The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll give you some tips for curing your Fortnite addiction.  I did a video a little while ago for parents and talked about how addictive the video game Fortnite is.  So, reading through the comments, I can tell most of the views on that video are not by parents — it’s mostly teenage boys, who are clearly searching “Fortnite Addiction” on YouTube.  Since I’m a middle aged parent, not every viewer likes my message, but there were a couple of comments from kids who are legitimately trying to find a way to quit or cut down on Fortnite use, so I thought I’d do a video on tips for that.  Addiction Here’s one thing to be happy about —  Fortnite is not a chemical addiction like nicotine or heroin.  It’s behavioral like food addictions or shop lifting.  That doesn’t mean it is easy to break, but you aren’t having to battle both your brain and your body. You jus...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share how I keep my food storage containers from getting out of control.  If there is one kitchen drawer or cabinet that is sure to be out of control messy, it is where you keep your Tupperware or food storage containers. It just impossible to get everything into that space without it looking like a giant mess. Right?  Wrong.  Now, I’m not one of those organizing geniuses, who can take everything out of a closet, magically get rid of a bunch of stuff and then transform it into something out of Real Simple Magazine, but I do know the one principle that you MUST embrace to keep order in your Tupperware drawer and that is  Standardization What does that mean?  It means that you have to choose a standard container for each size of container that you want.  And you CANNOT deviate.  If you are like me, this will be challenging. I have a bunch of different s...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, we’ll talk about the benefits of scheduling 15m of organizing every weekend.  I am someone who functions best with my chores scheduled in. I do financial chores on Tuesday, pay bills on Friday, laundry on Thursdays, fold clothes on Fridays, and on Saturdays I do 15m of outdoor chores and 15m of organizing.  I realize that this seems utterly oppressive to some people. I get it — different strokes for different folks, but let me make the argument to you why I think you should do 15m of organizing a week, whether it’s on the same day each week like me, or just has a place on your weekly to do list. First, let’s talk about Organizing burnout I typically have A LOT of energy for a project when I first get started.  For example, I love rototilling and planting my garden in the spring — then I lose steam and have less energy for weeding and maintaining my garden throughout the s...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll present the third and final tutorial on Workflow before it became Siri Shortcuts.  It didn't change much aside from the rebranding, so the basics are almost exactly the same, but I WILL point out some differences as we go along.  In this video, I'll do a step-by-step explanation of my favorite complex shortcut: Dictate for Directions -- just keep in mind that a Workflow is the same as a Shortcut in today's app.  There are some Workflow tutorials on YouTube that are great and that taught me quite a bit.  What I really wanted, though, was a step by step guide walking me through a complicated workflow telling me everything that workflow was doing, including the inputs and outputs.  I didn't find this, so now that I have a slightly better grasp of how workflows work, I'm doing one myself! My 2 previous videos are a tutorial-style explainer on Workflow, Actions, Inpu...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll tell you all about my new obsession -- automating iPhone and iPad activities with the Workflow app.  This is the second part of a 3 part tutorial. In the last video, we went over the basics of the Workflow app and automation.  We talked about the screen setup, what a workflow is and the three different types of actions: get, transform, and share.  In this video, we'll dive a bit more into the nitty gritty areas of inputs, variables, debugging, adding workflow items to your home screen, and automation for the Apple Watch.  Here we go: Inputs As we talked about in the last video, each action is kind of like a tiny machine -- taking in an input, doing something to it, and then producing an output.  An input can be almost anything.  It can be the current date, stuff that is copied to the clipboard like a URL, or a paragraph of text.  It could be t...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll talk about the new Siri Shortcuts and show you how to use it to automate routine iPhone and iPad actions.  This is the first of a 3 part tutorial. Recently with iOS 12, Apple launched Siri Shortcuts.  It has hit with a splash, but it's not really a new app or even new functionality.  Instead, it is a rebranding, relaunching, and function expansion of the old Workflows app.  In fact, when installing iOS 12, Apple just turns your Workflow app and all of its data into Siri Shortcuts. Okay -- confession time.  I found out about the Workflow App really late.  Like a couple of months ago.  I became so obsessed with automating iphone and ipad functions that I immediately did a series of 3 videos about it.  Unfortunately, these videos were still in the hopper when Apple changed Workflow to Siri Shortcuts rendering all three videos obsolete. That was ...