Are you playing Checkers or Chess? Of course, you are playing Checkers. We all are. But, some of us are playing (and winning) Chess, too!

In today’s episode, I breakdown how you can “play” the game of life better with an emphasis on strategy. 

As I breakdown the “game of life” in this episode, we discuss:

• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• Marie Kondo’s life with three kids

• Generational norms

• The strategy of living life with a planned approach

Which leads us to the free Organize 365® blitzes. These blitzes were designed to help you get ahead. They may seem like “small wins” but they have a huge impact on how we look at our time in a more strategic (chess-like) way. These blitzes teach us how to incorporate forward planning into our game of life.

In the next four months, you are going to experience Memorial Day, Mother’s Day, tax day and the summer season. These things are coming whether you plan ahead or not. But, if you do join our blitzes and planning day, you’ll be able to approach the next four months with a planned and strategic approach. This will allow you to enjoy summer experiences with your family, sign your kids up for their favorite camps, purchase plane tickets before they sell out and look forward to your summer. Playing Chess allows you to get out of the reactiveness of the Checkers game.

Organize 365® Planning Days allow you to do the mental work ahead of time so you can enjoy the upcoming season. I hope you’ll join me!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Routine Reset Blitz

• Organize 365® Home Planning Day

• The Productive Home Solution™

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!

During this month we have been talking to women about how women in their 30s are getting it done. Stephanie represents women that are not working from home. She began her career as a corporate executive before she left to continue to grow the company she founded with her husband, Vince. She and Vince have 4 kids, 11, 9 (twins), and 6.

She worked from home for the last couple of years, but got physical space last Spring and she is back working in an office. She enjoyed her time working from home, but realized she needed more thinking and planning time and has since moved into a physical office space.

She moved to a condensed schedule, Monday to Thursday available for meetings and in the office with Fridays off, to give her the ability to have some parts of a stay-at-home mom. Never being able to fully work on just Austin Fowler, she has found time saving activities. Her time is very full with her own business and a family of 6 so it is important to her to plan and prepare for her weeks and weekends. She is very disciplined and uses her Sunday Basket® and Friday Workbox® to plan while using her bags to pack and prepare.

Listen in to find out what things work well for Stephanie and her family during this season of growing children and a growing business.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• AustinFowler.com

• Instagram @austinandfowler

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!

In today’s Coffee Chat I’m excited to launch a brand new Organize 365® Blitz! Over the years, we have provided blitzes for free to help our audience learn how to strategically plan ahead for things like school, holidays, golden windows and seasonal organizing.

The newest blitz is all about routines.

Have you observed that you personally go from “Hey, I got this!” to sudden out of control feelings? You just wake up and feel like you are behind the eight ball?

This happens to me. And I’m betting it happens to you sometimes, too.

How do I get back on top? How do I regain control of the things that I can control?

This is exactly what I’m sharing with you inside the new Routine Reset Blitz. This is a simple three day blitz where we are going to reset our morning, afternoon and evening routines.

Resetting your routines is the thing that will make it all easier and help you get back to getting things done.

Inside the Routine Reset Blitz, I teach you that it is not about what you are going to do for your routines. It’s about why.

Each routine throughout the day is going to answer a question. I equate this to The Sunday Basket®. The Sunday Basket® itself is wonderful but the real magic of The Sunday Basket® lies in being able to habitually ask yourself, “Can this wait until Sunday?” and then being able to move on with your day if it can.

Your routines can do this for you, too.

I want you to rethink when you use all your decision making energy. This blitz will guide you through thinking about your day, the purpose of your routines and how they can create success that cascades throughout your day.

Good routines make everything lighter. They give you more capacity and productivity. And I want to help you reset your routines. 

Episode Resources:

• Join the FREE Routine Reset Blitz

• The Sunday Basket®

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 we really talking about clothing again? What does this really have to do with getting a PhD anyway?!

Organization unlocks our time and productivity unlocks our capacity.

I’m using my PhD as the example for these stories, but everything I’m sharing with you is how I am taking past organizational strengths, learning, or habits that I have had or am developing now and how I’m refining those in order to get more time and have more capacity.

The way in which we free up our time in order to be able to do the next thing, that’s organization. As we organize, we create a habit. A habit is just doing the thing you’ve already organized without consciously thinking about it. In order to really get more time, you have to over analyze some basic habits to figure out if there is a more efficient way to do these things and somehow create this new habit and put it on autopilot so we don’t have to even think about it.

This brings us back to clothing!

Listen in as we talk about how creating a uniform for the different hats you wear will help you to transition into the role that you're playing and mentally enter into that space. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Follow my journey on Instagram - Check out the PhD Highlight Button

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!

There is no such thing as perfection.

There just isn’t. Don’t let social media fool you. What about those pictures you see as you're scrolling your phone? Those aren’t real. Perfection isn’t real. But how do we get our brain and subconscious mind to understand this? 

When you see me, you are getting the 100% real me. I don’t use filters. As a matter of fact, I don’t even know how to use filters. It’s important for me to show you the real me. What you see is what you get.

I am not a perfectionist. I am a woman of excellence. This episode is going to help you understand how you are also a person of excellence and what that means.

Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do..therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit.”

The habits taught through the Organize 365® systems and courses lead us to be people of excellence. These same habits help us free our brains and time to do what we are uniquely created to do.

Habits are so purposeful. Negative habits tend to happen naturally. But positive habits rarely happen naturally. I want you to think about your habits - are they helping you be a person of excellence? Are they allowing you the time you need to do what you are uniquely created to do?

I want you to choose a life of excellence over perfectionism. Don’t expect perfectionism from yourself or others. A person of excellence is able to focus on substance, richer conversations, better solutions and live a more productive life.

A word of the wise, choosing not to be a perfectionist is not an excuse to be lazy. You still need to strive for excellence. This will look different depending on your phase of life and priorities. 

I want to leave you with three things in this episode:

1. Perfectionism is not a thing.

2. Excellence is a great middle ground for you to strive for.

3. You will never be done working on yourself, learning, growing and creating the person you want to be. It’s a journey.

As you think about your journey, I want you to also think about your home and the three seasons per year within your home. You need different things in those seasons. A person of excellence is continually improving and evolving the way they organize and use their home and time.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution™

• The Paper Solution®

• The Friday Workbox®

• Aristotle Quotes

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!

Welcome back Andrea to the podcast. Andrea, 37, is married to her husband, age 41 and together they have 4 children, 2 girls and 2 boys ages 11, 8, 7, and 5. Listen in as we talk about how she stays organized in her 30’s with a young family.

Andrea discusses her focus of functional organizing for a family of six. We also get to hear how interesting her time and scheduling works, and what she does to make the different seasons of her life work within a schedule. 

We all know feeding a family can be challenging and the desire to make the right food choices is a priority. Andrea shows us her process of making food changes in her family when change doesn’t come easy for anyone.

Andrea mentions the quote “Build a life you don’t need to escape from” and how she and her family have built that life where she feels energized and isn’t looking for a vacation to bring her rest.  She doesn’t feel the need to take days off to recharge her batteries, because it seems to work itself into each and every day.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• AndreaDekker.com 

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!

Have you wondered why you don’t seem to have enough time in your day? 

I use my Google calendar to organize my time, everything that would naturally occur in my life gets a time block on my calendar, including commute time. Then when I look at my week, I can play with those time blocks. Am I spending enough time in certain areas or too much time? 

I’ve been able to see all this time in my calendar and I’ve gotten better at estimating my time for my classes and assignments. This allows me to figure out where I have extra time and where I don’t have enough time.

Have you asked yourself, why don’t I get everything done?

Or do I have the capacity to take on something new?

Start looking at the pockets of time on your calendar that do not have anything associated with. Document how you use that time for a week or two and then you know if you have time you can actually give to something new and maximize your productivity.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Follow my journey on Instagram - Check out the PhD Highlight Button

• Google Calendar

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!

Let’s break down one of the fastest spreading organizational news stories I’ve ever seen - Marie Kondo is admitting that her home is no longer tidy and she’s embracing it!

The news of Marie Kondo’s house being no longer organized spread like wildfire. This was not an accident. Marie Kondo is a worldwide sensation. She did an amazing job marketing her book and herself. She’s a renowned organizer and businesswoman.

Here are some past episodes I’ve done on Marie Kondo:

• Why the Magic Art of Tidying Up Doesn’t Work for American Women

• What Do You Do with Items that Don’t Spark Joy?

• How Marie Kondo is the Atkins Diet of Organizing

We all can feel better knowing that Marie Kondo is saying perfection does not exist. Although, if you have been following my podcast all this time, you know that I have always valued progress over perfection.

In this episode, I take the conversation in the media about organization a step further.

• What does it mean to feel organized?

• Can you recognize and observe organization or is it a feeling? Is organization the ability to quickly take action?

• How do we know when we are organized or when we are no longer organized?

Your home and your organizational systems should be a representation of YOU. What’s important to you? What works for you? What doesn’t work for you? 

I LOVE my home. I love how I decorated it. I love how I organized it. I love what I’ve saved over the years. And I want you to love your home also. I want you to love the stuff you are maintaining, dusting and living with. I want you to look forward to being at home, walking around your own home and loving the things you see on the walls, shelves, even inside your storage room.

Organization and being organized is SO much more than minimalism. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Productive Home Solution™

• The Paper Solution®

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Friday Workbox®

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!

Meet Jamie and Jason Balmet in Oklahoma running a small business, raising 7 children, and homeschooling:

• 10 year old twin boys

• 7 year old twin boys

• 5 year old girl

• 2 year old boy

• 3 month old boy

Jamie and Jason are currently in the accumulation phase and we talk today about how they handle this phase of life with home and work. We discussed how their housework is divided, they’ve got a great mix going on, and how the kids are involved in this.

They have some great tips on how to get the kids involved at home. One of the tips for this was to talk a lot about their family vision and how that plays into giving responsibility to everyone in the family.

Listen in as they tell us how their family began traveling full time to now putting down roots in Oklahoma. We also get to hear about how they organize things at work and home and how different their systems are; Jamie loves her paper and Jason is all about the digital side of things.

Because their business blends with work deadlines plus having family time, the communication aspect is key for the two of them. Being honest with each other about their needs and their  mental space is important to keeping things running smoothly.

How have they gotten to this place in their lives? They are very clear on what their goals are. Working in the business and on the business and being purposeful and intentional with planning plays a large part in how they have been able to succeed.

Tips from Jamie:

• Be clear on your vision 

• What are your family values

• What are you saying yes to and what are you saying no to

• Planning meetings annually and quarterly about

• • Business

  • Homeschool

  • Family

• Be realistic with your time

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• eMyth by Michael E. Gerber

• The Productive Home Solution™ and Planning Day

• Finding Joy in Your Home   

• Finding Joy in Your Home Podcast 

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!

This week I am talking about how I organize my assignments. Some of the things I use are Organize 365® Slash Pockets that are colored red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. These slash pockets help you organize the basic tasks you do at home and at work inside of a Sunday Basket® or a Friday Workbox®. These organize the everyday events, not the projects.

I am using colored slash pockets, productivity tabs, and highlighted documents to keep track of everything within my courses.

Red: Research Lab

Orange: Wednesday Class - Psych 501

Yellow: Thursday Class - Psych 502

The game changer for me was creating the excel spreadsheet with all assignments and reading ordered by due date and color coded. I cannot explain how much more grounded I felt when I could see in totality everything I needed to do inside of a 2-page spread. This gives me the extra buffer I need by allowing me to stay ahead.

If you have different moving deadlines, moving pieces, or moving parts that need to be done over a period of time, it may be helpful to put all of those into one big document in order of when things need to happen, versus keeping things separate in separate categories of your life.

What would happen if in very busy seasons of your life you would use this one big document to go by what is due next versus what role you are playing in your life?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Follow my journey on Instagram - Check out the PhD Highlight Button

• Organize 365® Slash Pockets 1.0

• Sunday Basket® 

• Business Friday Workbox® 

• Kolbe

• Organize 365® Productivity Tabs

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!

When I started this podcast series looking at how I’ve used the Sunday Basket® over the years, I thought I’d be sharing with you the tactical details of how I use the Sunday Basket®. What I realized is that the Sunday Basket® is a habit. Like brushing your teeth, making the bed, getting ready in the morning. Things we didn’t do at one point and eventually they become part of your everyday life and routines. And that’s what the Sunday Basket® has become. It’s part of my everyday routine.

In this episode we are back in my present day life. My kids are now adulting. Their day to day needs are off my plate. I’ve outsourced a lot of the tasks that have to do with my home and I have a whole team at Organize 365®. 

Presently, my Sunday Basket® is running like a well-oiled machine. And it’s serving its purpose for Grayson, my grandson, as well. I end up with lots of toys that need batteries on Sunday. I drop those in there throughout the week and all the incoming mail. My Portable Sunday Basket® goes back and forth between my home and my office. I have a slash pocket for calls that need to be made during business hours and things that can’t be dealt with on Sundays.

What has really increased over the years, and if you listened to the previous episodes in this series, you have probably noticed the evolution of my Friday Workbox®. I have multiple Friday Workboxes® and pretty much always have. I used to have Friday Workboxes® set-up for different income streams. Now I have Friday Workboxes® for departments, teams and initiatives within Organize 365®.

But the biggest shift in my life right now is the transition I just made to becoming a student again. This was a big decision for me. And as I was trying to make the decision to take this leap, I asked myself “what if?” What if I do get my PhD? How will I feel? What if I don’t do this? And I decided, definitively, that if I didn’t say yes to this at this point in my life I would be disappointed. I would still want it four years from now. And this is the time to do it. To jump in with both feet and go for my dream of becoming a PhD.

So now I want to ask you, what if? What if you had the real Sunday Basket® with the playbook, the properly color coded slash pockets? What if you had access to the Sunday Basket® Club every Sunday as your accountability and success partner? What if you came to Planning Days with me and truly planned out your goals, assessed your routines and created a plan for your upcoming trimester? What if you took the courses inside The Productive Home Solution™ and learned to be organized while getting your entire home organized? What if everything in your home had a place and you had more time? What if you had a Friday Workbox® and Friday Workbox® Planning Day to help structure your work and deliver on your projects with ease? What if you knew what you were uniquely created to do?

Keep moving forward and keep making progress and thinking about what is possible.

I can’t wait to continue this series in five years. I’m excited about what’s to come for me and Organize 365®!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Friday Workbox®

• Portable Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution™

• Home Planning Day

• Work Planning Day

• Embrace - Discover what you are uniquely created to do.

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!

Listen in as Emily and I come back together for the final episode of our podcast series. The things we are talking about we regularly talk about privately, but we feel that what we are sharing is meant for more than just ourselves. 

People really don’t talk about this: how you stay organized at home, how you survive hard things, how you transition through unexpected events. I am such a forward motion focused person, I’m always thinking about what is next. And this is what excites me and lights me up.

We talk about what you are uniquely created to do. It is not necessarily ONE thing, it is always evolving, changing, and growing. The Organize 365® mission is to help you get organized so that you have more time so you can do what you are uniquely created to do. My only goal is to show you the invisible work that you’re doing and you can decide if you want to continue doing it or not, organize it, habitualize it, or declutter it, so that you can get time to do what you are uniquely created to do. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Friday Workbox®

• Victim’s Assistance in Akron

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!

During week 4, we talked about how I think in color and how it helps me to learn things faster. When focusing on learning something new, being able to chunk the information into at least 4 color categories as I am learning is really helpful.

I’ve learned how to add colors into writing my papers to help me remember which journals I am citing, which information is mine, and which information is from different authors.

As I am going through this PhD podcast, I hope that learning how you organize in one phase of life can inform and help you in the next phase of life.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Follow my journey on Instagram - Check out the PhD Highlight Button

• Zotero

• Organize 365® Research Podcast

• Organize 365® Research

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 the positive, productive and proactive Lisa to make her debut? Welcome to 2017!

In this podcast, we explore the paradigm of personal and professional growth.

By 2017, I was running my in-home professional organizing business. It was BOOMING. But I had this gut feeling that it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing.

I was noticing that a lot of the women I was organizing were diagnosed or self-diagnosed with ADHD. I enjoyed what I was doing so much that I wanted to reach more people. I wanted to make a strategic pivot in my business so I could have a larger impact.

During this period of my life, my Friday Workbox® took center stage. I went to an office supply store to get more slash pockets and found that they were no longer offering packs of solid colors - only the multi-colored packs. That’s when I realized that I needed to manufacture these slash pockets and bring this all together so people could master these systems and save time.

Talking through my ideas with my mom helped me think even beyond just manufacturing the slash pockets. She had me walk her through exactly how I would create a Sunday Basket® or Friday Workbox® if I were to create my own. And then she got to work with her sewing machine and the first Sunday Basket® prototype was born. Looking back, it was such an exciting time of growth for me - both personally and professionally.

I knew I needed to become a different kind of company (beyond in-home professional organizing). I needed a team. For the first time ever I was starting to trust my own intuition as a business owner. This is when I started to make the leap into the business owner and CEO you see today.

I hired my first coach. I needed to invest in myself to grow as a business owner. I knew that the cap to my business growth was me. I had to (and still do) grow for my business to grow.

All those things that I did gave me the investment in myself that I needed to understand my worth and grow into the role I wanted for myself. It’s okay for not every single thing I do in my business to be direct income generating.

I wanted to create systems and processes that anyone in the world could get a Sunday Basket® to save 5 hours per week to use for The Productive Home Solution™ to unlock their time for what they were uniquely created to do. And that’s what I’ve done. All of these organizing solutions and courses are available to you today because 2017 Lisa had a bigger vision for herself and for YOU!

How do you want to change your future? Learning to be organized can get you there. The time I spent as a professional organizer was what helped me create the courses we now offer at Organize 365®. I saw how much organization had a larger impact on people’s ability to achieve results. I share stories of this in this episode.

What impact could living an organized life have on you?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• FREE Sunday Basket® Mini Course

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Friday Workbox®

• The Productive Home Solution™

• 1.0 Slash Pockets

• 2.0 Slash Pockets

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!

I’m excited to welcome back my sister, Emily Kelly, to the podcast for part 2 of 3 in this series. This has been much anticipated by the Organize 365® community and I was waiting for the perfect time for her to tell her story.

In part one of this podcast series, Emily Kelly shares her experience for the last year. Today she is sharing how she has organized her personal and work life during this time. Listen to Emily as she describes how she is using her Sunday Basket®, Friday Workbox®, and her slash pockets to sync her bills, goals, and her calendar.

Emily and I share what we looked like before slash pockets and binders while working together to settle our Dad’s estate. I share my CliffsNotes™ on how we handled this important time in our lives.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Friday Workbox®

• Athena International

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!

The way I see the world in color is helping me organize my PhD studies and the work I am doing in school. Being able to use color allows me to chunk the information I am learning and help me remember it better.

Pink: For home it is anything related to your uniqueness and for work it is your ideas and marketing.

Purple: For home it is anything related to household work and projects and for work it is the visible work and projects.

Blue: For home it is anything related to your family and pets and for work it is your team and people.

Green: For home and work it is anything related to money and your invisible work.

I was able to learn how to do a literature review, how to do an annotated bibliography, and how to write a proposal for a conference using color for each of these key components. Whenever we talk about introductions it will be pink, whenever we talk about methods it will be blue, and whenever we talk about results it will be purple.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Follow my journey on Instagram - Check out the PhD Highlight Button

• Organize 365® Research Podcast

• Organize 365® Research

• Organize 365® Business Friday Workbox®

• Organize 365® Sunday Basket®

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!

When we left off in the previous episode, I was in the pit of despair. I wish I could say I was out of it by 2012. Spoiler alert - not quite. But 2012 is when a monumental shift began to happen.

I was 39 years old by this point. I quit my job. Our family was sinking into debt. Our kids medical needs were still high. I didn’t even recognize my own house (it was a wreck). And my marriage was feeling the strain.

My inherent organization ability had gotten me this far in life but now everything I knew about organization was not enough. I didn’t have a playbook or framework for being the person I needed to be - hosting the holidays, having kids with busy schedules (and going to two different schools), and all the other positions I found myself filling.

Which leads me to explore how we become disorganized. I think part of it is that we get to a point in our lives where we no longer have a story we are working towards.

This episode is really important because when you find Organize 365®, you're likely a pretty organized person and looking for more tips and tricks to be even more productive. But more of us stumble across Organize 365® when they realize “I can no longer continue this way for the rest of my life, there has to be another way.” And the good news is that if you have had this thought - there is another way. Change can be uncomfortable. But it is through this discomfort that you transform. I’ve seen it time and time again in the Organize 365® community.

What you may not be expecting is that when you need to learn the skill of organization the most is usually at a point in your life where you don’t have the time and money to do so. But by not budgeting the resources to get organized, you won’t be able to easily get out of re-living the same story you are trying to get out of. This is where I found myself in 2012. I was in the wrong story. Tune in and find out how I began to turn it around in 2012.

Also in this episode:

• The Friday Workbox® takes center stage

• Tips and Rules for Organizing Passion Projects & Hobbies

Want to hear more about my 2012 story and my 5 tips for organizing with depression? Listen to this podcast.

What is the organized story of me going forward? Stay tuned next week to find out! What is the organized story of you?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• FREE Sunday Basket® Mini Course

• Organization is a Learnable Skill

• The Friday Workbox®

• The Sunday Basket®

• Saving Your Story Photo Organization Program

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!

I’m excited to welcome back my sister, Emily Kelly, to the podcast. This has been much anticipated by the Organize 365® community. And I was waiting for the perfect time for her to tell her story.

Emily Kelly worked for Organize 365® for about 5 years. When I last interviewed her on the podcast, she was embarking on a new adventure. She had found, what she believed to be, her DREAM JOB.

This is a three part series where we are going to get all the details on Emily’s journey since she left Organize 365®, but you are also going to get an in depth look at the relationship between Emily and me. Sibling relationships are unique because this is likely the longest relationship you will have in your life. Longer than your parents, your spouse, your children and your friends. You and your sibling(s) are in a unique position and have experienced things together that will forever just be an experience shared between you and them.

Emily experienced some very unexpected life events. And one of the lessons that she had learned during her time at Organize 365® kept her going in the right direction. Grace. Give it freely. To yourself and others. 

Flash forward to today and we find Emily, a new version of herself, ready to share the broken road that led her to exactly where she needs to be. But you will hear more about that in Part 3.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Jesus Calling Book

• The Sunday Basket®

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!

Starting the PhD, I was as planned as you could possibly be. I even took care of all the possible health visits I could have before starting school just so I didn’t have to take away any time to do that once I started; now that is planning!

This journey is not easy, but I prefer to be positive and upbeat, not sharing everything that’s not working. I don’t pay attention to the things that I don’t have control over, but I am going to tell you the things that have gone wrong in the first 3 weeks just so I can point back to this episode and be like, “remember week 3”, not everything is perfect.

In preparing, I began by pretending, since I’m a pretty productive person, I could add in this extra 30 hours of work and nothing else would really be sacrificed. That’s not a thing because there aren’t 186 hours in a week, there are only 168 hours in a week. I’m hoping that the learnings that I take from this can be beneficial to you and whatever it is that you are adding to your plate and whatever you are striving to be as well.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Follow my journey on Instagram - Check out the PhD Highlight Button

• Laura Vanderkam - 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

• Oura Ring

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 year was 2007. And I was ROADKILL. Unexpected life events had run me over.

Divorce had unexpectedly hit my family. My father was in poor health. I was raising young children with medical diagnosis. I had attended one HUNDRED and ten doctors appointments. I came unglued. I reached my breaking point.

There I was standing in my kitchen. Not making sense. Tapping on a cabinet. Greg swooped in and got the kids out of the house. As I stood there pleading with myself, “You’ve got to get it together, Lisa!” 

I went upstairs to my room to figure out why I felt like I was falling apart. At the time, I had a physical planner. I flipped backwards through my planner and realized a pattern. I was spending so much time at doctor’s appointments. I started to tally it up and found that in the past year, I had gone to 110 doctor’s appointments.

Doctor’s appointments are not only time consuming, but they are expensive. So at the same time, I had become a “jill of all trades.” I was running my Creative Memories business, cleaning houses, organizing, tutoring, working for Scholastic book fairs and several other direct sales related jobs. 

No wonder I was falling behind and apart.

When it rains, it pours. My Sunday Basket® became my umbrella. I was overwhelmed. And I was being pushed to new limits. But I wasn’t disorganized. I cannot even imagine what this phase of my life would have looked like if I had not already had my Sunday Basket® system and routine in place.

I was not home much at all during this phase of life, but I always had my Sunday Basket® with me. Which meant I was able to still be productive while waiting at the doctor’s office or in the car pick-up line. This helped me keep up when life started moving way too fast.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Free Sunday Basket® 5 Day Mini Course

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Warrior MAMA Binder

• The Paper Solution®

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!

show notes

I’m so excited to introduce you to The Paper Solution® Binder & Course Bundle.

When I wrote the The Paper Solution® book, I knew I wanted to provide this offering. And we have finally been able to do it.

The Paper Solution® provides a complete solution to the unseen but impactful organization that allows you to have confidence and peace of mind during life's unexpected events.

Learning to become an organized person is both an outer and inner game.

It doesn't always look perfect but it provides calm in the storm, order in the midst of chaos, breathing room and clarity for you to think and make a plan as life continually pivots.

Life is a dance. A dance between the known and unknown. The necessary and unnecessary. How you want to spend your time and how you need to spend your time.

Along the way we have different levels of organization. Often when we talk about getting organized, we talk about our storage room, closet, kitchen or car. Places we can see with our eyes.

Mental organization and unexpected life event organization is often invisible. But oh so impactful when done properly.

If you have experienced one of these events:

• Moved houses/apartments
• Gotten married
• Had a baby
• Experienced a medical event for yourself or loved one
• Lost a loved one

The invisible work that goes into navigating these life events is very stressful, and organization is your life raft.

The Organize 365® Binders were created out of all the unexpected events that I have lived through. I was looking for a solution. A solution to organize the invisible work I was doing and provide a playbook for what needed to be done.

The Paper Solution® provides you with everything you need:

• The Medical Binder
• The Financial Binder
• The Household Operations Binder
• The Household Reference Binder
• Lifetime Access to The Paper Solution® Course Dashboard
• Which includes: Editable downloads, lessons for each binder, tips from Certified Organizers
• Organize 365® Virtual Paper Organizing Retreat on Demand
• Access to the Organize 365® Community App and The Paper Solution® Community Group

Ready to learn more? Visit The Paper Solution® Course page.

There is a difference between perfectionism and setting up a system. My first writing assignment should have taken me just an hour or two but instead it took me eight hours. I shared my new adventure on Instagram stories and many of you told me to take a page from my own book and embrace progress over perfection. YES! I hear you but let me explain…

I wasn’t trying to be perfect. I was trying to spend some time now to set-up my systems and create a template for myself to save me time in the future. Does this sound familiar to you? This is EXACTLY what organizing does. Organizing is an investment in time today for a future exponential return on time.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Follow my journey on Instagram - Check out the PhD Highlight Button
• Organize 365® Research Podcast
• Organize 365® Research
• Zotero

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 podcast is the first in a series of five that will walk you through different life phases and stages I’ve experienced, and how The Sunday Basket® has been my partner in productivity along the way!

Join me in my time machine as we take a glimpse into what my life looked like in 2002 and how The Sunday Basket® was created to support me during this phase of life.

In 2002, I had two babies, a successful career in direct sales, the same house I still live in today and of course, Greg! I also had a paper pile problem. And everyday I was playing “the paper pile game”. I would leave my ever-growing pile of papers (bills, mail, to-do lists, calls to make, checks to be deposited and everything in between) on one side of my kitchen island. Each day I would have the best of intentions to tackle that paper pile; but often I would have just enough time to shuffle the papers around before one of the babies needed me and then right back on the counter it would go. That process was repeated day in and day out.

How could I make this paper pile more actionable? 

One night as my family slept, I finally laid out all the papers in front of me. I began to sort the paper piles into categories. By the end of that evening, I had 40 separate “piles” that were now categorized.

The next day I was able to grab just one of those categories (I had separated them all into binder dividers I had on hand) and take immediate action. Oh my goodness! What a profound impact this had on me. It felt so good to finally be taking action and little by little I watched the paper pile shrink. 

I put all the binder dividers in a Longaberger basket (remember those?) and I began to add any new mail, paper, notes, to-dos, etc. into the basket. Then each Sunday, I would sit down and go through it. This is where I learned how to prioritize things that needed to be done before the next Sunday and plan my week ahead as a mother and direct sales leader. 

The impact of breaking down my paper piles into actionable chunks was HUGE. This is how The Sunday Basket® was born!

Want to have your own The Sunday Basket® experience like I did? 

We have a FREE 5 Day Sunday Basket® Mini Course that you can join now. This course will walk you through gathering your paper piles and how to sort them in 5 daily tasks. 

Join me next episode as my journey takes a stark turn from babies and bliss to chaotic and unexpected. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket® Mini Course
• The Sunday Basket®
• Organize 365® Paper Organizing Retreat
• See photos from 2002 on Instagram

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!

Today I’m so excited to introduce you to Laura L. During the pandemic she found me via the Organize 365  podcast.  Laura started her Organize 365® journey with The Sunday Basket® and the binders.  She also created binders for her parents.

The day she got the MS diagnosis, the Medical Binder and the Sunday Basket® became monumental to her daily success.

Laura got into the habit of taking her Medical Binder with her to doctor’s appointments. She loves having everything at her fingertips.  She has noticed that she gets a poor cellular signal in the medical buildings; so it’s nice to have the paper copy to reference. 

Laura was already a fan of all things Organize 365®; but she felt compelled to share her success story with others.  Laura launched her business and is The Paper Solution® Certified. She is thankful for the peace of mind that comes from the organization offered by the Sunday Basket®.  

 Recently at her daughter’s wedding the portable Sunday Basket® was called “The Bag with All the Nuclear Codes.” She was organized and had all the information with her in her portable Sunday Basket ®. Then again the very next day it held the information needed for her mother because she had a doctor’s appointment to take her to.

Her advice if you are just getting started: “Just carve out the time to do it!”

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Paper Solution® Binders
• Paper Organizing Retreats
• The Sunday Basket®
• The Organize 365® Medical Binder
• The Friday Workbox®
• The Portable Sunday Basket®
• The Paper Solution® Certification

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!

Episode 1 - Over Prepared

Even though I am the CEO of Organize 365® I am not exempt from life events that can throw a person off track. I only got a 48 hour honeymoon phase of balancing life, work and school until life showed up! But we are in it now - I’m juggling home and school and family!

As I pondered the week I have concluded to only try to be seven days ahead, not four years! I was so over prepared I didn’t know what to do with myself and then it dawned on me that I could work ahead. I learned I could even test ahead if I’m prepared. And I just may do that because who knows when life is going to show up again!

Listen in to hear how my family has handled the transition!

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 am not a CPA and neither am I on my way to becoming one…but I have learned so much about how to get organized for optimal results when it comes to doing or getting your taxes done. And I’d love to share some ideas on how to organize the paperwork you need for your taxes and make the tax season easier for you.

Whether you do your taxes yourself or have someone do them for you - it is in your best interest to have organized documentation. Documentation is key!

The Organize 365® Income and Expense Binder holds all your substantiating documentation for your business.  Did you know you need 7 years of substantiating documentation?  Now there is a way to effortlessly keep track of everything.  This binder will give you peace of mind at tax time. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Free Organize 365® Tax Organizer Worksheet
• Organize 365® Income and Expense Binder
• Green Slash Pockets
• Mimi’s Cookie Recipe (as mentioned in the mailbag)

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 their 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!

I have spoken about life events and how they derail us from time to time.  Rosa E. came to the paper workshop and was energized to get her home organized.  Little did she know that shortly thereafter her mother would be moving in with her permanently. A life event was about to derail her.  

Now that her mother has moved in, her family is finding a new normal.  I offered some ways she could spend some special and intentional time with her mother. I speculate that this model of multigenerational homes may become popular due to the economy and all the demands on two parents in the workforce. I also shared how this works in my house with Abby and Grayson living there.  Each family’s space is considered mini condos or apartments. And I teach this starting in the Organize 365® Kids Program. It’s easier to divide common spaces up and identify personal spaces. Everyone needs a “safe space” to decompress and do what they want to do without answering to anyone. 

I also pointed out that we all like the Sunday Basket® because it speaks to us, we’re all just 12 year olds at heart.  And now she’s implementing a Sunday Basket® for her mother too. To top it all off, Rosa is also starting a new career.  She’s home organizing and The Paper Solution® Certified.  She has been using the Friday Workbox® as her partner in success as she’s starting her business.  She attributes the Friday Workbox® to helping her schedule her week, think ahead to marketing and networking, and grow her organizational business in Arizona.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Organize 365® Paper Organizing Retreats
• The Paper Solution® Certification
• The Business Friday Workbox®
• The Sunday Basket®

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 just experienced a Golden Window and I want to share with you how I got organized to embark on my back-to-school journey!

When I shared with you all that I’m going back to school to earn a PhD, I got a lot of suggestions. So many amazing suggestions that I literally started a pink slash pocket so I wouldn’t lose any of these valuable ideas. And, of course, I want to share everything with you.

Here’s why - this journey is super helpful if you are also going back to school (whether you’re working towards a PhD or a different degree). And it’s also helpful to apply my journey and my experiences to any and all of life’s changes. The type of organizing I’m doing to get ready for my PhD experience is no different than the type of organizing and preparation I would recommend for any life change or transition - having a baby, moving, starting a new job, getting ready to retire, getting ready to welcome grandchildren. When you are getting ready to make a change (especially one that will impact your daily schedules and routines) it’s important to look around your home and at your organizational systems to make them as functional, organized and efficient as possible for what life is going to look like for the foreseeable future.

This is a whole new life transition.  Remember recently when I explained the difference between Ready…Set…Go? I have completed all household projects, put systems in place, reorganized my schedule, and I am in “Go” mode. This has been a major transition for me and I really evaluated how I spend my time, my habits, my routines, and looked for 30 hours I could devote to my post-baccalaureate first, and then my PhD. 

I will be taking you all on this journey with me.  I could not be more excited and in four short years I will have earned my General PhD in Psychology from Fielding University!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®
• Happy Doc Student Podcast
• How to PhD Podcast
• The PhD Life Raft Podcast
• PhD Pending
• A PhD Rollercoaster: A Diary of Ups and Downs of Being a Doctoral Student

Stay connected with me and see behind the scenes on Instagram.

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 their 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!

Kristen K. had a demanding full time job and a demanding two year old.  When she “broke”, she found herself searching for productivity podcasts. Lucky me, Organize 365® came up and Kristen was listening so she could gain control over her boxes of mail. Kristen was taking vacation days just to address these boxes of mail; and she knew there had to be a more productive way. Paper can easily get the better of anyone. After listening to multiple episodes, she knew the next step was the Sunday Basket. You guys, she still has her original Sunday Basket and uses it faithfully! She’s even gone further to become a certified organizer so she can help others. She knows the struggle and doesn’t want others to go through the same struggle.

Kristen made an interesting side comment during this episode. She said, “I mean I had to do it, I knew my husband wasn’t going to help.” Too often we think our family is going to join us in this organization endeavor. No, they may not - and that’s ok. You have to go into it knowing this is a “you” thing.

We also discussed productivity vs. priority! Being productive is NOT prioritizing your tasks. Pick your priority, and that priority is ONE. You can prioritize ONE section of your life or ONE room in your house. We go over all the ins and outs of this topic in the episode. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®
• The Productive Home Solution™
• The Paper Solution® Certification

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!

Is it possible? Can you put enough systems in place to correct or manage ADHD? After diving into ADHD and running all the tests, the ADHD expert was convinced I did not have ADHD. However, when we took a deeper dive into my childhood and who I was before Organize 365®; it was a clear picture of a person with ADHD.  The expert explained that all the systems I have put in place, combined with hiring out the tasks that I struggle with…I have masked the fact that I have ADHD!

I didn’t always believe in an ADHD diagnosis.  When I was young and thought I knew everything, I was convinced children just needed a little more discipline and manners.  Some children just had a lot of energy is how I explained it.  But then I had one student who put me in my place.  I thought it was crazy for mom and dad to try medication for the little girl during the VERY last week of school.  But much to my surprise; she was a very bright student and the medication helped ADHD get out of her way! I realized I knew nothing about anything. 

Isn’t it funny how the more you know, the more you realize that you know very little? Once we adopted children, I loved to play preschool with them.  It wasn’t until a routine doctor visit that it was brought to my attention that I would be raising a child with ADHD. At this point, I craved information to help my children to succeed. I was lucky enough to attend seminars in Cincinnati with all the best doctors and learn about ADHD!  

Now I’m embarking on my PhD journey, where I’ll be focusing on the brain and the eight executive functions. That’s right! I’m a lifelong learner and am confident that I have the systems in place that I need to be organized and succeed. It has come full circle – and I’m here to share it with all of you!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• ADHD Podcast Playlist
• ADHD Resources Page
• ADHD Online

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 does it mean to be organized?

How do you know when you’re done organizing?

No one has ever officially defined "organized." I decided I would define it. We started by conducting academic-level research using our surveys. You can read more about Organize 365® Research and the finding on our Research page.

For most Americans, organization happens as Swiss cheese organizing.

You’re a little organized here and a little organized there. You can’t confidently say, “I AM organized,” because you think that being organized means perfection while not being organized is hoarding. You don’t have language for what happens in the middle of these two!

We need to consider the idea of done rather than perfect.

In this episode, I share many statistics and findings from our research, which is all leading us to change the way we present and teach the material in The Productive Home Solution™. 

If you just get through the first 42 days of the 100 Day Home Organization Program, you will have 80% of the spaces you use on a daily basis organized. You CAN call yourself organized. But many of you don’t FEEL organized. It doesn’t fully check off any single category of organizing as complete for you. It just marks a couple more spaces in your Swiss cheese organizing. I want to see you get to the point where you can say that you are personally organized or storage organized or paper organized, etc. You get to pick and choose which areas you want to tackle and master and declare organized in your life.

Coming in the fall in The Productive Home Solution™, you will be able to pick an area, focus on it for 5 or 6 weeks, and then declare that area of your life organized. You’ll work in baby steps to mark a full area as done so you can move on to the next area you want to organize. 

But what does it mean to be organized? Both men and women declare their home organized when… You’ll have to listen in to find out the answer!

Learn more about and join The Productive Home Solution™ here.

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

For 2022, we are adding to the Lisa glossary. This week, we are talking about the Organize 365® Research projects.  No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about the ideas and beliefs that are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing.

Several years ago, as I was writing the Organize 365® vision, I knew that I wanted to conduct research to bring to light the organizational needs of Americans. I want to be the go-to resource for knowledge about home and paper organization.

I legitimately had no idea how to do research surveys and data analysis. Recently, I have been learning about the difference between market research and academic research. Organize 365® is now sponsoring academic-level study and third-party data collection backed by Harrisburg University. 

Research always starts with a hypothesis — what you think the result will be. I wanted research results that showed that women are doing the majority of the work at home. But, that’s now what we found. We have started to share our initial research findings.

As I learn more about research, we really end up with more questions. One of the steps in research is to define every term used in study surveys. For example, you cannot ask a participant about “mental health” because that term is too broad and open to interpretation. However, you can ask about anxiety or depression. 

When we developed the first survey, I needed to figure out how to define “housework.” The research questions ended up focusing on four different types of housework.

Cleaning - Cleaning is related to the dwelling and covers any task a cleaning company would do. Learn more back in Podcast 422. 

Tasks of Daily Living - These are tasks related to the person regardless of where they live. These are the tasks defined by Social Security Disability and include things like preparing food, consuming food, running errands, planning meals, and washing laundry. Learn more back in Podcast 424.

Maintenance - is an optional housework activity where the property owner makes an additional infusion of money into their investment (property) to maintain and improve their property. In the long run, maintenance expenses increase the value of the initial investment. Learn more back in Podcast 428. 

Organizing - is an optional housework activity where a person makes an investment of current time for a future return of time. This is completely optional and customizable. Time spent today organizing results in an exponential time in the future. Often this involves setting up systems of organization and can be applied to renters and owners. Learn more back in Podcast 426. 

Literature Review 

As part of academic research, researchers look at other studies done on similar topics. The Organize 365® review looked at the role of women in the 21st century home. As I mentioned above, I thought women were doing all of the housework. It turns out that everyone thinks they are doing the majority of the work at home. There is so much work to be done.

Defining housework and recognizing these four areas makes housework feel overwhelming and never-ending. As women become more effective at articulating their role in housework, families will be able to better understand how much work is being done and proactively decide if the work should continue to be done at all. 

Our next study survey has been completed and we are busy analyzing the results. Learn more back in Podcast 430.

#myextra5 

The Sunday Basket® consistently saves people at least five hours a week by getting organized and being proactive. Through organization, you get extra time, and we all need more time. Follow or tag Organize365® on Instagram and share how you are spending your extra time once you get organized! — #myextra5

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

For 2022, we are adding to the Lisa glossary. This week, we are talking about ditching the file cabinet and establishing essential household binders. I also want to be your teacher to help you get your home and work paper organized and functional. 

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about the ideas and beliefs that are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing.

As a professional organizer, I used to teach people how to build (and hopefully maintain) a color-coded file cabinet at home. But, in 2017, I had a sickening revelation that what I was teaching was not working. In a short time, I heard from two audience members who needed to emergently evacuate. No matter how organized their files were, their paper was not portable.

I am a functional organizer, and I learned that our paper needs to be portable and limited to a reasonable amount of space. It was time to ditch the file cabinets and organize reference papers into essential household binders.

File cabinets are typically not well-maintained and they are certainly not portable. America needs a better solution for reference paperwork. 

After some ongoing analysis, I realized that household paper generally fits into four categories. I look at my own life experience caring for my ill father and settling his estate. I look at my life as a homeowner. I thought about all of the information it took to keep my household organized and my family functioning. 

There were no ready-made systems for being a caregiver and executor when my father passed away. I have worked with the members of the team who have gone through similar life challenges to try and make our binders as broad and effective as possible. But, because they are binders, they can also be adapted to handle any life situation you encounter.

I created a reference binder for each of the four areas of essential household paperwork. Tax forms and kid's memories live outside of this system, but everything else that needs to be saved can typically be fit into one of the four essential binders. 

The Four Essential Household Binders

Organize 365® sells physical binders to help with your household paper organization. The contents for each binder are also detailed in The Paper Solution book. However, our physical binders have multiple pages of worksheets that help get the information from the many places it lives organized into one location. 

Setting up the binders will make your life more organized and easier. But, it is also a gift for your family. If anyone else ever needs to take over any portion of your #adulting, they will have what they need at their fingertips. 

Financial Organizing Binder

This binder details your current and future financial information. It includes retirement accounts, vehicles, insurance, home inventory, estate planning, and funeral plans. 

This binder was originally designed for someone to be able to take over your financial life and close your estate. It can help with tracking bills, setting a house, or cancelling a lease. 

I estimate that in order to have a comprehensive financial binder, you will get 30% from your file cabinet, 30-40% digital information, and 30-40% in your memory or on random papers in your home.

Medical Reference Binder

This binder is designed to be used mainly by a caregiver. You can set one up if you are caring for someone else, or you can set one up to make it easier for a friend or family member to care for you. 

Although medical records are electronic, they are siloed in each medical practice. Many of the software systems do not effectively share information. Pharmacy, doctors, dentists, specialists, and insurance companies all have their own record systems in America. 

I estimate that 5-10% of this information lives in your file cabinet right now. 40-50% is online in some kind of medical record system. The other 40-55% is not recorded anywhere (yet!). 

Your medical binder is also a perfect place to keep a list of questions for your next appointment, write down observations, record behavior changes, and communicate with other caregivers.

This binder has a comprehensive workbook that includes a health history, childhood milestone tracker, symptom recorder, and place to record what you have already attempted. 

Life is short and the unexpected happens. We will either need caregivers or be caregivers. Having a portable, concise medical reference binder will help you to get the best care.

Household Reference Binder

This binder is the one I use most frequently. It is designed for people who are homeowners but can be used if you rent too. 

This binder is designed to have all the reference information you would keep organized if your house was a person. If you were selling your house tomorrow, you could hand over the binder to the new owners. The binder contains home improvement information, paint colors, appliance information, and landscaping details. 

Typically, 80% of the contents of this binder are already in your file cabinet. Manuals, make and model numbers, serial numbers, and similar information can be stored in the binder. I also recommend keeping receipts for purchases here too so you know when it was purchased and how much it cost. 

Household Operations

The Household Operations binder is all of the paperwork and information you need to run your household. No matter what kind of dwelling you have, you need a place to track meal planning, cleaning schedules, events, holidays, vacations, and pet information.

As a teacher, I think of this binder as my lesson plan book for my family. 

Why binders?

Papers that live in your file cabinet are not enough for someone to come in and manage your life. Some of the information on the pages in the binder lives in your computer, in your head, and in physical places like your wallet. 

File cabinets are not portable. Most of our emergencies involve leaving the house. We evacuate or lose our homes to a fire or flood. Someone gets hospitalized and we need the paperwork available for the healthcare team. 

In true emergency situations, it is rare to need reference papers at home. Usually, you need them where you need to go. Papers need to be taken to the family member, a doctor, a lawyer, or a school meeting. 

File cabinets hold far more information and physical paper than most of us can effectively manage. When I helped professional organization clients clean out their paperwork, most can declutter at least 80%.

What about tax paperwork?

Keep it in a file cabinet or file box. These items are bulky and rarely referenced. In a true emergency, you could replace them. 

What about kid-related papers?

Kid’s School Memory Binder

Kids enjoy their own memories most when they are young and can see their own growth and progress. When your kids are in the midst of their accumulation phase or survival phase of life, they probably will not have time to sit down and look through their old math tests and spelling lists. 

But, when your kids are young, you might be amazed at how much joy they get from looking at their artwork, stories, and projects. They will sit down with their binders and tell stories about school that you might not otherwise get to hear. 

Have your kids help to make their own memory binder and then use them. Sit down together and see what they have to say about certificates, awards, and their own creations. 

Warrior Mama Binder

For kids who have an IEP or 504, we have the Warrior Mama binder. This is a combination of medical and educational information that will help you to keep your child’s paperwork organized and help you to advocate for his or her best education. 

Walk Softly and Carry a Big Binder

My children are adopted and both needed additional support in their educational journey. I found that when I was going to advocate for my kids, I needed the medical and educational papers together for both doctor’s appointments and school meetings. I needed medical tests, health records, and learning assessments all in one place.

Your binder will hold essential details and can cut down on the time you need to spend to get your support professionals up to speed. This gives you more effective time during appointments. In my own experience, having paper documentation raises your expertise level with professionals and gives you immediate credibility. 

Why Not Digital?

In all the times I have advocated for the people I love, paper has worked best. No one has ever asked me for a digital file. Often, systems are incompatible with one another. Records from the doctor are not easily accessible by the school record-keeping system. 

Paper is immediate. Sending a digital file after a meeting has not gotten the same results as passing around a physical paper during a meeting when all of the decision-makers are gathered together.

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

For 2022, we are adding to the Lisa glossary. This week, we are talking about The Paper Solution. In 2020, I published a book called The Paper Solution. I also want to be your teacher to help you get your home and work paper organized and functional. 

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about the ideas and beliefs that are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing.

Paper is my thing. I love writing on paper, I love organizing paper, I love everything about paper.

But, as a professional organizer, I realized there is very little information available about how to organize paper, the categories of paper we deal with in our lives, and how to actually use paper in everyday life. 

Less Paper, not Paperless.

Although we have been promised a “paperless” society, the reality is that the US is a paper-based society. We are able to handle more things digitally than ever before, but we still need physical paper for many things in life. 

In America, our vaccine cards, birth certificates, vehicle titles, and medical records are all physical paper. Other parts of the world have digital systems for these things, but because of the uniqueness of our government and our focus on freedoms, we do not have universal, digital records for these things.

In my own life, physical paper has saved me over and over. Paper means that I can avoid expensive professional fees, and it gives me authority with lawyers, doctors, and school principles. In America, paper is the way I (and you) can substantiate claims and provide proof of what you know. Paper is useful in settling estates, advocating for children during IEP meetings, and for communicating vital health information during a medical emergency. 

The Paper Solution

The Sunday Basket® is the foundation of an organized home. The Sunday Basket® starts as a physical basket that holds actionable papers. But, really, it is so much more. It is a weekly habit of processing and looking proactively at the upcoming week that keeps the household running more smoothly. 

In 2020, I published The Paper Solution as a physical book. It is written to change your mindset about papers, and to give you the practical tools to get your household papers organized. 

The Big Purge

As a professional organizer working in people’s homes, I saw over and over that file cabinets allow us to save much more paper than we ever in. Surprisingly, most Americans can get rid of 80% of their filed papers and will never need them again. 

You can declutter your papers in as little as 15 minutes a day. Take a few file folders out and review them. Make piles for papers to recycle, shred, and save. Put the “save” papers back in the file cabinet. 

If you have ever taken care of a loved one’s papers, you know how vital it is to have important papers organized and easy to find. Take care of the people you love by clearing out all the old papers that no longer need to be stored or saved.

Types of Paper - Actionable and Reference

Of the papers that should be kept, there are two main categories. 

Actionable papers are papers that require you to take some action — bills to pay, grocery lists to buy, or a note to book that vacation hotel. 

Reference papers are all of the other papers we save — bank account numbers, retirement statements, wedding cards, and love letters. These we may look at again sometime in the future, but they mostly need to be kept safe.

Ditch the File Cabinet

After years of helping people get their files color-coded and organized in a file cabinet, I had several clients who were facing emergency evacuations. The reality was that they did not have time to pull out important documents during their emergency. 

That is when I realized that our reference papers need to be portable and there must be a constraint on how much paper we keep. It’s not realistic to load up an entire file cabinet when trying to get away from a forest fire or a hurricane. 

For several years, I have been teaching people to ditch the file cabinet and replace it with several essential reference binders. (More on this in the next podcast). 

Certified Organizers

America is going to need a team of trained professionals who understand the skill of organizing to teach it to others. The Organize 365® system offers different levels of assistance for learners depending on their personal needs. 

Certified Organizers are trained by Organize 365® to provide 1:1 or small group coaching, assistance, and support. I want you to have what you need to get organized and to be successful. 

We all need to have our paperwork organized. You can do it now, or you can do it after an emergency. It is a blessing to do it now — it is a gift to yourself and those who love you.

Organize 365® offers The Paper Solution for any type of paper you have. Actionable, household, reference, or work. Learn more at organize365.com!

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

See the full blog post at organize365.com/special-circumstances-organize-365-story-part8

This is part eight of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. I want to talk with you about some special circumstances that impact your organizational journey. As always, I start with helping you to get the right mindset about home organization. I want to give you the ability to look at your life circumstances and understand the ways in which they are impacting your organization. Getting your thoughts and mindset ordered is vital to ordering your physical spaces. I want to share with you some life circumstances and talk about how they affect your thinking and your organizing work. This week, I want to share some special circumstances you may face in order to help the Organize 365® community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language.

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about how I special circumstances and their impact on organization. These ideas are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing and will help you take those first steps towards learning the skills of organization in order to progress along your transformational journey. 

See all eight parts of this series at organize365.com/glossary

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

See the show notes at organize365.com/redefining-work-organize-365-story-part7

This is part seven of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. I want to talk with you about how you define "work." As always, I want to share my mindset and thinking with you. I also want to share how owning a home or running a household can also be your work. In this podcast, I also share many of the words I use surrounding the concept of work that help me to be more efficient, productive, and effective.

This week, I want to share my perspectives on work to help the Organize 365® community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language. No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about how I think about work. These ideas are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing and will help you take those first steps towards learning the skills of organization.

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

See the blog post at organize365.com/redefining-time-organize-365-story-part6

This is part six of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. I want to talk with you about how you look at time affects your organization and productivity. As always, I focus on helping you get the right mindset about how you spend your time. Time is the most abstract concept that will have the longest impact on how you spend the rest of your life. I want to share with you some of the ways you can change your mindset and how I think about time has changed over time and has helped me to grow in productivity. This week, I want to share my perspectives on time to help the Organize 365 community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language.

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about how I think about time. These ideas are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing and will help you take those first steps towards learning the skills of organization.

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

See the full blog post at: organize365.com/home-organization-perspective-organize-365-story-part5

This is part five of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. I want to talk with you about getting your home organized. As always, I start with helping you to get the right mindset about home organization. I want to give you the ability to figure out how to organize your home for yourself. Getting your thoughts and mindset ordered is much more effective than ordering your physical spaces. I want to share with you some of the ways you can change your mindset and the way you name the spaces in your home. This week, I want to share my home organization perspectives to help the Organize 365® community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language.

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about how I think about how we get our homes organized. These ideas are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing and will help you take those first steps towards learning the skills of organization.

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

See the full blog post at: overwhelm-to-plan-organize-365-story-part3

This is part three of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. This week, I want to talk with you about what happens as we move from one phase to the next. Typically, we get overwhelmed, feel like we are living in chaos, and struggle to have a plan. We struggle to keep pace with the new change while we are trying to learn a new level of organization, and the transition takes longer than we expect. As things get moving faster and you begin to feel overwhelmed, the way to regain clarity and be able to adjust from being reactive to productivity is the Sunday Basket®. This week, I want to share the details of the Sunday Basket® to help the Organize 365® community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language.

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about how I think about how we get our homes organized. These ideas are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing and will help you take those first steps towards learning the skills of organization.

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

Check out the blog post at organize365.com/cycles-seasons-organize-365-story-part2

This is part two of a series sharing the Organize 365® Story. This week, I want to share the cycles and seasons you will experience along your transformational journey to an organized life. This podcast and our new glossary will help the Organize 365® community to have a shared vocabulary and foundational language.

No matter when you begin your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you. Listen in as I teach you about the cycles and seasons that influence your organizing journey and that are at the core of everything I teach and how I approach organizing.

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

Check out the blog post and more details here:  organize365.com/organizing-foundation-organize-365-story-part1

This week on the blog, I am starting a series sharing the foundation of Organize 365®. I share the five foundational principles that are the bedrock of everything I teach inside of Organize 365®. I want to ensure that we have a common vocabulary and you know what the foundational principles are. No matter when you being your transformational journey (or when you need to reset or restart), this information will be here as a reference for you.

This episode is a part of the Organize 365® Glossary Playlist. Listen to other episodes on the Glossary Playlist here.

Has your New Year’s energy kicked in yet? It’s time to capitalize on that energy! We know you have goals and we have the tools you need to get you there!

One of the things that I have learned over the last decade is that life is work. There’s unpaid work at home and paid work at work and sometimes there’s unpaid work at work and sometimes there’s paid work at home. It’s all work. In order for me to be the best me I can be I need to plan for both the unpaid and the paid work that is my privilege and responsibility as a contributing member of society.

We have heard from many of you that you are trying to decide or pick what your focus will be in 2023 and I say we should just have it all.

An organized person unlocks their time, allowing them to pursue what they are uniquely created to do! The start of the new year feels like the turning of a page, a clean slate to make lasting organizational change in our lives - at home and at work. Organization is a learnable skill. One that will take you wherever you want to go.

Follow your renewed energy that the new year brings and use it to maximize your progress! Half the battle in learning the skill of organization is deciding what to do next. The “Organization Is For ME 2023” Bundle can make those decisions for you. This bundle will assist you with getting organized and making consistent progress towards your goals at HOME and at WORK.

Why can’t we have it all? Why can’t you be organized with your paid work and your unpaid (but oh so fulfilling) unpaid work? 

That’s why we’ve put together the Organization is for Me in 2023 Bundle - to help you do just that. You don’t have to choose between work and home. This bundle is going to give you the courses and tools you need to excel at both. 

In this bundle you’ll get The Productive Home Solution™ with Planning Day. As well as The Friday Workbox® system with the Goal Planner and Planning Day for your work.

Imagine how amazing it will feel to unlock your time in 2023?! How it would feel to come home to an organized house and create a system and routine for managing your work, passion projects or business?

This is your YEAR! Be all you can be with the Organization is for Me 2023 Bundle!

Episode Resources:

• Watch the video
• Organization is for Me 2023 Bundle
• The Productive Home Solution™

Last week I shared with you that one of my weaknesses has been overcoming the fact that I usually "ready, fire, aim" as opposed to "ready, set, go."

Learning to do the SET step in Ready, Set, Go has been my weakness. What I have found from nearly 11 years of working with the Organize 365® community is that GO is the area that tends to trip you up.

Being able to GO - actually getting started or keep moving on your goals and overcome your self-limiting doubt - can paralyze us.

I used to be where you are. I used to worry about what others would think of me. Will Greg (my husband) judge me? Can I meet or exceed my own goals? What if I can't do what I want to do? What if I can't live up to my own expectations? What if I invest time or money and fail?

The what ifs would paralyze me and keep me from starting. It allowed me to stay stuck. Stuck in my reactive and negative life. I would start a cycle of getting ready and set but never going. 

Ready, Set, repeat. There was no risk with ready and set. I didn't have to step too far out on a limb or too far out of my comfort zone.

Then one day I asked myself - what if everything happened for me? What if everything was easy? What if I did achieve these goals? What if I was able to achieve a bigger impact on my family, community and ultimately the world?

And I ask you - What if I had never started Organize 365®? What if I stopped podcasting tomorrow because I worry about looking silly or foolish? What if all of the Organize 365® products went away and were no longer resources to you?

How did that make you feel?

I don't know what it is that you have to offer the world. I don't know what a more organized life with less stress and more time will do for your family, your community and your work - but I bet it is more than you even realize now. And ultimately the only way we will know is if you GO. If you actually get started. Stop holding onto that branch of self-limiting beliefs and negative what-ifs. It's time to take the next step in your organizing journey - it's time for you to go.

What great timing! We are headed into a new year - clear out your house, clear out the cobwebs in your mind. Get ready, set, and let's GOOOOO. I believe in you. You can do this, you have what it takes, and the time is now. Please join me. We are going to do this together.

If your goal is to reclaim your home and your time - I have the solution for you. The Productive Home Solution™ is a new way of thinking about your space and time! Half of the battle with anything we are ready and set to do is deciding what the next step is (and then the next step after that). Avoid decision fatigue and use The Productive Home Solution™ as your roadmap to guide you through the journey of getting organized. Organization will carry you through so many of your goals; and was the first step for me getting to where I am today.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Productive Home Solution™
• Organize 365® Year End Bundle
• The Productive Home Solution™ Planning Day - December 31, 2022

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 I will be giving you a full orientation on the Organize 365® Kids Program.

Children want to be helpful. They love to learn and want to please adults! And in a perfect world, we would all have plenty of time to work together to keep a home clean and tidy.

But we often don’t have the time or energy. Our time and patience gets consumed by after-school activities, homework, housework, and adult work.

Teaching your children the skill of organization is an absolute must. These skills will serve them well while they're living in your household and, one day, their own. The Organize 365® Kids Program is your solution. This is your “get organized'' class for kids.” Taught directly to them by me!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Download the Kids Program Syllabus
• Watch the video
• Get the Kids Program
• Get the Year End Bundle that includes The Productive Home Solution™ & The Kids Program

Meet Michelle. She’s the voice behind the mailbag introductions on the podcast and the Customer Service Team lead here at Organize 365®. Michelle is SO loved by the Organize 365® team and customers!

She got quite the surprise when I asked if I could come and organize her storage area and video it for The Productive Home Solution™!  You guys…my home is already SO organized, including my storage area.  I’ve already shown everyone in The Productive Home Solution™ my storage area too many times. It was time for me to tackle someone else’s storage room.

The progress we made in ONE DAY may seem unbelievable; but it is all very doable when you know the order of the tasks you need to complete to get organized! 

Michelle picked me up at the airport and we got to work. Thank goodness we had a dumpster. We started by focusing on what could go in that dumpster.  We were able to tackle a tucked away storage area with old shelving and her garage.  

Michelle, who described the experience as “humbling”, almost had us pass on that tucked away storage area. But looking back, that was the most rewarding space to get organized. We really forced Michelle to focus on what we could get rid of first by repeatedly saying “You have the dumpster, we are here, what can go?”. Then we focused on cleaning and reloading the storage area by zones. 

Michelle said it felt like a 40 year old weight had been lifted off her shoulders at the end of the day. Her mom (who also lives in the home) was so pleased at what we accomplished in one day.  

When you listen to this episode, I want you to be inspired and know that you too can learn how to get an organized storage area and then go do it. Once you have it organized properly, it should stay organized for a very long time…if not forever. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Limited Time - watch the video of Lisa Organizing Michelle’s Storage Room (only available through 12/31/22).
• Shelving Units
• Bins
• The Productive Home Solution™

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!

Wow, a lot can happen in a year! As you reflect on this year, go over your planner, see how much you did, what new things you tried, and how much you have grown and changed!

Let’s talk about how you want to grow in your business, in your unique gifting and in the impact you can have on others. Imagine if you could help them to get results faster?  

As you think about 2023 I want you to consider helping your clients even more than you do already!  

Listen in to hear about The Paper Solution® Certification. If this is something that has been on your mind or in your heart to do next year - schedule a call with Monique Horb (MHorb@organize365.com) to learn more!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Year End Business Checklist
• The Paper Solution® Certification
• The Paper Solution® Certification Orientation

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 part two of this three part Ready, Set, Go series, we are going to discuss the middle child of the Ready, Set, Go family - SET. What does it mean to get SET and to be SET?

The running joke for visionary entrepreneurs like myself is the quote, “Ready, Fire, Aim!”

And boy have I lived that quote in the past! At first, in my 20s, it was because I didn’t know what I was doing - at home, at work, or as a parent. I learned the hard way - every time!

But later in my 30s, it wasn’t really my fault anymore. There wasn’t enough time to prepare or aim. Life was moving so fast that I was missing important things while running at Mach 1 speed!

It wasn’t my fault. And it’s not yours either.

The last time we had “preparation time” in our calendars was in grade school where our teachers carefully planned our assignments and workload so we had time to complete things.

By the time high school arrived: extra-curricular activities, part-time jobs and sleep filled in all the cracks and then some.

No one has enough time. And no one is going to give us more time. #truth

Work colleagues, parents, children, partners, neighbors and friends all want our time. Some demand, some plead, some expect it without question. And we give it…gladly, lovingly, freely.

We get up earlier, stay up later, eliminate hobbies and rearrange our days.

Eve Rodsky compares our time this way, “Men’s time is worth diamonds, and women’s time is like sand.”

Ouch. You can’t unhear that. But, it’s true for me.

Greg has a golf night. He goes on fishing and golf trips. I haven’t had a hobby night or gone on a trip with friends since having children (22 years ago)!

After work, Greg makes dinner and then watches TV. Now, I do the dishes (sometimes), take a bath and do a puzzle. But I feel weird about it.

Until a few years ago, my after-work activities involved driving kids, cleaning the kitchen, laundry, straightening up, etc. until I felt it was an acceptable time for me to stop “working” and take my bath.

When are we going to give ourselves the permission to take back a little of our time?

Last week we talked about being ready. The truth is you and I are OVER ready. We have been for decades. But we don’t make the plan and run the race to a different end. Why is this?

SET is all about saying your time is not more important, but AS important as everyone else’s.

For me, in this season, it means I am going to start my Ph.D program and travel - A LOT. For work, for pleasure, and for me.

Let me be clear. My family is not happy about it. They intellectually support it, but in words and actions, they are not pleased with the change.

Am I being selfish? Maybe.

Would I want it for every single one of them? Absolutely! When one of my family members wants to…further their education, move out, have a baby, take a trip, find a new doctor, pursue a new passion…I facilitate the how, when, where, and payments.

I am happy for the sacrifices of time and self-focus I have devoted to my family over the last 25 years, and for the ability to grow Organize 365® around my family.

But now I want to pour more of my time and talent into my unique gifting.

So, how do we get SET to do the things we want and need to do in life?

We know how to help others in our lives get set. We set our kids up for school, set-up their school supplies, bookbags, dorm rooms, etc. We set our partners up for their endeavors and trips. We know how to get set-up; we just don't often look at doing it for ourselves the way we do for others.

How do we SET ourselves up for success?

Getting SET comes after getting ready because when you are getting SET you are already ready. You are doing the final steps before you GO (more on that next week).

What do you need to GO? Get that together now.

How can you get SET for a productive and proactive new year?

If your goal is to reclaim your home and your time - I have the solution for you. The Productive Home Solution™ is a new way of thinking about your space and time! Half of the battle with anything we are ready and set to do is deciding what the next step is (and then the next step after that). Avoid decision fatigue and use The Productive Home Solution™ as your roadmap to guide you through the journey of getting organized. Organization will carry you through so many of your goals and was the first step for me getting to where I am today.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Productive Home Solution™
• Organize 365® Year End Bundle
• The Productive Home Solution™ Planning Day - December 31, 2022

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!

Amber N. shared her transformation with me! She’s the mom of two children who are a senior in high school and 14 years old, and she has a Greg of her own! Amber had always been inspired to be organized; but at some point life just got in her way.  She was no longer organized but desperately wanted to be. Amber had tried other organization systems, including hiring a professional organizer.  The funny part is, once she got through some of the Organize 365® resources, she no longer needed that professional organizer to come back in for a “refresh”.  She had learned the skill of organization and now she can do it on her own! I keep telling you, organization is a learnable skill people!

Amber had to come to terms with what “being organized” actually means.  Did it mean mimicking the pictures from Pinterest; or was it more important for it to be done? Picture vs. Reality. Cute vs. Organized. We put so much pressure on ourselves to give our children these picture perfect parties or bedrooms. Honestly, our kids aren’t on social media and do not see the pictures we see. They are not on Pinterest. They are not looking for these tiny details. They are just happy to spend time with us, and to celebrate their birthday. Give yourself some grace. 

Amber had to start with baby steps…but ultimately she ended in a sprint.  She started with her mail and the Sunday Basket® despite all the paper in her house.  She was so excited with the results that she wanted more and wanted it more quickly. Now she’s The Paper Solution Certified and can help people on their own organizational journeys!

I encourage everyone to evaluate what your energy level is during each season, and what area you want to focus on - such as the house, school & work, or maybe it’s being a more intentional mom. Then set the expectation at the beginning that ‘something is better than nothing’ when it comes to getting organized. 

Amber has learned so much from Organize 365®.  Her major takeaway is to extend herself grace. Her other biggest takeaways are: 

• If you put a process in place, you can move through it
• Good is good enough and focus on macro not micro
• Don’t get bogged down

Now that she is organized, she has time to spend with her family and on her business too. She also has more money because she isn’t paying late fees and more grace that she gives to herself!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®
• The Paper Solution® Certification

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!

Are you READY to think differently? Are you READY to evaluate your past new years goals and productivity? Are you READY to put in the work and reap the rewards of your focus & labor? Are you physically READY? Mentally READY? Emotionally READY?

Today’s episode is about readiness. And I’m so excited to share my ideas for what it means to be READY.

My favorite activity is to think about my thinking. It is a habit that I have cultivated into an art form and can no longer do without. It’s my habit.

And that is the thing about habits. Bad ones are easy to fall into and hard to break. Good ones take thought, planning, discipline and determination to establish.

Yet, habits are the ONE thing that separates the life you have today and the future you envision for yourself.

• You cannot fall into productivity (it doesn't just happen)
• Your house will not magically clean and organize itself

As I get ready for the new year, I want to share with you how I think about this coming season. As the December days quickly pass by, I look forward to the new year. This is the official day I start running my race for a productive 2023 - when new opportunities like starting college for my Ph.D program begin.

I am getting ahead of myself. Today. Today is about being READY.

Readiness is a state of being.

You will never be 100% ready. And that's 100% okay! You don't have to be 100% ready in order to start!

Readiness is an understanding of the strengths and limitations you are experiencing in THIS phase of your life.

What unique seasons are you experiencing right now that you can leverage to move forward in your home organization goals?

• Are you in a season where you are home more?
• Do you have more energy at a certain time of day, or day of the week?
• Is there a big event coming up that will motivate you to work faster?
• Do you have a companion who is motivated to pace with you?
• Is this a season where you have money in the budget to add to your efforts?
• Would selling unused past purchases help you fund your new years goals? 

You may not be in a season where you are READY to devote more time and energy to your personal home. And that is OK.

However, what I have found to be true more often is that there is always a seed of readiness in each season, but we miss it.

I mentioned that I think about my thinking - constantly. I love sharing my unique thinking with you - to motivate you to do the same! Think about where you are right now and what you are ready for!

Change is normal. Most people spend their whole life trying to avoid change.

But change is where transformation comes from. Change unlocks the future. And it starts with READINESS.

• READINESS is fragile
• READINESS is fleeting
• READINESS holds all the potential for the future

Next week I will share with you my thoughts on SET, but this week focus on your READINESS. READINESS is the first step in your new year. Don't miss it!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Productive Home Solution™
• Organize 365® Year End Bundle
• The Productive Home Solution™ Planning Day - December 31, 2022

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 the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

Today I am so excited for you to meet Maura. Over the summer I put out a social media post requesting a family that would allow me to get their kid’s rooms organized and FILM IT ALL for a movie about Kids Organization. Maura was jumping up and down saying “pick me”!

Maura is a mom of four - Bode (12), Lucy Belle (10), Finley (7) and Blaise (4). She runs a bakery out of her house (oh my goodness - she makes the BEST cookies) and her husband also works from home. 

As Maura put it, “the spigot never stops.” Which leads us to talking about OVERWHELM as a parent. The overwhelm is beautiful and messy all at the same time. And I’m so glad I was welcomed into Maura’s house to put into action the principles of Organize 365®’s Kids Program.

I LOVE ORGANIZING CHILDREN. I LOVE IT.

I was able to come one day early, meet these kiddos, and look at the task ahead of me.  I spent a total of 2-3 hours with each child individually and we focused on the oldest three. 

We are all looking for ways to connect with and spend quality time with our children. Did you know that time spent teaching kids the skills of organization while organizing their room with them can be the BEST quality time? 

Get the kids involved! Working with your kid to organize their room is quality time you can spend with them. They love the one on one time. They love talking about their stuff. They love getting to make decisions. They love the result and the process. You are teaching them the valuable skill of organizing while spending time with them.

Make it an enjoyable process for both of you! Listen to their stories. Everything in their room has a story for them. These are their little treasures!

Now when Maura tucks her kids in at night, she can actually go into their rooms and not get filled with so much frustration over the mess. Listen for the update since my visit. 

I can’t come to everyone’s house but trust me - you can do this!  The Organize 365® Kids Program is like I am there with you and we go through all the areas.  Harness your kids excitement to your benefit

NOW is just as good a time as any.  Since the kids are out of school and there’s anticipation building for the holidays…declutter and organize.  Make room for all the new stuff that will be coming into your home. I also shared some tips you may want to use for other ideal times that you want to declutter and organize.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Watch the Kids Organization Movie featuring Maura’s lovely family LIVE this Friday with me at 7 pm ET.
• Want to get organized as a family? The Limited Time Year Bundle is the perfect resource to get yourself and kids organized in 2023.
• Sign-up for the Kids Program Orientation on December 27 at 11 am ET
• The Kids Program
• The Launch Program
• Maura’s Cookies

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 look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

“In today’s podcast, I’m channeling my 30-something self. 

Once school let out for the holiday break, any shred of productivity or sanity that I was going to have for the last 10 days of the year were out the window and I was back to being camp counselor again.

If you are in your active parenting years, this podcast is a HUGE HUG from me. It’s all going to be alright. You’re going to be fine. Everyone is going to love everything that they get, everyone is going to appreciate the work that you are doing, all the invisible tasks are going to be well-rewarded. YOU ARE DOING A GREAT!

If your primary role and responsibility right now is raising humans…that is not a job. It’s a life’s calling. It is your legacy. It is your life. It is all consuming. I’ve been there. I’ve done it. 

I know you feel like you never have any time. And you may tell yourself that you will get organized when you have more time. But, the truth is...people in their 30’s are the BEST at getting organized. Because you need it SO much more. 

Learning the skill of organizing is not optional. If you opt-out, meaning you don’t want to learn the skill of organizing, then everything is going to be harder for you. Organization skills is where ease, capacity, time and sanity comes from! It is an essential skill.

The Organize 365® Year End Bundle includes the three essential things you are going to need in order to get optimally organized in 2023. This will ensure your whole entire life is organized so you can move even faster.

I know what you want…

• More impact
• More capacity
• Do more. Be more places

You really don’t have to pick and choose. You need to be everywhere and doing everything in your 20s-40s.

You need to learn the skill of organizing AND your children need to learn the skill of organizing.

So here’s what we’ve put together for you:

1. The Productive Home Solution™
2. The Kids Program - like The Productive Home Solution™ for your kids
3. The Sunday Basket® System

If you are wanting to get your WHOLE family organized; from the dog all the way to mom and dad, then listen to the end because we have a big event planned to help you AND your family

show notes

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!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Ashley C. She lives with husband, three children and some fun pets! She shares her struggle with living up to the Pinterest perfect bar she set for herself when she had her first baby.  

Ashley has been a dedicated podcast listener for years.  The Organize 365® podcast gave her the permission to forgo the Pinterest perfect nursery rooms and scrapbooks and get things done a little less than perfect.  

We discuss how we have all these long to-do lists and so much pressure on ourselves but the funny thing is, no one is checking that list.  No one is disappointed that we didn’t accomplish something or accomplish it in the way we planned.  

Ashley is somewhat of a reformed perfectionist now.  In her business, she uses the phrase “experiments in imperfection.”  She joined The Productive Home Solution™ and got her new home organized. Only recently did she purchase the Sunday Basket®.  Why now?  Lisa helped her to unveil feelings of fear of failure. Ashley knew about all the resources Organize 365® has to offer but she subconsciously felt that maybe she wouldn’t do them justice. 

I encourage everyone to not sit on the sidelines due to fear of failure. Is it time for you to get off the sidelines and make the commitment with the Sunday Basket® system?  I am happy to say Ashley is organized and on her way to the next chapter of life. Her transformation story is ongoing as she is now working her way into business and just got started with the Friday Workbox®. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®
• The Friday Workbox®
• The Productive Home Solution™

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!

Great News!  We have two new locations for 2023!!  I hope to see you there!

Learn more and sign-up for a live, in-person Paper Organizing Retreat.

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 today’s episode as we wrap up our series on my ADHD journey and exploration of executive functions, I am excited to introduce you to Keith Boswell, Vice President of Marketing at ADHD Online.

ADHD Online is transforming the diagnosis and treatment of people dealing with neurodiversity. Organize 365® and ADHD Online have partnered several times over the past year to present organizational solutions that I have found to work for others struggling with ADHD.

Keith brings a new level to this conversation we’ve been having - he is open about his diagnosis of ADHD and his own organization challenges and triumphs. We talk about his familys’ problem areas, the progression of aging children, and roles that will come with the organization of their house.

Find out how we met and how our partnership is evolving. Keith and ADHD Online are doing some important work for awareness and helping people function with ADHD. They are helping people to get a faster diagnosis and move on to finding solutions.  ADHD Online has medical professionals providing the diagnosis and from there you can choose to work with them or your primary doctors and pharmacies. And, they are proud to say that the solution is not always medicine!  They really work with their clients to help them succeed. Organize 365® is  excited to work with them to provide solutions that work for helping their clients live a more organized and proactive life.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• ADHD Online
• ADHD Awareness Resources

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 today’s episode we wrap up our four part series on exploring the executive functions and the role they play in our ability to be organized. I’ve always believed that you won’t just “be organized.” Organization is a learnable skill. This means that it’s not something you have to be born with. If you’re currently not organized, that's okay too! You can absolutely learn how to be organized.

I have always had a strong belief that organization is a learnable skill. So, I wasn’t surprised to learn that 87% of Americans also believe that organization is a learnable skill. However, I was surprised to find that of those same Americans - only 18% believed that they are organized. Organize 365® courses and programs teach you how to be organized. If you struggle with initiating and task monitoring, then you need community. That’s why adding the Organize 365® Community App was important to me.

Initiation is simply the “start” factor. Task Monitoring is the ability to look at how far you have come and understand how much still needs to be accomplished.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Organize 365® Blitz (Free)
• Organize 365® Community
• The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan

Listen to today’s episode to learn how community and grace play a huge role in helping you learn a new skill (like organizing).

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!

As we continue our series exploring executive functions today we get to talk about planning.

Can you hear it in my voice? Planning is my FAVORITE-IST thing!

Planning is so much more than filling in a planner or checking boxes. Planning is purposefully setting aside time and deciding how you want to show up in the next season. Decide what rules you want to make for your next season so you can be as proactive as you want to be. It’s time to dream about what is possible, about what you want to change, and about what you don’t want to change. 

At Organize 365®, I offer LIVE Planning Days for home and work where I teach you how to proactively plan. They are conveniently scheduled around natural Golden Windows.

Golden windows is a phrase I created to help articulate different times that are optimal for getting started on your transformational journey to organizing. Learn more about golden windows in podcast 242 - Golden Windows of Organizing Opportunity.

You do realize, without knowing it, there are about three times a year we shift in life?  These are what I like to call Golden Windows.  This is a time to organize and plan.  Effective planning going into these golden windows can have a profound impact on your organizational transformation because your organizing energy is naturally higher than normal. And with a plan in hand you can really capitalize on that energy. 

Planning is everything! Planning will help you make the invisible work visible. See how I’ve applied this to so many seemingly “invisible” tasks in life such as putting up and taking down my Christmas tree.

There are a lot of layers to this conversation - listen to the full episode and join me for the next part of this executive function series where we will be talking about initiation & task monitoring.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Organize 365® Blitz
• Business Friday Workbox® Starter Bundle with Planning Day
• Friday Workbox® Planning Day Bundle
• The Productive Home Solution® with first Planning Day included
• Home Planning Day Bundle - Essentials
• Home Planning Day Bundle - Deluxe
• ALL IN Work & Home Planning Day Bundle

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 coffee chat is a special Holiday Blitz Edition. Every year I host my annual FREE Holiday Blitz. The goal of the Holiday Blitz is to help you strategically plan for your holiday season by making the invisible work of the holidays visible. The Holiday Blitz includes 13 free downloadable planning pages and 5 course videos where I walk you through planning the holiday season. We talk about how you can simplify your holidays, embrace your uniqueness and be present, proactive and productive throughout the season.

Listen in as I interview busy CEO and mom Jessica Evans of Ultimate Bundles. Jessica shares with us how she used the Holiday Blitz to plan out her holiday traditions. Find out what traditions she loves, which ones she doesn’t enjoy as much and how she is setting herself up for success this holiday season. Jessica also shares some really fun holiday ideas!

Do you want to plan your holiday season with The Holiday Blitz? There’s still time! Join the Holiday Blitz On Demand now.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Holiday Blitz On Demand
• The Holiday Blitz Bundle

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!

Does it ever feel like you have a two year old in your brain talking to you all day reminding you of things you need to do and demanding what to do next?  Do you feel like you are playing an adult version of Memory or Go Fish when it comes to your paperwork? 

Now that I've learned that I have ADHD, I'm ready to dive deeper into this topic of executive function and organization with formal research. Lots of times ADHD can be diagnosed when the person’s executive functions are analyzed. In this episode I explain the Executive Function of the Organization of Materials.

Did you know most people organize their closets and kitchens first?  Why do you think that is? Listen to the full episode to understand.

At Organize 365®, I have designed systems with enough structure to get the job done and with a little wiggle room for customization, because we’re all unique. Here are the rules to keep you on track…

1. Everything should have a place. True - but you (not Pinterest, not society - you) get to pick that place.
2. We tend to reorganize about every twenty years due to stages of life and unexpected life events. This is totally NORMAL!
3. Maintain what is working for you. You only need to implement systems for what is unorganized.
4. Organization of Materials has an order (think stages of life)
5. Organization of Materials is about personal rules you create to maintain sustainable organization. 

Through learning the skill of functional organization; you will literally unlock your time and be able to spend it doing what you are uniquely created to do.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Lisa School Binder
• Organize 365® Lattice Binders
• Organize 365® 1.0 Slash Pockets
• Learn more about “zones” and functional organizing in The Productive Home Solution™

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's next for research at Organize 365®? Now that I've learned that I have ADHD, I'm ready to dive deeper into this topic of executive function and organization with formal research.

Lots of times ADHD can be diagnosed when the person’s executive functions are analyzed. 

In this episode, I shared three examples of me relying on my working memory.  I analyze if my working memory helped or hindered the situation and explore explanations as to why I responded, the way I did, in each situation.  

The executive function of working memory holds information in your head for a short amount of time so you can manipulate that information and do something.  Example: A math problem.  You take in the information of the numbers and functions that are being requested. When you do the problem in your head you are using your working memory to solve the problem.

All hope is not lost - yes we can improve our executive functions according to Psychology today.  They suggest to identify which executive function you want to improve and then pick a strategy to help you improve.

Strategies to improve your executive functions include:

1. Chunk things into smaller tasks
2. Externalize information using notepads, to do lists, or reminders 

(had you completed the math problem, mentioned earlier, on paper, you would be helping your working memory by reducing demand upon your working memory so it is available for other items you need to remember)

3. Buddy up with a peer to foster accountability
4. Blocking access to distractions such as your phone in a drawer while focusing on a task
5. Use rewards to motivate periods of consistent effort

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Psychology Today
• Strategies for improving executive function
• The Sunday Basket®
• The Friday Workbox®
• The Holiday Blitz
• Planning Day for Home
• Planning Day for Work
• Notepads and Notecards
• Find me on Instagram @Organize365

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's next for research at Organize 365®? Now that I've learned that I have ADHD, I'm ready to dive deeper into this topic of executive function and organization with formal research.

There are five areas of executive function that involve organization:

1. Initiating - getting started
2. Working Memory - holding information
3. Planning - planning ahead
4. Monitoring - knowing what needs to be done next
5. Organizing Materials - organizing your home

I believe that you can impact and change your executive functioning by learning the skill of organization so you can have more time to do what you're uniquely created to do. At Organize 365® we have programs, systems, and products to help you in each of these areas.

In this episode, I explain where I am going next and the massive decision that I have made in order to take the next step. I've talked about doing it for years, but finally, in January of 2023, I will begin a one-year program that will lead me into a Ph.D. program.

No one else will do this research for me. If we are going to take on this project as a company, I want to be the one not just leading the team, but leading the research. To do that, I have to have a Ph.D.

I've already been rearranging my schedule and preparing myself, my family, and my team for what this will look like. I'm dividing my week into three parts so my family, my company, and my studies all get the attention they need.

Come along with me on the journey!

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 the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I want to let you know that there will not be any Wednesday Transformations in November. I had some scheduling conflicts and was not able to record any new interviews for you. Wednesday Transformations will return on December 7.

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.

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

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!

Do I have ADHD or not? This has become so confusing!

According to ADHD Online, I have a medical diagnosis of ADHD. According to Barbara Hunter's analysis of my BRIEF-A assessment, my executive functioning indicates that I do NOT have ADHD. Who is right?

I took my questions to a psychologist in Cincinnati for a final answer.

Why? Well, first, I want to give good recommendations to the Organize 365® community. If ADHD Online is not a good resource, I don't want to refer you to them. Second, I want to continue to do executive function research related to ADHD and organization, so I want to know if I actually have ADHD or not as I go into that project.

Organization is a learnable skill. If we learn the skill of organizing, can we mitigate or eliminate the effects of ADHD?

In this episode, I share with you my story of gathering supporting information from my childhood, taking additional assessments, and speaking with the psychologist to get the final answer. I explain the criteria for an ADHD diagnosis. I also share how in the process, we determined first that I do NOT have dyslexia as I have always been told.

Two interesting things were the clinchers for my final answer. One was speeding tickets, and the other was how I handle money and debt.

Listen to this episode to hear how in the beginning, the psychologist believed there was no way that I could have ADHD and how this all came together to finally find out if I do have ADHD.

More Resources

• Book: How ADHD Affects Home Organization
• Organize 365® ADHD Playlist

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 the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Carrie F. She lives with her husband and they have two teens at home and one away at college. She's a retired veterinarian. Paper was her greatest organizational struggle at home, especially after closing her practice. We talk about how she overcame her piles of paper by pressing through, starting with the current paper, and then working her way back through the rest of the paper.

Is paper your nemesis? The Sunday Basket® System is the first step to getting your paper organized!

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.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

• Organize 365®
• The Sunday Basket® System
• The Productive Home Solution™

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

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 month I've been exploring the topic of ADHD and more specifically, discovering if I have ADHD.

Last week, I shared my journey to reach the point of deciding to be tested for ADHD. First I took the assessment from ADHD Online and was told that I DO have a medical ADHD diagnosis.

In this episode, I'm talking with my friend Barbara Hunter about whether she thinks I have ADHD... or not. She gave me The BRIEF-A to make her determination. This is the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function® Adult Version.

The BRIEF-A is given in three parts: I took the assessment. Then both my husband, Greg, and my chief of staff, Stephanie, took the assessment to give their perspective on me.

Barbara walked through the sections of the test with me to explain what the various sections mean and my results compared to Greg and Stephanie's opinions of me, as well as ways to improve my executive functioning in some areas.

The final result? According to The BRIEF-A, Barbara says that this current assessment of my executive function says that I do NOT have ADHD.

So, where do I go from here? I contacted a doctor in the Cincinnati area to do more testing so I can definitively find out if I have ADHD or not. More to come!

Looking for more information on ADHD and Organization? Start with my book, How ADHD Affects Home Organization. It's available for free as an audiobook on the ADHD Playlist!

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Book: How ADHD Affects Home Organization
• ADHD Online
• Springer School and Center
• Barbara Hunter and Integrated Learning Designs
• The BRIEF-A

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 the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Kat S. She lives with her husband and together they run her music studio out of their home. Kat feels like she learned to be organized at a young age because her mom had hoarding tendencies, but she has learned so much more since implementing Organize 365® systems. She and her husband trend to the minimalist side and have great systems in place for living and working together.

Kat was able to bring her husband home to work in her business in part because she was able to show him using her Business Friday Workbox® and her stack of pink slash pockets all of the ideas that she had for her business that she needed help to bring to life.

What's in your pink slash pockets?

Visit Kat's website at KatStarrMusic.com.

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.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

• Organize 365®
• The Sunday Basket® System
• The Productive Home Solution™
• Friday Workbox®

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

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!

Do I have ADHD? My mom doesn't think I have ADHD. I didn't think I had ADHD. At one point, I adamantly opposed people who suggested I had ADHD.

But, in more recent years, I have thought: Maybe I do have ADHD?

When I would organize women in the Cincinnati area, many would start their appointments by telling me that they had or thought they had ADHD. My kids received their ADHD diagnoses when they were children and attended Springer School and Center for many years. I was a teacher and I saw many kids receive their ADHD diagnosis and the support put in place for them.

My book How ADHD Affects Home Organization came out of this time of discovery and research about ADHD and research about organization. (By the way, you can now get the audiobook for free on our new Organize 365® ADHD Playlist!)

People who have ADHD need more structure and support. It's not an issue of intellect. It's an issue of executive functioning. Everyone learns at a different pace and organization is a learnable skill. It's just that people who have ADHD tend to need a person to help put structure in place for them to learn the skill of organizing.

In this episode, I fill you in on my journey of learning about ADHD and then coming to the point of deciding to find out if I actually have ADHD... or not.

Many things came together recently for me to reach this point personally. I have done some biohacking with my Oura Ring and Apple Watch. I began a partnership and series of webinars with ADHD Online and learned more about their services.

But, it was my recent meeting with Barbara Hunter that pushed me over the edge. She was at Springer School and Center for over 20 years. I took any class they offered as my kids were students there. They often bring in top-notch experts in conjunction with Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Barbara is now doing executive function coaching through her company Integrated Learning Designs. In this meeting, we were discussing how there are many resources for students and employees with ADHD, but no one is really addressing how ADHD affects your home life.

So, then, I pondered out loud whether I actually have ADHD or not. Do I really want to know? What would it change if I knew? I wouldn't medicate for ADHD at this point in my life if I have a diagnosis because I have skills and systems already in place to make my life run smoothly. What would knowing that I have or do not have ADHD do for me? What I really want to know is my level of executive functioning and how to optimize that, whether I have ADHD or not!

Barbara tells me there's a test for that! It's called The BRIEF-A. I was in! Just in our casual conversation, Barbara saw signs in me that pointed towards an ADHD diagnosis. And I saw more signs. I always had a floating "C" in school, I'm a talker, I interrupt people, I'm a busybody who doesn't vacation well, and I can't sit to watch TV without a puzzle to work on or laundry to fold. So, I made arrangements to take the test with Barbara.

Before that, still unsure of if I really wanted to know the answer, I decided with some trepidation and some encouragement from Joey to first take the test from ADHD Online to see what they had to say.

The results? According to ADHD Online and their assessment, I have ADHD.

Next week, I talk about my results from The BRIEF-A and my meeting with Barbara Hunter. What does Barbara have to say about my executive functioning based on The BRIEF-A?

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Book: How ADHD Affects Home Organization
• ADHD Online
• Springer School and Center
• Barbara Hunter and Integrated Learning Designs
• The BRIEF-A

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 the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Jennifer S. She lives with her husband and three kids, two of whom are off to college. Jennifer is an attorney and has always worked full-time outside of the home. We have a great discussion about wills, trusts, power of attorney for your adult children, inventories, caring for aging parents, and so much more. Jennifer shares how the Sunday Basket® kept her life running in a hard season while caring for her grandmother at the end of her life and her own aging parents.

Jennifer loves Planning Days for both home and business but needed a little extra help. She gives a thank you to Stefanie at Island Organizing for her services related to the Business Friday Workbox® organization and the community she's found there.

Jennifer, like many of us, tends to be a perfectionist. She's learning to say, "I am a person of excellence!" How are you pursuing excellence?

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.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

• Organize 365®
• The Sunday Basket® System
• The Productive Home Solution™
• Friday Workbox®
• Home Planning Day
• Business Planning Day
• Stefanie at Island Organizing

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

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 over a decade of studying female heads of households in their homes and researching what it takes to get them organized, I've thought a lot about time and the invisible work we are doing.

The big thing when I started my business was hitting six figures. Everyone wanted to hit $100,000 in yearly income. Back then, I had just quit my teaching job in a private school making $24,000 a year in take-home pay. I couldn't even wrap my mind around ever being a six-figure income earner!

Over the years, as I've looked at how women use their time, I've come to this conclusion: You can have six-figure time without the six-figure income. It's all about mindset and how you choose to spend your time. In this episode, I share my observations of six-figure income earners and my suggestions for developing a six-figure time mindset.

How Six-Figure Income Earners Spend Their Time

As a professional organizer, I went into the homes of many six-figure earners with million-dollar homes. These were often doctors, lawyers, business owners, and C-Suite executives. I had the opportunity to see how they run their lives and the type of help they hired. Having a six-figure income gave these women and their families a choice in how they spend their time.

Can you have this six-figure time mindset without the six-figure income? I think you can! Many millionaires are time-poor while many who have no income at all are time rich. What's the difference between time poverty and being rich in time?

Time Passing vs Making a Difference

Most people see time in terms of how much time is passing and what they can get done. Truly productive people see a third dimension: If I spend my time doing this today, will it make a difference in the future? Will it make a difference a month, a year, 5 years, or 10 years from now? People who are time multipliers always make their time decisions based on the significance factor.

If you could get the to-do list done, what would you do with your free time? Too many of us just add more to-do items to the list. 

I think we most want time freedom. To reach that goal, you must be proactive and not reactive. I talk about this all the time at Organize 365®. This is not a new concept. But, this is more than just planning out the big projects. You have to develop the habit muscle of proactivity in every area of your life.

It means not doing every little thing when you have the thought. You write the thought on the index card, drop it into the Sunday Basket®, and do those little things all batched together to save time.

Six-figure time takes being proactive a step further. Instead of waiting to have the thought about the dog's medicine or the bills that need to be paid, you put it on a schedule with a plan for how to get it done or create other automations for the task like using bill pay. You purposely plan ahead for how the task will be done. What in your life can be systematized, scheduled, and automated to save you time and mental space?

Forward Thinking and Planning Days

Everyone is a forward thinker according to Ben Hardy. The difference is how far ahead into the future you think. It's great to have 15 minutes of free time and do something that your future self will appreciate like emptying the dishwasher or starting the laundry, but this is reactive productivity. How do you move to the next step and think farther into the future?

The answer is planning days.

Planning days for your home and your work give you the focused time to get more done and have more impact. The goal isn't a longer to-do list. The goal is more time to do what you're uniquely created to do so you can have more impact.

I'll be honest: It's more comfortable to add to the to-do list and check off the low-level tasks because it makes me feel productive. It takes time to wrestle with the question of what you're uniquely created to do and to try things out to see if that's the right thing for you. It takes time to develop skills and practice those skills. Six-figure income earners spend a lot of time growing their skills. 

Six-figure income earners also spend a lot of time networking and making connections with like-minded people. Surround yourself with people who are investing their time and resources into being more productive so they can have an impact on the world.

They also change their role as they grow. Six-figure income earners do the things that are the highest use of their time. You have to focus on working your way out of jobs. This might mean delegating jobs to other people or services that can do the work for you. This might be other family members. Consider meal planning services or hire a house cleaner. It might also mean changing the standard at which you do a task in your home. Can you lengthen the time between dusting or changing your sheets?

Building Relationships

I think that the true freedom of six-figure time comes when you can start to think about not just the work that needs to be done at home or in the office, but how you can impact relationships in your family, friends, and work. This is harder to prioritize because no one is holding us accountable. 

Using the Sunday Basket® for Six-Figure Time

The Sunday Basket® System is the first step in developing a six-figure time mindset. It helps you think about and systematize your personal life, household, family, and finances. I teach you how to move from being reactive to proactive.

Now, based on this podcast you can take your thinking to the next level. When you focus on your Sunday Basket® color of the week, consider the chess level next steps. What can you do for yourself, your household, your family, or your finances that would save you time and give you time freedom for the future?

I encourage you to pay special attention to how you invest your time with your family because these are the types of things that never make the to-do list and we fail to think about them until it's too late. I've shared many times about how I spent purposeful time with my kids in their teens to develop the close relationships that I have with them now. 

Here's a simple way to be productive in your home instead of reactive and make time for family and relationship-building this holiday season: Join our holiday blitz! Get on the wait list for the 2022 Holiday Blitz now!

Being a six-figure time person means seeing how valuable your time is and how valuable you are. Invest your time wisely!

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Book: I Know How She Does It by Laura Vanderkam
• Book: 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think
• Book: Overcoming Underearning by Barbara Stanny
• Book: Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden
• Book: Who Not How by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan
• Join the waitlist for the 2022 Holiday Blitz
• The Sunday Basket® System

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 Wednesdays, I normally 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.

For the rest of this month, I have a treat for you on the Wednesday Transformation episodes I want to share with you some of the extraordinary breakthroughs from women just like you who attended Embrace 2022. Listen in for Part 3 of the transformations!

Embrace is now available on demand! You can learn more about the Embrace Self-Guided Retreat here.

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!

There are four types of work that we all do at home. In this episode, I go through these four types of work in detail and discuss how to reduce the amount of time spent on the first three so you can do more unique purpose work.

Housework

We've talked a lot over the last couple of years about housework. As a part of our Organize 365® Research, I have honed in on and defined this type of work. There are three main types of housework: cleaning, tasks of daily living, and organization. You must clean your home to some standard you set, do all the tasks that make you a human, like showering and brushing your teeth, plus the things in your house must have a home. Housework is like a part-time job of 18-25 hours each week for the average household without children!

Listen to these episodes for more about how I define housework:

• #422 - Defining Housework Part 1 - Cleaning
• #424 - Defining Housework Part 2 - Tasks of Daily Living
• #426 - Defining Housework Part 3 - Organization
• #428 - Defining Housework Part 4 - Maintenance
• #495 - The Process of Equitably Dividing Housework
• #497 - Housework: The Hot Mess Theory Part 1 with Jacqui Ioli
• #498 - Housework: The Hot Mess Theory Part 2 with Jacqui Ioli
• #499 - Effort: The 80/20 of Housework - Not All Housework is Equal

Invisible Work

This is the work that happens in your Sunday Basket®. I talked about this with Eve Rodsky. Invisible work is the mental load and related tasks to running a household. These are things like paying the bills and planning for holidays. This type of work doesn't fit into the housework category and we have a hard time labeling and quantifying it.

The Sunday Basket® System helps with invisible work. The first six weeks of setup and habit-building can take a lot of time because you're setting up systems and processes. You have a set time to handle all these little one-off or recurring tasks. It might take you 90 minutes to 3 hours in the beginning, but then something magical happens. The time savings (and lightened mental load) that you experience during the week is exponential. The average Sunday Basket® user saves 5 hours each week!

There is a second type of invisible work: emergency invisible work. Illnesses, scheduled changes, and childcare/adult care fall into this category. When you or someone else gets sick in your family, the world around you doesn't stop and wait for you. The regular work doesn't go away and the emergency itself often creates more work. There are also schedule changes that are really just a part of life and we have to just roll with them. Not everyone has the final category, but childcare and caregiving for adults is a full-time 24/7 job all on its own. 

Hobby Work

Angela Watson and I talked a lot about hobby work earlier this summer in relation to teachers. We naturally fill our time with work, but it's not all essential work. Sometimes, we do extra work to make ourselves feel better or make something look the way we want. That's hobby work. This often involves trying to be perfect or redoing work. When I talked to Jacqui, she called this overwork. Whatever you call it, it is robbing you of your free time! This is refolding the clothes in the drawer, matching the socks, folding the underwear, micro-organizing the toys, and over-cleaning.

Unique Purpose Work

The female head of household struggles the most to prioritize unique purpose work over all other work. Unique purpose work is the work that you're uniquely created to do. No one else can do this work except you. But, too many of us feel that we must have an "A" in the first three areas before we can move into unique purpose work. Your family will push back. Your internal thoughts will push back. It's easier to search the internet for a fun printable about cleaning and press into hobby work. The reality is this: The pain of not doing what you're uniquely created to do must become greater than the pain of continuing to prioritize housework, invisible work, and hobby work for you to choose to prioritize your unique purpose work. 

How Do I Find What I'm Uniquely Created to Do?

I'm asked all of the time: How do I find what I'm uniquely created to do?

First, I suggest that you go through the Embrace Self-Guided Retreat. We've set it up as an on-demand experience that you can do alone or make a weekend of it with friends. The sessions will help you focus on yourself and show you how to begin to dream again. 

Second, you need to understand that finding your unique purpose takes time. I told you when we talked about passive organizing that it takes 12-18 months of research before you get started on organizing. It's natural then that it will take just as much time and research to find what you're uniquely created to do. You need focused thinking time.

At Organize 365®, our mission is to help you get organized so you have the free time to do what you're uniquely created to do. Take your time back through organization! Find what you're uniquely created to do and press into it!

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 Wednesdays, I normally 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.

For the rest of this month, I have a treat for you on the Wednesday Transformation episodes I want to share with you some of the extraordinary breakthroughs from women just like you who attended Embrace 2022. Listen in for Part 2 of the transformations!

Embrace is now available on demand! You can learn more about the Embrace Self-Guided Retreat here.

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!

Marie Kondo is like the Atkins Diet of organizing. Yes, it's true. Let me explain.

Please understand that this is NOT an anti-Marie Kondo episode! I think Marie Kondo is awesome in so many ways. She's done so much to raise awareness for organizing and decluttering in the media and the general public. There are benefits to her method, but I do feel that the Marie Kondo method is not the best long-term solution for the average American woman or home.

Last week I kicked off this podcast series by talking about passive organizing. When you're in this information-gathering stage, your interest and initial motivation can be sparked by things like Marie Kondo's book or TV show. 

In this episode, I explain why Marie Kondo's organizational method is like the Atkins Diet of organizing. 

First, ultra-low-carb diets like the Atkins Diet can give you quick results. You can get really, really quick results using the Marie Kondo method. That quick win can give you the motivation that is needed to keep going in the beginning. The problem is that you have to get rid of nearly everything to get those results!

Americans (and Australians) in particular tend to have larger homes and more stuff in those homes. Japanese homes are usually much smaller and rooms are more often multifunctional. When an American woman uses the Marie Kondo method of organizing, there's a lot of pain and chaos that goes along with pulling everything out of a particular space. It's like the headache you get when you go through carb withdrawal.

Second, the Atkins Diet is very one-size-fits-all, as is the Marie Kondo Method. There are strict rules to follow without deviation to get those results. Marie Kondo's Method is very prescriptive, telling you exactly how you should have each area of your home.

Do you have paper? She says get rid of it all except a tiny folder. This doesn't work for the typical American because so many important documents must be kept and presented in paper format. My grandson, Grayson, is a toddler and he already has two pieces of paper that must be kept track of for the rest of his life: his birth certificate and his social security card. We are not and cannot be paperless in the United States at this point in time. There are too many variables in the American household, especially in terms of paper, making a one-size-fits-all approach difficult to follow.

Don't even get me started on books. Marie Kondo says to get rid of all of your books. I did it. I got rid of all of my books. And I regret it! I love books and bookshelves. I have a couple of custom bookshelves in my home and I want more. I have hundreds of books on Audible and I'm in the process of buying many of those again in paper format so I can highlight them and write in them. 

(Side note: I'm so used to thinking in terms of pink, purple, blue, and green work that I'm starting to highlight information in my books this way using our Organize 365® highlighters.)

Third, the Atkins Diet is very restrictive and not as filling. The Marie Kondo Method is very restrictive and not as fun. There is one way to follow her program. If you don't follow the program to the detail, you don't get an A. But, I want an A in organizing.

The problem is, I like stuff. I'm organized, but I like stuff. I don't have a ridiculous amount of stuff, like clothes, but my closet is far from being a capsule wardrobe. 

These types of prescriptive systems tell you exactly what the end should look like to be considered organized. Minimal. Rainbow ordered. What if you have 35 pieces in your wardrobe instead of 33? What if you kept your books instead of getting rid of them all? Then you didn't follow the method and you don't get an A. You're not organized. 

Lastly, most people cannot maintain the Atkins Diet for the rest of their lives. In a similar way, it is difficult to maintain organization like Marie Kondo. As soon as you stop following the prescriptive directions, the organization falls apart. It doesn't last. The Marie Kondo method of organizing gets you started, but it's not a sustainable way for most Americans to live.

Organization is a skill that must be learned.

You must know how and why you want to get organized. Your phase of life and the type of order that you want play a part. You need to practice making decisions that become rules and then habits for your life and home so that in the long term, you deal with less decision fatigue. 

Marie Kondo's method of tidying is a wonderful place to start your journey. You can make some great visible progress with her system, but if you are not naturally a minimalist, it is not a sustainable lifestyle. 

If you're like me and you like stuff (and are a bit of a rebel), it's time instead to focus on learning the skill of organization. Use the momentum of these quick-start methods to propel yourself into lifelong organization rather than endless cycles of decluttering and feelings of lack.

Here at Organize 365®, we're not about Pinterest-perfect organizing. Our focus is functional organizing. Learning the skill of organizing is a lifestyle change, not a quick-fix project. It requires a mental shift. It's about having what you need, those things having a home, and regularly putting everything back where it belongs.

The Productive Home Solution™ teaches you the skill of organization, guides you in developing systems, and learning to make decisions that become habits. I help you do the mental and the physical work. I show you how to make the invisible work visible. 

Are you ready to move from passive organizing and short-term solutions to actively learning the skill of organization?

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Organize 365® Highlighters
• The Productive Home Solution™
• The Sunday Basket® System
• The Friday Workbox®

Related Episodes

• #501 - Passive Organizing

• #138 - Why The Magic Art of Tidying Up Doesn't Work For American Women

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 Wednesdays, I normally 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.

For the rest of this month, I have a treat for you on the Wednesday Transformation episodes I want to share with you some of the extraordinary breakthroughs from women just like you who attended Embrace 2022. Listen in for Part 1 of the transformations!

Embrace is now available on demand! You can learn more about the Embrace Self-Guided Retreat here.

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's time to add a new term to our organizing glossary: passive organizing.  I've said for years that it really takes three years to get organized, but the first 12-18 months are not easily recognized in that process. The reason is that this first chunk of time is spent in passive organizing.

What is passive organizing? Passive organizing is the time period during which you're becoming aware that maybe organization could help you become more productive. Maybe organization could help you get back your time. You're thinking, you're researching, and you're listening. This is passive organization. The change is happening in your mind, in your emotions, in your heart, and in your beliefs.

Passive organizing is the "pink" work of organizing. This is the time frame when you're working on yourself. You haven't committed to organizing, but you're gathering information and working on your mindset. You're thinking about the when, the how, and the order. You're deciding who you want your teacher to be. 

In passive organizing, you're consuming exorbitant amounts of information. Sometimes, this can cause information overload and paralysis. You might struggle to take action because you see the best in all the options. 

Let's take a little rabbit trail. The Kolbe Assessment is a quantitative test that helps you determine how you think. Among other things, it tells you how you leverage these three areas of thinking and processing in order to complete a project:

• How much do you need to research something before you can do it?
• How much structure do you need before you can take action?
• How much do you need to talk before taking action?

I am a "quick start." I spend the majority of my time talking about a project and then the active work portion of the project comes out really quickly at the end. I verbally process everything and I change my mind a lot. My team on the other hand tends to be much higher in research and/or structure.

An example of this is how I wrote the book How ADHD Affects Home Organization. I completed the writing of the book in a weekend, but I spent two years preparing to write the book and talking about it first!

How much research, structure, and talking do YOU need before you can take action on getting organized? 

The other obstacle to deciding to get started with organing is having a tipping point. You have to reach a point when the pain of continuing to live in the current state of life is greater than the pain of change and learning a new skill to get the result you want. You have to realize that organization is a learnable skill. 

Another tipping point is a golden window. These are big life events: a milestone birthday, a new baby, a new house, a new job, a loss, a health diagnosis, etc. Many times, multiple big events happen at the same time. These are seasons of opportunity. Disorganization leads to more disorganization, but when you seize the opportunity, these are major turning points.

I want to remind you that I was once where you are. Back in 2012, I quit my teaching job, I was overweight, I was depressed, and everything was falling apart around me. You can read my story in Organization is a Learnable Skill and listen to my depression story in episode #69. I was negative and pessimistic. You would not have wanted to be my friend back then. What you see of me now is the after picture!

You must also believe that you can get organized. You must make a decision that you are now going to live proactively instead of reactively. This is where you draw a line in the sand and step over it.

And one day, you will find yourself listening to an Organize 365® Podcast episode and you just get up and start organizing while you listen instead of just gathering information!

Are you ready to draw your line and get started on your organizing journey?

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• The Kolbe Assessment
• Book: How ADHD Affects Home Organization
• Book: Organization is a Learnable Skill
• Get Started: The Sunday Basket® System
• Get Started: The Productive Home Solution™

Related Episodes

• #69 - My Depression Story
• #242 - Golden Windows of Organizing Opportunity

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 the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Loren S. She lives with her boyfriend and her 10 houseplants. Loren describes herself as a natural "piler" but implementing the Sunday Basket® System means that she now has fewer piles around her home. She and her boyfriend participated in the Adult Spring Break Blitz by cleaning out and reorganizing their linen closet together. Loren also introduced me to The Conqueror Challenge, which is an app that gamifies exercise.

I do some teaching in my conversation with Loren about how to manage her Sunday Basket®. We talk about having only 5 slash pockets in each color and how to manage an ideas slash pocket for each color.

Loren shares how she tried to DIY a Sunday Basket® for herself before committing and purchasing the Sunday Basket® System. She found the extra teaching you get with the Sunday Basket® System precisely what she needed to mentally grasp the system and be successful. Is it time for you to make the commitment and purchase the Sunday Basket® System?

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.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

• Organize 365®
• The Sunday Basket® System
• The Productive Home Solution™

Related Episodes

• Swiss Cheese Organizing - Organize 365® Research Findings - #481

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

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!

One of the most impactful books I've ever read is The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. This book taught me so much about consistency, well before Organize 365® was even an idea.

We've reached a major milestone with this episode here at Organize 365®. This episode is our 500th Friday podcast episode. This doesn't count the extra episodes we've done over the years with Wednesday Transformations, Coffee Chats, and more. Counting those would bring us to well over 700 episodes in total and you've downloaded these episodes over 16 million times as of July 2022.

Those numbers and that amount of content creation only come with consistency. In all these years, I've NEVER missed publishing a Friday episode!

I was in my late 20s or early 30s when first read The Slight Edge and it stuck with me. I didn't fully understand back then the impact of a habit over time. You don't see that until you look back later. I knew I had to find ways to unlock more time in my life. I dived deep into how organization could unlock more time for me. Now, with the creation and implementation of the Sunday Basket® System, YOU have collectively unlocked 3 million hours and counting in YOUR lives! Wow!

In this episode, I'm sharing quotes from The Slight Edge and things I learned from the book.

Here are some of my takeaways:

• I had to see things in life not as being "to" me, but rather "for" me.
• Consistency beats talent.
• Most businesses take 10 years to really get started.
• Things will take longer than you want, but you need to look at time differently. 
• Stop looking for permission!
• Podcasts that take breaks don't last.
• I have higher self-standards now, but there are no "shoulds" and much more "grace" in my life.
• Focus on what you can change.
• Visionaries make people uncomfortable.
• I'm odd. You probably are too.
• There are fewer people to talk to as you move up.
• You have to live more in your mind than in reality to see the next big thing happen.

It's time to stop filling your days with to-do lists and household tasks. Quit doing things that don't matter in the long term. Focus instead on being consistent in what WILL make a difference over time. Consistency beats talent, money, and pedigree every time.

I'd love to hear how you're using your extra time to do what you're uniquely created to do! Join me on a Wednesday Transformation episode, tag me on Instagram (@Organize365), or share your story in our community app.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Book: The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson
• The Sunday Basket System®
• The Productive Home Solution™

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 the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Laurie R. She lives with her husband and three kids, including one with special needs. When Laurie lost her job in 2015, she looked for organizing podcasts to listen to and found Organize 365®. At the time she was frustrated because her 1800s-era home had no closets and everything felt cluttered. You might be surprised to learn that she actually tackled her paper management first! We talk about Swiss cheese organizing, how hiring a house cleaner is a form of accountability, and permission to let go of things.

Laurie also gave a great tip for creating a "jobs binder" to hold copies of professional licensure paperwork, performance reviews, and portfolio samples. 

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.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

• Organize 365®
• The Sunday Basket® System
• The Productive Home Solution™
• Friday Workbox®
• The Paper Solution® Warrior MAMA Binder

Related Episodes

• Swiss Cheese Organizing - Organize 365® Research Findings - #481

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

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!

Time to plan out the next quarter of your work? Learn more about the Friday Workbox® Planning Day in this orientation replay.

Watch the video version and download the syllabus here: https://organize365.com/orientation

Time to your work? Learn more about the Friday Workbox® in this orientation replay.

Watch the video version and download the syllabus here: https://organize365.com/orientation

The Pareto Principle says that 80% of the fruit comes from 20% of the labor. I first learned about this principle when reading 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More by Perry Marshall. This is not just a sales thing. It can be seen in nature, road traffic, and math. So, I started thinking about how this 80/20 principle applies to our homes and housework.

I know that perfection is not attainable. Instead, I've resolved to strive for excellence. What does it look like to be an excellent homemaker?

We tend to equate cleanliness with organization. We are looking for order but "cleaning" your house doesn't bring that order. 

In this episode, I share with you how I have employed the 80/20 principle in my house to bring it to excellence but not perfection while also giving me time to do what I'm uniquely created to do. (Spoiler alert: We're going to talk more next week about using that extra time!)

What do 80% and excellence look like for my floors, counters/flat surfaces, laundry, and straightening/tidying in my home?

What does it mean to get to 80% in your Sunday Basket® routine and The Productive Home Solution™? 

Read the full show notes here: https://organize365.com/podcast/effort-the-80-20-of-housework-not-all-housework-is-equal 

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Book: 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More by Perry Marshall
• The Sunday Basket® System
• The Productive Home Solution™
• Organize 365® Research
• Paper Organizing Retreats

Related Episodes

• Swiss Cheese Organizing - Organize 365® Research Findings - #481
• Organizing Personal Spaces - #482
• Organizing Family & Communal Spaces - #483
• Organizing Storage Spaces - #484
• Organizing Paper Management - #485

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 the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, Holly P. is joining me again to update us on her transformation. You can listen to her previous transformation story here. Holly is back to talk about the Friday Workbox®, quick moves, self-care, and more. I love how Holly put together a Workbox® just for her pink slash pockets and how her dreaming and rising self-confidence brought her a promotion to management in her company. Way to go Holly!

Holly's story is a great example of what happens when you use those pink slash pockets and start dreaming. What is in your pink slash pockets?

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.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

• Organize 365®
• The Sunday Basket System
• Friday Workbox®
• Book: Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo
• Transformation with Katherine Z.
• The Paper Solution® Certification Program

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

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!

Time to get your paper organized? Learn more about our paper organizing retreat in this orientation replay.

Watch the video version and download the syllabus here: https://organize365.com/orientation

Jacqui Ioli is back with me on the podcast to finish the conversation that we started last week. Be sure to listen to her Wednesday Transformation to hear more about who she is and her story. Before you listen to this episode, go back and listen to the first part of our conversation about Jacqui's Hot Mess Theory of work and the concepts of overwork, underwork, rework, and workarounds.

In this episode, Jacqui and I get into real-world examples of how you can eliminate overwork, underwork, rework, and workarounds, especially in terms of creating correct paths using the Sunday Basket® System.

Many people have gotten organized using Marie Kondo's system of pulling everything out and going through it all until it's done. Unfortunately, this doesn't work well for the average woman, especially moms. It causes more chaos because you don't have big blocks of time to work with. The Organize 365® method gets you organized in 15-minute, bite-sized chunks of time that you can expand into larger blocks when the time and energy are available. You will still have some of the hot mess chaos between the stages of decluttering, organizing, and increasing productivity, but it will not be catastrophic to you personally and your life in general.

The Sunday Basket® specifically helps you eliminate the four types of work that Jacqui discusses and gives you back time. Our research says you can get back on average 5 hours a week by developing a Sunday Basket® routine! Having a place to gather the actionable paper but also a time to sit down and process those papers and random thoughts gives you the space to develop procedures and eliminate the problem of no correct path. 

Jacqui describes how she has a procedure for when she finds a pair of work pants that don’t meet her needs. She has a correct path for removing those pants from her closet and home.

Could you create your own Sunday Basket® System? Could you create your own curriculum like The Productive Home Solution™ to organize your home? Sure, but as Jacqui describes, it's faster and easier to buy the programs and modify anything to fit your specific needs rather than to create it from scratch. Eliminate the overwork!

Jacqui also talks about signs and systems for taking care of an aging parent. If you're caregiving for an aging parent or another relative, you need to hear how Jacqui talks about vital signs for determining their capacity for caring for themselves. She also gives this great tip about creating a duplicate binder of their paperwork to keep at your home.

What about paper versus digital? Yes, we went there too in this conversation! By all means, keep digital copies, and feel free to create complimentary digital systems. But, paper is powerful! When you walk into doctor's appointments or IEP meetings, you will save time, get more accomplished, and be taken more seriously if you can hand over a physical piece of paper.

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jacqui. I loved hearing about her research and examples of how and why the Sunday Basket® system works to eliminate the hot mess chaos in your life! Be sure to visit the post for this episode because you can download Jacqui’s slides from her presentation as well as some medical forms that she graciously shared with us and links to other things we discussed.

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Lisa J. She lives with her husband on a farm in a remote area of Western Australia. They also have two teens who go to boarding school because of their remote location. Their 17,000-acre crop-oriented farm and they have employees who live onsite. Lisa found Organize 365® when she was searching for a better way to organize their business. We had a great conversation about Australia, the Friday Workbox®, Lisa's partial digital system with her Friday Workbox®, anxiety, and community involvement. I even snuck in a little business coaching about hiring and training new employees.

Lisa's story is a great example of what happens when you get your work life organized. If you're looking to get your business or work life organized, you need the Friday Workbox®!

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.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365®

Workboxes

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave us a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. See this post and coffee chat episode for help setting up a podcast app as well as how to leave a rating and a review. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Have you been considering becoming a certifed organizer? Learn more about The Paper Solution® Certification program in this orientation replay.

Watch the video version and download the syllabus here: https://organize365.com/orientation 

Are you ready to tackle the piles of actionable paper in your home and misc to-dos that you're keeping in your head? Learn more about The Sunday Basket® System in this orientation replay.

Watch the video version and download the syllabus here: https://organize365.com/orientation

Jacqui Ioli is my guest today on the podcast. If you're not familiar with Jacqui's story, be sure to go back and listen to her Wednesday Transformation episode.

I asked Jacqui to join me to talk in-depth about why the Sunday Basket® works and how the concepts spill over into your work with the Friday Workbox®.

Jacqui has been a registered nurse for 40 years and a nurse practitioner for 25 years. She went back to school in her 50s to get her Ph.D. in nursing education and research. She's brilliant! (And talking with her makes me want to get a Ph.D. even more!) I know you're going to love hearing how she explains these concepts.

Jacqui got into research because she wanted to figure out why work was such a mess for the outpatient nurses she was supervising. She found grounded theory research, which is simply the basic way people solve day-to-day problems in a particular setting. She applies her knowledge of grounded theory to my theory of organizing: Declutter, organize, and increase productivity.

After some insight into how a medical practice operates, we dive into types of work as well as the concept of invisible work. Invisible work is everywhere at home and at work! Making the invisible work visible allows you to reduce it, systematize it, and talk about it. Next, we dig into Jacqui's Hot Mess Theory of work.

The Hot Mess Theory consists of four different types of work that are happening simultaneously. These are:

• Overwork
• Underwork
• Rework
• Workarounds

In this episode, Jacqui fabulously explains these four types of work in detail and how they relate to the Sunday Basket® and your work life. 

Overwork is too much work or too many steps. Jacqui explains this in terms of dusting. You could dust daily, but is that necessary? Could you stretch out dusting to my standard of six weeks or maybe every four weeks works between at your house?

In this area it is important to ask two questions:

• Where am I doing too much?
• Where can I delegate?

If you are overworking, you are also underworking. Underwork is working below your level of skill and training. If you say that it is just easier to do it yourself rather than delegate a task, you are both underworking and overworking yourself at the same time.

This brings us to rework. This is work that wasn't done right the first time and must be done again. At home, this can be related to looking for something that you lost. The Sunday Basket® rescues you here because you can use it as the holding place for those important and actionable items. In terms of paperwork, where can a task be automated that has to be done over and over again? In housework, why are you refolding clothes or reloading the dishwasher? Let good enough, be good enough! Doing rework leads back to overwork.

Workarounds happen when you don't follow the process or there is no correct path. You don't have time to think when you're in the midst of overwork, underwork, and rework. You then end up taking the workarounds because there's no correct path.

The Sunday Basket® System and Friday Workbox® routines give you the opportunity to process the work, iterate, and create the correct path. These systems help you reduce barriers to your work and you make forward progress! 

Jacqui and I just kept talking and talking so we split this conversation into two parts. she will be back next week to talk more about her Hot Mess Theory.

Be sure to check out the full show notes on the website for this episode to get the download of Jacqui's slides from her presentation.

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Jacqui I. She lives with her husband and adult son, but has also been responsible for her aging parents and their estate. Listen in to hear how getting organized has helped her cope with the emotional rollercoaster of some unexpected events over the last year. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! 

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.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365®

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution™

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

I'm so excited to have Eve Rodsky on the podcast again!

Eve first joined me on the podcast back in episode #312 where she discussed her book Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live). I highly recommend going back and listening to that episode so you have a foundational understanding of the concept of Fair Play. Since she was here last time, she has released the Fair Play Documentary that I also think you should go watch.

In this episode, Eve and I discuss the invisible work being done at home and how society has tried to erase the gender division of labor in the home. So much focus has been on women and giving women tools to better balance work life and home life. Eve found it difficult through Fair Play to give solutions to families who said that both the man and the woman in the household were doing a task. Enter the mustard. How did the mustard get into your refrigerator? This is a great example that you have to hear Eve use to explain the difference between the execution of a task versus the cognitive labor related to a task. It's eye-opening!

We then discuss some of Eve's family background growing up with a single mom as well as my daughter Abby's life as a single mom today. A large number of children each year are both to single moms. These single moms are unfortunately at a disadvantage because they are usually holding all of the cards for their families and therefore have fewer work and income opportunities available. 

Eve also walks me through an exercise that I hope you will also do for yourself.

First, what is an activity outside of your roles that you love to do and share with the world? This goes beyond self-care or exercise or pleasure reading.

Second, what is something you love to do? What values does doing this thing bring up for you?

I of course talked about travel and learning, but Eve helped me see how understanding the values underneath these things will help you find activities that can bring up these values for you even when you're unable to do the activities you really want to do.

I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Eve Rodsky as much as I did!

Connect with Eve Rodsky

• Visit FairPlayLife.com
• Watch the Fair Play Documentary
• Follow Fair Play Life on Instagram
• Listen to episode #312 - Fair Play with Eve Rodsky

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Shea B. She lives with her husband, her 12-year-old daughter, and her 8-year-old son who has special needs. Shea found Organize 365® because she needed something to pick up her after listening to true crime podcasts. She stayed because she related to my stories about raising my kids who also have special needs. Shea says that she appeared organized, but she didn't feel organized. She ordered The Productive Home Solution™ and while her family was away, she did a year of organizing in 4 days! The freedom of an empty house allowed her to move quickly. The other resource that Shea found helpful is the Warrior MAMA Binder. She tells how she was able to better advocate for her son and receive needed services for him. Now she has more time to give back to the community that supported her when her son was a newborn. What a great way to use her extra time!

Can you relate to Shea's story? Do you need a system to manage all of the paper and information related to a disability diagnosis for your child? The Warrior MAMA Binder is the resource you've been looking for! I walk you through gathering all of the paperwork from medical to IEP/504 and more so you can be a better advocate for your child.

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365®

The Sunday Basket® System

The Productive Home Solution™

The Paper Solution® Warrior MAMA Binder

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

Over the last several weeks, we've been talking about the history and importance of Home Economics.

Listen to all of the episodes in this series:

• The History of Home Economics In Lisa’s Family - #492
• The Secret History of Home Economics Part 1 (1800-1940) - #493
• The Secret History of Home Economics Part 2 (1940 - Now) - #494

I left you last week with the promise of the story of how my house didn’t fall apart while I was on the book tour last summer. This story really begins in 2012.

So, back in 2012, I started getting organized. In Organization is a Learnable Skill, I share this story and how I went from being overweight and depressed to organized and starting a company.

What happened next was the realization that I could teach this skill of organization through a podcast and courses. The problem? Well, about 5 or 6 years ago, I found that I was out of time. With everything I was doing at home, I only had about 6 hours a day to devote to Organize 365®. I tried working until late at night. I tried working on the weekends. My family wasn't happy because they only saw my working hours and it looked like I was always working. I just didn't have any additional time in my days to grow my business and I didn't have the finances to hire any more people.

In this episode, I want to share with you how I worked myself out of jobs at home to make time to do what I'm uniquely created to do!

At that time, my kids were in high school and I was driving them 25 hours a week. I was doing all of the household chores except taking out the trash and mowing the lawn. So, I made some decisions. I abdicated everything related to cooking, except doing the dishes. Greg took this area on. I delegated the house cleaning to a housekeeper. For a period of time, I even hired out most of the laundry to our local dry cleaner.

The Sunday Basket® and my weekly Sunday Basket® routine took the load of many of the invisible things. The routine running of the household takes place during my Sunday Basket® time. Bill paying, holiday planning, date night planning, vacation planning, reordering prescriptions, making doctor appointments, placing online orders, scheduling car maintenance, and more. Anything related to running errands, I place orders to be shipped or picked up instead of running around town.

As far as organization is concerned, there wasn't much left. My husband and kids handled their own personal organization, I was personally organized, the storage area was organized, and my paper was organized. These things only needed maintenance. That only left family and communal spaces. Because I have a house cleaner, all that's left is for me to just make sure that those spaces are picked up regularly. 

When I left for the book tour last summer, Greg was sure that the house would fall apart without me. But, it didn't! Everyone continued to do the things they do and they figured out how to handle the dishes. Every member of our family is now capable of making a meal, cleaning, and doing their laundry. They handle their own personal and paper organizing needs. I have worked myself out of these jobs!

What job can you start working yourself out of so you have more time to do what YOU are uniquely created to do?

The Productive Home Solution™ and the Sunday Basket® System can help you take control of your home and paper starting today! The Sunday Basket® System alone can give you back 5 hours a week of your time!

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Lauren S. She lives with her husband and 4 kids. She has a daughter who is non-verbal and wheelchair-bound from a genetic condition. Lauren shares the chaos of the last couple of years from two job changes for her husband to issues with access to services and changes to special ed teachers for her daughter during the pandemic. She decided that she could not continue to live in survival mode permanently! She joined The Productive Home Solution™ and jumped in with both feet. This self-proclaimed creative who struggled with organization decided that organization is a learnable skill. She made organizing her part-time job and plowed through the 100 Day Home Organization Program and more in less than 100 Days! Lauren pushed past grief and faced the emotional paperwork for her daughter to create her Warrior Mama Binder in time for an IEP meeting as well as boxing up belongings of her late brother for safekeeping that had been taking up space in her home office. The community app and the Sunday Basket® Club were essential to her success especially when she struggled with figuring out what her next step should be.

Can you relate to Lauren's story? Do you have a special needs family member for whom you are the primary caregiver? Are you tired of living in the chaos of survival mode? Regain control of your home and paper with The Productive Home Solution™ and the Sunday Basket® System like Lauren did!

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365®

The Sunday Basket® System

The Productive Home Solution™

The Paper Solution® Warrior MAMA Binder

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

This is the third episode is a series on Home Economics and the book The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger. In the first episode, I talked to you about my personal family history. In the last episode, we talked about how Home Economics grew and moved outside of personal homes in the 1800s and early 1900s.

Listen to all of the episodes in this series:

• The History of Home Economics In Lisa’s Family - #492
• The Secret History of Home Economics Part 1 (1800-1940) - #493

In this episode, we pick up the timeline at World War II. The ending of the war brought a change with fewer women in the workforce and fewer women going to college. Two-thirds of women were married by the time they reached age 24. Despite new technology, in the 1950s, these women were still spending 52 hours a week on housework. At this time the American Home Economics Association defined Home Economics as being concerned with strengthening family life. 

A divide emerged. On one side were women who understood the original definition of Home Economics. They believed that what happens at home is important, is a science, and should be studied in higher education. On the other hand, there were children of the next generation like me who were taught that Home Economics was about socialization and based on what the government and consumer brands wanted for society.

You either had to be a fulltime homemaker or have a fulltime career. Jobs held by men generally brought in enough income for women to have the luxury of being primary homemakers. There were still scientific advancements being made in the field of Home Economics during this time period, but brands like Betty Crocker and Johnson & Johnson were driving the narrative of what it meant to run your family.

I love digging into the history of divides in thinking like this. My grandmother never understood the controversy. She said to just do the work! It doesn't matter where the work is or what the work pays. Just do the work. 

As we move forward, I want to talk more about the division of housework. How did housework go from being all women's work to now being a discussion about having equity at home?

What I really want you to see is the invisible work that is being done at home. Much of what we do is on autopilot and was learned from our mothers and grandmothers. There is a shift in process. Everyone in the family wants to feel valued for the work that they are contributing to the family. 

In the next episode, I'll share how I worked myself out of being a fulltime stay-at-home mom to being a working mom who traveled for six weeks last summer. (Spoiler alert! Nothing fell apart at home while I was gone!)

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Tracy S. She lives with her husband and three high school and college-age kids. Tracy is a former special education teacher and homeschooler. She used to have so much anxiety at night that it would drive her out of bed. Everything was in her brain and she was terrified of forgetting an important piece of information or not being able to find an important piece of paper. The Sunday Basket® reduced her anxiety and helps her sleep better. Tracy also found the Kids Program helpful and wishes that she'd had that resource available when her kids were younger.

Can you relate to Tracy's story? Do you have paper and informational stress and anxiety that keeps your brain awake at night?

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365®

The Sunday Basket® System

The Productive Home Solution™

Kids Program

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

I'm going to get a little meta on you today. This is a podcast about podcasts. Stick with me!

Take a journey with me and learn about some of the changes to podcasting over the years. I'm not a fan of asking you in every episode to rate and review and follow the podcast, but rating, reviewing, following, and sharing a podcast is what helps the podcast directories know that you find our content valuable. In turn, those directories like Apple and Spotify are more likely to put the Organize 365® podcast in searches and on charts where new people can find us.

When you share on social media, I'd love it if you'd take a screenshot of the episode you're listening to and tag me in your post.

It's not about the numbers themselves or the charts. Those are vanity metrics in many ways. The podcast crossed 16 million downloads last week (and that's amazing!), but more people need to hear our message! This is about reaching more people with the message that organization is a learnable skill, the invisible work needs to be made visible, and being organized gives you time back to do what you were uniquely created to do.

Last week, I shared with you some of the history of my family of origin, which has given me the perspective that I have regarding home economics. You can listen to that episode here.

In this episode, I'm diving into the content of The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger. This is a meaty book and a fascinating read! 

Home Economics was the path that was created for women to enter college and earn college degrees. Women like Catherine Beecher, Ellen Swallow, and Margaret Murray Washington led the way in the field. Home Economics at that time was about an ideal home life that was unhampered by tradition and which utilized modern science for better productivity. It was about the study of food properties and diets as well as experiments with bacteria, standardization of clothing measurements, and so much more.

This is the time in which MY grandmothers were living and earning their Home Economics degrees. They were learning that what you do at home affects the larger American economy. Running your home like a business is a thing and it impacts more than just your family!

I hope that you found this history as informative and as interesting as I did! I shared a few ways that we are making changes in our home to be better examples for and to teach our children how to stretch their budget and food supplies. How will you use this knowledge about Home Economics to make changes in how you run YOUR home? What missing skills will you be teaching your children now in light of the current state of the economy?

In the next episode, we will talk about how the view of home economics shifted after World War II. 

The Launching Life Skills Bundle is a great resource for the young adults in your life! We’ve put together digital training and the essential portions of our physical resources to help your high schooler, college student, or young professional prepare to transition from living at home as a kid to being an independent adult. Learn more here about this and the rest of our Kids Program here.

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Nancy B. She lives with her husband and their two young children. Nancy is a nurse practitioner in Canada. She first learned about Organize 365® through a former grad school professor who was sharing about her Sunday Basket®. Nancy had used the Marie Kondo method successfully for herself but quickly found that she needed something more to keep her growing family organized. She really saw the benefits of her new systems during a medical emergency when she was able to quickly gather medications and information for her husband when he experienced a heart attack a few weeks after their second child was born.

Can you relate to Nancy's story? Are you a somewhat organized person but your systems aren't working now that you're a wife and mom? Have you had a medical emergency in your family and not been able to quickly gather the needed medical details and paperwork? This episode is for you!

Related episodes:

• My Depression Story & How Depression Affects Organization - #69

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365®

The Sunday Basket® System

The Productive Home Solution™

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

Welcome to the Organize 365® Podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Woodruff, CEO and Founder of Organize 365®

87% of Americans believe that organization is a learnable skill but they only give themselves a 1 in 6 chance of being organized in any particular area. 

As a former educator, I'm taking on the challenge of uncovering how to make the invisible work at home visible, how to eliminate as much as possible, and to get our home from being in the process of being organized to finished being organized.

Join me for client success stories on Wednesdays and my latest thoughts on the state of the American home on Fridays, plus some bonus episodes from time to time.

Welcome to the Organize 365® Podcast. I'm so glad you're here!

Learn more about Organize 365® and our programs:

Organize 365®

Organize 365® Research

The Sunday Basket® System

The Productive Home Solution™

The Friday Workbox®

Visit the Organize 365® podcast channel to see all of our podcasts and playlists.

Last summer while I was on The Paper Solution®  book tour in Chicago, an attendee recommended that I read The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger. It sounded interesting so I grabbed the audiobook. 

Oh my! I couldn't listen fast enough! When I got home, I had to have a paper copy of the book to take notes and dive deeper. 

Over the last year, I've been digesting and contemplating what I read in this book. I'm now ready to share my thoughts and reflections over the course of several podcast episodes this month. 

First, I want to talk to you about my latest reflection on my family of origin and how this reflection has created a greater understanding for me of the role women in my history have had and then next week we will dive into the content of the book.

In this episode, I share about the families on both my dad's side and my mom's side and the difference between the two in terms of average life span, education, and family practices. I go into depth about my mom's side of the family where we have a long history of women going to college and becoming entrepreneurs. The Secret History of Home Economics helped me understand why each generation in my family thought about and experienced a different college and work experience - even with the same college subject degree! 

This was the foundation from which I went to college, became an entrepreneur, developed a love for travel, and now understand home economics. I also share with you the origin of my "grandma name" that I hope Grayson will use once he starts talking! - but so far I respond to anything!!

What was your family of origin like? What is your background in understanding home economics? History is SO fascinating!

There is an economy at home and work to be done at home that is valuable. At Organize 365®, we're figuring out what that work is, defining it, and eliminating Swiss Cheese organization.

The journey begins with the Sunday Basket® System to organize your actionable paper and continues to organizing the rest of your home with The Productive Home Solution™.

Then you can take that success into your work with the Friday Workbox®. Join me as I teach you the skill of home organization and make visible the invisible work that is done at home!

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Laurie W. She lives with her husband. They are empty nesters with boys who come home frequently for long visits. Laurie found Organize 365® through the podcast. She was about to start working on organizing her youngest son's room while listening to an episode of the podcast when she heard me say to work first on the room where you spend the most time. Laurie dropped everything and moved to the living room to start her journey to a lasting organization. We talk about the pandemic, family working from home, organizing storage spaces, how bigger houses just mean more places to put things, Sunday Basket® insights, The Paper Solution® book, Home Planning Day, and more.

Can you relate to Laurie's story? Are you an empty nester ready to take advantage of this golden window? Are you surrounded by family working and schooling from home? Are you struggling to get your Sunday Basket® habit started? 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365®

The Sunday Basket® System

The Productive Home Solution™

The Paper Solution® book

Home Planning Day

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

Read the full show notes with links here: https://organize365.com/podcast/transformation-with-laurie-w 

I'm changing and iterating again! I'm a teacher and a life-long learner and it's time to pass new knowledge on to you. We are finally ready to release to you the changes to The Productive Home Solution™ that I've been talking about in some of the recent podcasts. 

Over the last 18 months, our Organize 365® Research has revealed that 87% of you believe that organization is a learnable skill, but only 13-18% of you feel organized in any of the four essential areas of organization. So, a large percentage of us feel like horrific failures when it comes to organization! It's time for that to change!

It's now time for The Productive Home Solution™ to be re-organized to reflect these four essential areas of organization. Beginning today, The Productive Home Solution™ Dashboard will have the content and videos from the 100 Day Home Organization Program split into Slash Pockets for the four essential areas of organization. Now you get to decide which area you want to organize first and declare that you are organized in that space. You'll also find four new corresponding groups in our community app where you can share and chat with others who are working on that same essential organizational space with you.

In this episode, I give you more background and information about these changes. I also give you some advice and considerations for which space to tackle first.

If you've not yet taken the leap to join The Productive Home Solution™, now is the perfect time! No more waiting for the next session to start. You can begin with any of the 4 organizational spaces starting today! Learn more here.

Which area will you choose to get fully organized first this fall? Your personal spaces? Your family & communal spaces? Your storage spaces? Your paper management?

Read the full show notes with links here:

https://organize365.com/podcast/bite-size-organizing-how-to-declare-you-are-organized-

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Samantha S. She is a teacher who lives with her husband and her three kids under four years old. Samantha found that by going through The Productive Home Solution™ to organize her home, moving to a new home was easier but it also made for much less stress when both her second and third children were born four weeks early in 2019 and 2021. Samantha loves following along with the Sunday Basket® Club using the recording and is able to process her 1.0 Slash Pocket system in less than an hour each week. She says that following along with the Sunday Basket® Club removes analysis paralysis. She doesn't have to think about what needs to be done to process her Sunday Basket® because we guide her through each week! Next up on her list is to get her The Paper Solution® Binders organized.

Can you relate to Samantha's story? Has The Productive Home Solution™ helped you survive a move or unexpected event? Do you join us each week in the Organize 365® app for the Sunday Basket® Club? 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365®

The Sunday Basket® System

The Productive Home Solution™ (formerly All Access)

The Paper Solution® Binders

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

Have you seen the organization in a kindergarten classroom? It's full of cubbies and bins. Any classroom from preschool through high school is designed to function well. The environment is organized in a way that there is a place for everything to be put away. There's a place for the books and the toys. There are stations designated for different activities. Classrooms are also set up to be age-appropriate. You won't find baby toys in the middle school classroom! The classroom environment is set up so that when the kids enter, they have the age-appropriate things they need and everything is where it is supposed to be. Your home can be set up this way too!

If you are teaching the skill of organizing to someone else, you first need a picture of what done looks like. Have an orientation when you organize a space in your home. This shows your family where things are located, the rules of that area, and what it should look like when it is clean up after using that space.

Next, you need a lesson plan. You have to know the right amount of work to give to your student so that they neither become bored or overwhelmed when learning how to organize.

Finally, the person you're teaching needs to have a spark ignited to want to learn the skill of organization. You cannot create this spark in someone else, but once they have it, it's game on!

In this episode, I help you think about what your space should look like to make it function like a classroom. I also walk you through how to teach the skill of organization to someone else.

What will your first step be in making your home function like a classroom?

The Productive Home Solution™ gives you all of the information and tools that you need to organize your home so that it is age-appropriate and functions well for your current life stage. It's also set up in bite-sized chunks so you can do as little or as much as you want to do at a time. Join The Productive Home Solution™ here.

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Andrea P. She lives with her husband, their young son, and their dog in the UK. Andrea with diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. She sought the diagnosis because while she compensated well into her adult years while she was single, life became too much when in a space of 3 years she married, bought a house, adopted a dog, and had a baby. I'm sure many of you can relate! She found that organization is a learnable skill and is now thriving!

What resonates with YOU about Andrea's story? Do you have ADHD?

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365®

The Sunday Basket® System

The Productive Home Solution™ (formerly All Access)

The Paper Solution® Binders

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

Do you know your preferred learning style?

If you don't know your learning style, think back to your highest level of formal education. How did you make it through or study for tests? That's likely your preferred learning style. You may find that you use more than one learning style, but you have a natural bent toward one of them. 

There are four main learning styles:

1. Auditory
2. Kinesthetic
3. Visual
4. Reading / Writing

In this episode, I'm sharing details about these four learning styles to help you figure out which one works best for you. Then, I want you to use these learning styles to see your home (and your work) in a different way. Because I am a teacher at heart, I have created our systems at Organize 365® to work for any learning style. I explain some of the features of our products and how to make better use of those things from the perspective of your learning style. From podcasts to coworking times, from videos to written materials, I've given you the content in multiple formats to help you succeed in becoming organized.

It's your home! Focus on consuming and implementing new information in your preferred way of learning. Give yourself the grace to learn as an adult learner the way that you are uniquely wired to learn!

How do you learn best? What features of Organize 365® programs and products have you found work best for your learning style?

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Sarah K. She lives with her husband and two of her adult children. Sarah shares how she tamed the paper monster! She used to dread her husband asking for a receipt or important paper, but not anymore. She went from 13 (yes, 13!) file cabinets down to 1/2 a desk file drawer and organized binders. Now she can find the papers she needs for her family, her home, and her rental properties quickly and easily in her Sunday Basket®, Business Workbox®, and The Paper Solution® Binders. I also love how organizing became a family project for this tight-knit former homeschooling family.

What resonates with YOU about Sarah's story? Are you dealing with medical issues in your family or drowning in paper?

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

Angela Watson is here again! If you're a teacher and you don't know Angela, you need to meet her! She was a classroom teacher for 11 years and has spent over a decade as an instructional coach. She has a podcast called Truth for Teachers and created the 40 hour Teacher Workweek program to help teachers take back control of their time.

In this episode, Angela and I dive into what's going on in education and the classroom post-pandemic. A survey from the NEA says that 55% of teachers are looking to retire sooner than they had the previous fall. That's a scary number when the typical attrition rate for teachers is 8%. Education Week says that teachers work an average of 54 hours a week and half of that time is spent on non-teaching time work. Angela's surveys have found that the average in her audience is 62 hours per week. Teachers know when they go into this profession that work doesn't end at 3pm, but at the same time, teachers are being taken advantage of because of their deep care for their work.

What's the solution? How can teachers work fewer hours and be more productive? Angela and I have both spent a lot of time working on different angles of this issue so we chat about ways to fix this problem! It comes back to boundaries and organization.

Angela's contribution to the solution is the 40 hour Teacher Workweek program. One of the things she does in this program is help teachers understand the difference between hobby work and required work. We have a long discussion about what hobby work is and how to cut back your work hours by reducing this type of work. Using Angela's program, most members have been able to cut 5 hours off of their work week in the first month in the same way that Sunday Basket® users are able to save 5 hours a week after using the system for 6 weeks!

My contribution to the solution is the Education Friday Workbox®. This system compliments Angela's solution by helping you organize the administrative and paperwork side of teaching. Instead of missing deadlines and spending time looking for important papers, you have more time to focus on the lesson planning and the teaching that you love.

I love talking with Angela! I hope you teachers out there find help and hope in these solutions!

For the final episode in this series about the Education Friday Workbox®, I'm talking with Kate McDonnell. Kate is single and lives with her cat in Colorado. She has been a teacher for over 15 years. Her career started with teaching science but her background is in computer programming. She now teaches many different technology-related courses in different formats with a schedule that changes every week.

Kate is also a certified organizer. You can find out more about working with her here.

In this episode, Kate and I discuss the challenges of teaching and organizing so many different classes and then the administrative work that goes along with that. Kate loves using the portable Sunday Basket® to carry her Slash pockets and papers with her to her various schools. We also talk a little about managing email. You know that I'm not your digital organizer, but I do have some tips for organizing email. (I share even more about email organization in the email course inside of The Productive Home Solution™.)

Learn more about the Education Friday Workbox® here.

Registration for Teacher Camp is now open. Click here to learn more and sign up.

In this final week of the series on spaces to organize, I'm talking about the second optional space to organize: memories and photos. Now, I don't personally believe that this is an optional space to organize for me and my family. It's kind of a passion of mine!

After you have sorted through the four essential areas of paper -- medical, financial, household reference, and household operations -- you're still left with a lot of paper that I categorize as memories and photos. What do you do with all of these things?

In this episode, I explain that there are different levels of final organization of memories and photos that you could choose to end at from simple boxes of collated photos to photo albums and binders. I love creating topic-based albums: holidays, vacations, birthdays, etc. I also personally love creating binders and albums because my family is more likely to pull them off the shelf and look at them over items kept in a box. Organizing your memories and photos can be such a source of joy for your family as they look back at the family history you've gathered and fun memories from their lives.

In our Saving Your Story Photo Organization Program, I walk you through sorting all of your photos, eliminating duplicates, and creating final albums with those photos. 

Is organizing memories and photos optional for you? What is keeping you from organing this space?

Over the last few weeks, we've been talking about the updated Education Friday Workbox®.

This week, I'm talking with Michele Vinje. She's been an educator for over 28 years in the same school and the same building for her entire career. She has taught various history and economics courses to sophomores, juniors, and seniors over the years. 

You can hear more of Michele's personal story in her transformation episode. Michele is also a certified organizer. You can find out more about working with her here.

In this episode, Michele and I discuss how the education system has changed since the pandemic. We talk about how the Education Friday Workbox® is a place to hold all of those administrative tasks that are important but not urgent so you can get to them once a week and before something is due. Michelle describes how the Education Friday Workbox® frees up your brain and that it is a system that is inclusive for all educators and administrators but customizable for anyone in the education world. And don't forget about the colors! The colored Slash pockets make it easy to find a category of information quickly.

Learn more about the Education Friday Workbox® here.

Registration for Teacher Camp is now open. Click here to learn more and sign up.

The final Embrace experience is right around the corner! I've put together a playlist on Spotify of all of the music we will be playing over the course of the weekend. 

In this Coffee Chat episode, I share with you why I'm sharing this playlist and why I think it is important for you to hear the music before the Embrace experience. 

Find the playlist on Spotify by searching for Organize 365® Embrace 2022 or use this link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2ZTrssdhbwGJPtsIPK4YUx?si=ifJnWlyPQqGsvbCpz8ffxQ 

It's not too late to join the Embrace experience virtually. Go here to learn more and sign up to join us: https://organize365.com/embrace2022 

We've been talking about essential organizing for the last several podcast episodes. Listen to the rest of the episodes in this series:

1. Organizing Personal Spaces
2. Organizing Family & Communal Spaces
3. Organizing Storage Spaces
4. Organizing Paper Management

This week, we are transitioning to the first of two optional spaces to organize. The first space is kids. Organizing anything related to kids is optional! But, if you have kids, I really think you do need to organize the things and spaces related to them. 

I've tried to organize my kids in a way that is Pinterest-worthy but let me tell you, it just doesn't work. It's not functional. I have three mindset shifts for you when it comes to organizing kids:

1. It's good enough.
2. Establish how long it takes to achieve good enough.
3. Remember that organization is a learnable skill, even for your kids.

In this episode, I go deeper into these three thoughts. I also break down the ages and stages of organizing kids and give you tips for each of those stages. Whether you have 0-5-year-olds, 6-12-year-olds, or teens, I have suggestions for not only organizing your kids but also teaching them how to organize themselves!

What do you find hardest about organizing your kids? How are you teaching them to organize for themselves?

Take the next step in organizing your kids with our Kids Program. For your teens and young adults heading out into the world, take a look at our Launching Life Skills Bundle or Launch Bundle.

Also talked about in this episode: 

Kids One Clip

This week, Annie Sisemore joins me to tell you how she uses her workbox in her job as an educator. Annie began her teaching career by substitute teaching right out of high school and has experience over the years in middle school math, instructional coaching at the district level, and as an adjunct professor teaching college students who want to be teachers. 

You can hear more of Annie's personal story in her transformation episode.

In this episode, Annie shares some great insights from her personal experience for using your Education Friday Workbox® such as how she uses slash pockets for her college students who she never sees in person and for gathering information for training new teachers in her district. We also talk more about the philosophy behind and changes we made to the Education Friday Workbox®.

Get the presale Education Friday Workbox® with special bonus here while supplies last.

Registration for Teacher Camp is now open. Click here to learn more and sign up.

Teacher Camp is coming the week of July 11 - 15, 2022!

Sheri MacGregor and I are going to walk you as a teacher or education administrator through the Education Friday Workbox® to get you ready for the coming school year.

We will add a new Slash pocket color each day with 30 minutes of teaching and training to give you ideas for how to organize your administrative work. Then for the next 90 minutes, you will have the opportunity to co-work with other educators to work out and plan your system of organization.

Listen to this episode for all of the details!

To join Teacher Camp, go to: http://organize365.com/teachercamp

In this podcast series, we've been talking about essential organizing. You can catch up on this series by listening to these episodes:

1. Organizing Personal Spaces
2. Organizing Family & Communal Spaces
3. Organizing Storage Spaces

This week, we are moving to organizing your paper management in our quest for functional organization in your home. You know how much I love to talk about paper organization! People are FINALLY coming around to the fact that paper is not going away, and it needs to be organized. You could organize your paper first or last, and you could also choose to only organize portions of your paper. 

We found in our research study that 54% of people have piles of paper everywhere. Only 18% of people have a system in place for organizing that paper. In addition, 70% of Millenials perceive a reduction in stress when their paper is organized. You see, we all have paper. You could have less paper, but you're never going to be paperless. 

Paper is different than other areas of your home. It's different because 85% of what you store in your filing cabinet you will NEVER need again. The remaining 15% is paper that you do need and you need to be able to find it when you go looking for it. You only go looking for these important papers when there's a problem. Binders are the solution! Trust me, your future self in crisis will thank you when you have your paper organized and can find what you need.

But here's the other problem you will run into with paper: Only about 20% of what I suggest that you put into your binders is actually in your filing cabinet or it is actually paper at all. The other 80% of what needs to be in your binders is either on the computer where only you know how to find it or it is stored in your brain. If something happens to you, how does anyone else take care of anything in your home or for your family?

In this episode, you'll find encouragement for why and how to get your paper organized.

Are your papers organized? What is keeping you from organizing your paper?

Mentioned in this episode:

Podcast #420 - The Weight of Paper

Paper Organizing Retreats

The Paper Solution® Binders

I am so excited to share with you our updated Education Friday Workbox®! Sheri MacGregor is joining me in this episode to help me tell you about all of the changes.

Sheri MacGregor is a former teacher with a Master's in Elementary Education, a certified organizer, and is now in charge of our teacher support at Organize 365®.

You can listen to these previous podcast episodes to learn more about Sheri:

• Friday Workbox with Sheri MacGregor
• Transformation with Sheri M.

Sheri was a part of the mastermind group that helped us revamp the Education Friday Workbox® and Playbook. You'll be seeing a lot more of her because she did all of the videos in the Education Friday Workbox® dashboard, will be joining me for Teacher Camp, and will be your host and guide for the weekly co-working time for teachers.

The new Education Friday Workbox® has an updated Playbook to help you set up your organizational system. We also included not only the 2.0 Slash pockets but 3 additional colors of Slash pockets -  because we know that teachers are juggling extra categories of work that need to be organized!

In this episode, Sheri and I talk about these changes and so much more! We share with you some practical ideas for organizing your Education Friday Workbox®, Teacher Camp coming this summer, and how to approach your administrator for reimbursement and continuing education units.

Get the presale Education Friday Workbox® with special bonus here while supplies last.

In this podcast series, I have talked with you about organizing your personal spaces and then about organizing your family and communal spaces. Now, we're ready to move into your storage spaces.

Storage spaces are not easy to organize, but once you set your mind to it, they can be maintained for the rest of your life! Really, they can! Whether it is your attic, basement, or an off-site storage unit, once you have a system in place, this storage space can stay organized for decades.

With the exception of some transient storage spaces, your storage space is generally a hidden area of organization. People don't see these spaces so we tend to put off organizing them. 

What I want you to understand is the mindset of organizing a storage space. You must start thinking of it as a store. It is your on-demand, already paid-for store, where you're storing things for when you need them.

In this episode, I share with you about creating a storage mindset, what kinds of things you might find in your storage space, and how to group those items. I also talk about why you might consider tackling your storage space BEFORE the rest of your home.

Ready to organize your storage space? You'll find more detailed guidance for organizing your storage space in  The Productive Home Solution™.

What do you keep in your storage spaces? What have you been holding onto in your storage space that really needs to go? 

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Krys H. She lives with her husband and their 21-year-old cat, but she is also mom to 11 grown children. Krys talks about the medical issues in her family and how having The Paper Solution® Medical Binder paperwork with her helped the first responders care for her during a recent accident. She also shares how she packed for a long-distance move that included downsizing from 3,000 sq ft to 1,400 sq ft. Krys is also a faithful keeper of her Sunday Basket®, which she does on Friday each week. There are so many fun nuggets of inspiration in this conversation!

What resonates with YOU about Krys' story? Are you dealing with medical issues in your family or preparing for a move?

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365®

The Sunday Basket® System

The Productive Home Solution™ (formerly All Access)

The Paper Solution® Binders

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

This week we are moving from personal organization to the next area of organization: family and communal spaces.

These are the areas that you will want to organize first because people see them when they come into your home, but they are the hardest areas to organize and maintain. I know, there can be judgment anxiety over these spaces. There is also a tension between wanting these spaces to look good but also being able to live in them comfortably.

In our research study, we found that only 14% of people say that they have their family and communal spaces organized. Why is this? Well... 

How often have you spent so much time cleaning and organizing just to turn around and find that space trashed again? I'm sure you've been through these seasons or you might be living in one of those seasons right now! Sometimes, it's like shoveling snow in a snow storm!

As you can see, family and communal spaces are hard and that's why I recommend that you start with organizing your personal spaces. Build your organizational muscles and habits there first. When you do get to the family and communal spaces, start with your kitchen. You'll feel a difference when you know where everything is in your kitchen and when you know that everything in there is purposeful. After the kitchen, move on to your other shared spaces: the family room, communal bathrooms, dining room, front hall closet, and cleaning supplies. 

Listen to this episode for more encouragement and inspiration for tackling the organization of these hard-to-organize family and communal spaces.

What makes these family and communal spaces so hard for you to organize and maintain? Do you have toddlers? Teens? Lack of time? Too much stuff? 

Ready to get these family and communal spaces organized? Learn more about The Productive Home Solution™ and how the program can help you reach that goal. 

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Catherine D. She lives with her husband and their blended family of 6 kids. They also have a dog, two bunnies, and fish. (And backyard chickens are on the wish list!) Catherine talks about wrestling through paper, passion projects, and storage spaces. She put the effort into creating spaces in her home that were functional during the pandemic. There's even a little retreat space for Catherine to relax with decor that makes her happy. She says that Organize 365® has helped her look at the spaces in her home differently!

What resonates with YOU about Catherine's story? Do you have any special retreat spaces in your home?

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365®

The Productive Home Solution (formerly All Access)

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

Oh my goodness!!!

The Organize 365® Podcast launched in September of 2014 and has now reached a major milestone: A few weeks ago, we crossed 15 million downloads! 

In this quick coffee chat, I simply want to say thank you for listening. But, in true Lisa fashion, I want to turn the tables and encourage you to pursue your unique calling even when it seems like that thing doesn't even exist yet.

Be sure to listen to Emily's farewell episode to hear how Emily's dream job appeared when she was ready for it: http://organize365.com/farewell-emily.

I’ll be honest: Organization is optional. While cleaning and tasks of daily living are not optional, you CAN survive without organizing. Even though this next-level step of organization is optional, when you do choose to do it, it is a current investment of time today for a future exponential return on time later.

Organization always pays you back in time and sometimes money.

You can't make anyone else be organized, so you have to start with yourself and your personal spaces. Organization must become a habit starting with these personal spaces. It needs to be something that you do regularly, spending 15 minutes a day or an hour once a week working on building your organizational muscles.

The best place to begin? Your closet! You are 100% in control of your clothing. After that, you can move on to your portion of the bathroom space and bedroom space, your wallet or purse, and your transportation.

Remember: This is NOT about perfection. Organized means that everything has a place and everything is in its place.

When it comes to organizing these spaces, there are no rules. I'm not going to come judge you and your space. Make it how you want it to be!

In our research study, "Organization is Not an Optional Hobby for Women," we found that 62% of women reported that anxiety prevents them from organizing their personal spaces. I just want to hug you and tell you that this doesn't have to be stressful.

In this episode, I share more about what personal spaces are and some encouragement and instruction for building your habit of organizing in these spaces. There are also some changes coming to the 100 Day Home Organization Program in the fall based on this research that I share too.

Are you ready to get your personal space organized?

Read more about our research studies here.

Ready to start organizing? Read more about The Productive Home Solution™ here.

Want more inspiration? Listen to my morning, afternoon, and evening routines episodes to hear more about how I use and organize my personal spaces.

On Wednesdays, I usually 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. This Wednesday Transformation is a little different.

In this episode, I sat down with my sister, Emily Kelly, to talk about her personal and professional transformation. Emily came to work with me at Organize 365® over 4 years ago. During that time, her mindset has shifted. Emily has been leveling up. She has regained control of her finances. She's gone through hard seasons. Now she's ready for a new adventure.

I said I'd never fire Emily and she said she'd never quit, but the time came recently for Emily to leave Organize 365® because her dream job appeared. She didn't go looking for it. It found her. Listen in as Emily tells the whole story in this episode.

Mentioned in this episode: You can listen to my depression story in episode #069.

I hope you find Emily's story encouraging as you're working towards your transformation!

How are you leveling up?

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

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Jackie S. She lives with her husband, two young children, and their dog. Jackie is also my cousin! Jackie describes herself as an under-buyer until the pandemic made her change a few of her habits. She talks about how Planning Day gives her more realistic expectations of her time constraints and keeps her from "should-ing" on herself. She shares how she's learning to balance her time between family, home, and work responsibilities with creative twists when needed. She also wants to have more than three priorities in a day, but I reign her in and explain the difference between three deeper priorities and a million shallow tasks. We also geek out together on topics like task-stacking and habits. Jackie and I could have talked forever! I hope you enjoy our conversation!

What resonates with YOU about Jackie's story?

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365®

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution (formerly All Access)

Planning Day

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

It's time for a little Organize 365® history lesson! Let's retrace the 10-year journey of Organize 365® and the various iterations of the 100 Day Home Organization Program.

I was a very organized child. My mom used to take me shopping with a bag of buttons in hand. While she tried on clothes, I'd sit on the floor and sort the buttons.

I love sorting things and I love finding new ways to organize things.

Over the course of my lifetime, I've had seasons where I was extremely organized, such as when I was a teacher. At other times, I was completely unorganized, like when we adopted our babies or when my father passed away and I was managing his estate. 

I found that when I was disorganized, I felt so out of control.

Listen in to hear more about how the 100 Day Home Organization Program was born and continued to change over the years. We're making changes to the program again now that it is a part of The Productive Home Solution™ (formerly called All Access). Based on our research, I'm excited to reveal the new choose your own adventure format that will enable you to make progress on what you need to organize in your current season of life. 

Note: If you're a current member of The Productive Home Solution™ you will continue to have legacy access to anything you have access to now. 

Learn more about and join The Productive Home Solution™ here.

This week I am sharing my conversation with Jullia R. She lives with her husband, two teenagers, and their pet cat. Jullia shares how the Sunday Basket® tamed her mail and papers. She loves that system creates vertical, color-coded piles that do NOT take over her counters. She also tells how a simple change she made while going through the 100 Day Home Organization Program made a world of difference in the functionality of her kitchen. In between the extra trips to the donation center and the dumps, she's found more control.

What resonates with YOU about Jullia's story?

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution (formerly All Access)

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

In this podcast series, I will be diving into organizing the business of work. I will be taking you along with me for a workweek that I recorded in November 2021.

At Organize 365®, we divide our work into four categories. As a shortcut, we use the Friday Workbox® colors to categorize the different kinds of work. These colors are pink, purple, blue, and green. 

Creating a shared vocabulary and defining different kinds of work gets all of our team on the same page. Together, we move faster in the same direction and have fewer episodes of miscommunication. 

Today is Friday - It is a hodgepodge day for me with a little green, a little blue, and a little purple work, but little to no pink work.

On this Friday, I start my day with purple by talking to YOU live online about this week’s podcast episode topic. Because I record my podcasts so far in advance, by the time an episode airs, I usually have a little more to share with you. Another purple activity for today is a masterclass I’m teaching called “Your Most Productive Year Ever.”

I’m spending some extra time with the team today by having Thanksgiving lunch together. Many people on the team will be taking extra time off for the holiday next week.

Most of you probably do your Friday Workbox on Friday afternoons, as I counsel you to do. While I will do a deep dive into my email, I will wait until over the weekend to do my Friday Workbox. It sounds blasphemous, but I purposely do this so I don’t overwhelm my team with new ideas going into the weekend. I just tie up the loose ends from my email, handle anything left on my desk, and prepare for the very beginning of the week. 

Then, I will spend 4-5 hours working over the weekend and during that time, I will go through my Friday Workbox®. I don’t talk much on the podcast about working over the weekend. I know many of you don’t want to work over the weekend, but this is what works for me in this season. This also gives me the margin to spend more of my Friday on social connections with my team.

I love the life I’ve created for myself, but by the end of the day on Friday, I’m ready to go home to spend time with Greg and snuggle Grayson.

In this podcast, I will take you along and talk to you at different times during my workday. Listen in to hear more about how I spend Fridays with my team, why we don’t do Black Friday sales, and how I use Google docs over email when possible.

How do you spend your Fridays? Do you do your Friday Workbox® on Fridays?

Learn more about the Friday Workbox® here.

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!  

This week I am sharing my conversation with Kristina S. She lives with her husband and two young girls in Germany. She shares how she and her husband stay organized as teachers without a permanent classroom space as well as how the Sunday Basket® has been the solution to her family's paper organization needs. I always love these international stories!

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution (formerly All Access)

Workboxes

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

In this podcast series, I will be diving into organizing the business of work. I will be taking you along with me for a workweek that I recorded in November 2021.

At Organize 365®, we divide our work into four categories. As a shortcut, we use the Friday Workbox® colors to categorize the different kinds of work. These colors are pink, purple, blue, and green. 

Creating a shared vocabulary and defining different kinds of work gets all of our team on the same page. Together, we move faster in the same direction and have fewer episodes of miscommunication. 

Today is Thursday - It is an all pink day for me.

It is important to both work in and on your business. Working on your business means taking time for your personal development, your growth, your mindset, your skillset, and thinking about where you’re headed in the future.

You need days like this when you can step back to work on yourself and dream for your business. 

On Thursdays, I usually focus on myself. I spend time raising my lid so I can lead Organize 365® and the dream team to the next level. I use these days for coaching programs, conferences, webinars, podcasts, and books. Instead of joining a coaching program right now, I’ve instead joined a couple of round tables for C-level executives and for business owners in the Cincinnati area. 

I have been spending my Thursday mornings meeting with other members of these round tables. On Thursday afternoons, I’ll often do things that I personally need to do like doctor’s appointments or clothes shopping. No one expects me in the office on Thursdays and I can do whatever I want!

In this podcast, I will take you along and talk to you at different times during my workday. I’ll share with you who I’m meeting with today, how I got a rare lunch with my husband, and how I handled some unexpected changes to my schedule.

What activities and resources are you using for your pink days to work on yourself and on your business?

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Natalie H. She lives with her husband and two (soon to be three!) kids. She shares how she set out to declutter 25% of her stuff and changed her mindset along the way. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution (formerly All Access)

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

At Organize 365®, we divide our work into four categories. As a shortcut, we use the Friday Workbox® colors to categorize the different kinds of work. These colors are pink, purple, blue, and green. 

Creating a shared vocabulary and defining different kinds of work gets all of our team on the same page. Together, we move faster in the same direction and have fewer episodes of miscommunication. 

Today is Wednesday - it is a mix of purple and blue work.

Wednesday tends to have some departmental meetings and I use the rest of my time to focus on some purple work to meet end-of-year deadlines.

In this podcast, I will take you along and talk to you at different times during my workday. 

Part of what I share is some different productivity habits I have slowly added in over the past 30 years that help me to be more effective and get so much done. 

Listen in and I’ll share about my meetings with Amy, Mary, and Sue. I also share some of the details of how Organize 365® functions, how I make decisions, and how I go through my workday.

Sometimes, you need to do a whole bunch of different kinds of work on the same day. In many ways, Wednesday is a rainbow day for me. 

What systems or tools do you use to keep your work organized during a rainbow day?

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Valarie H. She lives with her husband and their two dogs. They have two adult children who visit. She shares how her stay-at-home move helped her get the house organized and gave her more time for hiking. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution (formerly All Access)

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Today is Tuesday, and this is a blue day. This is my most structured day of the workweek. It is meeting day.

Organize 365® is 10 years old, and we were a 2 million dollar company in 2021. We have 20 team members:14 in the office and several remote contractors. We also work with outside vendors and support companies.

I will be in meetings all day with the team. I’ll be working in the business.

How Organize 365® Keeps Meetings Productive

I have created the most productive way of communicating with the team with a weekly check-in to make sure we are on the same page. Communication is the number one obstacle to growth inside of a profitable company.

At Organize 365®, we have shared meeting agendas in Google Docs for every single scheduled meeting (and for some of our major projects). I put my own thoughts, questions, and ideas at the top. The team enters their questions for me in the next section for things that need approval, a budget, a signed contract, extra help, or other things to move forward. 

Within the document, there are topics for the team discussion. Each team member types in a different color, and often we are able to resolve questions or collect ideas in advance of the actual meeting. If we are able to resolve things outside of the meeting, the team can move forward in their work.

As an organization, we very rarely email other team members. All projects are in shared documents and can link out to other files if needed. No one needs to comb through an email thread or hunt for an email. 

I check all of the agendas a few times a week and add anything I can answer at the time. By keeping all our ideas and communication in one place, we make better and quicker decisions. 

Today’s Meetings

Listen in as I take you along on my meetings with Vanessa, Shona, Stephanie, Pat, Monique, and Erin. 

I used to fit my meetings into my calendar, but now I have dedicated a full day to the meeting necessary to keep the company running smoothly. I schedule every meeting to start at the top of the hour, and if we finish early, I fill in the time by making progress on other tasks. 

When my meetings are done for the day, I use any time left to complete administrative work, review meeting agendas to find my actionable items to add to my Friday Workbox®, and deep-diving into some projects.

What can you do to make your team days more productive?

I’m so excited. It’s my birthday! I am 50 years old today!!!

The women in my family have lived to be old—into their 90s and 100s. I have always been in awe of all they have done in their lives. Organize 365® just turned 10 years old.  I think I am going to live to 100, so I am just getting started.

I have an innate understanding of time and money that I call “Lisa math.” It doesn’t follow the traditional rules about these things, but I am able to use it to show how I understand the world. 

We all have constraints in life. We are naturally limited by our time, money, and energy. Getting organized helps you to develop more capacity by investing your current time for a future return of more time. 

Improving your capacity allows you to do more things in life, handle unexpected events, and live out your unique purpose. 

The mission of Organize 365® is to help busy people get their home and paper organized so that they can do what they are uniquely created to do.

Over the last 20 years, my Sunday Basket® has given me an extra 5,200 hours. I have poured that extra time into creating Organize 365®. I have been able to help many of you save more time by using your Sunday Baskets®. And, boy, have those hours added up!

By end of 2020, the Organize 365® customers saved over 1 million hours!!! At the end of 2021, we have saved over 2.5 million hours. 

Your time and capacity have been unlocked. So many of you have been gracious enough to share how you are living your unique purpose using the hashtag #myextra5. That is the best birthday gift ever.

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Jennifer M. She and her husband are empty-nesters who are also snowbirds. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution (formerly All Access)

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

I want to stop by quickly and let you know about some upcoming Organize 365® events. 

For all the details, check out https://organize365.com/mastermind-with-lisa-upcoming-events

In this podcast series, I will be diving into organizing the business of work. I will be taking you along with me for a workweek that I recorded in November 2021.

At Organize 365®, we divide our work into four categories. As a shortcut, we use the Friday Workbox® colors to categorize the different kinds of work. These colors are pink, purple, blue, and green. 

Creating a shared vocabulary and defining different kinds of work gets all of our team on the same page. Together, we move faster in the same direction and have fewer episodes of miscommunication. 

Today is Monday, and Mondays are pink days in my work.

Pink work is about ideas and possibilities—new projects, new ideas, new partners, possible process improvements, and other future ideas that might become a reality. 

Because I am the CEO and visionary of Organize 365®, I give myself two full workdays each week to focus on my pink work. I take time to think, to dream, to process, and to move forward about what might be in our future. I spend a lot of time and research exploring possibilities, and sometimes I put the ideas on hold, and sometimes I decide that we are never going to do a particular project. 

In this podcast, I will take you along and talk to you at different times during my workday. 

Part of what I share is some different productivity habits I have slowly added in over the past 30 years that help me to be more effective and get so much done. 

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Tiera A. She lives with her husband and middle school daughter. She shares all about how she got her house in order, lost 30 pounds, and found lost time. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution (formerly All Access)

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

In this podcast series, I will be sharing how my habits, routines, and the different ways I think about time. This week I’ll be sharing my evening routines.

I always learn more from listening to real-life stories of how other women are “getting it done.” Thanks for letting me share mine with you!

Evening routines help us transition from day to night. They take place after dinner and as we wind down for the day. It’s time to relax, get ready for bed, and do any prep for the morning.  

A Day in the Life Evening Routines

When the sun goes down, I’m done for the day. 

I love being at home, taking my bath, and then sitting on my bed. I might watch TV, work on a puzzle, read a book, or snuggle Grayson. 

I went to record my evening routine for you, and I don’t really have one. It doesn’t change much. I don’t want to talk about it at night, because that’s my low energy time.

I take a hot bath every night. The length of time varies, but I use my Epsom salts and some other skincare and self-care. I put on my pajamas and a cozy jacket. I get ready for my evening.

In the past, I would prep for the day ahead. I would pack a lunch and lay out my clothes. I also review my calendar and think through my schedule for the next day. Now, I tend to do this at the end of my workday during my afternoon routine. 

I’m also including a recording of an older evening routine that I followed when the kids were younger. Different seasons of life have different needs for structure. 

Do you have an evening routine? Which of your routines are the most effective for you?

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week I am sharing my conversation with Martine E. She lives in France with her husband and their two daughters. She started with a DIY Sunday Basket® and then upgraded to a Friday Workbox™ and The Productive Home Solution™. She shares about her newfound peace of mind and exploring to find her unique purpose. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution/ALL ACCESS

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

In this podcast series, I will be sharing how my habits, routines, and the different ways I think about time. This week I’ll be sharing my afternoon routines.

I always learn more from listening to real-life stories of how other women are “getting it done.” Thanks for letting me share mine with you!

Afternoon routines are those things we do between our daytime activities (work or school) and dinner. 

A Day in the Life Afternoon Routines

Adding an afternoon routine to my schedule in my 40s was a game changer!

Today my commute home from the office provides that natural transition. In my 30s, my transition came at the end of the school day, driving in the carpool, or collecting the kids from the bus stop. 

Recognizing your transition may be all you need for your brain to make a switch in priority and production. 

Ultimately daily routines add structure and reduce decision-making fatigue.

Listen in as I share how I “bucket” my morning routine to line up with the kind of work I’ll be doing each day of the week.

As a bonus, I added my afternoon routine when my kids were in high school to this podcast episode. 

This podcast series is not for you to compare yours and my schedules, but to open your thoughts to explore the possibilities of what could be in your everyday life. My afternoon routine has continued to change and evolve over the years and will continue to do so in the future.

Do you have an afternoon routine? Is it time to add or take something away from your afternoon routine?

You can learn more about the 2022 Embrace experience on our website. In 2022, we have both virtual and in-person options. Save the date of June 25 & 26, 2022!!!

In this podcast series, I will be sharing how my habits, routines, and the different ways I think about time. This week I’ll be sharing my morning routines.

I always learn more from listening to real-life stories of how other women are “getting it done.” Thanks for letting me share mine with you!

It's time to dive into the workweek.

Before I go any further, I just want to remind you that here at Organize 365®, we view your “work” as “whatever you spend the majority of your Monday - Friday doing during the day.” 

Why is it important to define our workday as “work”?!

It was so powerful for me to redefine “work” for myself and view my seasons of parenting, homeschooling, and being the family medical liaison as “work” because then I could embrace and apply better routines & productive habits to my day.

I share one week of my morning routines recorded in November in this week's podcast. While recording this week, I realized that I actually have two different morning routines.  

Listen in as I share how I “bucket” my morning routine to line up with the kind of work I’ll be doing each day of the week.

As a bonus, I added on to this podcast episode my morning routine when my kids were in high school. 

Hands down, one of the best habits I embraced for my mental health was establishing daily routines. 

Why? Because it gave my “never-ending to do list days” structure and broke my day into buckets of time. 

We all need structure, routines, and transitions in our days.

This podcast series is not for you to compare yours and my schedules, but to open your thoughts to explore the possibilities of what could be in your everyday life. My morning routine has continued to change and evolve over the years and will continue to do so in the future.

Do you have a morning routine? Is it time to add or take something away from your morning routine?

You can learn more about the 2022 Embrace experience on our website. In 2022, we have both virtual and in-person options. Save the date of June 25 & 26, 2022!!!

In this podcast series, I will be sharing how my habits, routines, and the different ways I think about time. This week I’ll be sharing my Sunday Routine.

I always learn more from listening to real-life stories of how other women are “getting it done.” Thanks for letting me share mine with you!

As I shared in the last podcast episode, Saturdays are fundays around here, which means Sunday afternoons are my domestic workday. 

We started watching church from home sometime in late 2018/early 2019, and Greg’s mother has been coming to our house on Sundays for the past few years. My Sundays are now spent entirely at home. I decided for this season to add all housework tasks in and around my Sunday Basket® time on Sundays from 12-4.

I fit my housework into a four-hour time block.

Each weekend, I give my home and family a four-hour block of time. Some weeks I am running to check all the to-dos off my list, and other weeks I am looking into my Sunday Basket® to find projects to fill that time. 

I have always found that getting my machines and people started first, before I dive into the work only I can do, has improved my productivity. I do the same thing on Sundays during this work time.

1. I go through my emails and make decisions.
2. I review my meeting agendas for the week.
3. I get myself organized. I clear out papers, plan my outfits, and update my calendar so that I have time to get my most important work done. 

In my 20s, 30s, and 40s, four hours would not have been enough time for all of this. This podcast series is not for you to compare your schedule with mine, but to open your thoughts and explore the possibilities of what your everyday life could look like.

How much time do you need to spend on housework each weekend? Which day or days will you do so, and for how long?

You can learn more about the 2022 Embrace experience on our website. In 2022, we have both virtual and in-person options. Save the date of June 25 & 26, 2022!!!

Today marks the start of a podcast series I have wanted to produce for years! I love sharing the “behind the scenes” of my daily life on Instagram. For a long time, I have been thinking about how I could share my day-to-day life on the podcast.

Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing how my habits, routines, and the different ways I think about time. I did not get to these mindsets and behaviors overnight. It was a transformation that happened over a decade. I want to share the information that would have helped me make these changes faster and more effectively. 

Now, I do not “have all the answers.”  I am on the journey of life, just like you, working to have more control over how and where I spend my time and energy. The easiest way to understand where someone's time and energy goes is to hear their story. So, I’ll be sharing my days in lots of detail.

I ask that you just consider these as possibilities and inspiration. Dream a little bit and explore how you might make some changes to your everyday life. 

Saturdays

Let's start with my Saturday routine. Saturday is a “free day” in the Woodruff household. 

On Saturdays, everyone picks their meals, sleeps as late as they want, and chooses their entertainment. It is a great way to transition from the hustle and bustle of our Monday - Friday into the more relaxed pace of the weekend. 

Saturday is my new Sunday.

Until we made this transition as a family, Saturdays were full of chores and work. 

Now that I work full-time in an office, I can’t even imagine having the energy to stay in full-on work mode on my Saturdays at home. 

Many of you make Sundays your “free day.” Either way, I think the important thing is that each person in the house gets to have a day, or a part of a day, to “do their thing.”

Do you have a day to rest and enjoy your passion projects? 

I am not sure I could have had this kind of a day in my 20s, 30s, and 40s, but I wish I had at least considered the option.

One of my passion projects is taking care of my family and our shared home. Listen in as I take you along on my “domestic day” and the rewards I choose when my time and energy run out. I don’t get it all done either! But, I do rest and rejuvenate when I hit my limits.

This month, I have a special treat for you! Normally, you get to hear the transformational story of ONE member of our community. This month, I want to share some of the very special breakthroughs of women just like you as they attended Embrace 2021.

You can learn more about the 2022 Embrace experience on our website. In 2022, we have both virtual and in-person options. Save the date of June 25 & 26, 2022!!!

There are 4 main categories of reasons why people decide to get organized. In this episode, I walk you through the main reasons to help you find YOUR why.

Unpacking your why will help you stay motivated and keep your eye on the prize when you get stuck in the day-to-day of your organizing. 

Which of these four reasons for getting organized resonates most with you?

1. I got caught up in the hype of New Year's resolution or the Marie Kondo Netflix series.
2. I'm tired of feeling behind and reactionary.
3. I'm looking for my home to be a restful haven.
4. I want to break a family cycle of disorganization.

Every reason has its trouble spots to overcome. If you jumped in spontaneously, the beginning is fun and easy, but then you find an area that requires more thought or doesn't fit the model, and you get stuck. Dig into another reason to continue organizing. If you're reactionary, there will be a period of time in which you feel like you're going backward. If you didn't have a model of organization growing up, it's probably going to take a little longer to learn the skill of organization. 

Be sure to take (and print) pictures of your progress too! It's hard to see your progress when you're so close to your home. Taking a step back and comparing before and after photos will help you see the progress. 

I don't want to see you give up! Figure out your why and hang onto it when you feel discouraged. What will getting organized allow you to do or be?

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 the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I have an extra special treat for you! By popular request, today’s transformation is featuring Lorie and her dad JB. So many of you have enjoyed watching Lorie help her 92-year-old dad declutter his home and get started with his Sunday Basket® habit. They are both great storytellers and have so many life lessons to share. I hope you enjoy their story as much as I do! 

Lorie has been a previous guest when she shared her own Wednesday Transformation and she also shared how she adapted to teaching from home during the pandemic.

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution/ALL ACCESS

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins!

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Charlotte S. She shares her very unique journey. She has worked as an international disaster relief nurse and lived both overseas and in the US. Her family size and shape have changed dramatically over the years. Listen as she goes from overcrowded and overstressed to having more time and an empty nest. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution/ALL ACCESS

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

Happy New Year’s Eve!

It’s hard to believe, but ten years ago, I started along this journey to create and share Organize 365®. I share the details of this story in my memoir Organization is a Learnable Skill. I was in a place where my world was spinning out of control, I had quit my job.

I could never have in my wildest dreams imagined that so many good things would happen. A podcast, physical Sunday Basket® system, and published books were not even in the realm of possibility in my future. 

But, I had written down my biggest possible goal for Organize 365®. I have all of my dreams recorded in my special pink notebook. I went back and looked at it.

That year I took to focus on my home and family changed my life. I changed my mindset from overwhelmed and reactive, to productive and proactive. I knew that my zone of genius was organizing. I set some goals for growing my business, but I have pivoted and exceeded my wildest dreams!

Sometimes it’s hard to dream forward ten years. Instead, take a little bit of time and look backward ten years. 

• What have you accomplished in the last decade? 
• What life experiences have you added to your journey? 
• Who are you today that you weren’t ten years ago?

Over the last few months, Organize 365® has been making a lot of changes. We are planning to be settled into our new normal by January 2022. We are working to make the transformational journey easier to start (and to finish) for everyone! We have been busy bees at the office getting everything decluttered and organized to better support your journey.

You can learn more about:

The Complete Sunday Basket® System

The Productive Home Solution™ (formerly known as All Access)

The Kids Program

The Friday Workbox™ 

Organization is an inside job. But, it is also a learnable skill. It’s not as simple as tying your shoes. It’s more like learning a foreign language. It typically takes about 365 days. You can start anytime you want. The sooner you start, the faster you will transform your life. Join us! I look forward to helping you get organized!

Thank you for being on this journey with me! Thank you for listening, downloading, sharing, and rating the podcast. We are going to celebrate ten years next week, and I cannot wait!

If you and I were at a family holiday gathering together this week, the podcast today is the conversation I would start. 

I have always been inquisitive. Asking big questions and researching new interests is something I have always done. I see it in my husband, Greg, and our kids too. Whenever we wonder about something, we grab our phones and start to Google.

It’s a great thing really, the ability to question and get answers to your questions right away. Access to information has become a great equalizer and I find more and more of my friends have caught the questioning and researching bug that I have always had.

The last two years have brought an unprecedented amount of change in every single area of our lives, and it is the pace of that change that is hard to comprehend.  

I do not have a big revelation, actionable plan, or solution to share. These are partly mindset shifts, and some observations, thoughts, and musings. 

Listen in and have a mental conversation with me this weekend. YOU are the person I would most like to talk to at the party. 

Be My Guest! Read more and apply here: https://organize365.com/wednesday

What do you think of when you think of productivity?

Remember last week when I said that when I am organized I feel like I can make forward progress on my goals and projects.

For me productivity means doing MORE usually in LESS time or with less resistance. 

If you break down the 3 steps to getting organized: 

• Decluttering = Removing.
• Organizing = Rearranging.
• Increasing Productivity = Moving forward faster.

Let's look specifically at Increasing Productivity. Productivity comes from thinking and planning. Every minute you spend planning SAVES 4-5 minutes in executing your plan.

Planning = TIME SAVED.

While it may be hard to find time to plan your day, your meals or your vacation, you KNOW that when you do - everything goes easier and faster.

Once again I have one caution... to be most effective, you need to have decluttered and organized the area you want to increase productivity in. These steps do need to be done in order.

5 Steps to Increased Productivity.

1. Use the organized system.
2. Plan.
3. Refine and reorder.
4. Evaluate / maintain.
5. Execute.

Get your FREE printable of the 3 stages of decluttering here!

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Sarah H. She is a physician and a single mom. She shares how she has worked to become more proactive even during an unpredictable phase of life. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution/ALL ACCESS

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

Get your FREE printable of the 3 stages of decluttering here!

FINALLY!

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Kerensa P. She lives with her spouse and young daughter. She shares her story of how a medical binder helped in her infertility journey and helped her to grow her family. She also shares how much she has benefited from working with a Sunday Basket® Certified Organizer. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution/ALL ACCESS

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Get your FREE printable of the 3 stages of decluttering here!

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with AJ C. She lives with her spouse, two kids, and a pandemic puppy. AJ shares how she has made progress in her storage room, kids rooms, and how she has increased her capacity to handle more projects with less stress. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

The Productive Home Solution/ALL ACCESS

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

Happy Thanksgiving weekend! Yesterday was Thanksgiving here in the US. It’s a time my family uses to catch up with family and friends. Thanksgiving kicks off the busy memory making, holiday filled end of the year.

Today, I want to share how thankful I am that I have been able to connect with you through this podcast for the last seven years. Even more mind-boggling, Organize 365® will turn ten years old in January 2022. 

Now that we are nearly a decade in, I am thinking about what Organize 365® will look like in another ten years. What do we want to take along as we move forward? What do we want to refine?

The podcast is not going anywhere. The Organize 365® team is here to help you with your life transformation, and we want to be sure the podcasts we share align with helping you to achieve your goal. I am deeply exploring the question: Are the quantity and quality of the podcasts we share actually helping you transform?

So much of our foundational teaching about the skills of organizing are buried back in the beginning of the podcast. The skills of organization are built on decluttering, organizing, and increasing productivity.

I want to really create some foundational podcasts that you can listen to on Fridays. They are concepts from older podcasts, but they will be refreshed for our new normal. There are a limited number of skills you need to learn to be able to get organized. Once you learn, then you need to apply the skills to actually create change! I am super excited about these curated podcasts we are putting together. I am looking forward to seeing their impact.  

What have you been running hard and holding your breath to get through over the last eighteen months? Where do you need to refine your own life to make it more sustainable going forward?

Monique Horb is back, and today is the day!!!

Our community app is now live and available for download!!!

Our old app with access to some of your dashboard has been removed from the App Store and Google Play Store, but we have a brand new online community ready for you. 

Today, we are launching our Organize  365® online community app. This will function similarly to Facebook, but it is private and less distracting.

We have simplified everything to make this app more productive. There is nothing there to take you away from your organizational interactions. When you are in the app, you can enjoy the other members and a supportive community, but the distractions have been eliminated.

You will have as much community as you desire, but you will also be able to stay focused on your own transformation and make progress along your own organizational journey. The app is directly connected to our website, so all of your specialized online communities will open automatically when you log in.

We have been working behind the scenes for months to get ready to host this community. We built this specifically for you. We want to have one place where it is easy for you to find what you need, and where it is easier for us to get you news, information, updates, and encouragement. This new community will save you time, help you be more productive, and give you encouragement. 

We have organized the community app to match your organizational journey. There are only six groups in the app.

• News & Updates - will have all the current news about Blitzes, Masterclasses, and whatever Lisa dreams up
• The Sunday Basket® Club - everything from the Facebook group has moved here including the weekly Sunday Basket® Club live and the replays
• 100 Day Program - motivation, encouragement, and interaction for completing the 100 Day Home Organization Program tasks
• All Access Program - content related to the extra step of All Access including the Tuesday Binder tips, photos, planning day, and the new All Access Podcast by Lisa
• Friday Workbox™ Club - all the support and encouragement you need for maximizing your Friday Workbox™ including the Friday Workbox™ sessions and replays
• Certified Organizer Group - community support and interaction for all of our Sunday Basket® Certified Organizers, our The Paper Solution® Certified Organizers, and Friday Workbox™ Certified Organizers

We hope that you jump in, make connections with the rest of the Organize 365® community, and continue to move along your journey!

We are still learning about the amazing ways we can support and encourage you using this technology - please give us grace as we continue to increase the value for you.

Things we do know the new app offers - badges to show what groups people belong to (including the Dream Team and Certified Organizers), direct messaging capabilities, and direct access to many of the printables. 

We are so excited about having a new community app. We would love for you to download it and come check it out!

Please download the official mobile app through the iOS App Store  or Google Play Store. You can also access the community on your desktop. 

• When you create your account, please use the email address that is associated with your Organize 365® dashboard access.
• Once logged in, check out “Start Here" to learn about this new platform.
• Have questions? Please click here for app FAQs

This week, I am sharing my conversation with Monique Horb. Monique is the Organize 365® Director of Business Development. We have spent most of the last year taking the Friday Workboxes to 110%. We have upgraded our Friday Workboxes into two overarching categories - Business and Education. 

We look at work differently here at Organize 365®. For us, work includes anything you do for the majority of your hours from Monday to Friday. We want to help you organize the different kinds of work that you do so that you can get more life and spend time in your unique purpose.

Friday Workbox FAQ

• What is the Friday Workbox™ and why might I want one?
  
  At home, we are used to thinking about having paper. However, at work, it feels like we are always on a computer. The Business Friday Workbox™ is a physical representation of your work inside of a box. Our brain is not digital.This system will hold all of your ideas and actionable to-do in a single place where you can quantitatively see it. Printing your emails and other digitials items helps you and others see the quantity of work you are handling.
  

• What is the difference between a Sunday Basket® and a Friday Workbox™?
  
  The physical components are the exact same physical tools as the Sunday Basket®. But, it goes deep because business is more complex and nuanced. For most of us, our brains make connections better when we are not in front of digital screens.  
  
  The Sunday Basket® is for anything related to your home, and the Friday Workbox™ is for anything related to work. Both help to eliminate your to-do list, and hold your ideas for future possibilities. Both help you to prioritize how you will spend your time and energy over the upcoming week.
  

• I understand how the Friday Workbox ™ can hold ideas, but what other things go in there?
  
  As a leader of a company, it is easy to spend a lot of time talking about ideas. If you have a more traditional job, the systematic approach of the Friday Workbox™ will still work for you. It works for anyone in any kind of business.
  
  Every job has four core components. Once you identify the components that relate to your job, you can optimize them and make your approach more productive. 
  

• What colors are used in the Friday Workbox™?
  
  Pink - anything that is only done by you
  Purple - your assignment or job description
  Blue - the team that helps you get your work done (direct reports and supervisors)
  Green - financial OR administrative and repetitive tasks
  

• If I get a Friday Workbox™, how long will it take to work? What do I have to do for this to be useful?
  
  This is not a one and done system. The Sunday Basket® takes four to six weeks to build the habit. The Workbox takes a bit longer to set up and build the habit. We ask you to give it a full quarter of the year; give it a full 13 weeks.
  

• You keep talking about planning. I don’t feel like I have the time or authority to stop my work and plan for my next quarter. How does your planning system work?
  
  When I think about my planning, I realize that I am a teacher, and teachers always spend so much time planning. I’ve always been a salaried employee, not an hourly one. When I tried to limit my hours in the past, I had to plan a lot to be a really good teacher. As the owner of Organize 365®, I am spending at least 20 hours a week thinking and planning. The more prepared I am, the faster and easier the work is for the rest of the team.
  
  For you, start with five minutes after each meeting. Go through what you have been asked to do, and add it to your actionable to-do list. See how much your productivity improved. Next, add on five minutes before meetings and review the notes from the previous meeting, write down any questions you have for the meeting, and then do your five minute post review.
  

• I know that a Friday Workbox ™ is the place to store the actionable to-dos and the Friday Workbox ™ Planner is the place to plan. What makes the Organize 365® planner different from others?
  
  I was an unusual child and I have had a planner since the fourth grade. I love planners. Most planners sold are really more of a date book or calendar; they record dates. Our planners have actual education for how to plan your time. The front of the planner has pages to guide you in thinking about your goals in all four kinds of work. I then guide you through an audit of how you actually spent your time. Then, we realign your time decisions so you can create what you are trying to create. The calendar keeps track of your appointments, and the planner gives you the vision of what you are going to accomplish.
  
  Planning and purposeful thought makes everything happen. Every single person is busy, but the goal in life is not to do more. The goal is to organize your time, thoughts, and energy so that you can make the biggest impact in the world. This system will increase your impact. Using a common language improves your communication tools. Improving your communication tools helps more people collaborate effectively without requiring more complexity.
  

• I have a lot of paper for my job. Does it all live in the Friday Workbox™?
  
  Each slash pocket represents and holds the paper for a single idea or project. Lisa has multiple boxes of slash pockets — one at work and one at home. The most active ones live in an active workbox or portable bag for this quarter, and the rest tend to stay in one place.
  
  Frequently accessed reference papers are printed and kept physically in binders, and they are also kept digitally. The binders are color coded to match the workbox and hold the reference materials for easy access when needed. The contents of each binder is reviewed quarterly to ensure they are up to date and to identify any decisions that need to be made on the contents.
  

• I have heard about a Friday Workbox™ Club. What is that and how can I join?
  
  As a teacher, I know there are many different kinds of students and learners. They need different levels of support and tutoring to be successful. Organize 365® provides three different ways to help you be successful in implementing the Friday Workbox™ system.

• On demand dashboard training videos

• Friday Workbox™ Club  - 90 minute virtual sessions in an online community for co-working and accountability

• Friday Workbox™ Certified Organizers - individuals who partner with Organize 365® and can provide 1:1 or small group assistance

• I have purchased other programs and not followed through. What support or access is there for the Friday Workbox™?
  
  Organize 365® is an education company. When you invest in our programs, I want you to have access to the teachers, the community, and the support you need to achieve organization. There is a lot included in your initial purchase — we want you to succeed!
  
  This is your professional development and an investment in yoru time management and productivity. It will multiply your time going forward, and we are not going to take it away from you.
  
• Is there a way to try this before I make a purchase?
  
  Absolutely! Please go to organize365.com/workboxes and read all about the workboxes. A Masterclass is coming soon! And, there is a free five day mini course available to you. 

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Holan S. Holan lives with her husband and young son. She is a rebel dealing with family medical emergencies, and shares how she has been successful despite not following directions for the 100 Day Program. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

ALL ACCESS

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Jessica E. Jessica has a very unique living situation. She has her son at home, her husband works out of the country, and her mom lives with them part -time. As a full time college instructor who will soon be moving overseas, she shares all about how now that she is organized she has more free time and more increased capacity to meet her goals.  I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365®

The Sunday Basket®

ALL ACCESS

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

I am super excited to welcome you to the next Organize 365® Podcast series. I am sharing my conversations with members of the Dream Team while we are in the messy middle of some of our current transitions. In this 4 part series we will be unpacking the most commonly asked FAQs for different parts of the Organize 365® transformational journey. I want to keep you updated on changes and improvements as we declutter and organize before our 10th Anniversary in January 2022. We are not eliminating anything, or raising our prices on any existing products. We are simply doing some decluttering, organizing, and increasing productivity.

This podcast is all treats --  no tricks!

This week, Emily Kelly and I go back to the foundation of home organization and talk about the Sunday Basket®. Emily is our Director of Customer Success and my sister. Emily has been making phone calls to  many of you and has gotten to connect with you on a personal level, just like I did during the summer book tour. We are hearing about how you found Organize 365®, where you live, and what your transformational journey looks like so far. We are taking what we learn in those conversations to make our programs even better!

During our opportunity to interact with all the members of this community, the same questions came up over and over. Change is nerve-wracking, especially after the out of control experiences so many of us faced during the pandemic. As your organizing teacher, I want to give you the lesson plan for how to get started and make progress getting your home and paper organized. 

Today, Emily and I share the top ten questions we have been getting about the Complete Sunday Basket® System. Listen in and let me know what you learn from our discussion!

Top 10 Sunday Basket® FAQ:

1. What is the Sunday Basket®? 

At the most basic level, it is a box that sits on your counter and acts as a place to hold all your ideas, actionable to-dos, kitchen counter papers, and mail. It is also a cadence to check those items and prioritize them for maximum efficiency throughout the week. It is your brain in a box! This clears up your brain for higher level thinking, problem solving, or even to rest. Although the “brain in a box” started as a joke, the Sunday Basket® actually does externalize your executive functioning part of your brain. Anyone can find success using this system, but it is especially effective for people diagnosed with ADHD. 

2. What does the Complete Sunday Basket® System include?

As a teacher, I wanted to ensure that any kind of learner could use and be successful with this system. For that reason, the training materials and support cover a variety of learning styles. The physical products include all the supplies you will need to use your Sunday Basket®: a collapsible box in your choice of color, 25 slash pockets to organize your actionable paper, and a training booklet. There is an online dashboard with training videos. And, every purchase includes access to the online community with a weekly Sunday Basket® Club - an online co-working and accountability session. As with all Organize 365® products, this includes lifetime access.

3. How long does it take to know if this system will work for me? 

Some people catch on quickly, and have it down in two weeks. For the majority of people, it takes four to six weeks to develop the Sunday Basket® habit. It takes some time for you to change your habits, and learn a new way of keeping track of your to-dos and making good decisions about how and when to do them. You are moving from living in a reactive mode to a proactive mode. 

The to-do list isn’t going away; finishing your to-do list faster is not the answer. It takes your brain at least a month to trust yourself and the new system. Initially, your brain will pester you, but if you consistently use the Sunday Basket® your brain will learn to calm down and trust that the Sunday Basket® works!

4. What if Sunday at 5 pm doesn’t work for me to do the Sunday Basket® Club live?

Do it every week when it works for you. Watch the Sunday Basket® replay! The day and time you do your Sunday Basket® does not matter as long as you are consistent and develop the habit. Make a rule for yourself, and stick to the time that works in your life

5. I don’t have enough paper to do my Sunday Basket® every week. What should I do?

It’s ok to adjust to what you need. If you are just getting started, still develop a routine habit of working in your Sunday Basket®. You can start with once a month or every two weeks to get in the habit, and then increase to every week.

If you have been doing your Sunday Basket® for a long time, you may be more proactive and you likely have cleared out a lot of your previous backlog. It’s ok to do it less frequently just don’t stop entirely! You can try every other week, or the first two weeks of each month, or a different cadence.

Whenever you feel stressed or anxious, consider going through your Sunday Basket® to get back on track. Chaotic times of year like May, August, and the last six weeks of the year benefit from weekly attention.

6. I have the opposite problem. I can’t wait a whole week without going into my Sunday Basket® again, there’s too much going on. Can I do it twice in the same week?

This situation is more typical, especially as people are learning the skills of organization or in a transition time of life. When going through my Sunday Basket®, I (Lisa) typically only plan through Thursday. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are too far away to plan effectively. I front load my week to get as much as I can done on Monday and Tuesday, and then I adjust as the week goes on. Of course, if needed, you can do your Sunday Basket® twice! 

7. You say to do the Sunday Basket® first when getting organized. Can I do the Sunday Basket® and the 100 Day Home Organization Program at the same time? If so, how would you recommend I do them together?

Yes! Emily recommends picking one day to do your Sunday Basket® and make that your only organizing task that day. Then, the rest of the week, do as much of the 100 Days as you reasonably can - focusing on progress over perfection and giving yourself grace for what is not done.

Lisa recommends - reframe your sense of time. “Most people underestimate what taking a full 365 days to focus on getting organized will do to transform the next ten years of your life” ~ Lisa Woodruff. Take a deep breath. You are on a journey moving toward proactivity and organization. You have everything that you need. What do you want to do first?

Start with your most pressing need or what you are most excited to do. Make it work for you. You have made an investment, so keep working towards your goals. 

8. I am drowning!! What if I don’t have the time to dedicate to my Sunday Basket® in order to get my five hours a week back? Is there a way to “start smaller” on the Sunday Basket® concept?

If you literally have no time or energy to get started, this can feel overwhelming. We know that spending about 90 minutes per week going through your Sunday Basket® gives you five hours of free time later in the week once you establish the habit. The Sunday Basket® moves you into proactive anticipation, and that results in more efficiency and effectiveness. The net result is you have more free time.

If you are listening to the podcast, you are taking the first step. You are mentally becoming a more organized and proactive person. It can take 9-18 months for your mindset to change enough that you are ready to take physical action. You are doing it right, and you are already saving yourself time just by the learning you do when listening to the podcast!

Unfortunately, there is ultimately no smaller step to getting organized than the Sunday Basket®. In order to pivot from reactive to proactive living, you need a system. The Sunday Basket® is the system you need to create change. You need to refocus your time and priorities to make changes in your life. Find one whole day before the end of the year and use it to stop and completely change direction. Set up your Sunday Basket® and see how your life changes.  

9. Talk to me about the lifetime access part of Organize 365® programs. I have purchased programs from other companies and I haven’t done them. I don’t trust myself to follow through with this either. Can you convince me?

I don’t follow the most common online selling practices. I don’t want people to feel pressured or anxious about purchasing or participating. I want to offer a transformational experience that I know is going to work and will be available for you as you go through life. Financial situations change. Emotional and physical demands change. Unexpected events are part of every single life. Organize 365® is here for you when you are making progress, and when you step away and come back.

Making a purchase can take things to the next level. It tells your brain you are serious and that you are investing in making a change. The membership aspect to our paid programs also helps to build community, gives you support, and strengthens your commitment. When you are in the Sunday Basket® Club, you have a membership in a group of people who focus on prioritizing what they are accomplishing for the upcoming week.

With lifetime access, you can start today. Some progress is always better than NO progress. Start now and take the first step. Join and start making progress. And, with the Sunday Basket® Club, you have weekly educational courses from certified organizers. Slowly improving over time can lead to big changes.

10. Does the Sunday Basket® organize ALL my papers?

No! The Sunday Basket® is only for your actionable to-do related papers. When you start your Sunday Basket® we have you collect the loose papers from everywhere in your home. You then divide them into actionable and reference/archive.

Any papers that do not require action should live outside of your Sunday Basket®. Organize 365® recommends storing your archival papers in portable, space-limited binders. Listen to podcast 456 next week for more information about that. 

BONUS: OK I think it might work, Is there a way for me to try it out before I buy it? 

We have a seven day mini course where you get more information on the Sunday Basket® delivered by email. Sign up at organize365.com/minicourse

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, 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 get Organized!

This week, I am sharing my interview with Mary G. She lives with her husband and two daughters. She shares about her journey with anxiety and helping her kids deal with their ADHD. Mary shares how getting (more) organized and learning to think proactively helped her family survive some very challenging unexpected events. I hope you enjoy her story as much as I do! 

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

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

ALL ACCESS

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

We have a big announcement for you! We wanted our amazing community to be the first to know. We are leaving Facebook!

I have wanted to leave Facebook for three years. The Organize 365® mission, vision, and values includes building life in community. In the past, some people who purchased a Sunday Basket®, the 100 Day Program, or All Access were unable to participate in the community aspect of our programs. Some did not have an account, and others chose not to have one. That limitation has always bothered me. The community that goes along with the Organize 365® transformation should be available to everyone who wants to participate.

We have been upgrading our technology and support for your transformation for several years already. The online community was especially difficult because it took us a long time to find the right way to create it. I wanted an app for our community that was truly independent of any other platform or company. 

We finally found our solution. We are creating our own custom Organize 365® community app. Now, everyone can be in community on this app specifically with other people who have invested in their transformational journey with Organize 365®. I wanted a way to host a community that was positive, productive, and purposeful. Everything in the new community app will help grow your mindset, increase your positivity, and help you organize your home to live a positive, proactive, purposeful life. 

Here’s what it will look like:

• Organize 365® app for people who have purchased Organize 365® products
• The app is free to download, but participation is limited to those who have purchased specified products
• It will provide the same community groups we currently have on Facebook
• The Dream Team and Certified Organizers will be there to help you along your journey
• All Access members will have a curated, private podcast starting December 5th, available only in the app
• The current Organize 365® app is going away once the new app is ready
• The website is optimized for mobile and you have access to your dashboard directly on your smartphone
• Near the end of 2021, we will archive all of the Facebook groups associated with our purchased products
• The free Facebook groups will continue including my lives and the Blitzes

We are giving you information to help you be proactive about this transition. The app is not launching today. We’re hoping to have it live in the next 2-6 weeks - ideally sometime in November 2021. You will get an email inviting you to join once the app is ready.

We have been working on this transition for three years already. It’s the right time for us to make this happen. We are looking forward to seeing you in our new community as soon as everything is in place.

Welcome to our new Wednesday series of transformational stories from our new Friday Workbox Certified Organizers! Organize 365® recently upgraded all of the Business Friday Workbox Systems and we are so excited to share the stories of the certified organizers who helped us make these improvements!

On Wednesdays, I normally 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. 

Today, I am sharing my conversation with Jennifer Butler. Jennifer is one of our newest Friday Workbox Certified Organizers. Jennifer brings experience as a parent of a child with a serious medical illness, and as an entrepreneur. She also has experience with autism, ADHD, and living internationally with her family. She brings all of this life experience and knowledge to her services.

You can find Jennifer at House of Order, on Instagram, and Facebook.

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 with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

All AccessCCESS

Friday Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

Organize 365® Certified Organizers

Four years ago, on a plane from Los Angeles to New York, I wrote out the Organize 365® mission, vision, and values. Today, we are a much larger team making a bigger impact in the world, but our values have stayed true. 

What is truly amazing is that these five values are not just held by the Dream Team, but these are the values that the Organize 365 community has as well. When we focus on these values, we arrive at the “after” feel of organization and productivity I shared with you last week. (Don’t forget to tag us in your after photos of what you are doing now that you have increased your capacity by getting organized!)

Organize 365® guides you along a transformational journey that organizes both your heart and your mind. Our values are:

• Power of Positivity 
• Building Community
• Life in Abundance 
• Transformational Freedom
• Proactive Anticipation

Let me know what value you think is the strongest for you and how you are seeing it in your transformational journey!

Welcome to our new Wednesday series of transformational stories from our new Friday Workbox Certified Organizers! Organize 365® recently upgraded all of the Business Friday Workbox Systems and we are so excited to share the stories of the certified organizers who helped us make these improvements!

On Wednesdays, I normally 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. 

Today, I am sharing my conversation with Jenn Dickel. Jenn shared about finding a Mastermind back in early 2020. She is back today to share her experience in our newest Mastermind to improve the Friday Workbox and become a Friday Workbox Certified Organizer. Jenn is a businesswoman and entrepreneur who loves to help others focus on improving their productivity. 

You can find Jenn at Seasonal Navigation Organizing, on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. 

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 with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

All AccessCCESS

Friday Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

Organize 365® Certified Organizers

Most professional organization companies like Organize 365® want to show before and after photos. We all love to see a big change - we love makeover shows, decluttering shows, and even dating shows. Magazine pictures and Pinterest show some drool-worthy before and after photos, and many of us are striving to achieve that “after” look of perfectly aligned shelves, and color coded produce bins in the refrigerator. But, those pictures aren’t reflective of real life. Those photo-worthy moments don't last when life is lived and stuff is used. 

The real change that comes from getting organized is hard to put into words, impossible to quantify, and can’t be demonstrated on social media. The photos we can take in our homes can sometimes show a partial improvement or a sample of the transformation. When you get organized, how you feel changes dramatically! 

Listening to this podcast starts to shift your mindset toward living an organized and proactive life. You incrementally get better at using your time to achieve your own priorities. When you add on our courses and products, you add rocket fuel to your transformation. 

Getting organized enough to feel different can happen in a weekend or a month, but your home (your outer reflection) will not look perfect. It’s actually not about your stuff.

Before

We have all had at least one season of life where our feelings were the “before” of living an organized life. When you live reactively, feeling stressed, depressed, overwhelmed, and anxious is typical. When your life is driven by someone else’s agenda and the obligations others place upon  you, all you can do is react. 

As I share in Organization is a Learnable Skill, during my most reactive times, I was afraid of letting other people down and not meeting external expectations. My emotions were just like a before picture of a disorganized kitchen. Thoughts were everywhere. I couldn’t focus and I knew I was not keeping up. Even worse, I was unbelievably stressed and I wasn’t meeting my own expectations. I didn’t have capacity for anything more. My house, brain, and heart were all disorganized.

After

As I developed the Sunday Basket®, I got a grip on my life again. Taking 60-90 minutes a week to look ahead and plan, gave me much more mental capacity and less stress. As I have continued to be more proactive in my own life, I have more time for myself, for self-care, for my passions, and for building relationships. I also have more capacity to pour into Organize 365® so that I can help you get organized so that you can live out your unique purpose. 

As you get organized and learn to live proactively, the way you feel inside changes. You are more calm and less overwhelmed. When unexpected events occur, you can adjust what is on your calendar, defer and delete the things that are no longer important, and handle what is actually happening. Your capacity increases - in almost every area of your life. You have more time for yourself, your relationships, your passion projects, and your life. 

Show us your afters!

We want to see your after photos. Not the cluttered and then empty kitchen counter, though that is great too! The after is you, living the life you are uniquely created to live!  

What is the essence of you? What do you love doing?

Maybe it’s being with your family, reading a great book, hiking in nature, starting a business, writing a book, spending time supporting a charity, or something we haven’t even thought about yet. 

The more you increase your organization and proactivity, the more capacity you have for what you want to do. The possibilities are limitless. Each of us has a story that keeps expanding.

So, on Saturdays, we want to see your afters on Instagram! We’ll be sharing some from the Dream Team, and we want you to share with us.

Welcome to our new Wednesday series of transformational stories from our new Friday Workbox Certified Organizers! Organize 365® recently upgraded all of the Business Friday Workbox Systems and we are so excited to share the stories of the certified organizers who helped us make these improvements!

On Wednesdays, I normally 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. 

Today, I am sharing my conversation with Sheri MacGregor. Sheri was a Wednesday Transformation guest in 2020 and is back today as a Friday Workbox Certified Organizer. She has experience as a teacher, running a construction business, dealing with medical paperwork, has worked on IEP’s, and has settled an estate. We talk about how she has adapted her professional organizing business in COVID and while moving. There’s so much to learn here!

You can find Sheri at Peaceful Paper Peaceful Spaces, on Instagram and on Facebook. 

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 with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

All AccessCCESS

Friday Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

Organize 365® Certified Organizers