Organize 365 Podcast

We've come to the downsizing & legacy stage of life. These are two different things, although I married them together about 6 years ago when I first wrote about this. Naturally people downsize, but I don't think they always think about the implications of legacy. Some downsizing is based on your family of origin. A lot of people never get to legacy, but legacy can happen at any time. So in this podcast, downsizing isn't because you are overwhelmed and want to live a minimalist lifestyle. I'm talking about downsizing because you don't need this big of a house anymore. It's a natural phase of life where you start to downsize the amount of possessions you have. Downsizing usually happens when you've observed or been through a very major life event; it changes your perspective on time forever going forward. Once you make the shift that people are more important than things, and that you want to spend your time with people instead of taking care of stuff - you start to let go of things on a regular basis. These cascades of downsizing happen 1) for the amount of house you want to clean and maintain, and 2) for the amount of stuff you want to clean and keep from the family of origin you have. This natural wanting to live in a smaller, easier to maintain house typically happens at the end of your 60s and into your 70s. The mental mindset when you have a life-altering event that makes you realize you're not invincible seems to take place by 70. What is the purpose or job in this phase of life? For downsizing - it's to continue to refine and curate the physical items you have around you that you still love and use and bring you joy in this season of life. For legacy - it's to have around you the things that remind you of who you are, where you came from, the legacy you've put into your family and into the world. This is why I'm adamant about not having your memories in your storage room. If you love it and it's part of your legacy - frame it, put it on a shelf, put it anywhere so you can see it. What is your capacity in downsizing & legacy? Over time your capacity will slow down, and you'll really want to use your capacity to spend time with family and friends, do the things you're uniquely created to do, not more housework. How do we use the physical spaces in our home? You purposefully choose to live in smaller dwelling spaces so the way you use those smaller spaces changes. What scaffolding or support do we need to make this phase of life easier and more productive? We need understanding, for the generations behind this one who aren't there yet who won't understand until they are in it, to listen to this podcast and think "yeah, that makes sense." EPISODE RESOURCES: The Paper Solution® Portable Sunday Basket® The Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

I just knew in my heart of hearts that the Special Education staff was going to need support. Jayme's building has ⅓ of the student population that qualifies for special education!! How was I going to give that support? Did the staff have the time? So I called Jayme and we decided on a Zoom class and I invited them to be my guest at my upcoming paper organizing retreat. The staff was excited to learn together and Jayme was creative in carving out time for them to complete the training. On Zoom The Zoom training kind of turned into a Q&A. The teachers felt prepared for the IEP meetings until Jayme pointed out that if you have to leave during the meeting (which happened often), then they weren't prepared. So they all threw out challenges and reasons why that happened. It was impactful for me to understand the variables and complexities involved in the IEP process. It was a non judgmental conversation rather quite productive in preparing them, Jayme and staff, and me, for the paper organizing retreat. The Paper Organizing Retreat I enjoyed getting to meet Jayme's Special Education staff and understanding their challenges. It was interesting to learn how much traveling they do and how many entities they are responsible for due to creating IEPs. And not to mention that all of the IEPs have legal implications...at a Federal level. There are timelines and if one "i" doesn't get dotted, the whole thing is invalid. I have been on both sides of this process and I know that the IEP meetings are emotionally volatile and the teachers need to be prepared with all the proper documentation. Not having a document or needing to get keys to access a document show unpreparedness and the teacher is perceived to be unorganized and unengaged. Jayme had a unique challenge that in the past her Special Education team had always been experienced and confident in "processing" IEP's. That was not the case going into this school year. Jayme needed to know just as much as her staff going into this school year. This brought a spotlight on the checklist she THOUGHT everyone had seen and was planning on using. Turned out there were multiple copies, some outdated, and some teachers had not seen the checklists. So there was a new digitally optimized checklist that was created initially in analog as they conversed. They identified tasks that needed to be completed (with dates) before, during, and after the IEP meetings to keep everything legal and moving forward. This was brilliant for Jayme because she had the master and will have it now for her career. The teachers could get access to it and edit it to their process and responsibilities, AND it was all on one page!! Creating Individualized Teacher Workboxes for Those Who Create IEP's Each teacher embraced the Teacher Friday Workbox®, but they realized they needed to customize it for the student population that they served as well as what felt good to them in an organizational sense. Also, it became obvious how much these teachers are on the move. Traveling between classrooms, meetings, and outside the building. Jayme invested in portable workboxes for the Special Education teachers. **Can't wait to find out why Jayme got red slash pockets for each student?? EPISODE RESOURCES: Teacher Friday Workbox® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Sorry, I got a little long winded in that last podcast. But you know, the podcast where I talk about your 30s and 40s I can speak to you more authoritatively about because I have lived it. A lot of what I'm saying from here forward is speculation and purely observational. Some things you have to just experience to understand - like giving birth! Being in your 50s is so freeing because you realize that no one is paying attention to what you are doing. They're worried about themselves, thinking about their own lives, their own dreams, their own hopes, ambitions, time, money, energy and capacity. Chasing who you are uniquely created to be and running after your own uniqueness and becoming as excellent as possible in the thing that you were gifted and created to do is like the rest of my life's mission. In your 20s there's so many possibilities - try it all. In your 30s, you need to be an independent adult. In your 40s you go ok, well…I tried a lot of things in my 20s and 30s and these things aren't moving into the second half of my life so they need to be decluttered, not only physically but mentally. I think there's an extended new phase of life here, I'm going to call it "Emerging Uniqueness." Women today in their 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s have big plans, lofty plans. They love what they are doing and the impact they're making. Your 50s are a Golden Window…a Golden Decade! If you had your children in your late 30s, this window will shift to later. So where you have your children (if you have them at all) does create where your fixed expenses and time constraints are going to be. The theme of the 50s to me so far and what I'm observing is that women aren't done. We haven't even really gotten started, to be honest. We want to be on the list - on the to do list. Like, we would like to be above the dog. Once you're decluttered and organized, you have a lot of capacity for the unexpected demands on your time and your money because you know how to move things around mentally and physically on your calendar in order to create the capacity when needed. I think that adulthood is self care. It has nothing to do with bubble baths, spas or whatever. Self care is taking care of yourself. In childhood, your parents took care of you. In emerging adulthood, you're in between your parents and taking care of yourself. Now is your time. What is our purpose or our job in this phase of life? Self care. Taking care of yourself and prioritizing yourself, in addition to everyone else that lives in your household. Planning - planning for you and what you're doing next and continuing to dream - that is your purpose. What is your capacity? HUGE. Huge capacity, income, earning, time, and 50 years worth of knowledge. How do we use the physical spaces in our home? You understand time capacity now. You understand how limited it is, but also how exponential it is. So, just get your homework done. Once your physical spaces are decluttered and organized, you're not in accumulation anymore - so it will stay maintained. What scaffolding or support do we need to make this phase of life easier and more productive? Once you've done The Productive Home Solution® and The Paper Solution®, what you need is Planning Day. Not only will Planning Days help you plan the next 120 days, it will encourage you, inspire you, motivate you, and hold you accountable to keep growing, reaching further, and dreaming about what is possible. Make a list of the things that you want to do, be, and have in the second half of your life…and then start going after it! EPISODE RESOURCES: The Productive Home Solution® The Paper Solution® The Sunday Basket® Home Planning Day Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

This is the recap of Day 1. I was driving to Jayme to teach the first workshop for her teachers about the Teacher Friday Workbox®. I'd been having conversations with other schools about implementing the Teacher Program in their schools. I was shocked by the one thing holding them back. The honest feedback I was receiving was that they were afraid they'd be shedding light on how overworked the teachers were and they knew the staff was resentful and considering quitting. They were afraid that making visible all of the invisible work they do would give them reason to submit their resignation! You're Not Alone And You're Not Crazy I shared this feedback with Jayme who laughed. "They already know they are overworked!" Jayme's staff had two reactions to the Teacher Friday Workbox®. Some (especially new faculty) were afraid to do it wrong. Jayme assured them if they were just doing something they were doing it right. And the others had epiphanies saying, "I'm not crazy, and I'm not alone." Those teachers discovered through the Teacher Friday Workbox® that other teachers felt the same as them. And it was cathartic to visualize all they really did and it was no longer a mystery why they felt overwhelmed. Jayme encourages other schools to understand that each teacher will embrace it at their own level and that's ok. At one point too, Jayme did the time circles with the teachers once again reinforcing that their time was spread pretty thin. The First Workshop There I was with Jayme the principal, the assistant superintendent, and a room full of teachers. I couldn't wait to hear all their feedback and realizations. But something interesting happened. I encouraged them to bring to light any issue within the building. This was another time they realized they weren't alone in noticing the same issues. They were learning from each other. "Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better." Maya Angelou. We discussed the different colored slash pockets and their use in the Teacher Friday Workbox®. The mental wellness of the staff providing for the students is so important. Now teachers had a designated place to place important documents. Red for behavioral matters like IEP's, 504's, things with possible legal implications Orange for calendars and computers - maybe they wanted to print off something actionable from a parent Yellow out of the classroom; like field trips or projects for parents who help Green reimbursement but some use it for grading or lesson plans Blue teams; grade level, building level, parent, IEP, meetings (record questions for next meeting) Purple attendance Pink THE TEACHER! PD, peer reviews, or maybe just happy mail to remind you that you are a good teacher and the kids love you. Jayme noticed two awesome unexpected side effects. The teachers were now task stacking due to accomplishing tasks of the same color. And there was a trickle down of sorts where teachers could offer similar solutions to students to tackle their assignments. I Almost Turned Around As I drove away recounting the workshop, all I could think of was the Special Education Team. They had no checklists and they were all new. They were new to the building, and most of them new to the Special Education Department. I knew they were going to need more support, so I arranged more time for the Special Education teachers. I do all of this in the name of teacher wellness, communication, and teacher retention! EPISODE RESOURCES: Teacher Friday Workbox® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Well, let's dive into our 40's. What I've observed in these decades as you move through your 20's, 30's and 40's to 50's is if you can imagine driving a stick shift car where it doesn't automatically cycle to the next gear, and you're driving in second gear and you need to shift into third gear but you don't and the car is whining. That's kind of how we are at the end of every decade - we're whining. We're not ready to leave this decade because we don't know the next decade and it makes us a little nervous and apprehensive. For decades, 40 was midlife. That's no longer true. Until your 40's, the answer to every organizational productivity problem was buy something, acquire something. Acquire the knowledge, the physical thing, the person. In your 40's, everything is about letting go. Letting go of what is no longer serving you, letting go of future hopes and dreams that maybe have not materialized. This decluttering happens in every single area of your life in your 40's. The process of making the decisions about what is staying and what is going is where the new capacity is unlocked. Organize 365® is set up to walk alongside you, provide community, co-working, and all of the lessons that you ended in order to get your home organized because once you do that all the way through, we've touched all the stuff and made decisions - it is so cathartic. So in your 40's, your organization is a lot about your mindset and making your physical space match the next decades of your life and the person who you want to be. What is our purpose in our 40's? We are surviving - surviving in carpooling and driving, with limited time and financial resources. The purpose is to really move from just being an individual contributor to society, to figuring out what is your family, your ideals, your values. What is our capacity in our 40's? This is a decade of constraint, capacity is limited and that is great because it requires you to push forward. If you have children, you become insular because you have to. They are humans that are growing so fast and they are depending on you. How do we use the physical spaces in our home in our 40's? You will probably remodel some spaces, maybe more than once if you plan on living in your home long term. You'll do bigger renovations in your 40's than you did in your 30's. What scaffolding or support do we need to make this phase of life easier and more productive? You need to learn the skill of organization. That's where The Productive Home Solution®, The Paper Solution®, and The Sunday Basket® come in. Those products were designed to teach you and walk beside you as you really embrace who you are and what you're uniquely created to do, and how your house will be organized and function for you. The essential thing I want to add to this phase of life are the Planning Days. They are a key differentiator in your 40's, because you are deciding, you are making decisions and there really is no one guiding your thought process through making these decisions. What do you want to see manifest in the next four months in your household? How are you going to do that? Let's look at all the constraints on your time, on your money, on your business, let's look at the role that you're playing, how many people are in your family. Let's look at all your household responsibilities and your chores. What's your plan going to be for laundry and dishes and meal planning and cleaning? There's so much time on the other side of 40. If you can use the time in your 40's to get yourself organized, then when you do have the time in your 50's it's amazing. Can't wait to tell you about it next time. EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® The Paper Solution® The Productive Home Solution® The Sunday Basket Home Planning Day Home Planning Day Prep Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

By now I'm guessing most of you have heard the evolution of the Sunday Basket®. The Sunday Basket® organizes the invisible tasks of home life, right? And with a teaching background, I also know there is a lot of burnout. The Teacher Friday Workbox® is designed to organize the invisible tasks of teaching. So what if, just what if, an entire school would launch a pilot with Organize 365® and they could feel supported and organized? Jayme was the principal who raised her hand and said I want to try this with my building for my teachers. A Spark of a Conversation Normally on the 4th of July people are spending time with their families and celebrating the holiday, right? Not go getters like Jayme and I; we were chatting about the opportunity of a Teacher Friday Workbox® pilot. Much to my surprise when I proposed a call, Jayme agreed. Our excitement for this pilot was ignited and put into action immediately. Jayme showed up in her minivan and we loaded it with workboxes for her building. She had 13 teachers come immediately to pick them up. There were teachers who knew what Jayme had been doing with her Teacher Friday Workbox® so they knew it worked and wanted to get started. More grabbed their workboxes after a meeting, and then more after the first training. Too Much New to NOT Do The Pilot Jayme was explaining to me some of the things she was expecting about the new school year which included new teachers (most of whom were new to special education), a new assistant principal, and more responsibility for her needing to be involved in student behavioral correction. I chuckled and knew with all that change and newness, the Teacher Friday Workbox® was going to save her 2023-2024 school year. Are Your Teachers Ducks? Have you heard the analogy of ducks looking calm on top of the water, but paddling like crazy under? Think of your teachers. Most are doing the same and that's what leads to burnout. They don't want you to see they are paddling so fast under water. The real trouble is when you see it - they are headed for burnout for sure. These are teachers who do not have an organizational solution in place. It would be ideal that the teacher understood the Sunday Basket® before embarking on the Teacher Friday Workbox®. But this time, we had to light the fuse due to the time of year. We initially found some of the teachers were overwhelmed with being new to the Organize 365® ecosystem, making visible the administrative tasks of a teacher on index cards (or some did a hybrid with sticky notes), and learning how to color code their work. When you clean up their mental chaos - you get teachers that will stay in their positions longer. We Owe It To Our Teachers I understand that the pressing question with all expenditures within the education budget boils down to "How does this affect the student?" Let me just say, a teacher with less anxiety, more mental bandwidth, and one that feels supported is best for the students! There is a school supply list for students; this should be on the school supply list for teachers. But there is no line item for organization, honestly, at home or in the workplace. I want to see all educators free up time and mental space for employment retention and a happy home life. EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® Teacher Friday Workbox® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Welcome to our next installment of our phases of organization, our phases of life. So here we are, in our 30's. We're going to assume from this point forward that you are living independently and separate from your family home. I coined my own phase of life years ago (thanks Rhonda for the reminder!) for adulthood - accumulation. When you leave your childhood bedroom and you are living on your own, you realize you don't own anything. Every time you decide you want to do something in your 20's and 30's, you end up going to a hardware store. As you progress through your 30's, the amount of discretionary income you have goes to negative. You usually don't have any discretionary income by the time you are at the end of your 30's. Same thing with your time - it goes to negative. How do we go from having some discretionary income and time to lacking both by the time you turn 40? In addition to accumulating supplies like a ladder, hammer, nails, etc., you accumulate other things. Also during your 30's, you accumulate other people;a significant other, children, or pets. But this is why it's hard having developmental stages for adults - because not everyone ends up with a significant other, kids or pets. There are so many different variables, different possibilities. You get to choose. You get to decide what your life is going to be like. What is our purpose or job in our 30's? Our purpose is to fully embrace independence from our family of origin. You are going to firmly establish your household and take on the responsibilities of that fully. What is our capacity? In the beginning you've got some time and money, but by the end it's very constrained and maxed out. You're trying to find a release valve, so to speak. How do we use the physical space in our home in our 30's? This is when your home will do the most constant reordering. Your kitchen, kid's rooms (if you have kids), and living spaces will constantly be updated to fit how you're living life in your 30's. What scaffolding or support do we need to make this phase of life easier and more productive? Number one you know will be the Sunday Basket®. You need household administration support - this will be your time to have a CEO meeting with yourself. The Productive Home Solution® is perfectly designed for people in their 30's. The 2 binders from The Paper Solution® that are the most important in your 30's are the Household Operations and Household Reference. EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® The Paper Solution® The Productive Home Solution® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Now that you know a little bit about Jayme and her background in educational instruction, let's move on to the responsibilities she's had in different roles. Jayme has gone from assistant principal, where she barely left the building, to being the principal, where she was off campus frequently for personal development. But she has yet to be the superintendent! Assistant Principal First thing Jayme pointed out that was so interesting is, in different states, different geographical sections of school are called corporations or districts. And because we have previously learned that Jayme was a counselor, she added that not all schools have counselors. Did you know that it is common for each counselor to have 250-300 students assigned to them? I know Abby and Joey really valued counselors in their schools. It's her previous title as counselor that makes it a natural strength as the assistant principal to be the liaison between the parents and staff. As assistant principal, Jayme was used to doing whatever her principal needed as well as overseeing special education needs within the school, IEP's, RIT, attendance, behavior and other miscellaneous responsibilities. Principal Jayme never had to worry about a budget as an assistant principal. Once she stepped into the role of principal, she found the magical money tree…not so magical now that she was in charge of it! She also found herself out of the building frequently for personal development. Thankfully her superintendent is great at communicating educational opportunities for her. Jayme is also the initiator of activities and signs off on them. One of the things that really impressed me upon a visit to her school during the pilot was Movie Day. This is the day before school breaks for Christmas. Jayme and I really talked in detail about the actual details of the day. I was so impressed with her organization and the fact that the students expect and understand the system of that day! If you want to sit with your friend who chose to drink Sprite then you better put a request in for Sprite too! A great takeaway from this conversation is that planning leads to expectation. Expectations are kind of like structure in this situation and that makes people feel safe knowing the next thing that will happen. And because of this organization and planning, her parents trust her to organize annual trips to DC and NYC. Superintendent This is the top dog, if you will, the CEO! We talk about invisible work. When you do it no one really notices until you don't! And the public facing role of superintendent is very much like this. No one notices until they don't attend an event. This person also faces the budget that Jayme has become familiar with multiplied by the number of schools they're in charge of. When Jayme's school had a massive renovation, it wasn't the groundskeeper that was reporting to the educational community what the progress and funding was, it was the superintendent! Sure, there are people supporting him in large projects, but ultimately he reports the good and the bad. When a superintendent makes a decision, there are multiple factors they are considering not just the population from one building. This is a very public, almost political, position due to reporting to the faculty, public, board, even the state!. Enough background information… Next episode, we're going to share how this whole pilot got started with a bang over the 4th of July weekend! EPISODE RESOURCES: Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

It is astounding to me that we live in dwellings all over the world and we don't have much at all (and nothing new) to explain the development of adults and the elderly. Surely this exists and I can't find it yet?!? First, I'm going to explain what I have been able to find, and then I'm going to ask the same questions I did with the other phases of life. The parabolas I came up with represent money and time. Then there's the middle, straight line - it's housework. It's never accounted for in any of these studies as life-long unpaid work. There are 3 types: cleaning, tasks of daily living, and life administration. What is our purpose in this phase? Do housework! This is our job at home. What is our capacity? It's three-fold: how much time you have, how much money you have, and the third that is unique to you - your energy. Are you optimally energized for the role that you are in? How do you use the physical spaces in your home during this phase? Houses haven't changed much since the 50's. But I can change your mindset about how to use your house. What scaffolding or support do we need? There have been no organizational supports or structures put into place for the administration of households. You need a Sunday Basket®, you need binders to replace your file cabinet, and you need The Productive Home Solution® in order to learn how to organize and optimize every part of your house. Different phases of life require different organizational structures and systems. EPISODE RESOURCES: Parabolas Illustration The Sunday Basket® The Paper Solution® The Productive Home Solution® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Jayme was a self proclaimed organized hoarder. She's always been a naturally organized person. In 2017, she hit rock bottom knowing she just had too much. It wasn't until the windows were replaced in her house. You see when you have new windows installed, you have to move everything away from the windows so the installers have enough room. For about two weeks, all that stuff was in the middle of her room. THAT was chaos, but it shined a light on the fact that all the mess or hoarding at home was causing Jayme mental chaos. This is when Jayme found Organize 365® and cleaned up her personal space, her home. Cleaning Up Mental Chaos at Work Jayme was used to pouring herself into work as a principal Monday through Friday and cleaned house on Saturdays. Jayme would stay as late as she needed to on Friday nights just to have peace of mind that she was prepared to walk back into school on Monday. If we are honest with ourselves, as educators, the one planning period you get is not ample planning time. When you plan as a teacher, you are able to deal with any distractions during instructional time. Jayme found the Education Friday Workbox® (now the Teacher Friday Workbox®) and was able to get organized at work. The Friday Workbox® allows her to plan and feel prepared, and that's what she wants for her staff. She wants them to continue having a passion for teaching and not feeling burnt out. Cleaning Up Mental Chaos at Home This cleaning up of mental chaos is why Jayme was so excited to share the Education Friday Workbox® with her teachers. If she could just show them how to get organized in the classroom, they would see the benefit of having home organized, too. At Organize 365®, we want to bring light to the invisible work you are doing and have a better plan to tackle it. It took Jayme about 18 months to get her home "done" and longer for work. Jayme encourages her staff to know it will take time. A first grader can't read a book and write a full report, but after a few years of learning and doing, in 3rd grade maybe they can. And I never mix words about this, it will take time. Jayme finds herself still listening to the older podcasts and learning. She recognizes that the information lands differently now when she hears it based on her progress. She still hears new things she can add to what she's already used to doing. You have learned a lot about Jayme and next Jayme is going to help us understand the structure of schools and responsibilities of staff in the state of Indiana, specifically Greendale Middle School in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. EPISODE RESOURCES: Teacher Friday Workbox® On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

This is the next installment of the phases of life series. We're now in the phase of development called Emerging Adulthood. In my PhD studies, I'm trying to figure out the role that the developmental phases of life play in how we learn and do housework over the life cycle. I've always been interested in human growth and development. After 18, the amount of literature and research drops off quickly. The key distinguisher of this phase of life versus others is this feeling of being "in between." Things happen legally at certain ages (18, 21), but other things are assumed to be inherently known or done. This isn't a US thing, it is a developed country thing. In Asia, until you are married your parents take care of you. In Italy, you live at home with no obligation that you would do the housework until you're about 30. People are living at home longer now, and not owning homes until they are older. I remember being in my 20's. I went to a 4-year college, got married a year after graduation, and adopted my babies in my late 20's. So I was a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) with 2 kids by the time I was 30. I tell my kids that your 20's are for trying things. Different jobs, schools, food, places to live - get experience so you know what you want to do by the time you're in your 30's. What does it mean to adult? By the time we are 30, we should be responsible for our finances, housework, where we are living, the job we want, and relationships. Finding friends in your 20's is hard! What is our capacity? Time and money wise - the amounts kind of melt together. You start having to pay for the "not fun" things in life - insurance, rent, utilities, etc. Things you never realize are part of adulthood. Then there's how we use the physical spaces in our home during this phase. Most of the spaces will be smaller, but will still have zones. Our mini apartment (bedroom), a dorm room, an apartment or condo. I'm already extending my parenting horizon to 25, mostly because I have children with ADHD. It's difficult for these new adults in this phase, but it's hard for us parents too. We're not done. Not that we are ever truly done - but the active parenting to a certain degree is done. As your 20 year olds start to take on more responsibilities of adulthood, there are some that are more easily acquired and there are some that take longer and have more limitations. As the parents of adults, I am paying for and providing these things for our children, but I'm looking at it as we are property owners. Will this work all the way until they are 30? Then I'm doing it. Organize 365® has the Launch Program for 16-25 year olds. Inside of Launch, there are lessons for turning your bedroom into a mini apartment and understanding the zones, a starter Sunday Basket®, and a binder with parts of the Medical, Financial, and Household Reference Binders for renters. Clothing, food, and entertainment are the biggest areas where you will fully embrace adulting. What scaffolding or support do we need? Understanding. This is a phase, there are pluses and minuses. It can be challenging. Having a way to communicate what true adult responsibilities are and what that looks like when you are successful is difficult. It's much better when the person in their 20's can figure out what they want to know and then ask the parents. This is the phase of life when you realize the fact that you have to clean your bedroom for the rest of your life! EPISODE RESOURCES: Parabolas Illustration Launch Program Kids Program ADHD Bundle The Sunday Basket® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

I hope you all remember Jayme from the Teacher Pilot that I shared with you in previous episodes. Jayme found the Organize 365® systems effective for home and then implemented them at work. Jayme was open to the idea of using her school as a pilot to see how the Teacher Workbox® could impact an entire building. In this series, we'll discuss everything from the idea to implementation and to the feedback. Meet Jayme: Principal at Greendale Middle School in Lawrenceburg, Indiana First off, I want you to know exactly who Jayme is and her background. The funniest request we have received is that people want to know Jayme's thoughts. Never mind that I too was a teacher and founded this organizational system. Just kidding! But I was surprised by it nonetheless. Jayme shared that she always knew she wanted to be a teacher. She remembers playing school even as a child. As I learned more about Jayme, I was surprised how much we had in common when it came to our childhood aspirations. It was also reinforced through this episode that teachers are cut from the same cloth; that of passion for teaching and hearts of service. School came pretty easy to Jayme with a floating B. She loved math, history, science, and to read. But to spell? That is a different story to this day! Before she even completed college, she was happy to keep her Fridays open so she could sub. She knew there would always be work on Fridays. Soon she met her husband Joe and decided to move to Indiana with Joe so they could live happily ever after together. "I'm not a workaholic, I'm passionate about teaching." Jayme completed her degree in 1998 in elementary education and middle school certifications for social studies and science. She graduated to teach elementary, but ended up in middle school. She worked in the classroom for about 7 years until she got the desire to counsel the students. She went for her Masters for counseling and finished while she was pregnant with her first child, Pierce. Most of her experience has been with middle grades 6-8 in science and as a guidance counselor. Starting in 2000, Jayme was a school counselor for 4-½ years. This is when she decided she needed another Masters for being a Principal and added another child to her life, Kennedy. Jayme shared she has always had a long commute, but appreciates the time to digest what is currently going on in life and work. With all this driving, education advancement, and growing - you could easily call her a workaholic but she prefers to identify it as her passion. But where does that passion go for some educators? We want to help educators retain that passion and put systems in place to prevent burnout. When the Principal Gets Organized Now that she had her Admin Masters, Jayme could be an assistant principal which allowed her to help students and teachers alike. In 2013, she became an assistant principal only to take over being a principal 1-1/2 years later when her friend and boss had to step down. Jayme thought, "I'm basically already doing her job because she had to miss a lot of work." Jayme's eyes were opened as to all the actual responsibilities once she was doing the role of principal for real. Jayme likes to delegate tasks with her assistant principal based on strengths. Jayme was all too excited to share with her staff what had been working to keep her organized and kept burnout at bay. I can't wait to share with you how this pilot played out!! On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

The first in this series of podcasts is the childhood phase (0-18 years). We are going to walk through the entire life cycle of a human and look at a few specific questions. 1. What is our purpose during this phase of life? 2. What is our capacity, time and money wise? 3. How are we using the physical spaces in our home during this time? 4. What scaffolding or support do we need to make this phase of life easier and more productive? What is the purpose or job of a child inside the household? There are two - the first is to develop and grow from a child to an adult, and the second is to learn and attend school. That's it. Some children will be able to add on a third, which is to be a productive, proactive person in the household by doing chores and helping. But some children will not and I think we need to normalize this. Because I always knew that developing from a child to an adult and attending school were the top two jobs of this phase of life, I didn't add on the third category of household chores for my kids. I did add on bedroom chores, but not household chores. What is the capacity of the child from zero to 18 inside of the house? Birth is when you have a lot more time than you do money. As a child moves from zero to 18, the amount of time and care they need will reduce and the amount of money they are able to generate will start to increase by the time they are 18. It's a huge two decade phase of life. Children in this phase go from being a baby that can't even hold a bottle to someone that can drive a car, has a job, goes out and gets their own food or makes their own dinner. The amount of physical, mental, emotional, social change that happens in childhood is huge. How do children use the physical spaces in our homes? Their stuff is everywhere. The amount of stuff doesn't change, but the types of things do. They're mostly in our communal spaces; the kitchen, family room, main bathroom, and laundry room if they're old enough. They're in their bedrooms or playrooms, sometimes in the basement or bonus rooms. As they get older, they start to get rid of more toys and be in their bedrooms most of the time. Then they can create zones - bookshelves, cube systems, a desk for schoolwork, etc. What scaffolding or support do we need to make this phase of life easier and more productive? Kids need to learn how to clear their mind and organize their bedroom, and they need to learn how to plan for the week ahead and be productive. Here's how I teach that in Organize 365®. First, there are lessons for parents on how to teach the skill of organizing to your kids. How to organize everything related to babies, clothing, and everything else. Then kids ages 6-15 go though the course to learn about their mini apartments and all the zones they have. You have to organize a bedroom before you can clean it. I teach them what are zones in your bedroom and how to understand there are different areas of your bedroom that have different responsibilities. Lessons on clothing, sharing bedrooms, schoolwork, creating activity bags, organizing passion projects, and school memories or paperwork. Then you have a child's backpack. Their backpacks are the equivalent to our Sunday Basket®. They go through their backpacks, make sure they have everything they need for Monday, pack their activity bags, and then write down their week on paper. In the Kids Program there is a sheet where they can fill out all their activities and events in the Before School, School Day, After School, and Evening categories. Next week we are going to talk about emerging adulthood, which is 18-29. EPISODE RESOURCES: Parabolas Illustration Kids Program Lisa School Binder School Memory Binder Launch Program Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

In this new podcast series I'm going to talk about organization in each phase of life, but first I want to talk about phases of life. There is childhood (0-18), a new theory called emerging adulthood (18-29), middle adulthood and late adulthood. There is so much to these phases of life and layered on top of these is the capacity and the time limitation of variables as it relates to that phase of life. I picture this like two arches that mirror each other and intersect at two points. We all know that childhood is pretty well established and studied. Then there's the new theory called emerging adulthood where you're in between childhood and full adulthood. Then there's the years around 70-82 where I made up this idea of "reverse emerging adulthood" because you have all this experience, but you're at an in-between stage again where you are no longer an active contributing member of society. The time and capacity continuum is frustrating for me because when I have time, I didn't have the knowledge and capacity to act on it. And then when I don't have the time, I have all the knowledge. A great example of this is menopause. The average age of menopause is 50 years old and that hasn't changed in the last 2,000 years. However, the age that puberty happens has changed. So the mid-life "dip" most people experience corresponds with menopause. Ironically, when a person is in the generative phase of life and pauses to focus on their needs and desires, usually between 45 and 55, society labels this as a midlife crisis. However, it isn't a crisis at all. It's a natural rebalancing of energy and production in the middle of a long adult life cycle. If I have to find academic support for everything I do or want to do in the future, it's going to take forever for us to really understand how households function throughout a lifespan, let alone how to organize them. So that's why I wanted to first have this conversation about how I view a lifespan. I view it as inverse arches of time and capacity, and the golden windows where they cross over. In this next series, what can you expect? I'm looking to unpack what our purpose is, what our capacity is, how we use physical space in our homes during certain phases of life, and what support we need to make this phase of life easier or less invisible. Basically I'm trying to figure out, what is the phase of life map of household organization? So if you were to map out household organization across the whole life phase, what would that look like? EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® Jump Start - Personal Jump Start - Kitchen The Kitchen Productivity & Profitability Blitz Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

I have these big ideas, big questions, big observations that I think about when I'm driving, going to bed, in the shower…how different related concepts are viewed in different environments and how they actually are all talking about the same thing; we're just using different words to describe them. So in this episode and the next, I want you to give me a little bit of latitude to verbally process with you where I am thinking we are in our understanding of how we're functioning inside of our families, especially as the head of household and the administration of what's going on at home. In this episode I want to really talk about the weight of the mental load inside households. I'm going to hit this from a couple different angles. I'm going to talk about what I've been learning about in my PhD, different things I've been reading, different things I've observed. I'm going to start by talking about cognitive load. In cognitive psychology, cognitive load refers to the amount of working memory resources used. Heavy cognitive load can have negative effects on task completion, and it is important to note that the experience of cognitive load is not the same in everyone. There is not a lot of literature I have found related to how all of these cognitive processes that we talk about in school or work affect us at home (please send me any links you have!). Working memory remembers tasks, processes information, creates a plan, and makes decisions. We do that at home from the time we open our eyes in the morning until the time we close them for a nap or to go to bed. Even when we go to bed, we're still trying to remember things, process information, make a plan and make decisions for the next day. The cognitive load at home is discussed in academia in relation to housework, especially the fact that women are doing more. It doesn't matter what gender or ethnicity you look at, women are definitely doing more. When I think about our role at home as household managers and the cognitive role at home, there's no end to our day. There's no quitting time. There's no ending time. Then you layer on top of that the fact there are just a bazillion trillion, little teeny tiny tasks that you have to do at home. And here's the thing: they are all INVISIBLE. I think the fact that the work is invisible adds to the cognitive load in a couple of ways. One, because we gaslight ourselves into thinking maybe we're not doing as much as we're actually doing because we can't see what we actually did. And two is that you know no one else can really see what we're doing and therefore we don't get the "atta boys" and gold stars and "thank you very much" that you would normally get if you were in corporate America or in school. I'm starting to double down on the fact that the uniqueness of the Sunday Basket® and why I think it works so well is the fact that you write things down on paper. I designed it to literally work for any kind of learner. My hypothesis is that it is the recorded thought on paper that is the science part. It gets the thought out of your head - it moves it from working memory and externalizes it. Also the fact that it is written by your hand is key - when you write by hand, the information gets encoded deeper into your brain. So is it the fact that you write that note on paper versus typing it into a phone helping you to retrieve a memory? I am retrieving a memory and writing it down, the physical act of writing is encoding it deeper into my memory. It pulls it out of my working memory onto the paper and then allows it to leave my working memory so now that is clear and ready for whatever I want to think about next. That idea or thing I needed to remember then becomes triage for later urgency, I no longer have to think or remember whatever that was. So then, does this repeated interaction with this task that needs to be done deepen the memory trace of this experience and the recall? Welcome to the Sunday Basket® - the physical representation of over 10,000 women's cognitive loads! The actual physical weight of the cognitive load of household management. For funsies, those of you who have a Sunday Basket® - I would love for you to go and weigh your Sunday Basket®. You are holding a very heavy cognitive load comprised of your finances, meal planning, bills that need to be paid, the mail, cleaning schedule, projects that are in process, requests of your time, so many little pieces of information that are literally weighing you down. I'm here to say, "atta boy", you're doing a great job. Here's your gold star. Thank you so much. Thank you for taking care of your family and your community and your household. Thank you for being financially responsible and cleaning up your messes and making your bed and doing your laundry. The invisible work that you're doing IS HAPPENING. Hopefully somehow through collaboration, we will be able to scientifically support what is actually happening cognitively for the homeowner in all of the roles an

This week I want to talk about lists. Why I don't have to do lists, cleaning lists, work lists, etc. I just all the sudden realized I didn't have them and had to figure out, where did they go? When did I get rid of them? How long have I been living without lists? Where was my security blanket? It just seems like the more productive you are, don't you need more lists? Shouldn't your lists have lists? So my new to-do list is my Sunday Basket®. Many of the things that our brain reminds us to do or that end up in our Sunday Basket® don't need to be done now, or in the near future, or in some cases, ever. But our brain wants to let us know about it as a possibility… of a potential way of spending our time if we'd like to sometime in the future, maybe. What I've moved into after so many years of checklists is establishing better routines, better cadences of natural structures inside my house, inside my day, inside my work. Looking at my morning, afternoon and evening routines. There are six routines that I have Monday through Friday, and then my household management and household cleaning day. There are no organizing emergencies. Having good, strong routines for the essentials and then wide open spaces for whatever you WANT to do. Let's play more! Are your lists really serving you anymore? Are they helping you? Are they reducing your stress and anxiety or making it worse? For me, the answer has been the Sunday Basket® at home, the Friday Workbox® at work, planning days every 3 or 4 months for home and work, and the Organize 365® Blitzes. EPISODE RESOURCES: The Kitchen Productivity & Profitability Blitz The Paper Solution® The Productive Home Solution® Jump Start - Personal Jump Start - Kitchen The Sunday Basket® The Friday Workbox® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

My fellow Americans…I bring you this state of the family economy due to what my household is experiencing and the relief I want to offer you! Have you also noticed the increased prices of the following? I asked the Organize 365® community and this is what you all said: •Groceries •Home Owners (especially in southern and coastal towns) •Electricity •Property Taxes •Rent •Healthcare •Tipping •Streaming Services/Entertainment •Service Providers Wait, I've been here before… In December I realized the hustle was back and I started to feel like something else was "brewing" but hadn't quite put my finger on it. Towards the end of January when I didn't see financial relief at the end of the tunnel, I knew what it was. We are all feeling inflation, and quite honestly, "shrinkflation." I have experienced this 4 times in the past. •2004-2005 - I remember those 110 doctor appointments, which I have approximated at 3 hours each. The bills that were racked up due to those doctor visits. And all of the invisible work I put into my family as a result of those doctor appointments, from caring for my children to science experiments called dinner. •2008-2009 - My father was in poor health, and when he passed away, it was my sister and I who were left to take care of his affairs since my parents had divorced a few years prior. I was the executor and on top of kids medical needs, the direct sales company I worked under filing bankruptcy, a recession, and just life! There was a lot of invisible work being accomplished by me of which no one else was aware. • 2011-2012 - The year I decided that if it was to be, it was up to me! I started Organize 365® in an effort to get my life under control and help others to do the same. I just love the American spirit, immigrant risk takers with passion, and how we can all pursue what we want in the way we want to because you all know traditional is not what you would call my business sense. • 2020…Need I say more? This was a time of immense fear and uncertainty. We were home so we organized. Now that we are not home as much, it's even more important that we stop, plan, implement. Stop doing 800 thousand million trillion things. Get off the treadmill to nowhere. Your home is THE business that powers the American economy! The pandemic pointed out how important small businesses are and today the American home as a business is flexing its muscle. We power America from 123 Main St. And we are really feeling it in the grocery stores. I noticed the ways I have solved this issue in the past are not effective this time around due to my family needs. I stopped (how did I solve this in the past?), planned (took a look at my family and our needs), and now I want to implement it with the Organize 365® community. Kitchen Productivity & Profitability Blitz - March 4-8th -Family surveys (the all skate) -Get clear on breakfast preferences, snacks, and the restaurants you operate daily -Stop wasting money at the grocery store - make your business (your home) profitable and productive Bonus: Great conversations, including how to get 5 "wins," sparked from the comments after this Instagram Live. EPISODE RESOURCES: Kitchen Productivity & Profitability Blitz [email protected] Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media

Last week I talked about Saturday time versus Sunday time, having housework time versus having household management time. Here's another layer: big projects, small projects, big tasks and small tasks. When I'm stressed, I tend to check off as many small tasks as possible - things that don't require a lot of mental bandwidth. It's basically decluttering, and that energy makes you feel lighter so you can move into organizing. Then there's big project energy. You can feel the difference between these. The problem is when you have a whole bunch of little tasks to do, but you have big project energy…or you have a big project energy, but not a big chunk of time. For organizing, sometimes you will want quick wins and you're organizing with little 15 minute tasks. Sometimes you will want really big two or three hour sessions, or maybe something that takes the entire weekend. When you're first learning to organize the Organize 365® way, there are two schools of thought. You do short, 15-minute activities…or you empty out the entire closet and get it all organized in one day. As you move along, these 15-minute quick wins that you learn to do just get expanded into longer and longer organizing sessions. It's all about the kind of energy you have for organizing, what kind of energy you have for projects. That is going to wax and wane throughout the weeks, months, and years. This ties back into Golden Windows. Golden Windows are seasons where the organizing energy is high for everyone. The organizing energy for February is finances. Organizing your finances, crafts, or photos. That is what most people will naturally organize this time of year. Your job right now is to keep going. 15 minutes a day. Just do a 15-minute organizing activity a day while your energy is low and then you just wait. It's going to happen. Be ready to either task stack a whole bunch of 15-minute sessions in a row, or tackle something really big that you've been putting off that you didn't know when you were going to do it. The more you understand how time is used at home and for what purpose time is used at home, the better you will be able to do it. Saturday time is not the same as Sunday time. Small task energy is not the same as big project energy. EPISODE RESOURCES: The Paper Solution® The Productive Home Solution® Jump Start - Personal Jump Start - Kitchen The Sunday Basket® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Today starts another three part series, and in this series we're going to be talking about time, tasks, task stacking, and how to really think about our time at home differently. Today's episode is about the difference between Saturday time and Sunday time. I'm going to take us all back to our childhood, because I think in childhood we understood the difference between Saturday and Sunday time. So on Saturdays, you cleaned your room (even if that meant just being able to see the floor and the laundry was put away) and then you went out to play. On Sundays, you cleaned out your backpack and got ready for the next school week - check all your folders, finish your homework, give all papers to your parents that they need to see, and so on. As adults, your bedroom turns into the entire house. Saturday becomes your housework day. Saturday work is very visible. Vacuum, clean the house, do the laundry and dishes, grocery shop, clean out the refrigerator…the list never ends. Sunday is for household management. Sunday work is invisible. This is where you go through your Sunday Basket® - open your mail, pay your bills, plan your schedule for the week, decide when you'll run errands…you get the idea. Both days are important, but both days are different in the amount of visibility other people have about whether or not you have done your work. They have completely different energies to them. My goal is to always make visible the invisible work you're doing so that we can do LESS OF IT. I want you to stop always working. There's always, always going to be more to do. When are you able to say it's done? When you become disciplined at having bigger time blocks for even your housework, you will find those little pockets of time where you could go for a walk, take a longer shower, find a way to start using those for yourself and your wellness - not to get one more thing checked off a list. Challenge yourself to do a time study and try to see if you can get your housework and your household management done in less time next weekend and instead give yourself some free time. Start to prioritize when your free time is going to be and what it will be used for. Start looking at your time like little buckets or Lego bricks, how can you manipulate them based on your energy? EPISODE RESOURCES: The Paper Solution® The Productive Home Solution® Jump Start - Personal Jump Start - Kitchen The Sunday Basket® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

First of all…don't panic! It's just a small, 6-week break. You know, every once in a while you need to get reorganized and pause something so you have more bandwidth to address another project. That's all we're doing! In the meantime, I'd love to record an episode with you about your transformation with Organize 365®! Just go to the website >Podcast >Wednesday Podcast >Apply to be our guest…it's that simple! But when I come back, the episodes will be a mini series with Jayme from Greendale Middle School who participated in the teacher pilot. This way when new educational faculty want to learn more about the program, they can listen to this mini series instead of having to sift through 9 years of episodes. Adult Circle Time Second of all, have I got something big for you! I've been mulling over this idea that as adults we need circle time. You know, think about the weather, what's for lunch, and activities we have coming up…but for adults. I still have that kindergarten teacher brain. And I really think as adults we could all benefit from a little heads up as to the organizing energy of the week/month, golden windows that are coming up so we can be prepared to get a specific project accomplished, plan for holidays so they don't just pop up on us, and offerings from us here at Organize 365®! I mean if you think about it, the schools do this for us, right? They let us know all the things that are coming up and then you as the parent plan ahead how you want to participate in each activity/event. Do you have time, money, and availability? Then you know what to expect. That's all this is - a little circle time that will be every Thursday evening so you can make a proactive plan. I hope you'll join me! It'll be everywhere your eyeballs would be That's right! At 7pm in all the places: your email inbox, the app, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook! The video newsletter will be published and you will get adult circle time to make better informed decisions about your upcoming week! If you have unsubscribed from the newsletter - I hope you'll reconsider because this will be the one and only communication to go out each week and it'll be jam packed with helpful information!! There will be a printable PDF for you to get organized, plan, and be more productive. EPISODE RESOURCES: Wednesday Podcast Guest Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

In this episode, I introduce you to Lydia M. who has two daughters, ages 4 and 9 months, is married and living in Florida. She has the capacity to run her business, invest in her family, and partake in her hobbies or simply scroll through Instagram. But it wasn't always like this. Lydia was getting ready to start her bookkeeping business, DAC Balance, so she searched for podcasts to motivate and educate her. She came across the Professional Organizer Think Tank Podcast in 2006 which still exists!! When Lydia heard me say that there was a regular podcast, Lydia found it and has been a loyal listener every Friday since 2017. It was fascinating to learn about what Lydia does, the business sizes that she works with, and compared Organize 365®'s business as it pertained to her business. Simply put, she's the middle man between the data entry person at a business and a CPA. Some businesses do not need a full time "controller" so they hire Lydia to fill that gap. Lydia and her husband were fortunate enough to move into her great aunt and uncle's home after losing her aunt. Since her aunt's passing was somewhat sudden, all their things were still in the home when they moved in. Lydia's family was happy to not have to purchase something for this home that was new to them but it also meant estate sales, garage sales, and multiple trips to donation centers over the next 4 years to clear it all out. In 2019, Lydia found out she was pregnant. Unfortunately, the pandemic hit not too much later. The idea of becoming a mom and the pandemic gave Lydia time to get organized with the 100 Day Program she'd received as a gift for Christmas. Now that the house had been cleared out, it was time to declutter her stuff. This resulted in items being in the correct rooms…but also meant all the stuff needed to be gone through again. I shared a little tip we competitive puzzle solvers use, and it's that we go through the pieces three times to complete the puzzle. We declutter to be able to organize to be able to get optimized and the result is productivity. This is why we go through The Productive Home Solution® three times. Lydia went on to describe how she is resetting her home every three months-ish due to her 9 month old growing and developing. With babies, there is a 3-4 monthly cycle in and out of clothes, toys, and safety in your home. Once our children are about 5 that turns into the first half of the school year, the second half, and then summer. This is why we do the home blitzes in that same pattern. Lydia wants to set an example of planning for her girls. I brought up that meme: Choose your hard…Planning is hard and not planning is hard. Lydia wants her girls to know it's normal to plan for the upcoming week. She wishes someone had taught her that way earlier in life. We talked about the impact on our mental and cognitive load when we use the Sunday Basket® and Friday Workbox®. Speaking of planning and the benefits, you think I rabbit trailed on shipping in the past two episodes? No, we really trailed off getting into what the heck I am doing with my PhD and what my coach and I discussed. Turns out I have had a good chunk of research completed towards putting together a Household Organization/Productivity Theory! Lydia's advice is, "Buy all the things. Do the blitzes to get a sense of how it feels to be organized in a season." EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution® The Productive Home Solution® Planning Day The Paper Solution® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

In this episode, I introduce you to Wendy T. She's married with a 13 year old son, a 10 year old daughter, one cat and one dog. She lives in Southern Australia and owns 2 Air BNB's. Talking to Wendy gave me a lot of ideas about traveling to Australia, and how to fulfill my wish list. I hope Greg joins me in 2026! It was interesting to learn that Wendy found Organize 365® through the ADHD Podcast which brought her to the Sunday Basket® Podcast and then to the main podcast. In learning about the Sunday Basket®, she thought this could be the way to gain calm in her home. In 2020, Wendy was in the process of moving. She purchased the old The Productive Home Solution® and found permission to let go of things. Back then it was the IDLE "process" and we laughed at the placement of the phone book mentioned. She'd experimented with Marie Kondo, but what she found different with Organize 365® were the systems, processes, and schedules. It was more than just decluttering. Wendy used to have paper piles in each room and she'd throw papers in them thinking, "Oh yeah, I'll deal with it later." When those paper piles started to disappear, that's when she knew Organize 365® was effective in her life. Our homes don't have administration offices like work, but Wendy saw her Sunday Basket® as a mini administration space. She could hold things in there until they needed to be dealt with. She loves the ability to think less and follows the tried and true systems of Organize 365®. We got on a shipping 2.0 conversation (1.0 was the Canadian shipping last episode), this time about Australia. This held Wendy back for a time. We feel selfish spending this money because it seems like it's for us. The reality is that the family eats better, the Sunday Basket® user is more calm, and the house runs more smoothly. We pay a lot of money for summer camps and soccer, we should spend money to maintain our homes too! After Wendy splurged on the Organize 365® products and shipping them to Australia, she realized it's like self care. She doesn't spend money on shoes or handbags; so this is her splurge. Wendy pointed out that because shipping is so high, she appreciates the planning and implementation days to still be part of organizing life with Organize 365®. Planning Day is where she learned about permission for something else…naps! The planning days brought us to discovering each other's calendars. Australians celebrate different holidays. Their seasons are different from ours. And their school year is different. This got me thinking about America's natural energy/cadence to organizing and how it matches up, or didn't in most cases, to Australia's. Her Golden Window is NOW! We determined Wendy's weather must be like that of Arizona's. It's summer now and can get up to 40 degrees C or 104 degrees F. It's also one of the busiest times for the Air BNB's with the gardens. She values her Friday Workbox® even more now with managing people. She's not doing so much physical work, but she is managing! Wendy's advice is, "Go back to 'Lisa Basics'. Give yourself grace. Done is better than perfect. Keep at it - chip away. Just start! It's just a habit. If you build the habit, it just gets so much easier!" EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution® The Productive Home Solution® Planning Day The Paper Solution® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Alright, it's time for the last organizational domino - Don't Quit! When you have mastered something, when you have persevered and you have learned something at a new level, you can easily forget what it was like to learn that skill. For many adults, we don't often have to push through any resistance in order to learn something new. When things get rough, we can choose to be comfortable instead of doing something hard or pushing through the resistance. Quitting is fine. You're allowed to quit. The reason why I didn't quit in 2012 in getting my home organized was because I didn't have any options left. I was turning 40, I started Organize 365®, I was getting our house organized and I had become a Professional Organizer. If I couldn't get my own house organized, how was I going to keep being a Professional Organizer? It was part of my identity of who I was becoming. The next time I wanted to quit was with growing Organize 365®. There have been a lot of things that have happened in 12 years in business that I didn't know how to do. I don't have a business degree, so I am learning how to be a business owner by being in masterminds, hiring coaches, taking courses, going to seminars and conferences. Being an entrepreneur is a never ending professional development course. As an adult you want to quit...or you just figure out how to do it. It's not about being afraid of the effort or the work; it's about not knowing how to do it, or what to do next. Go back to your WHY - why do you want to get organized to begin with? When you know your why, then you know your limits, strengths and weaknesses...and realize that you will need resources, help, expertise, advice and so forth in order to get further and grow more. Organization can be the solution to having a plan and getting your time back. I know you're probably thinking: "it's ridiculous to pay money to Organize 365® to learn how to organize, when I should just know how to do this myself." Why should you know how to do something just because you've always lived in a household? Everything is taught to us, or modeled for us. If you weren't TAUGHT how to be organized, you have to go to class. When you get stuck - join the community, get in the app, go to the coworking time. Get with people who are like minded. Sign up for a 1:1 session with a Certified Organizer. Everyone is going to get stuck. I'm not going to let you quit. Keep pushing through, because on the other side is the organized life and unlocked time freedom that you're looking for. EPISODE RESOURCES: Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution® Sign up for the Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

In this episode, I introduce you to Francie G. Francie found herself googling for basement organization podcasts when her mother-in-law decided to downsize from her home of 46 years in November of 2022. She came across the "arranging your hot mess rooms" episode and was hooked. For her mother-in-law's move, which turned into her move too…she invested in The Productive Home Solution®. She grasped the idea of "same with same" and ease of access based on frequency of use. She then chose her own organizational adventure. At the same time, Francie, her husband, and two children, Thomas and Joanne, were living in a condo. Francie and her husband started their lives there 18 years ago, but knew it was not their forever home. Her mother-in-law downsizing meant they would be acquiring some furniture, memorabilia, and other items from this transition. They knew it was more than their condo could hold. They temporarily rented a storage space, but knew that money could instead go towards a mortgage for a house that was plenty big to have all their stuff in their home. This was the perfect time to start the search for their new home. We got to talking about our children getting older and that means their bodies get bigger too! It's like 4 adults were living in their home. They were at a point in life where a little more space would be nice. And I don't think we talk enough about buying your first nice piece of furniture or your first home in your 40's. We don't move into our first home and everything is perfect and brand new! Cue the The Paper Solution® Financial Binder. They needed to be more diligent with their money and she wanted peace of mind to know things would be ok. Francie and her husband have always been intentional with their spending despite esteemed professions. They have never owned a car, stayed in their condo till they felt they needed to move, and hired a nanny that had capabilities to drive. Francie's first investment actually was the ADHD Bundle, and we might have gone down a rabbit hole about shipping internationally and how things have changed. She also explained that because of the public transportation and the nanny, she was able to work from home with both children attending different schools, uninterrupted. When the children were in school, the nanny would run errands or help with housework. If Francie needed to go anywhere, she could hop on the public transportation. With all this change for her mother-in-law and their family, Francie started thinking she too may have ADHD. Re-establishing the systems she's learned, she realized she just has a lot of complexities in her life and no ADHD. Those complexities can suppress executive function. She laughed thinking "Well, I had gestational diabetes while I was pregnant. So maybe I'll have ADHD while the kids live at home!" She's realized that Organize 365® is the cure for that! She's regaining her work/life balance and knows she can do hard things. Francie's advice is, "the systems, routines, and schedules at home that Organize 365® teaches are the external scaffolding that keeps life organized. " EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution® The Paper Solution® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Are you ready for organizational dominos Step 2? Step 1 was getting started - in decluttering and organizing; and understanding that organization is different than housework. It is putting systems in place that will support you and will last for more than a day or a week and give you foundation. Step 2 is how long will this take? I need you to give me more time. If we could do it in a weekend, I would let you know. If we could do it in a month, I would let you know. Even if it was your full time job, we couldn't do it in that short amount of time...there's just too much to do. It's going to take one to three years. I know you don't like that answer but this is not new information, and this is not a marketing scheme. If anything, it's an anti-marketing scheme. It takes a MINIMUM of one year to get organized. Part of why it takes a minimum of one year is because you just finished December. If you're starting brand new now in January, do you remember what all you did in the beginning of December? Thanksgiving? Halloween? There are things that you did seasonally that you don't remember right now as you're organizing in January. There is a seasonality to organizing your physical spaces. Year One During your first year of organizing, your only job is to do 15 minute tasks every single day. Keep doing those 15 minute tasks every single day in every space until it's completely organized. A completely organized space has only 2 requirements. 1. When you walk into that space, it isn't "talking back" to you. The space isn't demanding your attention. 2. There are no more decisions to be made. There's no more thinking about what you're doing (or need to do) in that space. Year Two By the end of your first year, you've been through all the seasons and your house will be pretty much organized. So in year two - you're going to go through your house AGAIN because now you can declutter more, add some organizational systems, make it prettier, etc. You're going to get into the cadence of reflecting on the last 4 months and then planning for the next 4 months. You're going to create better systems, better cadences, start using the Sunday Basket® and The Paper Solution® Binders (if you haven't already). Year Three You are living an organized life in your home and in your work, and you identify as an organized person. Unexpected events happen in your life, but they don't become all consuming. You're better able to handle the complexity. You're going to be able to flex with the unexpected events because your house is under control, your work is under control, and you really do have work-life balance. You know the visible and invisible work that needs to be done in both, and you've set up systems in both that are supporting you so that when the unexpected happens - you're the one that can bounce right back and still maintain your goals. You know where all your time goes, where all your money goes, where all your intention goes, where your energy goes. You know you have capacity to do MORE. Why? Because YOU. ARE. ORGANIZED. EPISODE RESOURCES: Sunday Basket® Friday Workbox® The Productive Home Solution® The Paper Solution® Organize 365® Kids Program Sign up for the Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Organizational math. As a math teacher, I knew that if there were any holes in my student's learning, they would struggle with future math concepts. Math skills build upon each other… just like organizing skills. There is a reason that most organizational programs start with decluttering (subtraction): you must reduce your pile before you can move on to step 2… organizing. Organization adds minutes to your days (addition) and speeds up your pace as you get through the tedium of everyday household tasks. But, increased productivity is the holy grail we all seek. Once you know how to multiply time, there is no turning back. The skill of being a productive person starts with decluttering spaces, calendars, commitments, and sometimes people. Adding the weekly cadence of organizing your time, your priorities, and your actionable to-dos leaves you with a manageable action plan. I used to think productivity = being busy. Now I know that everyone is busy. Ironically, the people who look least busy are usually the most productive. Podcast episode 463: Learning the Skill of Organizing: Step 3 Increase Productivity Next year at this time, do you want to be more productive? More purposeful? More peaceful? The organizational level you are at today is a reflection of the cumulative minutes you invested in the full organizational cycle this year. Decluttering + organization = increased productivity. It would be my honor to walk with you through your organizational journey. Productivity is a fickle friend. It will not spontaneously happen. Productivity must be planned. It's time to make a plan! EPISODE RESOURCES: The Productive Home Solution® The Paper Solution® The Household Operations Binder The Sunday Basket® Friday Workbox® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

In this episode, I introduce you to Christa G. Christa is from a little town not too far from me; but about six years ago moved to Michigan from Georgia. Christa is married and has two children that are almost 12 and 16. Christa ended up hearing one of my interviews on the Boss Mom podcast around 2015/2016. She knew when they got to Michigan that she wanted to start a wedding planning business. She got the Friday Workbox® to keep her on track and organized before they moved. She now runs her wedding planning business full time! She's known for planning unconventional weddings that reflect the character of the bride and groom. When Christa first found me, my kids were about her kids' ages. We laughed about having these humans that look like adults in our homes and how they take up more space, have opinions, and different food preferences. Christa has been such a proactive mom that these little adults do their own laundry and can prepare meals for themselves…even if it's just frosted flakes! We rabbit trailed to what I call "selfish" laundry. Christa mentioned that she'd like to see her son wash more than just a uniform he needs for his sports team. When Greg says he's going to do the laundry and I see only his jeans got washed; I give him a hard time saying "Oh, we're doing selfish laundry today?" Christa and I agree to just put a full load in the wash instead. She plans her meals for the week when she processes her Sunday Basket® and then the family sees what she'll be making and what nights they'll have to fend for themselves. We kind of have this going on at my house except we all have cars and we all have money. So we are all shopping and not all of the food is getting eaten. I remember my mom doing the "refrigerator review" which meant she'd heat up all the leftovers the night before garbage day. Whatever didn't get eaten, she'd toss. This was one more attempt at that food getting eaten instead of wasted. The Woodruff's are a work in progress in this area! Christa managed to get her home life running pretty smooth and then she focused on her business. She has learned to become a person of excellence in one area and then build on her skill set. Weddings look so different for each couple. I shared that Greg and I were married 6 months after Greg finally proposed, it took him three years. Christa shared that she eloped. She normally hears "you made this process so much more calm than I expected it to be." Wedding planners are there to have your back. They will read through all the contracts, search for options for flowers or other items you need, and pivot when needed. This way the bride doesn't get lost in the weeds of the details. She offered some wedding planning advice: Get help planning your wedding. Ideally a wedding planner, but if not rely on your wedding party to help. Your budget will depend on the number of guests you have attending. So to stay within your budget you may consider a smaller invite list. Find a venue that fits your vision to prevent additional spending in order to transform the space. Hot button alert!! You wanna hear a good story about a good venue and contracts? I shared what happened to Organize 365® with the Savannah Center. You will not see me doing business with them! Christa shared how she had to fight for a couple when at the last minute a venue decided to have their ballroom renovated leaving them to deal with a less than ideal wedding. You bet Christa got that money back!! That's the blessing of a wedding planner. Christa's advice is, "learn to be flexible, readjust when needed and not be so rigid in what you want to happen. But feel out what is supposed to happen and what feels right." EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® Friday Workbox® The Productive Home Solution® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Happy New Year! Today, I'm kicking off a three-part series called Organizational Dominos. We're starting with Step 1: Start. Next week will be Step 2: Extend Your Timeline, and then comes Step 3: Don't Quit! We all want to quit at some point, but we're going to push through and we are NOT going to quit. But let's talk about getting started first. Getting started is the hardest part when you're trying something new, doing something different, or not really sure where you're going...or confident that you know how to get there. We've been doing Thursday Throwback episodes of the most popular podcast series we've ever had called The Stages of Organization. Step 1 of that cycle is decluttering. Decluttering leads to organization, and organization leads to increased productivity. Decluttering is easy. It gives you the big "WOW" result when you're done. You can do that for a couple of weeks and feel lighter. However, there are problems with decluttering. One is that you don't declutter enough, and the second is if you've already decluttered but what is left isn't organized - then you need to move on to step 2. Over decluttering is a thing! We tend to do this if we don't know how to get organized, and think instead that we just need to get rid of more things. Set a timer for 15 minutes, grab a black trash bag, and fill it up. Even if you just start with trash or broken items, do that. Then go back through and collect anything that you can donate. Stop by the donation place of your choice every single week until you can't fill the car anymore. Declutter 15 minutes a day, and whatever is going to be donated - put it straight in your car. Getting started - declutter. Throw out all the trash and broken items, decide to sell or not sell, establish a donation cadence. Time to move on to organizing. 15 minutes a day. If you use that 15 minutes a day for housework instead of organizing, you're not going to get organized - EVER. What's the difference between housework and organizing? That's what I'm focusing on in my PhD. No joke - in the American Time Use Study, working on a boat is considered housework! Emptying ashtrays, shoveling coal, waiting for your electric car to charge - all housework. Mind blown! Housework is anything you do weekly that is basically undone by the time you finish it. Dishes, laundry, grocery shopping, planning meals, cleaning the refrigerator, you get it. So the 15 minutes a day you are spending on ORGANIZING (not housework!) should be for something that will last at least a month. There isn't enough information out in the world about how to actually get organized. There is for decluttering and productivity - but not organizing. So when you're looking this year to follow someone to inspire you to get organized, look for these things: Someone who has the plan and the results that you want Does their lifestyle match yours? Their rigidity - Do they have lots of checklists? Do their checklists have checklists? How they pivot during unexpected events: Do they pivot the way that you would? I might not be your person. I may not be enough organization for you. And that's ok. Are you ready to get organized in 2024? I want to encourage you that it is literally impossible to be behind when you are organizing. All you have to do is START! EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Last week we went over the first step to the cycle of getting organized; decluttering. I shared that decluttering leads to organization. I defined organization as lasting change in your home - not like housework that needs to be done daily or weekly. In this episode, I take that definition one layer deeper. Your rooms should not be talking to you…what does that mean? There IS seasonality to our homes; our choice of shoes, meals we cook, our diets, activities we enjoy. Naturally, we need different items for each season. This is why here at Organize 365® we have divided the year into trimesters; 4 month segments to plan for the next phase of seasonality your home and life will be facing. Now that we are done with the holidays, when is the next time you'll be making a turkey? Likely in 11 months. So you could put that turkey pan and the lifters in your storage...but you can't because your storage area is a hot mess like every other storage area I've seen ever. THIS is why it's nice to be organized. You can tailor your spaces with the seasonality and have an appropriate organized storage area to do that! Each planning day helps you to anticipate these seasons and the "unexpected" events that come our way with each season. Did you know that this year Easter is in March?? Yes! Our last planning day we talked about that, which will change spring break for many of us. How do you "Spring Break"? You may need to make hotel reservations or talk to people you travel to for Easter. It's inevitable that after Easter our brains switch to summer - but the reality is that we have a lot of weeks left in school until summer. I also brought awareness to taxes. Yes, they are coming!! It's funny how these "unexpected" events come out of nowhere and can throw everything off track. This is why we have the planning days. For this reason, you get the first planning day included when you get The Productive Home Solution®. We want to give you all the support we can to get you organized and stay that way even if an unexpected or routine "unexpected" event comes your way. Year One After a year of going through all your spaces (15 minutes at a time) decluttering and organizing, you will no longer have rooms talking to you. No room is reminding you to change the light bulb, order a backup of a product you use daily, or a repair that is needed. You have backup of products you use and systems in place to resupply. You are no longer using your decision making allowance on what you are going to wear, what is for breakfast, or other simple decisions throughout your day. This process of decluttering will result in organization. This will not look like everything is labeled and "pretty." This kind of organization will look like more time and more free thinking space in your brain. You can start to mentally prepare for your day as you get ready or drive to work. You can focus on accomplishing your goals. You may not be organized now, but you could be a year from now. So where do you start? I always advise starting in your personal spaces and storage, and then you get to choose your own adventure. You can choose your paper, family spaces, or kids spaces. I will note that kids' spaces need to be done in the summer; so consider where you are in the year when you choose where you will organize next. Once you get to fall, you need to do the spaces you didn't do in summer. This will take you about a year. If you think about how much time you spent on just your bathroom, you can expect your full home to take about a year! Year Two Now that your spaces aren't talking to you, it's time to refine. You get life long access to The Productive Home Solution® and can really go through it as many times as you'd like. This time you will go through all of your spaces again…but during this round you will get rid of some things you didn't last time. You may have set up your Sunday Basket®, but you may find that you are not really making everything wait until Sunday. This year, you will start to understand the importance of waiting until Sunday to free up decision making and time. You will also start to better utilize The Paper Solution® Binders. You will find yourself going through the free blitzes at a deeper level. You are a productive planner. This is the year most people will add the Friday Workbox® too. You have seen the impact of the Sunday Basket® at home and you desire that same level of organization at work, too. Year Three THIS is the year you recognize "I am an organized person." You finally feel it. No rooms are talking to you. You know the visible and invisible work that needs to get done and you have systems in place to support you in work and life. Work is in control. Life is in control. You can flux when unexpected life events come your way. Your home and work will not fall apart. Now you can gather all the time from both areas and think about whatever you want to all the time. You can now start to do what you are uniquely created to do! I'm not goin

You all love when Emily comes on the podcast! Here's the update… Pretty safe to say the two of us like to plan. And there's a cadence or a cycle to organizing. We dream, make it real, complete the idea, and then we get to start dreaming again. Emily shared that she looks at these areas of her life the last week of the year or the first week of the new year: financial, spiritual, relational, emotional, mental, and vocational. She decides the next steps she wants to take to improve those areas and then strives towards the next step over the next six weeks which takes her to her birthday. She can audition new ideas and keep what works and what needs to be revamped. "Forcing things never prosper." Emily and I agree I have a pretty high awareness of my intuition. I have always been more focused on the destination rather than how I get there. I asked Emily when she decided to start trusting her intuition. She acknowledged that she used to force things and go against her gut. And it was no surprise that things haven't worked out with this strategy. At Quality IP, she was tired of forcing square pegs into round holes. Once she relinquished control, she felt God putting things into place to keep her afloat as she started down her entrepreneurial journey. She has hustled. And let me tell you, in general, the hustle is back. The pandemic is over and we are back to the hustle and bustle of life. She has found a couple of marketing clients and she's done some odd jobs to supplement. She's always been a fantastic networker and those relationships are paying off. There's no forcing anything and she's listening to her intuition. She knows she's not in control. She reminded us all that we are only in charge of our thoughts, attitude, and our efforts. Emily pointed out not to count eggs that have not hatched. She shared that she had calls lined up that ended up canceling. But Emily didn't sweat it because she'd taken advantage of all opportunities that had come her way. Don't say no to a money making opportunity today because you may have money coming in a week or two. A Friday Workbox® can really help a person to keep track of odd jobs while organizing your main stream of income. Emily has found herself to be more productive when she starts the day with a list of priorities from the end of yesterday's work day. She made her list at the end of the day what was most important to complete the next day while it was fresh. Emily took advantage of her good credit score before she was let go to get a bank loan as a safety net. Keep your credit score in good standings. Things are moving faster since Covid. I remember many years ago learning about the Singularity Theory from Ray Kurzweil, that at some point everyone would know everything. I had the hardest time wrapping my brain around this concept. This has been made possible mostly due to the internet. The rate at which we learn new information is exponentially faster than 10 years ago. There's not the lag of relaying of the information that there used to be. And now… Visit organize365.com/EmilyKelly to read more. EPISODE RESOURCES: Friday Workbox® 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

You did it! You made it to the end of 2023. What lies before us are all the hopes, dreams, and possibilities of 2024. This is what I like to call the Golden Week. The week after Christmas and before New Years where you're culminating the end of a year and getting ready for the beginning of a new year. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, the last week of December is magical for everyone. For some of us, we're like "Bye bye 2023! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!" What's the cost of not being organized? What's the cost of not making a choice about not making a resolution to get organized? The cost is usually time and money. Everything costs you time and everything costs you money. The first and easiest way that you can save money is by planning your food and meals. You use the Sunday Basket® System to help you meal plan. Use this Golden Week to reflect, make changes or pivots. Take 15 or 20 minutes a week and really start to think about your grocery shopping and meal planning. How can we get a handle on our time? For me, I've always captured every single second of my time to try to get as much out of that time as possible; to be as productive as possible. Now my goal is to get more of my time back so that I can do NOTHING. Yes, you heard that right! I really want to see if I can stop working by 8 pm every night. I know what needs to be moved into daytime hours or completely eliminated. Very few people know where their time goes. Not me. I keep track of everything - every minute spent at work, on school, with Grayson, Greg, Joey, Abby...all of it. So when you look at your 2024, is there one way in which you want to focus on your money? One way in which you want to focus on your time? One way in which you want to focus on your wellness? How can you take the first step to do that? The Sunday Basket® helps you get through as many tasks as possible and plan for the upcoming week of what you anticipate to happen. You can go to organize365.com to try the free week of the Sunday Basket®. What do you want out of your 2024? Where do you need to improve your organization so that you can have more time and money? EPISODE RESOURCES: Sunday Basket® Free 5-Day Mini Course Sign up for the Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Throw-back time…We are going to revisit a 3 part series that includes our most listened to episodes. I'm going to revisit what each step looks like and how to complete them. It's a domino effect - decluttering leads to organization which leads to productivity! There is so much information about decluttering and productivity but where is the handbook to organization? The middle step is missing. It's a common thought that housework is organization. I am here to set the record straight. Housework is those daily or weekly chores that never seem to be completed, and organization is the lasting result. Decluttering the utensil drawer and making it more functional for your home is organization. Putting things into the drawer from the dishwasher is housework. Vacuuming and laundry is housework. Once you organize something it usually stays that way for a while unless it's a family space and the results don't last as long. You know! Declutter → Organization → Productivity Step one is decluttering. All you have to do is set a 15 minute timer. Now to complete a housework task. Go to your bathroom or closet and declutter for 15 minutes. At the end of that 15 minutes decide where the items you no longer want will go. Will you toss them? Recycle them? Sell them? Donate them? In my book "Organization Is a Learnable Skill," I took 4 months to declutter. Then I decided to sell a few things. For those four months, I placed items in one room. Then I held a garage sale. I wasn't in a position to work and I wanted to contribute to the family so this was a way I could. You can sell online or however is most convenient for you. BUT I have three rules. In my opinion, sell the items that will bring in $25 or more. It will take you time to set up a garage sale or post and monitor online so make sure it's worth your time. Then set a deadline to have the items sold. If you haven't sold them by the deadline, then it's time to trash or donate. You could spend a lot of time trying to re-post or sell elsewhere. Call a spade a spade and move on. Decide before you sell specifically what you are going to use that money for. Like I mentioned, this was my way to contribute to my family. You could go on vacation, buy something for the house, remodel something, buy a new piece of furniture, The Productive Home Solution®…lol, just sayin'. If you have decided to donate…just relocate the items immediately to your car trunk. I encourage you to get a routine down daily or weekly. Maybe every Thursday after work, you stop by your donation center and drop off your items. Maybe you want to get through as much as you can in one week. Before you start the next 15 minute decluttering session the next day, you go drop off your items. Head home and complete as many 15 minute sessions as you have energy for. You CAN spend too long decluttering… Once you are happy with what is in your home, stop decluttering. It's possible that you keep decluttering things you actually want in search of that sense of control. Or you want to feel like the heavens have parted and are shining down on your hard work. Not yet. The idea is just to get rid of your broken or no longer used items so you can organize the things you do want in your home. I want you to know where they are and have your home functional for you. The next step of organization is where you will feel more confident and in control of your home. Look into my crystal ball These 15 minutes of decluttering sessions are sustainable for about 2 months on your own. And that brings us to the end of February. At that point you are going to think "I love the spaces I have decluttered and organized. I'd really like support to keep going on with the rest of my home. I'd like to try something more with Organize 365®" OR you will think "I did it! I organized the few spaces I spend time in and I'm at peace with that." I don't really have a crystal ball but I have observed clients and the Organize 365® community and have seen this play out time and time again. I'd love to be the one to help you get organized in 2024! Who are you gonna follow? Are you ready to get organized in 2024? I am not everyone's cup of tea and I am ok with that. I am a functional organizer. I strive for excellence not perfection. Greg grew up in a minimalist setting so he gives me grief over the house not being organized. He would not follow me! I am extremely organized, but I am not a minimalist. I like books and memorabilia. I like my things, and the things I have are organized. I hope you do see the value that I am offering. I hope you see how I pivoted during Covid and it seemed approachable for you. I hope you saw me take the challenge of Greg's shoulder surgery last week and see how the holiday was still successful. It just looked different this year. Whoever you decide to guide you down the road of organization - do you like their lifestyle, daily accomplishments, rigidity? Choose a person that tackles life events and organization in a way that fee

I just love sharing this journey with this community! I love that while processing my thoughts auditorily, I get to connect with you and pick your brains. Just like you all do in the online community! I shared with you about the Teacher Pilot and now I want to fill you in on the Kids Program Pilot. "How did you come up with the Kids Program?" I should have expected this question. Of course, they didn't have many organizational questions because they had just completed the after school program their parents signed them up for - The Kids Pilot. And there should have been no surprise that it was predominantly boys. Mom wanted little Johnny to pick up after himself better, I guess! We had 14 children participate. They wanted to know how I came up with the Kids Program. First Thing's First First things first, what is the Kids Program? In my years of professional home organizing, I developed some rules for organizing the kids' rooms. First, no parents. I wanted the child to feel comfortable to say yes or no to items or clothes they didn't want in their room. And let me tell you, you can force your child, guilt your child into keeping something in their room, but it isn't getting played with or worn! Speaking of stuffed animals, and you can apply this to other "collections," there's a process of elimination I explained. Our brains can get all mixed up when the things we definitely want to keep are mixed up with the things we are ok to let go. Also, if the child has a rock collection you don't want them to have, come up with a compromise. It's like their passion project and you are completely dismissing it. So instead allow them a certain amount of space or number of items that they can keep. It's their little passion project, their treasures. You can have an organized room with passion projects in them. And clothes are a whole other battle. When dealing with smaller children, the only real question they are considering is how do these clothes make me feel? They don't care about the occasion they may need it for. They never knew how you dressed as a child or how you envision your child dressing. They wanna be able to play in comfort. I always found in boys it was jeans vs. "swishy" pants. You can buy them all the jeans you want but if they like swishy pants, swishy pants are the only thing getting worn. I want to save the child from the battle with the parent over what they want to wear. And I want the parent to spend wisely on clothing their children will actually wear. I talk to the child in my only Lisa voice and help them to respectfully articulate to their parents their preferences and why. I know we all want an organized child and an organized child is much more likely to be confident. Organization breeds confidence. There are about 14 steps between "You know how" and "Do it like this" There is no system in place of how we "hand down" how to #adult. This applies to baby steps like helping our children to organize their mini apartments, to our emerging adults to their independent living spaces. That is why we offer the Kids Program and Launch Program for ages 16-25. We go out on our own and overnight gain a ton of responsibility. Did you know that one out of three children are born with organizational skills? So it isn't any wonder that 87% of adults don't feel organized. So if we don't learn organization in school or college, I mean, where are we to learn these skills? It's not like we wake up adults one day with the skill of organization! The Launch Binder is a great way to comprehensively hand down the skills and systems we have learned along the way for an organized lifestyle. How do we all learn grocery shopping, a cleaning schedule, managing prescriptions, health insurance, buying a car, routine things like oil changes and getting new tires? As parents we just figured it out with each new stage of life. And oh my gosh, throw a kid in the mix and now it just got a lot more complex! Now you are managing a house instead of an apartment, managing other people's messes and your emotions about those messes, and you are balancing work and home life - not just school and the other stuff mom and dad take care of. Kids don't know what they don't know and I believe we all want to better inform our children to reduce their stress and boost their confidence. How do we get this into the educational system? So again I want to ask you, my community…how can we get this into all educational systems? At what age? Senior in high school? At the college level? We NEED to be teaching the skill of organization! Did you know that children who aren't organized also have increased negative self talk? And as we get older and gain more responsibilities to juggle, do you think the self-talk improves? If we can teach these students how to get organized and maintain it, we'll have mentally healthier confident children with skills that transfer into the rest of their lives. That will result in them moving through their goals faster and

How do we move from being a productive person who can get a lot done in a day to someone who can really set and achieve bigger goals that are going to make a marked difference in the world? The way to become more impactful doesn't come from productivity, it doesn't come from apps, and it doesn't come from digitizing things. It comes from increasing your organization. In order to build the tracks for your work train, you have to establish work systems, processes and habits. In Workbox Planning Day, we talk about having a beginning of the day routine, a midday routine, and an end of the day routine. Then you can add in Friday Workbox® coworking time each Friday, and Planning Day every quarter. Now there will be the new Workbox Planning Day Implementation event that will kick off next week, and will continually happen every quarter. You have to build these tracks first so that you can move forward faster. Having these three routines each day gives you guardrails and allows you to task stack different things at different times of the day so that you have more capacity and more time to work on your purple projects and move new initiatives forward through the company. Now you're moving faster because these habits and routines have reduced your decision making fatigue. You've task stacked as many of your green tasks into these bucketed times each day and week so that you have more free time to work on the other colors - pink, purple and blue. Now it's time to build the train cars. How you build your work train cars is very customized. What your train looks like throughout your career is also very customized. Interestingly, you can get your work train up and running faster than your home train. Typically it only takes a year - if you're an employee. If you're a business owner, it's a lifetime pursuit. You're never going to be done because you're always reorganizing the train tracks, moving around the cars or adding and subtracting them. It's basically one big game. The first work train car will be the Business Friday Workbox®. This will teach you there are four different kinds of work; four different roles you play in your job. Everyone has four: pink, purple, blue and green. Once you figure out what those are, we're going to optimize those four kinds of work over the course of one year. The second train car are the Workbox Planning Days. Until you learn how to plan, how to use your Friday Workbox®, it's really just a pretty way of organizing your to do list. Until you learn to plan the work that's within the workbox, it's very reactive. You might speed up a little, but you will not have the impact that you want to have. How do you take the green work (administrative) and task stack it in as small amount of time as possible at regular intervals throughout the day so that you can increase the capacity you have for the pink, purple and blue work? Once you start going through the Planning Days, you start to proactively and purposefully plan out what your initiatives are going to be in the next 90 days. You start doing less, but getting more in depth. You delete or delegate projects, you streamline your goals and stop overcommitting. You realize how cyclical work is and how much it's related to home. There are other things that are going to slow down your train - like losing a team member, adding a team member, a new product, losing a product, and so on. Every time you pull into the station, you will go through every single train car. Every 90 days, every quarter. I would love for you to join me for the Workbox Planning Day Implementation event next week. It will be the 13th week of every quarter from now on, so you can add this into your coaching package in order to keep your train running. My job is to get you more productive and profitable so that you can avail yourself of all of those great coaches thereafter. EPISODE RESOURCES: Business Friday Workbox® Workbox Planning Day Friday Workbox® Planning Day Monthly Subscription Workbox Implementation Day Sign up for the Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

I wish you guys could understand the opportunity Jayme gave me when she offered up her school as a pilot school. Jayme had been talking about the Education Friday Workbox® and explaining how she was so organized, but I was still shocked that she was able to get approval overnight! It was an easy "yes" for the superintendent because he knew it was already so effective for Jayme. I am so excited to share how it went! "Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years." - Bill Gates The same can be said for our houses. Most people overestimate what they can achieve in one weekend or month and underestimate what they can achieve in one year. It's funny, through developing Organize 365® I've been able to identify that we do not focus on decluttering or productivity as much as we focus on learning organization. The first one aids organization and the last is allowed due to organization. When I wrote "Organization Is a Learnable Skill", that's what I shared; my acts of organization. When we are organized, we get the pay off of productivity. I'm excited to dive into the book study and dig into how you can achieve results, too! Three years after launching Organize 365®, I was able to be the business owner and send my team out into the field. After six years of effectively running Organize 365® due to organization leading to productivity, I was still blogging, had the podcast, the early stages of what is now The Productive Home Solution®, and manufacturing for the Sunday Basket®. I was still in multiple direct sales companies and the train wasn't stopping any time soon. But If you would have told me I would accomplish all of that, I am not sure I would have expected to. I used to love to stay after school when I was a teacher and organize a fellow teachers' space. They loved when I bopped into their classrooms. I say all of that to tell you that at that time, I launched 8 workboxes. I had a box for all the things I was doing. And the Education Friday Workbox® was one of those 8. Being a teacher is so different from any other career. When you need a potty break at work, you get up and go, right? Not a teacher, they are in charge and looking after multiple children. They can't just leave them unattended. I have such an understanding of the teacher world, workload, and home life. So I knew how to make the Friday Workbox® work for teachers. I truly believe this should be on each teacher's supply list. It's a one time purchase and then a lifetime of organization in the classroom. The real issue becomes who pays for it; I don't think this should also fall on the teacher! Should it come from the federal budget? The state budget? Or the local educational budget? Each state operates a little differently so we'll have to cross that bridge when we get to it, I guess. Our teachers really only get paid based on instructional time with students. But what many may not realize is all the administrative tasks they have, the responsibility to meet curriculum, nurturing the relationships with students and parents, and time that takes away from their families and pets that rely on them, too. They do not get paid based on all of the invisible work they do that is not optional! Our teachers make large sacrifices of mental capacity for the career that they love. Did I call Sally's mom back? I need 4 toilet paper rolls for that experiment tomorrow. Those are just a few examples of what teachers are trying to remember. We need to help teachers free up their mental overwhelm! They are constantly surpassing their mental capacity. I designed this pilot to teach them how to write those thoughts down quickly, something that can be done right in the middle of class, and continue on with the lesson. Then at the end of the week, sort them into slash pockets and conquer the tasks. It's so gratifying to free up mental capacity for them in a way that makes them confident everything will still get handled. Because I understand this world so much, I decided to create 3 more slash pocket colors for the Education Friday Workbox®. So, how did it go? What I Discovered It was interesting to me that all three sessions I led were mandatory. There were 52 people in attendance. This was offered to all faculty, not just teachers. Thirty-five staff members took on the opportunity to get organized for a more smoothly run classroom. The special needs teachers showed that they needed additional support. After doing a zoom with the special needs teachers, I decided to offer the Paper Organizing Retreat to all of the special needs teachers. Because what I learned was, almost all of the special needs teachers were new to teaching or new to their school building. That's a lot of newness and it explained their desire for more support! I had 4 of them attend plus Jayme. I sat down with them and learned more about their students and their workload. We came up with customized solutions for each teacher. That's the th

Are you driving a car, or conducting a train? Today's episode is about your home organizing train. It takes a lot of effort to stop a train. When you are productive, have a lot of impact, and your life is up and running - you get a couple of unexpected events coming at you but can take the first few of them in stride. When you are driving a car, there's only so much you can handle. You only have so much capacity, although that car moves fast and is nimble. You can stop it easily, pivot or turn around. The size of your car, how fast it is, how much gas you can keep in the tank has a limit. A train doesn't start or stop very fast - but once you lay those tracks and build those train cars, you can go really far really fast without a lot of effort. How do you lay the tracks and build the cars? Organizing. Creating and maintaining systems, habits, and productivity at home and work. Once you have those established - which is going to take a while - the only thing that will derail you are really big life events. These can be catastrophic: like a medical diagnosis, a divorce, or someone passes away. Or they can be happy events: getting pregnant, getting married, moving to a new home. Your train will also slow down and speed up during the Golden Windows of a calendar year. You will need to slow down and "come into the station" at the end of each quarter at work and each trimester at home. This is the piece I was missing that I am going to share with you. You have to establish your systems, routines, and habits that your train will run on; otherwise you can't have the train. You must establish these first, so your train has something to run on. If not, then you're stuck in the car. When you're driving a car, you're just on roads that have been established by other people and you decide in which order you want to take those roads that somebody else created. You have to stop at every red light, decide whether to turn right or left, take the highway or the back roads. Constantly making all these decisions unnecessarily. Now that you have the engine, it's time to build those train cars. Your first one is the Sunday Basket®. You must become a master at delaying your decision making. You plan your week and stop being pulled by every single decision that comes at you. The next train cars are personal, storage, family, and paper organization - which happens within The Productive Home Solution®. Remember, each of these train cars are going to take a couple of months to build. They will need regular maintenance. This takes discipline and the right mindset. Every car needs to be decluttered and organized every trimester at home. At first, it's going to take more time. To establish the train tracks, move from a car to a locomotive, put the cars on the track, and get the train up to speed takes at least three years. This realization is such a buzzkill, I know. Don't get discouraged though, it's not like it takes this long to see any positive changes. You can run that train at 50% after a year and it's still going to be better than what you had before! But to make the impact you want and need, those train cars need to be running at 80-90% organized so they are running strictly on maintenance. A train that is running on maintenance pulls into the depot and you go through it car by car - this is what happens during Planning Days, and now during the new Prep Event I've created. You will revisit each of your train cars - the Sunday Basket®, your personal, storage, family, and paper. If you are this far in organizing, this will feel weird. You will think that you need to tear it apart and start all over each time. But you know the math: you've subtracted by decluttering, added in what you need, multiplied for productivity and now you're in division. You don't have to start all over again. Even if you have a major event, you can go through it all again - but it will go so much faster. Moving to a train is a purposeful, disciplined act that requires you to grow organizing muscles, to think long-term instead of short-term, to think strategically instead of giving into immediate gratification. Once you learn this, you will have the skill set with you for the rest of your life. EPISODE RESOURCES: Sunday Basket® Business Friday Workbox® The Productive Home Solution® The Productive Home Solution® Planning Day Workbook Monthly Subscription Plan Kids Program The Productive Home Solution® Planning Day Prep Sign up for the Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Ready to get to know Lisa Woodruff from the past? I feel like it's valuable to fill you in on where all this started. Have you ever had an out of body experience? A temper tantrum of sorts? I remember one night in 2005, when I had one. It was as if I was watching myself have this meltdown. Greg was in shock, took the kids, and left for a long time. During that time, I tried to figure out what my problem was and how to get it together. I looked at my planner and realized I had taken the kids to 110 Dr. appointments on top of work and regular life responsibilities. No wonder I was having a melt down. I can remember the added stress of how broke we were in 2007 and 2008. Unfortunately after my parents divorced, my father passed away in 2009. My sister and I found a little financial relief in the sale of his house. Nothing stressful about settling an estate! But I was able to remodel our kitchen with some of that money, but then what? I knew better than to think the debt we had accrued wouldn't just get racked up again if something didn't change. I do have both trains running full steam ahead now. But there was a time when I graded all aspects of my life with an F with the exception of work. I was a teacher at a Montessori school for 18 months. I learned alot from my co teacher, the students, and that school. I learned compassion and was exposed to more diversity than I ever had in my teacher settings before. 2010 was the year of the Tsunami in Japan and the Earthquake in Haiti. Montessori is flexible and allowed for us to have discussions with the students about these current events in a way that expanded their thinking. I really loved my job there. That is, until it was brought to my attention that they didn't feel like I was doing as great of a job as I thought I had been doing. As I drove home from that difficult conversation, a conversation I tried to pass on because Abby was home very sick and I just wanted to be with her, I knew I needed to make a change. I asked myself, "What am I doing with my life?" If I was appreciated in my work, I knew my family would make a small sacrifice. But that wasn't the case. So I decided to ditch the job and raise my grades in the other areas of my life. I was spinning way too many plates the way it was. In December of 2011, I quit my job to be a stay at home mom. I knew the life I wanted to provide for my children. I also knew I needed to make money to replace my teacher salary. I am no stranger to making money and within 6 months I had surpassed that teacher salary. By our 2012 tax refund, I listed 9 schedule C's! NINE! I was doing it! I was available for my family and making money. Greg and I are very much aligned in two things; doing whatever it takes to help our children and living a life with no regrets, even if that meant money was tight at times. I didn't want to regret not being home with my children. I don't regret that we haven't been able to travel until now but boy am I ready! Europe here we come! And with everything Greg and I have been through, I'm so thankful that my marriage was never in question. 2012 is also the year I launched Organize 365®. I didn't know what it was going to become. All I knew is that the areas I had been successful in were organization and that it would result in good SEO! I wrote the book "Organization Is A Learnable Skill" for that year. It's a pretty accurate account of that year. I wrote month by month what I did and how I felt about the actions I was taking. I am a 4th generation female college graduate. I am a 4th generation female business owner! And here we are 12 years later with a podcast that has been consistent for 9 years helping this community. And I am proud to now be pursuing my PhD to better my business, Organize 365®! EPISODE RESOURCES: Episode 69: My Depression Story & How Depression Affects Organization Organization Is a Learnable Skill The Sunday Basket® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Today's episode is going to be a refresher to some of you, and new to a lot of you. I've recorded two podcast series that I'm going to reference, plus a concept I created years ago. This will get us all to the same place of thinking as we end the year. Are you the one thinking: "Ok, I want that productivity that Lisa has and I'm doing #allthethings. So why don't I have what I think I should have as productivity?" You're busy running around like a chicken with your head cut off, trying to make the merriment for everyone around you the entire month of December. What you're craving and what you want is to figure out how to finally get organized so you could be more productive, so you could be less stressed, so you can get more done. So why is it that we can declutter, get kind of organized, and then get to productivity - and yet we still don't achieve our goals? Or we get some time back, but not a lot of time...then one little unexpected life event comes and you feel like you've been put behind 6 months at home. Why is it such a regular occurrence that getting sick or an unexpected event can derail us so badly? Organization is a three-part cycle: Decluttering, Organization, Increased Productivity. I'm going to add a fourth part to the cycle - Impact. This is the one that most people never get to. We're always going for productivity, but really I think we're going for impact and productivity is the step before impact. Now consider the Lisa Math that I do...and let's fit all of this together. Adding is organizing. Subtraction is decluttering. Multiplication is productivity. Division is the impact. Impact comes from organization. Not productivity - impact. Productivity will increase the speed of the organization you have, but that's it. If we're only as productive as our organization will let us be, how do we optimize organization? Productivity is time bound. You can only get so much done in a day. EPISODE RESOURCES: Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution® Planning Day Prep Event Workbox Implementation Event Sign up for the Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

I've been talking a lot about planning lately - an obscene amount honestly, but that's ok. Ironically, today is Workbox Planning Day! We're starting off the month getting those purple projects completed and ready for more GREEN in 2024! In today's episode I talk about how this week I'd love for you to come up with a list of planned neglect. It's been a long time since I've talked about planned neglect. I remember the first time I ever heard about this concept at a Creative Memories conference. I want you to think about all of the things that you've done for the past 11 months of this year. Out of all those things, what are the things that you are NOT going to do in order to create more margin, more bandwidth, more breathing room for you to actually enjoy the holidays and enjoy the end of this year? Really, honestly think about it - what are the things that you are going to purposefully put off from right now until the end of January? Just like right now with getting my PhD, I know I'm neglecting a lot of things in my life for the next 2 years (I'm almost done with year 1!) This doesn't mean I'll never do those things again, just not right now. Figure out what you can do, when you can do it, and how long it is going to take. What are all the roles and responsibilities that you have inside of your life and what are things you can do to make those easier? EPISODE RESOURCES: Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution® Friday Workbox® Sign up for the Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Happy Thanksgiving! I am so thankful for YOU! Did you know that you can write a note to us when you place orders with Organize 365®? I love to read them! I also love to know what some of your orders are for...they can be so random sometimes! It makes me so curious - and it makes me want to know even more about you! As you're listening to today's episode, I'm probably putting up our Christmas tree. I used to put it up the Monday before Thanksgiving, when the kids were in school. I'd grab my fountain Coke, turn on holiday music, and get to work. Things have definitely changed! Only in America do you have Thanksgiving, followed by a bazillion days where you spend money. We eat a lot of food and spend a lot of money! I spend an obscene amount of money on Black Friday. I couldn't believe how much money I spent last year, but also how much I saved! I finally realized when you're looking at your household economy (hello food prices!) you have to figure out how to make your money go further at home. Here's my tip: shop for ANYTHING you need on Black Friday! Think of your house as a small business - when you spend money, you stimulate the economy. You are the CEO of your home; the business owner of your household. You have expenses and ways in which you can make your cashflow last longer. If you see anything that is being sold at a deep discount right now, and you know you will be using that item before March 1st - buy it NOW. Also, think about not only the gifts you can give that people want, but also the things that people need. Items like Apple watches or the Hero medication dispenser may be expensive purchases, but for loved ones who it could be incredibly beneficial to (think elderly parents) it would be a worthwhile purchase. Could you go in on big ticket items with other family members? Would it give you peace of mind or take any burden off of you (or them) in some way? You may come up with gift ideas of things that they don't even realize that they need! EPISODE RESOURCES: Black Friday Shop Holiday Blitz Shop Sign up for the Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Happy Anniversary Wednesday Podcast! In this episode, I wanted to do something just a little different. Normally I talk to someone who shares their Organize 365® transformational story. Some way, shape or form they found us, BUT not today's guest. Today, I am introducing you to the editor of the Organize 365® Podcast, Tiffany Mason with Virtually You! She has been with Organize 365® for a year now. I wanted to know her thoughts about the time she has been with us and the effect we have had on her. She sends me Voxer messages often so I know she has fallen down the same organizational rabbit hole as the rest of us! Recently, Virginia had to leave Organize 365®, but it was Virginia who connected us with Tiffany. There was an interview, we threw a lot at her, she didn't blink, so we decided to give her a try. Initially, she shared that she felt a little overwhelmed; there were a lot of different episode formats, products she didn't know about, and lingo she'd not heard before. After a few episodes, it made sense that we had a glossary playlist we needed her to republish for the sake of the Organize 365® Podcast listeners. It wasn't long before I could tell she was hooked. I mean, she is paid to listen to the podcast, but I think she would listen regardless. But why? Tiffany shared that she feels seen by me. She feels like my mission is not to sell sell sell - but rather offer systems and products to free up time for my listeners so they can do what they are uniquely created to do. Tiffany can also relate to my husband Greg. Her husband is more like me and she finds humor in the things I share regarding Greg and I! And she shared how impressed she was to learn Organize 365® was the 32nd largest woman run business in Cincinnati. I am proud to share that this year we moved up to the 30th spot! Because Tiffany is in Florida and I am in Ohio, I shared that Cincinnati is the number 1 city for startups. She pointed out that our ranking is even more impressive, being in that environment and climbing. I wanted to know how her organization has changed. She said she started with the Friday Workbox® and after she was comfortable with that, she wanted to do a planning day. She has had such a great impact from the planning day that she joked about getting on her knees and calling it a PSA post for society that all women should attend a planning day! She saw what it could do for work so naturally she wanted a Sunday Basket® for home life. She aspires to train her family to put things in her Sunday Basket® as you have shared here on the Wednesday Podcast. We got into an interesting conversation about the definition of home roles. Tiffany saw a post where a wife had the kitchen garbage and questioned if she's crazy to think he should do all of the garbage, if his "chore" is to do garbage. But this is the problem. After the war in the late 40's, marketing "brainwashed" us all into thinking a woman's role was homemaker. The guys aren't at fault either, they are just doing what they saw modeled. There are plenty of great fathers and husbands who are willing to do their part. Tiffany remembered a previous guest sharing that nowadays women are working and don't only have the house to focus on. In business, job descriptions are written but at home…well?? And in my studies, I have uncovered this is a white woman problem. In other ethnicities, they have well defined roles and housework gets done! Even the children have roles. Tiffany expressed so much gratitude for being a part of Organize 365®. She is impressed with the grace we all extend one another. She has been able to take some of our organization and implement it with her clients. There are so many moving pieces, but she's proud to work with Organize 365®. She encouraged all of you to share an episode with someone on the drive to Thanksgiving dinner, like a spouse maybe (wink wink). OR if you have had enough Thanksgiving, get some fresh air while you catch up on the Organize 365® Podcast and feel free to tag us! Tiffany's advice is, "You don't need to reinvent the wheel, just get the products that Lisa has taken the time to perfect." EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® Home Planning Day Workbox Planning Day Friday Workbox® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

What do YOU want - and how do YOU want to show up at the holidays? We spend so much time, money, energy, thought, worry, and preparation for the holidays. Always outwardly focused, which is fine. It always seems as if we're constantly in the mindset of...what does the family need? What do elder members or extended members of the family need? What do the kids need? What do we need to keep doing, even though we don't want to do it anymore because somebody still wants us to do it? There are so many things that we spend our time and energy on that are outwardly focused; we do them out of service, out of respect, out of love, whatever it is. In this podcast, I want you to be selfish just for a few minutes. I want you to think about what you want and how do you want to show up at the holidays? You probably just completed the Holiday Blitz. It was free, you got the printables, you watched the videos, you asked your family questions. Then, today at 11 am ET is our first annual Holiday Blitz Mini Planning Day. It's 90 minutes, and if you can't attend live the replay is available to watch through December 31st. This mini planning day will focus on the person we want to show up as at the holidays. Not what you're going to serve, what your house will be decorated like, not if you send out Christmas cards or not. All that was decided in the Holiday Blitz. That is the difference between the planning days and the product. So the Holiday Blitz identifies all the work, all the external, visible things that you see in the holidays - the food, the decorations, and everything in between. The Holiday Blitz Mini Planning Day is about YOU. Planning days are selfish. That's ok. They are selfish because planning days are for you to plan your energy, your financial resources, your intellect, your energy level, your hopes and dreams and desires. I don't think we sit back often enough and ask ourselves what we want, because we're too busy doing all the things that are already on our to-do list and we say: "I'll figure out what I want after ALL this is done." It's time for that to end. You're so used to being the orchestrator, the driver, the director, the doer, the giver, the server. What if someone coordinated the holidays for YOU? How would you want them to orchestrate it? I want to challenge you to give that to yourself because you're worth it and you deserve it. You should be able to enjoy the holidays just like you are making the merriment for everyone else. When you're happier - everybody else is happier too. Remember that. EPISODE RESOURCES: Holiday Blitz Mini Planning Day Holiday Blitz Bundle Holiday Blitz Bundle [+] Complete Sunday Basket® Sunday Basket® FREE Holiday Blitz Sign up for the Newsletter Sunday Basket® & Friday Workbox® Clubs Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

In this episode, I introduce you to Trish K. Trish lives at home with her daughter and 3 year old grandson, Wolfie. Trish has a great relationship with her sister, Kathleen, who loves to try all kinds of organizational systems. When she tried Organize 365®, she believed Trish could utilize it too. So about a year ago, she "tricked" Trish into doing "a free thing." Once Trish was inspired to take her organizing one step further it got her wondering, what else could she learn from Organize 365® Not only has Trish learned new ideas, but she has sustained her organization. That was the thing. With other organizing systems Trish had tried, she'd fall off the wagon. But with Organize 365®, she's been keeping up with The Productive Home Solution®. Trish has taken advantage of most of the systems and products from Organize 365®. Lisa pointed out that holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, these all happen annually without fail. Trish expressed how she loved the planning days that help her to be proactive. Trish said she wants to live a proactive life. She loves that she gets to revisit her planning every 120 days. Lisa talked about the age old theory that simply writing down our goals "puts them on our radar." And sometimes we even accidentally achieve them! Even if you do nothing after planning day, you thought about it and are aware now. No one knows what you are doing and no one knows if you took any action. No one is checking. Trish said it's like planting seeds; over time they bloom. Trish has found so much joy throughout her short time learning with Organize 365®. She unintentionally planted seeds in her daughter, too. Trish was so excited about an organization project she had completed that she wanted to show her daughter. Trish's daughter has ADHD and Autism, so organizational projects can be tough for her. Heck, school and life has been tough for her! Lots of times when Trish talks to her daughter, she feels like her daughter only hears Charlie Brown's teacher speaking to her. Much to Trish's surprise, her daughter is watching what she is doing and wants the same for herself. This brought out a lot of similarities for Trish and Lisa to talk about. They both have grown single moms, who have their own struggles, living with them with their grandchildren. And of course, the conversation turned to their grandsons. They compared weight, the types of beds they are in or about to grow out of, the sizes of clothes they are in, and the pure joy of living with them right now. As grandparents, you get to see life through their eyes because you aren't worried about dinner or those daily tasks that we do to keep our houses running during the active parenting years. Trish is happy to see her daughter thriving too due to the example Trish is showing. Trish started with her closet and graduated to her kitchen. She goes by The Productive Home Solution® plan and has done the kitchen three times now. Trish described her old placement of items in the kitchen; how silly that she put the thing she uses the most on the highest shelf. She has since learned to put those items in a more convenient spot. Trish also appreciates the freedom of "permission" to put into action functional organization over Pinterest organization where all the boxes match. Trish's advice is, "Just start!" Even if it's just one drawer, get started and it will give you energy to do just one more drawer. And that will feel so good, you'll want to tackle a small closet or room. Get started before your brain has a chance to start coming up with excuses! EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution® Planning Day The Paper Solution® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

In this episode, I invited Lisa J. back for an update because she has some exciting news. She lives in Australia with her husband Kirk on their large farm, and their two teen children go to boarding school. She takes care of the administrative tasks for their farm. She loves what she does but got overwhelmed with all the tasks. If you recall from her previous episode, she got relief with the Sunday Basket® and Friday Workbox®. It's not common for a farm in Australia to have more than one person taking care of the office and associated tasks. She took Lisa's advice after being on the last podcast and has hired an executive assistant three days a week for the past 3 months. It's going well and she is now looking more at the corporate farm structure. Family farm, one wife is usually taking care of the office. Corporate farm, there is a "team" doing all of the administrative tasks. She can see their farm going in the Corporate direction. The Lisas discussed what that may look like. Lisa Woodruff brought up the point that yes, there are a lot of tasks. Yes, you can hire help to get those tasks done BUT it must be in the name of growth. Or be aware that it may just simply enhance your lifestyle. Right? It will free up time that usually a business owner can then use towards strategy and growth. If you are content with where business is then just know you are paying for that extra time. And that is fine but Lisa made a brilliant point about hiring help in this respect. That being said, Lisa J. is in a growth mindset and since the last episode has been able to attend 4 planning days. She said the way Lisa W. breaks down the quarter really helps her. It helps her to spatially visualize what will be taking place. She likes to do a one year plan, break that down to one quarter, then one month, and lastly one week. The planning days help Lisa J. to do just that and accomplish goals. Lisa J. has been able to transition some purple slash pockets to her assistant. Now that she's in the thick of it, she and Lisa also talked about some blue and green slash pockets Lisa J. could hand over to her assistant. The Australian government has put a lot of paperwork back on the farms which has increased their workload exponentially. These are tasks her assistant can do, as well as handle technology and social media. Lisa J. was good to create slash pockets for her repetitive tasks and can now offload them one by one. Lisa J. wants to share her organization with other farm offices. It's usually the wife of the farmer. We all know mom's wear a lot of hats and not all of them have the capacity or skill set to be #allthethings. Both Lisa's agree the work that one woman is doing is easily the work of 5 people. Just think of companies as big as Lisa's farm and there are usually multiple people running HR, bookkeeping, administrative tasks, and more! The beautiful part about Organize 365® systems is that they are kind of like scaffolding and then you, the homeowner or business owner, can customize it to your needs. Anyone can apply these systems to their lives. Drum rolllllll pllllllleassssse….Lisa J. is going to start a podcast to help other farm offices. It will be titled Farm Office Tool Box. She has a burning desire to help other wives/farm offices that may be trying to do it all and feel overwhelmed. She wants to share how she uses the Sunday Basket® and Friday Workbox®, or really how she had kind of combined them to stay consistent and feel in control. And she wants to normalize more people running a farm office. Lisa J. shared that being organized really helps her to feel confident. She trusts herself to make good decisions for the farm. Lisa W. pointed out that all farms, not just Australian farms, will be able to utilize and implement the tips and advice Lisa J. will be sharing. Lisa's advice will be in her podcast Farm Office Tool Box Podcast…check it out! EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® Friday Workbox® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

I find it challenging, interesting and exciting to try to break down how I plan and win at home and work, which took me two decades to figure out. It's like working backwards with little Lego bricks that you can replicate to build your own productive and organized house. There are productivity courses and productivity gurus. For the most part, people who have learned to be productive have done so through a lot of trial and error, thinking, processing, and moving things around in their brains and in real life. Organization is essential for a productive life because if your physical space is disorganized, then it's harder to have enough mental capacity to organize invisible work - which is what productivity is. If your physical space is disorganized, then your productivity doesn't get enough traction to make enough of an impact in your life that you will persist long enough for it to become magical. The Sunday Basket® is the first step to becoming a productive person, because it moves you from day-to-day thinking to week-to-week thinking. Even if you only do it for 90 minutes on Sundays, it's a monumental lift because the day to day of running a household and being a homeowner is pervasive. There's an inherent, unending task of being a household manager. You can't systematize your house to the point that there's no work to be done. You can reduce your expectations, the amount of stuff you own, the size of the house you live in, outsource your meals, cleaning services...the list goes on and on. But still there's only so much you can automate in your life. You still need to buy clothing and take care of your body (shower, brush your teeth, etc.), eat, sleep, and the like. The final thing I want to reiterate is that the Sunday Basket® System moving you from day-to-day thinking to week-to-week thinking has a secondary benefit for your whole family. It creates this weekly cadence and this purposeful pause in requests and fulfillment of requests for yourself and your family. Being able to look at your finances on Sunday and then make decisions based on what everyone wants or needs helps you make better money decisions and also better time decisions. Next week I'm going to talk about why email is the laundry and dishes of work. Oh my gosh! And then in a few weeks I'm going to talk about how to move into season-to-season productivity, both at home and at work. What does it look like to take the Sunday Basket® and turn it into seasonal productivity? What about the Friday Workbox®? Why would you even want that? Stay tuned! EPISODE RESOURCES: Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution® Sign up for the Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

In this episode, I introduce you to Kristi L. who has two daughters at home. Rachel is a high school senior and Lydia is in 8th grade. After losing her husband to cancer, Kristi decided to move closer to family in Indiana. Kristi is a rare gem who found Organize 365® before the podcast! It's so fun to meet someone who has seen and appreciated the evolution of Organize 365®. Kristi started with my eBook in 2012, then grew her organizing skills through the Sunday Basket®. Kristi relied heavily on the Sunday Basket® to stay organized while she took care of her husband. After his passing and trying to do it all, Kristi decided to sell the horse farm and move. It didn't sell overnight. While trying to keep the house "showing" ready, she moved a lot of stuff into a pod for later organizing which was smart because it took 2 years. She decided the taxes were just too high and was tired of spending a lot of time mowing the lawn, just a quick 8 hours! When they got to their new downsized home with only two garages, Kristi took her time settling in. She could have continued to get COBRA health insurance forever, but her girls needed coverage going into 2019. So Kristi decided to go back to work. It was a good thing too because shortly after her daughter, Lydia, would be diagnosed with epilepsy and she'd be using the Warrior MAMA Binder more than ever. She already had the binder because Lydia has an IEP for ADHD. This is when Kristi decided they needed more structure and she knew the 100 Day Challenge (now The Productive Home Solution®) was just the answer. Shortly after, she added the Friday Workbox® for organization and productivity at work too. She realized a lot of tasks were assigned digitally so admittedly she let the Friday Workbox® go. But then in her review, she was urged to get more training done. It dawned on her they weren't getting done because it was something the Friday Workbox® used to help with! She was happy to share that she went back to the Friday Workbox® and now has the next three months scheduled, which allowed her to delegate work to others (in different time zones) to help with different tasks associated with the training. She learned her lesson and is sticking with the Friday Workbox®! Kristi now has The Productive Home Solution®. After having a nightmare that she was passing and her daughters were going to have to take care of things and she wasn't organized, she knew she needed the binders for peace of mind. She pointed out that the Sunday Basket® serves to accomplish actionable tasks while the binders keep your affairs in order. She felt it beneficial to get both which are included in the The Productive Home Solution®. Kristi has a lot less stress these days due to the products and systems from Organize 365®. One the most recent things Kristi treated herself to was the Paper Organizing Retreat! Kristi loved the 1:1 help she received with her paper and binders. She had such a fabulous time at the retreat, not to mention the night in the hotel where she was finally able to charge her car. More importantly, she got to "be" with all her paper that next day and make more progress on what she started at the retreat! Next time she's bringing her mom! Her mom is 80 and has a lifetime of paper. Kristi likes the idea of being able to shred what she predicts to be 99.99% of that paper at the retreat! Lisa joked that either way, Kristi will be taking care of that paper. So it can be with her mom's help now or later because it's not going anywhere otherwise. Kristi's advice is, "start with the Sunday Basket®, then buy it all." Kristi says to start with pink and take care of yourself first. Get you organized for two reasons; as a woman you need to get organized first and it'll take a long time before it needs to be touched up-you're the only one using your personal space. EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution® Planning Day The Paper Solution® Friday Workbox® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

My "party trick" is being able to know what you're thinking; I've been doing it for over a decade. My obsession is figuring out how families and homes work. How to make visible the invisible work so ultimately we can spend more time with family and make more memories. If I stay at least 10 days ahead, I'll have a buffer. If you have a buffer, then it takes A LOT for you to get behind the 8 ball again. Here are the things you need to be thinking about that will happen in the next 10 days. Halloween: candy inventory and costumes Fall Events: pumpkin patch, festivals, trunk or treat, etc. Daylight Savings Time: changing clocks and circadian rhythms Election Day: how and when you will vote As a business owner, I think about how these events will impact my employees. The more you are the leader, the Household Manager, the CEO and COO of your home - you get to decide what YOU want. You get to ask yourself: "What do I want?" How do I know what's coming next? I know because I observe my own life, look a couple of weeks into the future, and then I move backwards. I'm obsessive about what is coming next, what is coming next, what is coming next. Always. EPISODE RESOURCES: Holiday Blitz Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution® Sign up for the Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU learn the skill of organization, too! In this episode, I introduce you to Jayme H, a wife and mom of two. In 2016, Jayme was lucky enough to attend a summit where Lisa was a speaker. From there, Jayme went down the Organize 365® rabbit hole. When she found Organize 365®, she had two children in K-8 and was a teacher. Since then, she has been promoted to counselor and is now principal of her school. Jayme is a unique individual that has found so much success with the Sunday Basket®, that she is doing a pilot of the Education Friday Workbox® with the entire staff at her school. We're going to report back to everyone in January on the feedback and results. Jayme really loves the process of organizing. In her teaching years, she was stuck trying to be a perfectionist. But now that she's attended three years of Planning Days and taken advantage of all the other Organize 365® resources, she knows functional organizing is where it's at! She and Lisa discussed the importance of knowing when to organize and when to move on to doing what you are uniquely created to do. It's funny, most people start organizing to get control of life and get time back. It's advised to do The Productive Home Solution® at least three times. But then what? Keep organizing? No! You have earned the time to focus on you now. Many times people want to stay where it's comfortable. The idea is to get your home to a place where you are not always starting from zero! The Productive Home Solution® gives you an assignment each week, right? If you feel good about that area, you do not have anything to do so go catch up on your show or use it to be uncomfortable growing in what you are uniquely created to do! You don't have to focus on the whole house all the time, just that week's assignment. She's one busy lady with her family, her career, and now her side hustle. Jayme and Lisa also discussed household management like the management you see in the workplace. Jayme wanted her home to run as smoothly as work does. When you go to work, you don't wonder who is going to clean the restrooms. But who is going to clean the restrooms at home? Roles are not defined. Departments are not defined. All of the invisible work in our homes has not been identified, broken down into "departments" and discussed who will take care of what. Jayme gained so much time that she has been able to grow her organizing business on the side. The first year putting The Productive Home Solution® into action she gained a chunk of time and then again around year 3.When she got motivated to do her binders, it was easy. She had already decluttered and had those papers in their places so she knew where to go for information! This year she finally felt like she could reply, on Planning Day, as feeling organized. She uses her Sunday Basket® at school too and her actions have caught the attention of the Superintendent. When Jayme asked about the school implementing the Education Friday Workbox®, he asked if that's how she's always remembering to follow up (AKA bug him) about projects and checking on the progress. He quickly agreed and we are so thankful for the opportunity to run this pilot…can't wait to share with you all in January!! Jayme's advice is, "Hold yourself to your own standards." Stop comparing yourself to others and make the systems work for you. She has recently come to the conclusion that we all have different standards and capacities. You are one person, complete what you think one person should be able to complete; you can't do it all. EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution® Planning Day The Paper Solution® Education Friday Workbox® Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday. Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

I had a huge revelation I have to share with you. I'm going to equate my PhD journey to your journey and how you're getting organized with Organize 365®. Hang in there while I explain. How is what you're doing now getting you ready to get organized? In episode 501 ("Passive Organizing"), I talked about how things like listening to podcasts and doing free blitzes are passive organizing. If you're listening to this podcast and reading this email, then you're learning to become a person who thinks about organization, productivity, and becoming an organized person. You are starting to identify as a person who's learning the skill of organization. It's the same as when I was doing "passive academia" during the postbaccalaureate program to set me up for extreme success for the PhD program. In the 6 week time frame between being accepted to when the postbaccalaureate started, I didn't know what to do or where to start. The only thing I knew to do (since I knew no one at the university) was to search for PhD podcasts in my podcast player. Doing so helped me to assimilate into the world of academia. It helped me to identify as a person who was getting a PhD. We are always in a process of passively doing the next thing, auditioning for the next thing, or actively doing it. You are so ready to be in the auditioning or active stage because you listen to this podcast and you understand the lingo. We speak the same language and you've been passively organizing...it's time to move to the next step! Audition organizing is when you're investing your time versus your money. There are so many ways you can do this with Organize 365® - so many ways that I don't mention often enough. The podcast, blitzes, free week of The Productive Home Solution® - you can follow me for a long time and never buy anything and still get organized!! Is that going to keep me in business? NO. So that's where active organizing shows up. You actively organize with your dollars. You've tried with your time already, now it's time to try with your money. You start to take advantage of the paid things to move you forward faster. Do you want to get organized in a longer amount of time with less money or a faster amount of time with more money? When you have all the resources at your disposal, you make faster progress because you're not wondering how you can get the same effect without the item you need. You can get from passive organizing to audition organizing with the Holiday Blitz. You can get from audition organizing to active organizing with The Productive Home Solution®. If you've already done the Holiday Blitz but you're not ready for The Productive Home Solution® - then start with the Sunday Basket® or the Holiday Blitz Bundle. Try out a planning day by registering for the Holiday Blitz Mini Planning Day! What would set you up best for running even faster and being even more prepared for when you're ready to take advantage of the next opportunity? Everything is happening FOR us, not TO us. You're in the right place at the right time. If you are in the active organizing stage and you've made the investment in Organize 365® and you're seeing the transformation - THANK YOU! Please come be my guest on the Wednesday Podcast if you haven't done so. For everyone in our community app, thank you for nurturing everyone who is new to this journey and affirming and encouraging them along the way. Remember how you felt when you were moving from passive organizing to auditioning? Then auditioning to active? Reminisce on those feelings and use that as fuel to help others be successful the way you have. EPISODE RESOURCES: Holiday Blitz The Productive Home Solution® Sunday Basket® Sign up for the Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!