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.