing that REALLY helps is having them eat school lunch. They have the choice to make their own lunches or eat school lunch, and they always pick the latter.
Frankly, I can’t believe how often I hear about this kind of behaviour from children. Stock your pantry with Campbell’s soups. Show them the peanut butter and jelly. Tell them about scrambled eggs. With the entire interwebs at our disposal, kids can’t figure out how to heat some soup? Do laundry? We’re doomed.
As someone whose kids are gone and whose house is empty, I can tell you that no, you will not miss it.
There is a lot of (good I think!) discussion of the fact that kids yours’ ages can typically be handling more of this themselves but in addition, are there ways to just reduce your mental load. Like – set up a recurring grocery order that contains snacks & sandwich supplies and get it delivered every week. Then never think about it again: there’s always diy food available; it might not be optimized, but it’s out of your brain. Ditto with a housecleaning service. Each family member gets 1 bin in the hallway that any of their junk left in common areas can go in. And then just throw stuff in if you’re looking at it and it’s stressing you out – let yourself not take on the mental load of thinking ‘ok, gotta remember to remind Timmy to put away his gym shoes’
Any recommendations for an AHA/BHA mask? I remember liking the DE Babyfacial but switched it up given how expensive it was. I haven’t loved the other ones since, including my current one from Dr. Idriss. Maybe the DE was more potent, since I can’t tell by feel or visually a difference from the other ones I’ve tried. Before I go back to DE, I would love any other suggestions!
I still like the DE Babyfacial. Try the Ordinary one though, the dark purple AHA/BHA one. I use that one if I only have 1-5 minutes and the DE Babyfacial if I have 20. I got Babyfacial on sale a while ago at Costco but don’t see it there now – maybe wait until summer sales like NAS? Sam’s Club has DE’s glycolic acid, but I think I prefer The Ordinary to that one.
I love Good Genes, by Sunday Riley. it’s a lactic acid leave on serum, not a mask.
Late to this post but this is the one I love.
I like the Glow Recipe AHA mask/serum… it is watermelon scented, as a heads up!
I like the PTR Pumpkin Mask.
I would love some recommendations for books about raising teens. I feel like I’m flailing with my 16-year-old. I am trying hard to back off and be more of a coach than a taskmaster, but it’s hard. (ADHD at play, here, so the executive function challenges are real and so are the consequences.) I’m worried that in the hustle of everyday life, what if DH & I are failing to teach him some important life skills and lessons. In some ways, he’s doing so much more than we did as teens, especially academically, and yet a lot less in other ways. 16 yo is very motivated to get a summer job, which will be a very good thing for a number of reasons.
I try to remind myself that he’s a good kid and that he’s going to make mistakes, while still feeling a lot of internalized pressure to parent him well through these years. Yes, he’s my oldest, if you couldn’t tell. LOL.
I would encourage you to foster independence and not always bail him out. My parents always came to the rescue of my brother and he’s still at home at 31, they hate it but can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
See, it’s stuff like this that concerns me. Obviously no parent wants that to happen! It’s a fine line between helping your kid and bailing them out when things go sideways. Natural consequences are important, but I also don’t want him to feel like nobody has his back. Especially if the inconvenience to me/us is relatively minor.
If you’re posting on the internet about being worried about whether you’re teaching him enough, I’m guessing that you’re a loooooong way from raising a kid who feels like nobody has his back. (Unless he views life as a victim.)
You could probably switch some of that “helping him out” energy and time into “I’m always here to help you problem solve, learn how to pivot, and brainstorm solutions” rather than actually doing the thing for him. Or, “You have 3 bail outs this semester for _____ [common forgetfulness issue]. You choose when you want to use them versus coming up with your own solution. I’ll always be here for you in a true emergency or real need, but ____ [common forgetfulness issue] is no longer on that list.”
do you have an adhd kiddo? mine is only 7, but so we are very much still working on all of this, but the executive functioning of someone with adhd is behind that of their peers. does this really matter when someone is 33 vs. 31, no, but in the younger and teen years this matters and at least for my kid, figuring out how to be firm without activating the shame spiral is something we are still figuring out.
i will also say that in retrospect, by the way people talk about things on here, most of you would probably think my parents probably did way too much for me and i think i turned out as functional/dysfunctional as most other adults i know
1:27, it sounds like we are having similar experiences! OP here. Honestly, my mom probably did way too much for us, and somehow I turned into a fully functioning adult who knows how to run a household and do it well. So maybe that’s a silver lining. The ADHD factor complicates everything. With my neurotypical child, who is quite a bit younger, teaching life skills has been significantly easier. It is what it is.
Ugh, my 38 year old sister is like this too. She doesn’t currently live at home, but she has intermittently done so and is fully reliant on my mother.
No advice just commiseration… these are the years that we’re supposed to feel like we suck at parenting, I think.
Commiseration. My oldest is a HS freshman with ADHD and I we’re still ‘scaffolding’ but trying to explain what/why/how those scaffolds are.
Are there specific areas you’re concerned about? Aside from school we’re trying to focus on cooking/budgeting/housekeeping/social skills as well as just talking a lot and trying to have open conversations on current events/work/finances/etc.
All the books by Lisa Damour.
I’ve heard her talk and she really writes with all of the love and care vibes that she gives off.
Love this. I somehow forgot about her, but that’s a good recommendation.
Yes. Particularly “The Emotional Lives of Teenagers.” Very very helpful (and I thought I knew everything necessary before I got the book!)
Dr. Damour’s podcast “Ask Lisa” is also wonderful
What types of things is he failing at, and can you help him with skills he can take into adulthood? I sit down with my calendar every Sunday night, for instance, to make sure I am prepared for the week. Is he missing assignments? Talk to him about a system with reminders and maybe set five minutes on Sunday where you check in on tasks for the upcoming week.
Lower stakes, are all of his clothes on the floor? Let him figure out on his own that he wants clean clothes and do his own laundry. If you need him to do a specific household task, ask him directly – a teen sadly is not going to automatically take out the obviously overflowing kitchen trash.
Not about raising per se, but “Coming of age” by Lucy Foulkes is a great book about adolecence that can help you relax a little. The auther writes from a UK perspective, but the science works either way.
How awful, I can’t imagine. I’d give them a Doordash or ubereats gift card, since they still need to eat and it gives them greater flexibility than bringing food.
Looking for podcast, Substack, or other content recommendations! I like well-researched and “smart” content about heakthy lifestyles (fitness, nutrition, stress management), personal finance, mindset/building the life you want (hobbies and relationships, self discipline to follow through through, “life hacks”).
I like Liz Moody, The Hybrid Lab with Dr. Alyssa Olenick, What We Spend. I love R29 money diaries too.
Money with Katie and HerMoney are fine.
I don’t like “broey” content.
Articles of Interest.
The Purse and Professor off Duty (both available through Substack) are great and touch on many of these topics.
I’ve been reading “Everyday Vitality” by Dr. Samantha Boardman and liking it a lot. She has a substack too.
Marketplace. Technically it’s on most NPR stations, but I usually just listen to the podcast.
This Podcast Will Kill You is hosted by two practicing doctors who break down a different disease or health topic each episode. Well researched and engaging.
Stick with me here, but – try the Holderness family? I feel like their podcast is increasingly going into health/stress/nutrition and they’ve had a lot of good guests and ask a lot of smart questions.
I’ve noticed that some of their content that comes through my facebook feed is starting to be less of the goofy Al Yankovitz stuff, and more sweet reflections on kids going to college, travel, etc. Huh.
Jordan lips is my go to fitness guru. His podcast is called “where optimal meets practical.” He might be too gym bro for you but he’s got legitimate credentials and takes a very reasonable approach fitness and nutrition. I can’t stand alarmist wellness content either “once weird trick” style tips and no understanding of nuance.
Any recommendations for playa del carman? Going next week with kids ages 4-11. We’re staying in a house and have a car, so some flexiblity. But we’ve been super busy and have planned nothing so need to get my head around this trip!!!
Does anyone use a free app to plan furniture placement? We are waiting to find out if we have been selected for a foreign posting and if we get it, we have been slated to take over a particular flat that has a huge living room but I just can’t quite figure out to optimally arrange it. Am using this as my current distraction project and would love to play with something that allows me to input the square footage and move around furniture.
I’ve used Excel to mock up floor plans. Make the cells to a scale that makes sense, use the dimensions of your furniture, and color in cells to test various layout options. Use thick cell borders to mark doorways and windows.
If you are licensed for it, Visio is better at this and has actual furniture icons you can play with.
In the same theme as using Excel. Draw.io also works pretty well for layouts as well. I don’t love using it on a phone, but on a web browser they have a couple of floor plan examples with furniture.
Draw.io is a lot like visio, but with less bells and whistles but it’s free.
I’ve used one before – it might have been floorplanner? It did exactly what you’re describing and helped me figure out how to lay out the room.
I used plan your room to make sure our furniture would all fit in our new flat (spoiler, it does not)
Question: is it less common for middle class kids to go to top-50 colleges than it used to be? I’m living in my hometown and when I was a kid half of the honors classes went to the top 50 colleges. Nowadays it seems like everyone is only planning on going to the state school. I know cost has a lot to do with this, with some private schools costing close to 6 figures per year. (Does this also have to do with the Republican war against colleges right now? Maybe middle class Trump voters don’t want elitist/DEI so they’re going state?) Just trying to assess how bad our (top ranked in the state) school district is.
No, not less common. Your schools have probably gotten worse.
But also, unless you’re comparing actual complete lists of graduating classes with details for every student, the most probable reason here, by far, is that you only see your kid’s friend’s school choices now but back in high school, you knew everyone’s, and you definitely remember who got into the schools you couldn’t.
Higher ed person here. In many ways, yes it is — there’s a bit of a trap for those who are between financial aid packages and those who can pay full-ride, and they often fall through the craps. Costs are astronomical. Students being pushed into honors classes, AP classes, and even community college classes just to show that they’re accelerated, but it does little to foster actual learning. College admissions offices are in a double bind: on one hand, they seem to demand this kind of performative academic acceleration, and on the other hand, they recognize that they’re letting in kids who are underprepared in real ways but who have been able to pay for tutors, professional coaches, etc.
I don’t know if this has to do with the Republican war against colleges per se, though it’s not helping. The asinine misunderstandings of DEI programs and their shutdowns is a problem; pulling funding for research means colleges need to turn to tuition more to cover costs; etc.
Class sizes are larger than they were back in my day, so I suspect there are more students competing for openings than there used to be. There are a ton of students in my daughter’s cohort who are very despondent about the future. She has seen many of her peer group opt out of a degree because they don’t think jobs will be there to justify the student loan debt they would need to take on to obtain a degree, and are hearing that AI is taking over the ones that are left. A number of her college classmates are struggling to make ends meet between gig jobs and tuition increases. There are also ICE agents who patrol the mid-tier state U campus. This generation has a lot of stressors we did not.
the cost of college is astronomical. it depends on what middle class means exactly. many private institutions, especially top 50, have very generous aid packages for families making less than certain amounts. it is also much easier for kids to apply to many schools, making the admissions rate lower than it used to be. it is also just so competitive to get into these schools. not all, but many of the top colleges are also focused on having a strong percentage of FGLI students, and depending on the size of the school, etc. there are only so many spots left. what part of the country is your hometown in? and has the high school gone downhill?
why is there such a focus on FGLI? When I go hear my alma mater speak they keep saying it and as someone who will end up paying full price I feel like I’m paying for their tuition also. And the dean or whoever will brag that 80% of students don’t pay full price — so the 20% of us who are are paying for everyone. No wonder it’s 4x what it cost in my day.
you are replying to me and i actually agree with you, but as someone who works in higher ed, I will say that some people feel like there should be an equity component to admissions and that universities should be leveling the playing field and have a responsibility to be improving the country, etc. i can’t recall where i either read or listened to a podcast about this, but for a while there was a meritocracy for college admissions (GPA and SAT scores). then there was all of this stuff about how those tests are ‘unfair,’ which led to more holistic application review…..
There was never a meritocracy based on GPA because of preferences for legacies, children of donors and athletes.
OP here – I just googled and median household income in our small town is $135k so I’m guessing that puts most people out of FAFSA range? We’re definitely going to be paying full price.
Say what? People making $135k a year would get free tuition at many top schools.
at most top private colleges you’d get a ton of aid with a $135 household income
+1 there’s significant aid up to $200k or so from top colleges.
yeah but that’s the median in the town
but good to know you can get financial aid up to 200k, i hadn’t realized it was so much. we’re still going to be paying full freight though.
They look at income but also you need to have “typical assets” for that income. We’re under $200k in HHI but I highly doubt we meet the typical assets part.
“Typical assets” is likely meant to exclude retirees with millions in the bank plus a paid-off house or people with massive trust funds.
I’m the <$200k HHI poster and we have a paid off house and will have millions in retirement by the time our kids apply to college. I know retirement is excluded from the FAFSA analysis but I thought the private colleges with the "free tuition under $200k" deals look at it. Would love to be wrong! I'm just not counting on it.
I’m still salty about my undergrad – a flagship state school – who denied me all financial aid when I started in 2000 because I was an independent student who made $13,000 in the prior year, and had taken a couple community college classes while in the service (which made me a transfer student under their rules). No need based aid, no merit aid. The MGIB hadn’t kept up with inflation by that point and didn’t cover much. I went my whole student life being told my excellent grades, test scores, extracurriculars and then military service would set me up for scholarships. All it set me up for was working 2 jobs and not sleeping for 4 years.
The Republican “war against colleges” has to do with the truly astronomical amount of money they are sucking up. Skyrocketing tuition, huge amounts of federal dollars, student loans go to the university with no accountability if the students can repay, an entire generation swimming in not-insubstantial debt, massive endowments, all of it. It’s unsustainable, especially given the demographics. Many schools, even elite schools, are trying to get lore students in the door to pay the bills: expanded graduate offerings, certificates, all of it.
Republicans are so gullible.
Colleges sucking up a lot of money is absolutely not a problem caused by the right. They would love to axe student loans or at least do some sort of basic underwriting, so you can’t qualify for $200k in loans for a degree that projects to pay $50k a year or continue qualifying if your GPA is below a certain threshold (above where you’d get kicked out). They also tend to support student loans being dischargeable in bankruptcy (because they would be harder to get in the first place, so fewer people would need to go that route). Allowing student loan packages to be degree-blind and progress-blind is much more of a thing the left defends than the right.
I don’t think it’s 100% a Democratic problem, either (not all problems are political), but blaming it on the right does not make sense. There are plenty of things in higher education that can be blamed on the right, but not this.
Denying the intrinsic value of having an educated population is certainly a tenant held strongly by the right, though.
Eye roll.
You mean tenet. Educated population, indeed.
I’m the Anon at 12:54 pm and I agree with you. My point is that the current system is unsustainable and causing huge problems. It’s in dire need of reform, and that doesn’t involve throwing even more money at colleges. I like the idea that’s been circulating for years to put colleges on the hook for loans that can’t be repaid: it aligns university incentives with what’s best for students.
I disagree. Make them dischargeable in bankruptcy, and require some underwriting before offering loans. Dramatically increase strings free scholarship giving instead, but only for cheap schools with good job outcomes.
Basically: you want to be a lawyer, doctor, engineer? Sure, here’s loans. You aren’t sure what you want to do? Here’s a free year at a community/state school. You want to be a drama major? Amazing, find someone willing to pay for it.
I have a ‘useless’ degree and so do all my colleagues, we all earn north of 100k (many even 200k) we aren’t rich no but we’re comfortable and good critical thinkers.
And that’s great for you if you funded your education via a method that isn’t backed by taxpayers. Those degrees are only problematic if you’re asking people you don’t know to bankroll them.
No all degrees are valuable, the economy is not the only metric. I’d say my job protecting the planet is significantly more important than anyone in private equity even if our salaries would indicate otherwise
I think we would be a lot better off if more people in government and business had “useless” degrees that had taught them how to think.
College is an economic bubble–it exists outside of real free market forces because of federal subsidies through loans. If the government is giving away loans to anyone who could sign up (no real underwriting standards, as mentioned below), why wouldn’t the colleges increase their tuition to capture more of those dollars? And some of these colleges have plenty of money, they don’t need to be charging what they are to sustain operations and research–look at Harvard’s endowment, it’s practically criminal that they are charging anyone tuition or taking federal loans with that much money around.
Remember the housing bubble? Predatory lenders signing anyone up for mortages that they didn’t understand and couldn’t afford? That bubble burst. I’m waiting for the college bubble to burst, and one of the only ways that will happen is if federal money dries up.
Honestly, same with healthcare insurance being tied to employment instead of a truly free market (along with other major issues with the system). If you could shop around for health insurance like auto insurance, it would be a fundamentally different market. Because it’s not truly open or free, who can blame doctors for increasing their costs to ensure they capture enough funds when reimbursement runs at 50%? That means if you want 100% of what it costs, your sticker price has to be 200%.
These aren’t right or left issues. These are libertarian economic ideals.
I think it’s always been very regional. I’m HS ‘02 and Midwest high school class of 400 sent 3 of us to elite universities and another couple of kids to selective Midwest SLACs like Grinnell and Carleton. Almost everyone who was college bound went to one of the two big state schools.
Much more of a culture of going out of state in the northeast.
+1, I lived in NE for most of my childhood and moved east in high school. The top-of-the-class kids from my old school, one of them made the “big move” to go to Northwestern but all the other bright kids went to state schools (mainly in-state, some in an adjacent state), and it wasn’t because their families were lacking in resources. It just was not the culture to go cross-country for a high-ranking school.
Yup, exactly this. The pinnacle of achievement for smart kids was Northwestern and U Chicago. Most smart kids didn’t even aim that high, and instead went to State Us with merit aid. No knock against Northwestern and UChicago, which are excellent schools, but Chicago was only ~2 hours farther from my hometown than our flagship State U was, so it didn’t really feel like leaving the cultural bubble. There was zero support from the school for anyone who wanted to go to schools on the coasts. I went to an Ivy because I had tiger parents who pushed me and supported me during the application process, but it was very rare and everyone acted like there was something wrong with me because I didn’t want to go to Northwestern or UChicago. There is definitely a culture of staying local in the Midwest, even for the highest achievers.
Yep, my kid is at a “national” school in the midwest and was shocked by how many kids grew up nearby. I was raised, and so was she, with the expectation of going “away” to college.
FWIW, most of the high achieving students I know in the suburbs of Boston went to schools that were close by. They go to Harvard or Yale, not Stanford; MIT, not CalTech; Wellesley, not Bryn Mawr; Tufts, not Pomona or JHU, etc.
True, the northeast is somewhat overrepresented at the Ivies. But having lived in the Midwest from birth to 18 and Northeast/Mid-Atlantic from 18 onwards, the culture surrounding college geography really is very different. In my Midwest hometown, the overwhelming majority (at least 95%) stayed in-state and most of those who went out of state went no more than a few hundred miles away to an adjacent state. People in the northeast might be more likely to go to Harvard or UPenn rather moving 3,000 miles away to Stanford, but they’re not as likely to stay quite so close to home.
I think the other issue is that even if you stay close to home and go to Wellesley, you’re going to a school with a large population of students from not- New England. In the Midwest, even people who go to a different state or an outstanding SLAC are usually in with mostly Midwesterners.
+1. I graduated from a large public high school in California in 2000 and almost everyone I knew went to a UC or CSU. Of course there were some kids who went out of state, but they were definitely in the minority.
It’s different in CA than in smaller states, though. Some of the UC schools are elite, and you can stay in-state and go hundreds of miles away from home.
Edited to remove a certain word:
I grew up outside of NYC where everyone went to a Top 50-type school or aspired to it. Now, I live in the SEUS and the schools of my youth are too far away AND too expensive for many. Everyone wants to go to an SEC or ACC school, from the straight-A kids who could go elsewhere (but often no parental logistics to tour even) from the kid scraping by who may enter as a second-semester freshmen or switching in after getting grades up at some other state U or community college. Sports, beer, parties, honors college, alumni network — it’s hard to argue against them, especially when the weather is better and the cost is so much less. Even the “smart” kids list it as a first choice because they know that HYP isn’t likely in the cards for admission or for payment and they are smartly saving any school debt for graduate programs.
I agree that culture and geography plays a big role here. I attended a private school in PA and everyone was aspiring to a top school. The “dumb” kids went to Penn State and we regularly sent more kids to Penn than Penn State.
Let me tell you the shock I had when I graduated and learned that for most people Penn State main campus was nothing to be ashamed about.
+1 for the role of culture and geography. In our SEUS community, it is pretty much unheard of for kids to go out of state, or even to go to the top state schools. The guidance counselor tried to convince my daughter not to apply to the top state schools or to apply out of state, even though she was at the top of her class and had excellent stats and ended up being accepted to all of those schools. We are in a red county known mostly for book-banning and ignorance.
I grew up outside of NYC where everyone went to a Top 50-type school or aspired to it. Now, I live in the SEUS and the schools of my youth are too far away AND too expensive for many. Everyone wants to go to an SEC or ACC school, from the straight-A kids who could go elsewhere (but often no parental logistics to tour even) from the kid scraping by who may enter as a second-semester freshmen to a transfer from some other state U or community college. Sports, beer, parties, honors college, alumni network — it’s hard to argue against them, especially when the weather is better and the cost is so much less.
Ugh don’t get me started. Here in suburban New York the rich kids in my supposedly excellent school district are going to out of state state schools down south. I suspect it’s less about money and more about the “experience.” I’m pretty reluctant to spend big money sending a kid to a school where he’s legally barred from learning women’s studies because they have sweet Greek life and a professional football team. My husband disagrees but my feeling is, NY state schools are good, but not glamorous. If my kids want a state school, stay in state! Albany, Buffalo, Binghamton, take your pick of the cold upstate town where you want to spend the winter! You can take class on African American literature, and you pay in state tuition. Weather and football cannot be the most import parts of college, can they? I went to a tiny liberal arts college and my husband went to a flagship out of state university. We disagree on the value of a big state school but agree that I definitely had more fun in college. I’m very skeptical of the importance of nationally ranked sports programs as far as having fun. You can tailgate for d3 sports and cheer on your actual friends.
Mine is still in middle school but I assume she will go to state school. I am divorced from her father and he and I are both remarried. I believe colleges will take the income of all 4 parents/step parents into account. It’s a ton of income on paper but not enough for us to comfortably afford $100k+ each year for 4 years. But we won’t qualify for need based scholarships, which is not unfair. We could come up with the money if it was our only priority. So state school it will be.
It’s harder to get into and harder to afford top schools than it was a generation ago. My daughter was ranked third in her class of 800, had straight As and something over 1500 on the SAT, and earned an IB diploma. There was no way she was getting in to an Ivy, Stanford, or an elite SLAC, and we couldn’t have afforded it if she had. We are squarely middle-class and the formulas say we should be able to afford full freight, but in reality we can barely afford $40K/year. By “barely afford” I mean we are scrimping so hard our financial advisor doesn’t know how we are doing it and is trying to talk us into cutting back on retirement savings to compensate. She got into the honors program at our highly ranked flagship State University with zero aid. She chose a SLAC just outside of the top 50 whose maximum merit aid award made it slightly cheaper than State U. If she’d gone with a higher-ranked SLAC that didn’t offer merit aid, we would have had to pay full freight.
If direct college costs (tuition, room, board, fees) had risen at the rate of inflation since I was in college, public school would now cost $26K/year and private school would be $59K. The aforementioned State U that my daughter turned down charges $43K/year.
This exactly.
This is helpful to me. Is it that she can’t qualify for loans at all? Or are you just avoiding that? I feel like even middle class kids used to get loans if not financial aid.
She was offered a few thousand in loans that we had her turn down. Our lives were ruined by student loans and we don’t intend to allow hers to be.
She qualified for a few thousand dollars in loans. Not enough that it would make a difference in our ability to afford college, but enough that it would be a burden to her on a starting salary. We had her turn them down because student loans ruined our lives and we do not intend to let the same thing happen to her.
Apologies for double post–it didn’t seem like the first reply went through.
Loans aren’t going to bridge a gap of $20,000 or $30,000 per year.
A lot of state schools have gone up in prestige and/or seem like a better financial “deal” than they were when I was in high school 30-odd years ago. There are lots of middle-class families that fall into a bit of a “donut hole” – too much income to get the financial aid offered at elite schools (i.e., >150k family income) but not enough money to pay out 90k a year from savings.
The kids in the honors classes at my rural MD high went to UMBC or UMCP if there was some kind of significant financial pressure at play, but neither was considered particularly prestigious in the 1990s. A handful went to University of DE because they would give nearly full scholarships to A students, even out of state.
In my state, state school is a much worse financial deal than it was 30 years ago. Cost of attendance has gone up so much that you might as well go private, and there is little to no merit aid available at the good state schools.
This is very state-dependent. In my state, even the top tier state universities are MUCH cheaper than any private college. And they buy a lot of smart in-state kids with huge merit aid packages. They’re also not that hard to get into for those who don’t follow the academic superstar path. Something like 70% of our local HS’s graduating class goes to one of the top two state schools. Granted, these schools do not have the prestige of a place like UCLA, but they’re solid schools whose graduates have good job opportunities.
I feel really lucky to live where we do, even though college wasn’t on our radar at all when we moved here. We hope to pay for private college if our kids are interested and can get into decent ones, but having two solid, affordable, attainable State U options has really taken the pressure off us and our kids.
I think this really depends on what is going on at your local college. I grew up in an upper middle class suburb in a SEUS state. All of the top students generally aspired to go “out of state” for college. When I was in high school, one of our state schools started giving really generous scholarships (full ride or full tuition) to in-state students, and that is just really hard to say no to, so the portion of our high school class at that school increased dramatically over time. To an outsider, it would look like the class was going to worse colleges over time, but many of these students were just opting for their state school on a full ride.