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