What started as a casual New Year’s Day recording turned into an accidental one-year reflection on habits, holidays, clutter, burnout, and the strange little rituals of adult life.
Mitchell and Scarlet look back at how much has changed since Episode 1 and what stubbornly hasn’t. The result is a cozy, chaotic, and painfully relatable conversation about tea journeys, stuff accumulation, hospital culture, introvert holidays, and why a snowman cookie jar should never be trusted.
☕ From Coffee to Loose Leaf
• The hosts reflect on their tea evolution from bagged blends to full loose-leaf devotion
• Mitchell is officially coffee-free
• Bone broth, mushroom adaptogens, and CBD drinks enter the chat
• The kitchen quietly becomes an apothecary
🏠 The Great Stuff Experiment (and the Vacuum Census)
• Last year’s minimalist dreams meet present-day reality
• A full audit reveals approximately 11–12 vacuums currently living in the house
• The couple explores why getting rid of stuff is harder than not buying it
• “Stuffmas” is born as the official name for modern holiday clutter
🎁 Holidays Without the Hallmark Glow
• Why neither host is really a “holiday person”
• The emotional pressure of gift-giving even when you agree not to
• Introversion, family expectations, and sensory overload
• A simple but powerful realization:
It’s better to wish you had something than to wish you didn’t have so much
🏥 Nurse Life, Break Room Law, and Hospital Babies
• Why the break room should be treated like sacred ground
• The universal rage of speakerphone conversations in public spaces
• The invisible labor of being socially “on” all day
• Why hospitalized men often revert into Victorian-era helplessness
• The forbidden topic: patients asking nurses for massages
🧠 Looking Back at 2025
• Dreams of RV life, Bend, Arizona, and downsizing
• Why “thought experiments” are still part of a healthy relationship
• 2025 wasn’t the golden year—but it wasn’t meaningless either
• Finding joy in imagining even when plans don’t move yet
🚗 The Snowman Cookie Jar Incident
• A roadside emergency
• A Goodwill snowman cookie jar
• A moment that will live forever in family legend
• Some objects are never meant to know certain truths
💬 Listener Love
Mitchell shares heartfelt messages from a listener who has been binge-listening the show, reminding everyone why Doing the Most exists: quiet community, shared experience, and realizing we’re not as alone or strange as we think.
🌿 Closing Notes
This episode feels like sitting in the living room on January 1st with the decorations coming down, the tea steeping, and your nervous system finally exhaling. It’s funny, reflective, chaotic in the best way, and full of moments that land because they’re painfully real.
I remember in your last podcast listening to you talk about how much you disliked your job. After over 30 years as an RN myself, it is nice to hear you and Scarlet talk about your work as something you are passionate about, both the good days and the bad. Another good memory is Katey and I deciding to spend a few days in Portland, for my birthday, and we went to a restaurant we had heard you talk about on the podcast. To my great surprise, Katey had invited you and your co-host to have lunch with us.
I do remember that. It’s strange how long ago that feels, but in the big picture, it wasn’t that long ago. Time has definitely become a different concept to me these days. I begin to think the small ways we collide or crossover in time is perhaps less coincidental and more intentional than we know. The universe has its own way of working it out.
I think I still have a candy bar wrapper that you provided in the “archives” (which is code for a garage filled with organized boxes of chaos). That said, I owe you more than a candy bar…