Lemon Aide Consulting, LLC

11/03/2026

November is National Family Caregivers Month. I wish we could do more - way more - for the nearly 63 million unpaid family caregivers in the U.S. According to the National Endowment for Financial Education, caregivers spend an average of $889 a month out of pocket, and nearly three-quarters go into debt to cover the cost of helping their aging parents. At the very least they deserve a tax break for filling a gap in the health care industry.

Check out the PBS Caregiving Documentary
https://www.pbs.org/show/caregiving/
It highlights the challenges and struggles caregivers are experiencing. A mother highlighted in the documentary who is caring for her young disabled daughter broke my heart 💔when she said she’s come to the conclusion that she can never die so her daughter will always be cared for.

A documentary revealing America’s caregiving crisis through intimate stories and expert insight.

10/27/2026

What to do with the Clint Eastwood picture I made from cut construction paper 40 years ago? I found it in an art portfolio I had long forgotten. I have no idea why I hadn't already thrown it out. Today I found it, and later tonight I'll stuff it in the county recycling bin with 0 regret.

Here's the thing: If it was still in the house after I died and my family found it, they wouldn't know how little it meant to me. In fact they'd probably assume it had been really important (why else would I have "saved" it for decades?). It would likely raise their regret level at the thought of throwing it out.

Don't assume the old thing a loved one kept for decades held great meaning. It's possible - likely even - they forgot they even had it. Feel free to pitch/recycle/donate it.

If anyone asks my family as they clear out my belongings, "Do you feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?" I want them to answer, "Yes!" because I made it so easy for them.

10/22/2026

The worst thing about Halloween when I was growing up was living in a house that gave out toothbrushes to trick-or-treaters. My dad was a dentist so he obviously was serious about tooth decay, but I think he was motivated more by the fact that he could buy individually sealed toothbrushes with his name and office number printed on the handle in bulk for less than 15 cents apiece. I challenge anyone to find a piece of decent candy and a shrewd marketing plan for less than that.

Since I wasn’t the one stuck at home giving out toothbrushes, I was free to enjoy the best thing about Halloween in my neighborhood. It was a great place to go door to door and score candy. You could always count on the Stevensons to give out full sized candy bars if they recognized you, and Mrs. Abbott would drop a coveted 12” marathon bar into everyone’s bag.

In these early days my dad walked to and from work, and on the day before Halloween he strolled home carrying two small boxes of toothbrushes for the 30 or so trick-or-treaters. By the time I entered junior high, the word had gotten out about the generous candy givers in my neighborhood, and the number of trick-or-treaters grew.

The next year Dad was driving to and from work on the day before Halloween transporting 100 toothbrushes. But soon the designated treat giver (my mom) started running low on toothbrushes early on Halloween. My dad suggested replenishing by picking up toothbrushes discarded on the front lawn by disgruntled youth who only wanted tooth rotting candy for their treats. Once Mom ran out of fresh and salvaged toothbrushes, she turned out all the lights and went to bed, but each year more trick-or-treaters arrived and she turned the lights out earlier than the year before.

When I was a freshman in high school and technically too old for trick-or-treating, my mom made some important decisions about Halloween. My family would rise to the occasion, and everybody would pitch in. Dad would order 300 toothbrushes sans personalization (it saved him money and by now everybody knew the dentist at the house that gave out toothbrushes). Mom would also order 300 small candies to give out with the toothbrushes as a bribe to discourage trick-or-treaters from discarding the toothbrushes on the front lawn. Most importantly, my mother announced she would no longer answer the door on Halloween. Instead, she would pay members of my high school’s Key Club a nominal fee to take turns answering the door on Halloween.

For the next three years these changes in protocol worked, but soon new concessions had to be made. If there was any hope of keeping the lights on past 7pm, some kids were given only toothbrushes and others only small candy. By my senior year there were no more toothbrushes or candy before it even got dark. As a result, Mom made an even more drastic decision. She ordered 500 toothbrushes, 500 stickers and 500 pieces of tiny candy. She still hired the Key Club even though she no longer had a child attending high school, and she had to pay them more because of inflation.

This worked until the county decided the number of trick-or-treaters in the area was getting so high that all 15 side streets needed to be blocked off and officers stationed at the crossroads to make sure no drunk drivers passed through to the heavily travelled trick-or treating route on the main road. By now the full-sized candy bars were ancient history, but with such guaranteed safety how could a parent not drive their children into the neighborhood to trick or treat. The year my neighborhood wound up on the radar of the county police, there were over 800 trick-or -treaters. Mom could have given up at this point, but her newly arriving grandchildren gave her a second wind. The next Halloween she fired the Key Club and started answering her door again with her delighted grandchildren.

By the time these grandchildren were in high school and college, Dad died and Mom knew she was living in a house that was too big for her and that came with an expensive investment in a holiday she always felt came with rather ugly décor.

Several Halloweens passed before she found a lovely small home to buy. With a lot of help she worked hard to downsize the big house to get it ready to go on the market. For the last Halloween at the big house, she ordered 1200 toothbrushes, 1200 stickers and 1200 little pieces of candy. During the evening, she and most of her children and grandchildren stood at the open front door and handed out the treats until there was nothing left. Mom closed the front door and turned out the lights for the last time. She and her kids and grandkids went to the back of the house for warm bowls of chili and to reminisce over the past 50 Halloweens at the house. After dinner and dessert were eaten and the dishes cleaned and packed into moving boxes everybody joined the annual tradition of picking up discarded toothbrushes off the front lawn. As mom dropped the last toothbrush into the basket, she said she thought she’d be sad about the last Halloween at a house she lived in for 50 years. It was bittersweet but she could honestly say she wasn’t going to miss hosting Halloween for 1200 trick-or-treaters.

10/14/2026

Grieving - it’s not one size fits all. There are as many different ways to grieve as there are people grieving. This lovely NYT article is about a woman who took a risk on social media in order to share baseball games with strangers after her son died. She found a way to let a little joy back into her life.

Rhenda Strub invited strangers to accompany her to Seattle Mariners games this season to help overcome the loneliness of grieving for her son’s death.

10/12/2026

Caring for a friend or loved one who has a terminal diagnosis? This NYT article by someone who’s been there has a great suggestion: “Reading old letters or diaries, making a photo album. Listening to music. Trying out family recipes. Don’t do it because the person is leaving. Do it because you love the person and enjoy being in the same room. Do it because you are tired of having your entire relationship consist of what you are losing. Do it because the process of making something together can shift your gaze to what you still have.”

Making a book of my dad’s train photos shifted my gaze away from all that he was losing.

10/07/2026

Came across this NYT food post while at my son’s apartment filling his freezer with homemade meals. I’m hoping to make the start of his new job a little easier by taking cooking off his list of things to do for a couple of weeks. Like my mom I love cooking for people when they’re in the throes of transition. Happy to cook but I won’t be doing any laundry 😊

Divorce, death, a big move, illness: Food may not fix anything, but a lovingly prepared meal can bring some much-needed comfort and nourishment. ⬇️ Get the recipes in the comments. (If you can't see the article there, search for "hard time" on NYT Cooking)

10/06/2026

How to ask for help Australian style from the awesome Gather My Crew

10/02/2026

The wrenching work of clearing out a parent’s house or even a single box of their personal writings can feel impossible. To some it’s like canceling out a life. I’m here on the front lines to report it was just the opposite for me.

3 ½ years after my mother died I have finally reached the last box of her things. I saved the hardest box - her journals - for last. In these deeply personal writings she expresses her grieving process over the loss of her son (my brother). She writes about her childhood memories, thoughts about books, articles and poems she’s read as well as her own poetry. I thought it would be slow, hard work. Instead, I found myself enjoying the sound of her voice in my head as I read her lovely handwriting. I often laughed at her funny observations and the occasional inside joke only a handful of people would understand (the article about sack lunches was a delightful find!)

I separated it into three piles: 1) digitize and save to the Google Drive everyone in the family shares (cost is only $2/month);
2) recycle; and 3) shred - where the first pile will go once it’s on the drive and the drive backed up.

I’ll keep a handful of the best things in a small box for when I want to touch the paper she once touched and wrote her personal reflections on aging, illness, life lessons - subjects I’ll want guidance on as I age.

It can be done. It can be sad but also joy-filled (a word I found sprinkled throughout my mom’s writings).

09/22/2026

If you need to declutter you need Matt Paxton’s wisdom before you touch a single thing. This book is an excellent start!

"If we don't know the stories behind the stuff, we will never be able to freely let go of it." That single line, delivered in Matt Paxton's warm, unhurried voice on the audiobook, hit me like a freight train, and honestly, I had to pause and sit with it for a full minute. Because here is the truth that most of us are too afraid to admit: we are not hoarders of things. We are hoarders of feelings. We are hoarders of moments, of people we have lost, of versions of ourselves that we are terrified to say goodbye to. And if you have ever stood in a room full of your own belongings and felt simultaneously suffocated and sentimental, then this book was written for you, and for me, and for every single one of us who has ever cried over a broken mug because it reminded us of someone we love. Matt Paxton is not your average decluttering guru. For over 20 years, he has helped people from all walks of life who want to live more simply declutter and downsize, and as a featured cleaner on Hoarders and host of the Emmy nominated Legacy List with Matt Paxton on PBS, he has identified the psychological roadblocks that most organizational experts routinely miss. His insights are woven with anecdotes about various clients, which added an authentic touch, making the read feel less like a guide and more like a conversation with a wise friend who understands the emotional weight of possessions. Listening to him narrate his own audiobook is something else entirely. There is a tenderness in his voice, a kind of earned authority that only comes from sitting on thousands of living room floors with grieving families, from holding space for people in some of the most overwhelming seasons of their lives. This book did not just give me inspo for cleaning out my home. It gave me permission to feel everything and still move forward. These five lessons are the ones that stayed with me long after the last chapter ended. I hope they do the same for you.

1. The Stories Are the Point, Not the Stuff
Matt Paxton tells the story of a woman named Etta, and what he expected to be an overwhelming task of sorting through a lifetime of belongings turned into something completely different. Over the following weeks, he and Etta took pleasure in her favorite life stories. They didn't bury her best years; they celebrated them. She had an eager audience in him, and she was in control of how the organizational process worked. Etta's memories were given another life when she recalled them, and Paxton says this is the most important part of the process, the part most experts miss entirely. When I heard him narrate this in the audiobook, his voice soft and deliberate, I genuinely felt emotional. Because how many times have we rushed through a clean out, bagging things up in a frenzy, not realizing we were also bagging up the very identity of someone we love? Paxton makes it clear with the kind of demure, steady authority that does not shout but lands deeply: decluttering done right is not about efficiency. It is about dignity. It is about sitting down, really sitting down, and letting someone tell you why that chipped ceramic figurine matters. The first step, he says, is to uncover the stories behind the stuff, and surprisingly, that actually makes it easier to relinquish items you no longer need. When the story is told and heard, the object is released. The memory lives. The stuff can go.

2. Your Clutter Is Someone Else's Burden, and That Is Not a Gift
Paxton has seen what happens when stuff outlives the people who owned it, and his message is blunt: your belongings will become someone else's burden if you don't deal with them yourself. This lesson absolutely slay ed me, and I do not use that word lightly. Because most of us comfort ourselves with the idea that our children, our siblings, our loved ones will figure it out when we are gone. We tell ourselves it is not that serious. But Paxton, speaking from decades of walking into homes after someone has passed, will gently but firmly tell you: it is that serious, and leaving it undone is not a neutral act. It is a weight you are handing to people who are already grieving, already overwhelmed, already trying to hold themselves together. Paxton emphasizes that decluttering is not merely a physical endeavor but a deeply emotional journey, and his focus on the emotional component reflects how attachments to items often stem from memories and experiences we don't always consciously acknowledge. Choosing to deal with your things while you can is one of the most generous, loving acts you can offer your family. It is curating your legacy with intention rather than leaving them to decode it in grief.

3. Build Your Legacy List: Five Objects That Tell Your Whole Story
Paxton introduces the concept of the Legacy List, the five objects that are most important to you to keep because of the memories they evoke and the stories they tell. Just five. And I know what you are thinking, because I thought it too: only five? That feels almost out of pocket, right? But here is the beauty of it. When you are forced to sit with that question, when you actually have to choose which five objects represent the life you have lived, the things that truly matter become startlingly clear. Everything else is clutter. Not because it is worthless, but because it is not doing the irreplaceable work that those five precious objects are doing in your heart. Paxton narrates this section with a kind of quiet reverence, and you can hear in his voice that he has watched this exercise transform people in real time, watched them hold an object, feel their whole life rush back into them, and then, finally, breathe. His approach doesn't avoid feelings, but rather helps transform them, by telling the stories associated with objects and honoring those emotions rather than side stepping them. The Legacy List is not about minimalism for minimalism's sake. It is about radical clarity.

4. You Need a Goal Before You Touch a Single Thing
Paxton specifies the need to have a very specific goal before you start decluttering or downsizing or whatever your initial plan is, and this lesson hit differently because most of us dive straight into the chaos, bags and boxes in hand, only to stop halfway through, completely cooked, surrounded by even more mess than when we started. Paxton insists that without a clear "why," the process will unravel you. Are you downsizing because you want freedom? Because you are moving closer to family? Because you are cleaning out a parent's home after a loss? Each of those goals requires a different emotional approach, a different pace, a different kind of grace with yourself. The book helps you sift through years of clutter, let go of what no longer serves you, and identify the items worth keeping so that you can focus on living in the present, but that sifting only becomes possible when you know what present you are actually trying to build. Paxton's voice in the audiobook is never preachy about this. He sounds like someone who has watched too many people get caught in 4K, mid clean out, frozen by indecision, because they never asked themselves the foundational question: what am I actually moving toward?

5. Being Fully Present Is the Most Powerful Tool in the Room
Much of the book outlines the unmatchable worth of sharing stories, but Paxton insists that the flip side of sharing stories is another vital practice: listening to them. To earn someone's confidence, you have to be fully present. This might be the lesson that gutted me the most, honestly, because we live in an era of doomscrolling and distraction, where being physically in the room is not the same as being truly present. Paxton is not just talking about helping elderly parents declutter. He is talking about what it means to show up for the people we love in their most vulnerable moments, to put the phone down, to make eye contact, to let someone be seen and heard in the fullness of who they are before they have to say goodbye to the objects that held their life together. Taking time allows for deeper connections and reminiscing, which brings forward significant memories and feelings associated with the items, ensuring that the process is not just about getting rid of things but about celebrating a life lived. That is what makes this book different from every other decluttering book on the shelf. It does not ask you to slay the mess. It asks you to love the person inside it. And if that is not the kind of inspo we all desperately need right now, I honestly do not know what is.

Book/Audiobook: https://amzn.to/4de7nj1

You can access the audiobook when you register on the Audible platform using the same l!nk.

09/21/2026

What’s on Your Bucket List?
You might think you’re too young for a bucket list, but you’re never too young and it doesn’t need to be a bucket list. Don’t deny yourself the benefits of creating “50/60/70/80/90 Things to do Before I Turn 50/60/70/80/90” Lists. Even if you don’t accomplish all the things on the list, it’s sure fun to try. Most important such lists remind us of the two most important lessons of life: “remember we must die” and “remember to live.” Dying is inevitable and will be an existential struggle if we don’t prepare for it and embrace the lessons of memento mori and vivere mori. You might not have a burning desire to hit a golf ball off Galena Summit while wearing waders after a day of trout fishing in the Big Wood River, but what will you regret not doing when you approach the end of your life?