You did it! You made it to the end of 2023. What lies before us are all the hopes, dreams, and possibilities of 2024.

This is what I like to call the Golden Week. The week after Christmas and before New Years where you're culminating the end of a year and getting ready for the beginning of a new year. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, the last week of December is magical for everyone. For some of us, we're like "Bye bye 2023! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!" 

What's the cost of not being organized? What's the cost of not making a choice about not making a resolution to get organized? The cost is usually time and money. Everything costs you time and everything costs you money.

The first and easiest way that you can save money is by planning your food and meals. You use the Sunday Basket® System to help you meal plan. Use this Golden Week to reflect, make changes or pivots. Take 15 or 20 minutes a week and really start to think about your grocery shopping and meal planning. 

How can we get a handle on our time? For me, I've always captured every single second of my time to try to get as much out of that time as possible; to be as productive as possible. Now my goal is to get more of my time back so that I can do NOTHING. Yes, you heard that right! I really want to see if I can stop working by 8 pm every night. I know what needs to be moved into daytime hours or completely eliminated. Very few people know where their time goes. Not me. I keep track of everything - every minute spent at work, on school, with Grayson, Greg, Joey, Abby...all of it.

So when you look at your 2024, is there one way in which you want to focus on your money? One way in which you want to focus on your time? One way in which you want to focus on your wellness? How can you take the first step to do that? The Sunday Basket® helps you get through as many tasks as possible and plan for the upcoming week of what you anticipate to happen. You can go to organize365.com to try the free week of the Sunday Basket®.

What do you want out of your 2024? Where do you need to improve your organization so that you can have more time and money?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Sunday Basket®

• Free 5-Day Mini Course

• Sign up for the Newsletter

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Throw-back time…We are going to revisit a 3 part series that includes our most listened to episodes. I’m going to revisit what each step looks like and how to complete them. It’s a domino effect - decluttering leads to organization which leads to productivity! There is so much information about decluttering and productivity but where is the handbook to organization? The middle step is missing. It’s a common thought that housework is organization. I am here to set the record straight. Housework is those daily or weekly chores that never seem to be completed, and organization is the lasting result. Decluttering the utensil drawer and making it more functional for your home is organization. Putting things into the drawer from the dishwasher is housework. Vacuuming and laundry is housework. Once you organize something it usually stays that way for a while unless it's a family space and the results don’t last as long. You know!

Declutter → Organization → Productivity

Step one is decluttering. All you have to do is set a 15 minute timer. Now to complete a housework task. Go to your bathroom or closet and declutter for 15 minutes. At the end of that 15 minutes decide where the items you no longer want will go. Will you toss them? Recycle them? Sell them? Donate them? 

In my book “Organization Is a Learnable Skill,” I took 4 months to declutter. Then I decided to sell a few things. For those four months, I placed items in one room. Then I held a garage sale. I wasn’t in a position to work and I wanted to contribute to the family so this was a way I could. You can sell online or however is most convenient for you. BUT I have three rules. 

In my opinion, sell the items that will bring in $25 or more. It will take you time to set up a garage sale or post and monitor online so make sure it’s worth your time. Then set a deadline to have the items sold. If you haven't sold them by the deadline, then it’s time to trash or donate. You could spend a lot of time trying to re-post or sell elsewhere. Call a spade a spade and move on. Decide before you sell specifically what you are going to use that money for. Like I mentioned, this was my way to contribute to my family. You could go on vacation, buy something for the house, remodel something, buy a new piece of furniture, The Productive Home Solution®…lol, just sayin’.

If you have decided to donate…just relocate the items immediately to your car trunk. I encourage you to get a routine down daily or weekly. Maybe every Thursday after work, you stop by your donation center and drop off your items. Maybe you want to get through as much as you can in one week. Before you start the next 15 minute decluttering session the next day, you go drop off your items. Head home and complete as many 15 minute sessions as you have energy for. 

You CAN spend too long decluttering…

Once you are happy with what is in your home, stop decluttering. It’s possible that you keep decluttering things you actually want in search of that sense of control. Or you want to feel like the heavens have parted and are shining down on your hard work. Not yet. The idea is just to get rid of your broken or no longer used items so you can organize the things you do want in your home. I want you to know where they are and have your home functional for you. The next step of organization is where you will feel more confident and in control of your home. 

Look into my crystal ball

These 15 minutes of decluttering sessions are sustainable for about 2 months on your own. And that brings us to the end of February. At that point you are going to think “I love the spaces I have decluttered and organized. I’d really like support to keep going on with the rest of my home. I’d like to try something more with Organize 365®” OR you will think “I did it! I organized the few spaces I spend time in and I’m at peace with that.” I don’t really have a crystal ball but I have observed clients and the Organize 365® community and have seen this play out time and time again. I’d love to be the one to help you get organized in 2024!

Who are you gonna follow? 

Are you ready to get organized in 2024? I am not everyone’s cup of tea and I am ok with that. I am a functional organizer. I strive for excellence not perfection. Greg grew up in a minimalist setting so he gives me grief over the house not being organized. He would not follow me! I am extremely organized, but I am not a minimalist. I like books and memorabilia. I like my things, and the things I have are organized. I hope you do see the value that I am offering. I hope you see how I pivoted during Covid and it seemed approachable for you. I hope you saw me take the challenge of Greg’s shoulder surgery last week and see how the holiday was still successful. It just looked different this year. Whoever you decide to guide you down the road of organization - do you like their lifestyle, daily accomplishments, rigidity? Choose a person that tackles life events and organization in a way that feels good to you. You want results, right? 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

I just love sharing this journey with this community! I love that while processing my thoughts auditorily, I get to connect with you and pick your brains. Just like you all do in the online community! I shared with you about the Teacher Pilot and now I want to fill you in on the Kids Program Pilot.

“How did you come up with the Kids Program?”

I should have expected this question. Of course, they didn’t have many organizational questions because they had just completed the after school program their parents signed them up for - The Kids Pilot. And there should have been no surprise that it was predominantly boys. Mom wanted little Johnny to pick up after himself better, I guess! We had 14 children participate. 

They wanted to know how I came up with the Kids Program. 

First Thing’s First

First things first, what is the Kids Program? In my years of professional home organizing, I developed some rules for organizing the kids' rooms.

First, no parents. I wanted the child to feel comfortable to say yes or no to items or clothes they didn’t want in their room. And let me tell you, you can force your child, guilt your child into keeping something in their room, but it isn’t getting played with or worn! Speaking of stuffed animals, and you can apply this to other “collections,” there's a process of elimination I explained. Our brains can get all mixed up when the things we definitely want to keep are mixed up with the things we are ok to let go. 

Also, if the child has a rock collection you don’t want them to have, come up with a compromise. It’s like their passion project and you are completely dismissing it. So instead allow them a certain amount of space or number of items that they can keep. It’s their little passion project, their treasures. You can have an organized room with passion projects in them. 

And clothes are a whole other battle. When dealing with smaller children, the only real question they are considering is how do these clothes make me feel? They don’t care about the occasion they may need it for. They never knew how you dressed as a child or how you envision your child dressing. They wanna be able to play in comfort. I always found in boys it was jeans vs. “swishy” pants. You can buy them all the jeans you want but if they like swishy pants, swishy pants are the only thing getting worn. I want to save the child from the battle with the parent over what they want to wear. And I want the parent to spend wisely on clothing their children will actually wear. I talk to the child in my only Lisa voice and help them to respectfully articulate to their parents their preferences and why. I know we all want an organized child and an organized child is much more likely to be confident. Organization breeds confidence. 

There are about 14 steps between “You know how” and “Do it like this”

There is no system in place of how we “hand down” how to #adult. This applies to baby steps like helping our children to organize their mini apartments, to our emerging adults to their independent living spaces. That is why we offer the Kids Program and Launch Program for ages 16-25. We go out on our own and overnight gain a ton of responsibility. 

Did you know that one out of three children are born with organizational skills? So it isn’t any wonder that 87% of adults don’t feel organized. So if we don’t learn organization in school or college, I mean, where are we to learn these skills? It’s not like we wake up adults one day with the skill of organization! The Launch Binder is a great way to comprehensively hand down the skills and systems we have learned along the way for an organized lifestyle. How do we all learn grocery shopping, a cleaning schedule, managing prescriptions, health insurance, buying a car, routine things like oil changes and getting new tires? As parents we just figured it out with each new stage of life. And oh my gosh, throw a kid in the mix and now it just got a lot more complex! Now you are managing a house instead of an apartment, managing other people’s messes and your emotions about those messes, and you are balancing work and home life - not just school and the other stuff mom and dad take care of. Kids don’t know what they don’t know and I believe we all want to better inform our children to reduce their stress and boost their confidence.

How do we get this into the educational system?

So again I want to ask you, my community…how can we get this into all educational systems? At what age? Senior in high school? At the college level? We NEED to be teaching the skill of organization! Did you know that children who aren’t organized also have increased negative self talk? And as we get older and gain more responsibilities to juggle, do you think the self-talk improves? If we can teach these students how to get organized and maintain it, we’ll have mentally healthier confident children with skills that transfer into the rest of their lives. That will result in them moving through their goals faster and making an impact. Please let me know what you are thinking as I am sharing this information. 

This is the last frontier AI will approach. And I’m not confident it’ll ever be able to manage the administration of life! So we’ve got to figure this out and teach them how to help themselves in whatever phase of life they are in. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Kids Program

• Launch Program

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Happy Boxing Day! Oh my goodness! This is another holiday that I now celebrate that other people may not celebrate. I've basically curated for myself a year full of fake holidays! I don't know any woman that wakes up on the 26th that doesn't want to declutter everything in their house. It's after the holidays, it's at the end of the year, you're getting ready for a new year, new you. This year on Boxing Day, I wanted to let you know that we are going to have a book club on January 12th, going through the book Organization is a Learnable Skill. I self-published this book in 2021 and did a book tour as well. This is the story of getting myself organized in 2012, the year I turned 40 and the same year I started Organize 365®. I wanted to publish this book for a long time because I like to follow someone's story through the highs and lows about how something happens.

So often when we are trying to do something new, all we see are the courses, communities, lessons...the whole long list of everything there is to do in order to end up organized at the end of the year. But what happens all the time, during that year? What are the milestones where you start to feel organized? When are the milestones where other people start to notice? What trips you up as you move along through organization?

You don't need to re-buy the book to attend the book club. The ticket to attend the live event is $12. Don't worry if you can't attend live, there will be a replay after the event that's available to watch for 25 days. If you need the book and the book club we have that option, too. If you like listening to books - the book is also on Audible! You can submit questions in advance and I'll answer as many as I can. You will also receive a downloadable Journal Prompt booklet in the email with the replay link.

So as you're looking to 2024 and want to start getting organized or continue on your organizing journey, these journal prompts walk you through each month of Organization is a Learnable Skill. This book is written almost like a monthly diary, what I did in January, what I did in February...how I felt about that and the progress that I made from being the least organized I've ever been in my entire life. 

Good luck decluttering everything. Try not to declutter anything with a heartbeat! Make sure the cats, dogs, and children are out of the way as you are frantically decluttering your house getting ready for an amazing, amazing 2024!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Organization is a Learnable Skill Book Club Event

• Organization is a Learnable Skill Book Club + Organization is a Learnable Skill Book

• Organization is a Learnable Skill (book only)

• Audible Version

• Sign up for the Newsletter

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

How do we move from being a productive person who can get a lot done in a day to someone who can really set and achieve bigger goals that are going to make a marked difference in the world? The way to become more impactful doesn't come from productivity, it doesn't come from apps, and it doesn't come from digitizing things. It comes from increasing your organization. 

In order to build the tracks for your work train, you have to establish work systems, processes and habits. In Workbox Planning Day, we talk about having a beginning of the day routine, a midday routine, and an end of the day routine. Then you can add in Friday Workbox® coworking time each Friday, and Planning Day every quarter. Now there will be the new Workbox Planning Day Implementation event that will kick off next week, and will continually happen every quarter. You have to build these tracks first so that you can move forward faster. Having these three routines each day gives you guardrails and allows you to task stack different things at different times of the day so that you have more capacity and more time to work on your purple projects and move new initiatives forward through the company. 

Now you're moving faster because these habits and routines have reduced your decision making fatigue. You've task stacked as many of your green tasks into these bucketed times each day and week so that you have more free time to work on the other colors - pink, purple and blue. Now it's time to build the train cars. How you build your work train cars is very customized. What your train looks like throughout your career is also very customized. Interestingly, you can get your work train up and running faster than your home train. Typically it only takes a year - if you're an employee. If you're a business owner, it's a lifetime pursuit. You're never going to be done because you're always reorganizing the train tracks, moving around the cars or adding and subtracting them. It's basically one big game. 

The first work train car will be the Business Friday Workbox®. This will teach you there are four different kinds of work; four different roles you play in your job. Everyone has four: pink, purple, blue and green. Once you figure out what those are, we're going to optimize those four kinds of work over the course of one year. The second train car are the Workbox Planning Days. Until you learn how to plan, how to use your Friday Workbox®, it's really just a pretty way of organizing your to do list. Until you learn to plan the work that's within the workbox, it's very reactive. You might speed up a little, but you will not have the impact that you want to have. How do you take the green work (administrative) and task stack it in as small amount of time as possible at regular intervals throughout the day so that you can increase the capacity you have for the pink, purple and blue work?

Once you start going through the Planning Days, you start to proactively and purposefully plan out what your initiatives are going to be in the next 90 days. You start doing less, but getting more in depth. You delete or delegate projects, you streamline your goals and stop overcommitting. You realize how cyclical work is and how much it's related to home. 

There are other things that are going to slow down your train - like losing a team member, adding a team member, a new product, losing a product, and so on. Every time you pull into the station, you will go through every single train car. Every 90 days, every quarter. I would love for you to join me for the Workbox Planning Day Implementation event next week. It will be the 13th week of every quarter from now on, so you can add this into your coaching package in order to keep your train running. My job is to get you more productive and profitable so that you can avail yourself of all of those great coaches thereafter. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Business Friday Workbox®

Workbox Planning Day

Friday Workbox® Planning Day Monthly Subscription

Workbox Implementation Day

Sign up for the Newsletter

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

I wish you guys could understand the opportunity Jayme gave me when she offered up her school as a pilot school. Jayme had been talking about the Education Friday Workbox® and explaining how she was so organized, but I was still shocked that she was able to get approval overnight! It was an easy “yes” for the superintendent because he knew it was already so effective for Jayme. I am so excited to share how it went!

“Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years.” - Bill Gates 

The same can be said for our houses. Most people overestimate what they can achieve in one weekend or month and underestimate what they can achieve in one year. 

It’s funny, through developing Organize 365® I’ve been able to identify that we do not focus on decluttering or productivity as much as we focus on learning organization. The first one aids organization and the last is allowed due to organization. When I wrote “Organization Is a Learnable Skill”, that’s what I shared; my acts of organization. When we are organized, we get the pay off of productivity. I’m excited to dive into the book study and dig into how you can achieve results, too!

Three years after launching Organize 365®, I was able to be the business owner and send my team out into the field. After six years of effectively running Organize 365® due to organization leading to productivity, I was still blogging, had the podcast, the early stages of what is now The Productive Home Solution®, and manufacturing for the Sunday Basket®. I was still in multiple direct sales companies and the train wasn’t stopping any time soon. But If you would have told me I would accomplish all of that, I am not sure I would have expected to.

I used to love to stay after school when I was a teacher and organize a fellow teachers’ space. They loved when I bopped into their classrooms. 

I say all of that to tell you that at that time, I launched 8 workboxes. I had a box for all the things I was doing. And the Education Friday Workbox® was one of those 8. Being a teacher is so different from any other career. When you need a potty break at work, you get up and go, right? Not a teacher, they are in charge and looking after multiple children. They can’t just leave them unattended. I have such an understanding of the teacher world, workload, and home life. So I knew how to make the Friday Workbox® work for teachers. 

I truly believe this should be on each teacher’s supply list. It’s a one time purchase and then a lifetime of organization in the classroom. The real issue becomes who pays for it; I don’t think this should also fall on the teacher! Should it come from the federal budget? The state budget? Or the local educational budget? Each state operates a little differently so we’ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it, I guess. Our teachers really only get paid based on instructional time with students. But what many may not realize is all the administrative tasks they have, the responsibility to meet curriculum, nurturing the relationships with students and parents, and time that takes away from their families and pets that rely on them, too. They do not get paid based on all of the invisible work they do that is not optional!

Our teachers make large sacrifices of mental capacity for the career that they love. 

Did I call Sally’s mom back? I need 4 toilet paper rolls for that experiment tomorrow. Those are just a few examples of what teachers are trying to remember. We need to help teachers free up their mental overwhelm! They are constantly surpassing their mental capacity. I designed this pilot to teach them how to write those thoughts down quickly, something that can be done right in the middle of class, and continue on with the lesson. Then at the end of the week, sort them into slash pockets and conquer the tasks. It’s so gratifying to free up mental capacity for them in a way that makes them confident everything will still get handled. Because I understand this world so much, I decided to create 3 more slash pocket colors for the Education Friday Workbox®.

So, how did it go?

What I Discovered

It was interesting to me that all three sessions I led were mandatory. There were 52 people in attendance. This was offered to all faculty, not just teachers. Thirty-five staff members took on the opportunity to get organized for a more smoothly run classroom.

The special needs teachers showed that they needed additional support. After doing a zoom with the special needs teachers, I decided to offer the Paper Organizing Retreat to all of the special needs teachers. Because what I learned was, almost all of the special needs teachers were new to teaching or new to their school building. That’s a lot of newness and it explained their desire for more support! I had 4 of them attend plus Jayme. I sat down with them and learned more about their students and their workload. We came up with customized solutions for each teacher. That’s the thing about any of the workboxes. They will get you 80% of the way there, but then you have to customize it to work for you and your needs.

They all felt that for the third session they would like to learn home organization. I was open to other topics like lesson planning. But of course, I love that they were experiencing organization at work and wanted it for home, too. Yes, get both trains running!!

What Puzzled Me

I was fascinated to learn that only 2 out of all participants had a digital only organizational process. Which meant that of the remaining participants, 50% were hybrid of both paper and digital while the remaining 50% were paper only. Mind blown because I always hear of people trying to get a digital system perfected. But what I think is actually happening is that they are doing double duty!

I’m also curious for the faculty that attended but did not take the Education Friday Workbox®, were the first two mandatory sessions beneficial? Should educators get an Education Friday Workbox® during college or first year teaching? Different states evaluate for IEP’s through different entities.

What I Would Love

I would love for all teachers to have the Education Friday Workbox® and embrace it! I would love to see professional development for teachers via the Education Friday Workbox®. I’d love to be able to improve their mental health by freeing up their mental capacity. And I’d love to see teacher retention.

I’m excited for this to become an actual study. But for now, I am happy with this pilot and it will add credibility to studies in the future. I’d love to help more educators as part of this Education Friday Workbox® pilot.

What I Need to Move Forward

Do you have knowledge about your state and how things are funded for education? Do I need to be part of a special vendor portal? Is there a certain list for vendors to offer professional development for your schools? Do the districts make the decisions in your state? Does your state have an initiative for teacher retention?

Are you on the board, PTO, a teacher or a principal and think this is something you may want to do in your building? Do you want to offer it just to first and second year teachers? Or on a voluntary basis? Who makes the decisions? Who do I need to talk to? Do they want to meet in person? What can I do to advocate for these teachers? Who is open to receiving this information?

Please email me at customerservice@organize365.com if you have answers to any of my questions or can aid introductions. I am taking you all on this journey so you can see that  though I do not know the answers, I keep trying. The success or failure of execution will determine my next steps. I have been uniquely created for a time like this. 

I have been uniquely created to create online courses to teach people organization through the internet to make visible the invisible work done at home and work. And after my PhD, I will do research to make visible the cognitive and mental load in all these areas at a scientific level to elevate the conversation of systems and structures that need to be in place for adults, just like we have for children, in school, home, work, and teacher environments.

I want you too to discover what you are uniquely created to do!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Education Friday Workbox®

• Paper Organizing Retreat

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Are you driving a car, or conducting a train? Today's episode is about your home organizing train. 

It takes a lot of effort to stop a train. When you are productive, have a lot of impact, and your life is up and running - you get a couple of unexpected events coming at you but can take the first few of them in stride. 

When you are driving a car, there's only so much you can handle. You only have so much capacity, although that car moves fast and is nimble. You can stop it easily, pivot or turn around. The size of your car, how fast it is, how much gas you can keep in the tank has a limit. A train doesn't start or stop very fast - but once you lay those tracks and build those train cars, you can go really far really fast without a lot of effort. 

How do you lay the tracks and build the cars? Organizing. Creating and maintaining systems, habits, and productivity at home and work. Once you have those established - which is going to take a while - the only thing that will derail you are really big life events. These can be catastrophic: like a medical diagnosis, a divorce, or someone passes away. Or they can be happy events: getting pregnant, getting married, moving to a new home. Your train will also slow down and speed up during the Golden Windows of a calendar year. You will need to slow down and "come into the station" at the end of each quarter at work and each trimester at home. This is the piece I was missing that I am going to share with you. 

You have to establish your systems, routines, and habits that your train will run on; otherwise you can't have the train. You must establish these first, so your train has something to run on. If not, then you're stuck in the car. When you're driving a car, you're just on roads that have been established by other people and you decide in which order you want to take those roads that somebody else created. You have to stop at every red light, decide whether to turn right or left, take the highway or the back roads. Constantly making all these decisions unnecessarily. 

Now that you have the engine, it's time to build those train cars. Your first one is the Sunday Basket®. You must become a master at delaying your decision making. You plan your week and stop being pulled by every single decision that comes at you. The next train cars are personal, storage, family, and paper organization - which happens within The Productive Home Solution®. Remember, each of these train cars are going to take a couple of months to build. They will need regular maintenance. This takes discipline and the right mindset. Every car needs to be decluttered and organized every trimester at home. At first, it's going to take more time.

To establish the train tracks, move from a car to a locomotive, put the cars on the track, and get the train up to speed takes at least three years. This realization is such a buzzkill, I know. Don't get discouraged though, it's not like it takes this long to see any positive changes. You can run that train at 50% after a year and it's still going to be better than what you had before! But to make the impact you want and need, those train cars need to be running at 80-90% organized so they are running strictly on maintenance.

A train that is running on maintenance pulls into the depot and you go through it car by car - this is what happens during Planning Days, and now during the new Prep Event I've created. You will revisit each of your train cars - the Sunday Basket®, your personal, storage, family, and paper. If you are this far in organizing, this will feel weird. You will think that you need to tear it apart and start all over each time. But you know the math: you've subtracted by decluttering, added in what you need, multiplied for productivity and now you're in division. You don't have to start all over again. Even if you have a major event, you can go through it all again - but it will go so much faster. 

Moving to a train is a purposeful, disciplined act that requires you to grow organizing muscles, to think long-term instead of short-term, to think strategically instead of giving into immediate gratification. Once you learn this, you will have the skill set with you for the rest of your life. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Sunday Basket®

• Business Friday Workbox®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution® Planning Day Workbook Monthly Subscription Plan

• Kids Program

• The Productive Home Solution® Planning Day Prep

• Sign up for the Newsletter

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Ready to get to know Lisa Woodruff from the past? I feel like it’s valuable to fill you in on where all this started. Have you ever had an out of body experience? A temper tantrum of sorts? I remember one night in 2005, when I had one. It was as if I was watching myself have this meltdown. Greg was in shock, took the kids, and left for a long time. During that time, I tried to figure out what my problem was and how to get it together. I looked at my planner and realized I had taken the kids to 110 Dr. appointments on top of work and regular life responsibilities. No wonder I was having a melt down. I can remember the added stress of how broke we were in 2007 and 2008. Unfortunately after my parents divorced, my father passed away in 2009. My sister and I found a little financial relief in the sale of his house. Nothing stressful about settling an estate! But I was able to remodel our kitchen with some of that money, but then what? I knew better than to think the debt we had accrued wouldn’t just get racked up again if something didn’t change. 

I do have both trains running full steam ahead now. But there was a time when I graded all aspects of my life with an F with the exception of work. I was a teacher at a Montessori school for 18 months. I learned alot from my co teacher, the students, and that school. I learned compassion and was exposed to more diversity than I ever had in my teacher settings before. 2010 was the year of the Tsunami in Japan and the Earthquake in Haiti. Montessori is flexible and allowed for us to have discussions with the students about these current events in a way that expanded their thinking. I really loved my job there.

That is, until it was brought to my attention that they didn’t feel like I was doing as great of a job as I thought I had been doing. As I drove home from that difficult conversation, a conversation I tried to pass on because Abby was home very sick and I just wanted to be with her, I knew I needed to make a change. I asked myself, “What am I doing with my life?” If I was appreciated in my work, I knew my family would make a small sacrifice. But that wasn’t the case. So I decided to ditch the job and raise my grades in the other areas of my life. I was spinning way too many plates the way it was. 

In December of 2011, I quit my job to be a stay at home mom. I knew the life I wanted to provide for my children. I also knew I needed to make money to replace my teacher salary. I am no stranger to making money and within 6 months I had surpassed that teacher salary. By our 2012 tax refund, I listed 9 schedule C’s! NINE! I was doing it! I was available for my family and making money. Greg and I are very much aligned in two things; doing whatever it takes to help our children and living a life with no regrets, even if that meant money was tight at times. I didn’t want to regret not being home with my children. I don’t regret that we haven’t been able to travel until now but boy am I ready! Europe here we come! And with everything Greg and I have been through, I’m so thankful that my marriage was never in question. 

2012 is also the year I launched Organize 365®. I didn’t know what it was going to become. All I knew is that the areas I had been successful in were organization and that it would result in good SEO! I wrote the book “Organization Is A Learnable Skill” for that year. It’s a pretty accurate account of that year. I wrote month by month what I did and how I felt about the actions I was taking. I am a 4th generation female college graduate. I am a 4th generation female business owner! And here we are 12 years later with a podcast that has been consistent for 9 years helping this community. And I am proud to now be pursuing my PhD to better my business, Organize 365®!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Episode 69: My Depression Story & How Depression Affects Organization

• Organization Is a Learnable Skill

• The Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

Today's episode is going to be a refresher to some of you, and new to a lot of you. I've recorded two podcast series that I'm going to reference, plus a concept I created years ago. This will get us all to the same place of thinking as we end the year.

Are you the one thinking: "Ok, I want that productivity that Lisa has and I'm doing #allthethings. So why don't I have what I think I should have as productivity?" You're busy running around like a chicken with your head cut off, trying to make the merriment for everyone around you the entire month of  December. What you're craving and what you want is to figure out how to finally get organized so you could be more productive, so you could be less stressed, so you can get more done. 

So why is it that we can declutter, get kind of organized, and then get to productivity - and yet we still don't achieve our goals? Or we get some time back, but not a lot of time...then one little unexpected life event comes and you feel like you've been put behind 6 months at home. Why is it such a regular occurrence that getting sick or an unexpected event can derail us so badly? 

Organization is a three-part cycle: Decluttering, Organization, Increased Productivity. I'm going to add a fourth part to the cycle - Impact. This is the one that most people never get to. We're always going for productivity, but really I think we're going for impact and productivity is the step before impact. Now consider the Lisa Math that I do...and let's fit all of this together. 

Adding is organizing. Subtraction is decluttering. Multiplication is productivity. Division is the impact. 

Impact comes from organization. Not productivity - impact. Productivity will increase the speed of the organization you have, but that's it. If we're only as productive as our organization will let us be, how do we optimize organization? Productivity is time bound. You can only get so much done in a day. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Planning Day Prep Event

• Workbox Implementation Event

• Sign up for the Newsletter

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

I've been talking a lot about planning lately - an obscene amount honestly, but that's ok. Ironically, today is Workbox Planning Day! We're starting off the month getting those purple projects completed and ready for more GREEN in 2024!

In today's episode I talk about how this week I'd love for you to come up with a list of planned neglect. It's been a long time since I’ve talked about planned neglect. I remember the first time I ever heard about this concept at a Creative Memories conference. I want you to think about all of the things that you've done for the past 11 months of this year. Out of all those things, what are the things that you are NOT going to do in order to create more margin, more bandwidth, more breathing room for you to actually enjoy the holidays and enjoy the end of this year? Really, honestly think about it - what are the things that you are going to purposefully put off from right now until the end of January?

Just like right now with getting my PhD, I know I'm neglecting a lot of things in my life for the next 2 years (I'm almost done with year 1!) This doesn't mean I'll never do those things again, just not right now. Figure out what you can do, when you can do it, and how long it is going to take. What are all the roles and responsibilities that you have inside of your life and what are things you can do to make those easier? 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Friday Workbox®

• Sign up for the Newsletter

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!