What Would You Do If You Were Me? {Real Life Hack}

I've mentioned that I'm on a quest to organize and streamline our house. Before our baby was born, I did a major office clean out. I'm talking, threw out my grade school report cards and poems that I had written in 4th grade kind of clean out. Never mind that I've kept these things through too many moves to count. Eliminating junk and creating space is very satisfying to me. 

I love getting rid of big items and replacing them with smaller, sleeker items like my old clunky printer. Yes, it could print, scan and copy, but it didn't meet my aesthetic standards. Big, gray, bulky, meh. So off I went to amazon to purchase my cute little white HP Tango printer after taking the old one to the dump. 

The printer arrived and my husband gave me the side eye and said "that thing is going to last you two weeks. It might break if I look at it the wrong way." I assured him that it would be perfect. Enter COVID-19, homeschooling and WFH and that Tango started dancing multiple times a day. Six printer cartridge changes later, things started looking badly for my cute HP Tango. 

Eight months from the purchase date, the Tango stopped dancing. The look my husband gave me when I realized this was equal parts "I told you so" and annoyance. Enter me, the stubborn Taurus who wasn't going to rest until we got a refund (we had four months left on our warranty). Bless my hubby for being willing to call customer support because I don't know about you, but summer with 6 kids is turning out to be even more cruise directing than homeschooling. Besides, my hubby is so good at getting refunds and getting people to help him. 

You want to know how he does it? Here's the real life hack. After lodging his complaint or request and getting the usual run around from a customer service representative, he says to them, "what would you have me do if you were me?". There's a long pause followed by a resolution almost every time. You really can't argue with this line of thinking. 

You know the one time this idea doesn't work? You guessed it, when it comes to food and your body. You can't look to someone else and ask them what they would do if they were you. There's only one you with a very specific set of likes, dislikes, experiences, traditions, cultural preferences, past traumas and so much more. Nobody should tell you that you shouldn't have your comfort food* or bread or sugar or diary (unless you have an allergy). Yet anytime you look to a diet guru or celebrity, you’re basically letting them tell you what to do when they know nothing about you. 

Here's what I want you to do, use this life hack going forward, but be careful not to apply this to your body. The minute you start letting someone else tell you what to do, you've given up your power, your connection to your body and your innate intuition. You'll inevitably lose valuable time and money, too. 

Speaking of money, we got a credit for that printer and I used it to buy a bigger, more robust HP model, because WFH and homeschooling might be back this fall. And guess what, the HP Tango was discontinued.

xoxo, 



PS. One of my comfort foods happens to be graham crackers (even though the wacko inventor of these crackers was a big part of starting the diet movement) and milk because I can remember sitting at the kitchen table dunking those crackers with my dad on many nights.