Don’t Be the Smelly Kid: Teaching Body Hygiene
The Family Lab: Experiments in Parenting and Home Management
Release Date: 02/02/2026
How Whitney and Molly Teach Kids About Money
The Family Lab: Experiments in Parenting and Home Management
My friend Molly Liggett and I talk about the many experiments we’ve tried over the last decade or so to help our kids learn how to manage money. We talk about allowance vs. paying per chore, and we get into the nitty gritty details about how much we pay our kids, what we expect them to do around the house, what they pay for themselves and what we buy for them, plus what we do when they owe us money and how we encourage them to save.
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Financial Education with Lauren Santagate
The Family Lab: Experiments in Parenting and Home Management
This month at the Family Lab, we’re teaching kids how to manage money. This week, we talked to Lauren Santagate of The Anti-Chore Moms about her family's financial system: how her kids earn, spend, save, and invest using the Greenlight card. Lauren explains her system of paying her kids when they add value to their family, their community, or to their own brains! You can find more information about The Anti-Chore Moms Family Exchange System at and follow them on Instagram
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The Family Economy with Richard Eyre
The Family Lab: Experiments in Parenting and Home Management
It’s Money Management month at the Family Lab, and we’re kicking it off with author Richard Eyre to talk about the family economy he and his wife Linda set up decades ago. In this episode, we talk about how to avoid raising entitled children and about why teaching kids to manage money is such a great way to teach them self reliance and responsibility. He’ll share how their kids earned money, how they learned to manage it, and how the system evolved as they grew up. And Richard even helps me figure out how to handle the next stage of financial education for my own kids—as they...
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Potty Training: Don't Be Afraid
The Family Lab: Experiments in Parenting and Home Management
Potty training sounds scary, but it can actually be a great time to connect with your kid and build their confidence and self reliance. Today’s guest is a firecracker of a human--Jamie Glowacki. She’s a potty training expert who wrote the book I wish I had when I was potty training, called Oh Crap: Potty Training. She also hosts a fabulous podcast called Oh Crap! With Jamie. Jamie is the first to acknowledge that there isn’t one right way to potty train, since every kid is so different. But she has helped potty train a lot of kids and she has drilled it down to such a great...
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How to Get Your Kids To Brush Their Teeth: Oral Hygiene Skills
The Family Lab: Experiments in Parenting and Home Management
We’re talking oral hygiene! My friend and our family dental hygienist, Megan Robbins, teaches us how to help our kids keep their teeth sparkly clean, including a demo with some giant choppers—so you might want to watch this one on YouTube rather than just listening. She’ll answer some of your burning questions, like whether you should you floss first or brush first? Which would win in a fight--regular floss, flossers, toothpicks, or waterpicks? How bad are energy drinks and soda for your teeth? What about vaping? And what’s the deal with fluoride? We also talk about strategies for kids...
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Don’t Be the Smelly Kid: Teaching Body Hygiene
The Family Lab: Experiments in Parenting and Home Management
Kids can be gross. And as parents, we’re their first line of defense to teach them how to wash those hands, scrub those stinky feet, wipe those bums, control their body odor, trim those toenails–all the things. To help us out, I invited my good friends Megan Robbins (a dental hygienist and one of the cleanest people I know) and Laura Nielson (a pediatric nurse) to help us lead our kids from helpers to workers to managers in this critical aspect of becoming a responsible human. I think you’ll enjoy these lovely ladies as much as I do!
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Archibald Experiments Fall/Winter 2025-26
The Family Lab: Experiments in Parenting and Home Management
It’s that time again, for an update of the experiments we’ve been trying in the Archibald home. In this edition, I talk about our latest new kitchen-cleaning system, our weekly family cleaning projects, our dinner menu system, monthly check-ins with the kids, family meetings, a college tour, fall sports, my son’s hat business, a home organization project, water aerobics and more! You can find my son’s hat business on Instagram
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Teaching Kids Self-Reliance
The Family Lab: Experiments in Parenting and Home Management
Welcome to Season 8! This whole season we’ll be talking about how to teach our kids to eventually take care of themselves on their way to becoming self-reliant, responsible adults. This episode will help you take the first step: evaluating what your kids are already taking charge of and where they have room to grow. I introduce you to the system I’ve been using with my own kids for years, and show you how you can use it to help your kids progress from helpers to workers to managers. Then I talk to my son and some of my nephews about what they learned from their own...
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Top 5 Christmas Traditions: A Teen Perspective
The Family Lab: Experiments in Parenting and Home Management
Ever wonder which of your holiday traditions are actually the most meaningful to your kids? For this episode, I went straight to the source and I asked five (incredible) teenagers what traditions they love the best: from that pesky elf to the jolly old elf himself, family bonding and family fights, re-enacting the nativity, and sibling sleepovers. It’s an episode filled with music and merriment. Here are more Christmas episodes you’ll enjoy!
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Beyond the Bins: Home Organization Strategy with Jen Martin
The Family Lab: Experiments in Parenting and Home Management
A conversation with organization genius Jen Martin, founder of Reset Your Nest, about how to align our home organization with our goals, values, and routines; how to set up different organizational zones in our kitchens; and how to create systems for our comings and goings, among other organizing tips. You can find Jen Martin at and on Instagram And for another great conversation with Jen, check out: How Jen Martin Organizes
info_outlineKids can be gross. And as parents, we’re their first line of defense to teach them how to wash those hands, scrub those stinky feet, wipe those bums, control their body odor, trim those toenails–all the things. To help us out, I invited my good friends Megan Robbins (a dental hygienist and one of the cleanest people I know) and Laura Nielson (a pediatric nurse) to help us lead our kids from helpers to workers to managers in this critical aspect of becoming a responsible human. I think you’ll enjoy these lovely ladies as much as I do!