Ep. 536: Make a Before-&-After Book, Enter the Library, and How to Deal with a Questioner Spouse
Happier with Gretchen Rubin
Gretchen Rubin / The Onward Project
4.7 • 13K Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We discuss how creating before-and-after photo books of renovations or improvements can bring satisfaction and preserve memories. Our happiness hack suggests visiting your local library (or museum) for the first time; that first visit can be surprising to make. We also share listeners’ strategies for handling a spouse who asks too many questions at inopportune times.
Resources & links related to this episode:
- Order your copy of Secrets of Adulthood
- Read 25 in 25
- Bookshop
- Pledge to Read 25 on June 25th
- Visit The Happiness Project shop for Father's Day gifts
- Elizabeth is reading: All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation by Elizabeth Gilbert (Amazon, Bookshop)
- Gretchen is reading: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (Amazon, Bookshop)
Get in touch: [email protected]
Visit Gretchen's website to learn more about Gretchen's best-selling books, products from The Happiness Project Collection, and the Happier app.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Lemonada. |
| 0:05.0 | Hello and welcome to happier, a podcast where we talk about how to make our lives happier. |
| 0:17.0 | This week we'll talk about the satisfaction of making a before and after photo book, after a big project, and we'll share listeners suggestions about what to do about a questioner, husband, who asks a lot of questions. |
| 0:31.6 | I'm Gretchen Rubin, a writer who said he's happiness, good habits, secrets of adulthood, human nature. |
| 0:37.3 | I'm in my little home |
| 0:38.3 | office and joining me today from Los Angeles is my sister Elizabeth Craft, my sister of the sage. |
| 0:44.1 | That's me, Elizabeth Craft, a TV writer and producer living in L.A., and Gretch, I always have to |
| 0:49.4 | laugh when you say that. I don't feel like a sage much of the time, but I'll take it. |
| 0:53.5 | I need to get you a t-shirt |
| 0:55.1 | or at least a mug that says sage on it. But before we launch in, a few updates. Aaron said, |
| 1:02.2 | loved hearing you promote the use of weekly pill holders for organization and travel. I take few |
| 1:08.7 | daily meds, but the long plastic pill holders with the days of the week |
| 1:12.5 | made me feel old. I'm only 52. I purchased two wooden round pill holders with a magnetic closure |
| 1:19.5 | that are much more stylish and just look decorative on the nightstand, and now I don't get that |
| 1:24.3 | negative old feeling when I pick it up to take my meds. |
| 1:27.9 | I love that because I know what she means. |
| 1:30.1 | Like there is something very hospital feeling about them. |
| 1:33.3 | They're super, super practical. |
| 1:34.4 | But yes, I think there is a lot of room for aesthetic improvement in that area. |
| 1:39.0 | So it's good to know it's happening. |
| 1:40.8 | Yes, Scratch, can I give you a side hack that I just discovered this week, |
| 1:45.0 | which is pill holders can also be used as jewelry holders when you travel. I needed to put my |
... |
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