As we are having these necessary conversations on how to be prepared for unexpected medical events or natural disasters, I saw a friend of mine Sarah Hart Unger had one of her own. I asked her to come on the podcast so we could talk about what happened, how she handled it, what she learned from it, and how she may improve her preparedness.

I’m Healthy

Sarah shared how she was so excited to get back into running marathons. There she was in Miami in about mile 11 of her half marathon when all the sudden she heard her body say something wasn’t right. She bunked (marathon runner speak for running out of steam) and she was surprised and disappointed, why was this happening? Her friend took her to the medical tent and they told her all was well. She was so confused because she was a runner and she considered herself a very healthy person. Five steps into leaving the tent something told her no, and to go back. Moments later she was on her way to the hospital. She was pleading with them to just let her get to the hospital to be put under so they could shock her heart there, not that moment in the ambulance! Sarah has been diagnosed with a rare condition called Arrhythmic Cardio Myopathy.

What Systems were in place? 

Thankfully Sarah was near where her in-laws live so they could support Sarah during her hospital stay and gave comfort to her daughters that someone was there comforting their mom. Sarah appreciated the medical team that took care of her, she felt heard, that they were honest with her, and was thankful for the way they cared for her. She wrote questions down because sometimes there wasn’t anyone to ask if it was like 2am. And she had realistic expectations of how long it may take to get a diagnosis. 

She got images in hand for additional specialists she wanted to see for second opinions. She advises to always ask for the images and reports. I feel like digital records help us to be productive and physical records help us to look, analyze, and see patterns. We’re all under this false pretense that our records are digital. And they may be, but, do you want your doctor visit to consist of tracking results down or do you want it to be focused on the course of action for treatment? Remember the mini medical binder is available for free right now. If you even show up with that you are ahead of other people. You can just start putting the medical papers in a pile and bring them. Sarah is a Pediatric Endocrinologist and says that she’d rather have people show up with results and reports messy than not at all. 

How to better prepare? 

Sarah wishes she had her old labs and EKG’s for comparison sake. I remember being able to show my doctor my cholesterol history and I avoided being put on medicine. I showed that for years my normal is in the “yellow” zone. Sarah also wishes she would have headed the advice to get another EKG years ago but life got busy and she forgot. Sarah stressed that we have to take care of ourselves just like we do our children. She accredits their amazing nanny for being able to step in and fill in the gaps. However, because they always plan their week out and share it with the nanny, they nanny knew how to fill out the schedule for the family. Sarah suggested a family member maybe come observe a couple days at your house to see the day to day unfold and be aware of what they may need to do in your absence. It’s ok if the ship sinks a little like if someone has to miss soccer, that’s ok. Sarah warned “Don’t ever assume ‘I’m healthy, nothing can happen to me.”

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Mini Medical Binder

• Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Amy L. who is married with a son, daughter, a dog and some chickens. At the time she found Organize 365® she and her husband were working full time and raising cattle. Amy was lured to Organize 365® by the cozy pictures people were posting with a drink and their Sunday Baskets® on Instagram. I had forgotten all about that!!  She had to check out what all the fuss was about. Organize 365® became the first podcast she intentionally listened to to learn about organization. Amy was in the middle of a remodel and had hit her tipping point. Paper had always been the bain of her existence but now she couldn’t locate important papers and she felt out of control and irresponsible. 

So Amy is in the middle of remodeling her house and her husband planning to start a business, when she gets a call from her brother saying “Something's up with dad.” Turns out something had been up with dad for a while but her brother had been trying to handle it. I don’t talk about it much but it was very relatable to me when Amy shared that her dad had late-onset of bipolar and he was acting manic. Amy was smart enough to get her name on her dad’s bank accounts and she became power of attorney but needed someone to diagnose him incapacitated. Amy was burned out. She explained her life as unmanageable at that time.  

Amy decided to quit her job in June of 2024. Her family needed her, especially her daughter with ADHD, dysgraphia, and dyslexia, and her son with autism and ADHD. She talked to her husband and they agreed to sell off their cattle. Amy’s dad ended up passing away in August of 2024 followed by her having a heart attack in November. She called for an ambulance after making arrangements for her kids and informing her husband. She kept saying she was under so much stress she felt like she was going to “stroke out.” She had a spontaneous coronary aortic dissection. We had quite a long conversation about that day and the day I drove an employee to the hospital who was having a heart attack. She accredits the Sunday Basket® for saving her butt because her short term memory had been affected by the heart attack. 

And that brought us into a very real conversation about your attitude in your 40’s and 50’s. We aren’t trying to be crass and we love our families. But in your 40’s you stop caring about what others think and in your 50’s you save what energy you have for important things or yourself, blame it on the hormones or lack thereof. I gave the example of when Grayson has an allergic reaction, I don’t need to be at the hospital. I can simply get updates from his mom. I know I am supporting her and if she needs me I’ll be there but if not, I’ll stay and get homework done in the office. 

Amy expressed gratitude for the grace I suggest women should give themselves with getting functionally organized not Pinterest organized. She loves that a person can get organized but it doesn’t have to look perfect in the end. Amy loved that it wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t cluttered anymore either during her renovation. She’d had the Sunday Basket® and listened to the podcast for 18 months before she put it all into action. She’d been gaining knowledge and learning how to give herself grace to get started and not need it to be perfect. She feels like the episodes are so relatable. And I added yes, you all are my friends and I want it to feel like we are just girlfriends talking. It’s nice to know that’s exactly how Amy hears it. 

Amy’s advice is, “Start small, start somewhere, and listen to the podcast” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

Take Shelter! As I record this coffee chat, our office is under a tornado watch! How timely? If anyone in our community finds themselves dealing with a natural disaster or unexpected event, I have created a space for us to come together and give or get support! The community was able to help victims of Hurricane Helene and now I want for all of us to be able to help or get help in those circumstances. But not all hard seasons of life are because of a natural disaster. So I am calling this a relief group. I want you to be able to raise your hand and be vulnerable to say “I need some help!” It’s the Organize 365® Relief Group.

I also know the value of having medical information accessible on paper in the event you need to evacuate quickly or go take care of a loved one. In episode 651 - Productive Disaster Preparation and Relief, I went over an Emergency Go Bag and a packed overnight bag/suitcase plus additional ways to just be prepared for unexpected events. In that Emergency Bag, I want you to have your medical information so I am giving away the first half of the Medical Binder. This is a way I feel I can help. Go to www.organize365.com/relief and download your free copy. 

You will also get access to our community where you can connect with others who have gone through what you are going through. It’s not through social media so you aren’t in the public fish bowl where someone may see a post you don’t want them to see, there aren’t ads, cookies, or bots spying on you either. And you can ask for items you may need. The way I see it, we all have enough stuff. If someone needs something you have in storage, you can simply ship it to them. You may not really want to throw that thing away, you’d rather donate it. And nothing feels better than giving to someone in need, knowing you helped in some way. 

Upcoming Episodes that will give you additional ways to be prepare:

652 - Organizing Your Role as a Power of Health Care

654 - Organizing Your Role as a Power of Attorney

655 - Organizing Your Role as the Executor of an Estate

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Get Your Mini Medical Binder and Join the Organize 365® Relief Group

• 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.

While the world seems calm, in terms of natural disasters, I wanted to offer three levels of ways to be prepared. Natural disasters are unexpected events and I want you to be prepared for anything that may come your way. I used two filters to concoct these courses of action to be prepared; “What would be harder to do once the disaster has happened?” And “How can I invest in being more self-sufficient and less dependent?” Preparedness is not a necessity but a way for you to be part of the solution.

Level One  - Go Bag!

You get news that you need to go see someone in the hospital or you need to evacuate, what do you take with you? I encourage everyone to have a Go Bag and fill it with items that would make you more comfortable. Think, if you were going to travel on an airplane, what would you want? I provided so many options of how to be prepared that this will become a reliable episode to share with anyone facing an unexpected event but hopefully everyone hears it before they are desperate for the information!

Level Two - Packed Suit Case

I understand this may seem a little next level for planning but when we get caught off guard and called away from home, our brains are scattered and it would be easy to forget things. I advise you to slowly build this packed suitcase. Maybe during Black Friday you pick up an extra curling iron so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to pack the one you use daily. Half of my suitcase is always ready with my toothbrush, brush, sound machine, curling iron, and so forth. In the event I needed to drop everything and go or simply to travel, I’d throw in some jammies and a few outfits, and out the door I’d fly.  If you have fires creeping close to your house I want you to be prepared to be able to do the same!

Level Three - Information Management

When I used to organize people’s homes and paper, I would use their filing cabinets until one time I was forced to tell a client to leave them behind. That paperwork is so valuable and I never wanted to tell someone that again. That’s why Organize 365® switched to binders, paper needs to be portable. When fires are near your home and you need to get away quickly, there’s no need to worry, grab them and go! When I was settling my father’s estate, I never found myself near the filing cabinets that had all the information, when I was being asked for it. You need easy access and it’s not always due to a natural disaster or an emergency. 

Prepare, Support, Cycle Preparedness

I asked the question: “Can a natural disaster be a Golden Window?” Sounded crazy as I said it but I thought of a few ways it could be viewed that way. I shared ways of how to be prepared with food, water, and power, in the event of a natural disaster. In the Organize 365® community there is a way to find support and give support. I never want people to be forgotten after these tragedies so we have the “Forget Me Not” Basket in Carolina Blue in effort to honor past events and future events. It’s also where you can go to download the mini medical binder to have in these go bags and suit cases. These natural disasters happen and we watch on tv helplessly. We now have a way to help anyone from 1 person to thousands going through the same thing in the community after the camera have gone home and the news coverage has stopped. And lastly, stay prepared by including updating these items each home planning day. I don’t want people to be caught off guard and unprepared so I wanted to share how you to can be in a constant state of preparedness too.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Organize 365 Relief Group

• Ep. 610 - Productive People's Mindset - Living a Prepared Life

• 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!

How exciting Planning Day for Teachers, not to be confused with Teacher Camp. Teacher Planning Day will be July 9th. You will get a workbook and we will really dial in your routines. We’ll be talking about when you first get to school, what do you want your routine to be for when you get a break, and what do you do right before you leave for the day? And as important as those routines are, we’ll be talking about your personal routines too. That will be a total of 6 routines. This will be the first time that Organize 365® holds a planning day for teachers to help you get systems and habits in place that will support you throughout the year. 

We’ll discuss theme days, like you always do grading on a Tuesdays or weed through your email on Wednesdays. We’ll be going over the slash pockets to set goals in place for the year. And we’ll do all of that by going through the workbook. What will you goals be for you and personal development? I’ll show you how take a look at the time you have and show you how to fill out the time pie pages. You might choose to spend your time more strategically to get better results.. We’ll plug in all the annual activities so at a glance you can see upcoming months and plan for those activities. And right now all planning days are 20% off so what are you waiting for? Are you ready for your smoothest school year yet? 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Teacher Workbox

• Teacher Planning Day

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

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

Calling all my inquisitive podcast listeners!  I have been podcasting for TEN YEARS and sometimes I wonder if I’ve already talked about the topic that I’m getting ready to record. I shared that Abby is getting ready to have back surgery and I will become Grayson’s primary care giver until she recovers. 

I imagine I will use all my energy on Grayson this summer. Soooo, when we were discussing the podcast summer plan, as a team, they came up with a great idea! How about the listeners get to ask burning questions. So I want you to submit all your questions or situations you want advice about this summer via email customerservice@organize365.com.  And I will answer them and tell you what “Lisa would do.”  I can’t wait to see what you ask and think about the solutions I will offer. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• 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.

Happy Monday! Today, we’re talking about how to combat teacher overwhelm. In this episode, Lisa is joined by Jayme (from the school pilot) and Anna (a member of the Organize 365 team) to talk all about why teachers are feeling so stressed and what can be done to help support educators. 

Support for Teachers

Some of the resources we found address ways to support teachers who feel overwhelmed by all of the demands of the education field. Some of the ways to support teachers include reducing or streamlining the number of administrative tasks teachers are burdened with, as well as helping teachers get organized. These are all things that we offer inside the The Teacher Workbox system and that will be addressed in Teacher Planning Day this summer. 

At Organize 365, we built the Teacher Workbox as a means to support teachers in the administrative side of their job. Teachers receive training in their preparation program on lesson planning, classroom management, and lesson design. We step in to help provide teachers with an organizational system to manage their time and streamline as many tasks as possible. 

A Sense of Community

Peer support helps ease feelings of teacher overwhelm, and we love that we can offer the supportive community of educators inside the Organize 365 Community App. This is where teachers have the opportunity to share ideas, ask questions, and learn from one another.  Teacher Camp is a live opportunity for teachers and other educators to get to know one another and work in collaboration as we set up our Teacher Workboxes for the coming school year. 

How Much Time Are You Wasting?

At the end of the episode, both Jayme and Anna confess to having made their own Sunday Basket before purchasing the actual Sunday Basket from Organize 365. They share how much time and money was wasted trying to create a perfect system, when the supplies they really needed were already available through Organize 365. They also reveal how no system they could create on their own was able to support them in the ways they needed because the do-it-yourself system did not come with a course, online community, or Sunday Basket Club that are needed to truly understand how the system works. If you are thinking of going this route, how much time and money are you willing to waste? 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Gallup’s State of the Schools Report: Insights to Inform Higher Education adn K-12 Leaders

• 2023 Teacher Shortages: What to Know About Vacancies In Your Region

• Prioritizing Teachers’ Mental Health

• The Best Benefits You Can Give Educators: Easing Their Mental Load

• A Dwindling Number of New U.S. College Graduates Have a Degree in Education

• 2024 Teacher Shortage Statistics Show We Still Have a Long Way to Go

• Nguyen, T. D., & Kremer, K. P. (2022). Burned out and dissatisfied? The relationships between teacher dissatisfaction and burnout and their attrition behavior. Elementary School Journal, 123(2). DOI: 10.1086/721772

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

Well the time is here! Abby is finally getting a back surgery we knew would need to be done despite all the cortisone shots and physical therapy. I don’t share this so you can plan when your next family member needs you for a surgery. I’m sharing all my planning thoughts and iterations because where else do we hear this stuff? How do you learn how others plan? This is for any event you have coming up that requires a lot of shifting and planning. I’m going into a time where there will be a plan and I can not just “not feel like it.” I have to do what is on the plan in order to have success. 

Operation “Take Care of Grayson”

What does this mean for me? Full time primary care giver to Grayson. Honestly, I’m using the lens that this is a unique opportunity to spend these months with Grayson and support Abby.

The first thing I knew I needed was to think about how I was going to entertain this active big 4 year old. I have a routine I am going to try out based on tiny details of care that Grayson needs and what he’s used to. And I’ve thought about a lil lunch box I can pack for on the go, what all needs to be in my purse at all times for Grayson, and a backpack in the back of the car with things we may need when we are out. The routine is in small chunks of time that I can start to give back to Abby as she recovers. 

Next Layer: The Family

When going into a time of new demands on your time and capacity, you need to look at it in reverse order to figure out how to still meet as many personal and family obligations as possible. So next my brain went to the rest of my family. How will I care for Greg, Joey, and help Abby through recovery. Greg has this trip to the Keys planned to take with Joey and his dad. It’s important and I encouraged them to still take it. It’s during the first week after Abby’s surgery. I’m asking Greg to take on a few tasks to make sure we all get fed and Grayson gets to and from Daycare. 

I’ve been reading up on this surgery and the recovery process. I have tried to consider the physical things Abby may need to aid her in her recovery. But I have also been considering the emotional toll this may have on her. Might be tough watching me play mom to her child for a while. I will do my best to include Abby to keep her spirits up. And the physical therapy! Likely I will have those scheduled before the surgery takes place. 

I’m sneaking in an adult field trip before surgery to fill my cup and one after Abby’s surgery to give me something to look forward to. I also looked at work and rearranged the things I need to be in person at, to the mornings, when I will be in the office. I’ve decided to work from home for the first week. And Saturday showed itself as a day I can take advantage of being in the office because Greg can be home with Abby and Grayson on Saturdays. I will be working on my dissertation starting now because I have time and then Saturdays. Please cross your fingers all the research I’m going to do in advance about Prospective Memory will be worth it because I have not got the green like on this yet. But it’s a risk, for times sake, that I have to take. 

How Will My Planning Day Workbook Look This Time?

So after taking 32 minutes to tell you all about my planning, I opened the Planning Day workbook. I walked through the workbook and shared, off the cuff, my thoughts about how I will plan according to each page. Ha! I was actually caught off guard on a couple of upcoming things like birthdays and our anniversary. Yeah, Abby needs an oil change and I checked but my car is good for a while. These are the things you should be thinking about going into something this big, what can I get done now to make this upcoming busy time more smooth?

I am trying to think of everything. I will continue to mull over my calendar and rearrange things as necessary. This is a ridiculous amount of planning that my future self will thank me for doing. This is the kind of detailed planning we do in Planning Day! 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Planning Day

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

We work fast! So excited to share the Embrace Add on that we created in collaboration with Heather S. As you heard in the previous episode, Transformation with Heather S., she has a 6 step process to help you really process life, understand where you are now because of events you have gone through, and ultimately move beyond those emotions. Emotions can hold us back from moving forward. 

Step 5 is realizing you are worthy! And now you need to ask yourself,  “What you want from life?”

And finally, Step 6 is getting to a place of realizing your value. And since you have so much to offer, ask yourself “what can I give or  contribute to life? How can I use my gifts?”

What if we just started to dream again? Even if you have done Embrace in the past, you are a new person than the last time. You have lived more since then and it may be time for you to rediscover what you are uniquely created to do. You can now get the Embrace add on which has water colors, special markers, water color paper, and other goodies to process your emotions through art therapy. Heather will take 2 hours to walk you through the prompts and activity to get the most from your Embrace experience. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Embrace Add On

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Heather S. She is a mental health counselor who is married and mom to 5 children. They have their own little “farm” they call home. Heather was in a hard season of life when she heard Sara Dean interviewing me on the Shameless Mom Academy Podcast and I was talking about the Sunday Basket®. Heather was a grad student, her dad was ill and Heather was his primary caregiver, not to mention she had a 21/2 year old at the time. Her brain felt very busy and she thought the Sunday Basket® could help. Heather believes that planning and organization is one of the best gifts we can give ourselves. 

Sometimes, as women, it seems as though we are expected to know how to keep a house.  It’s ok if you don’t know how and you need to hire someone or purchase a course to teach you. We both agreed that organization is self care! There’s one component of being a household manager that negatively impacts a person and it’s the emotional. It’s based on how well we think we are at the managerial and cognitive pieces of running the home. And there’s a lot of negative internal chatter about it! The Sunday Basket® quiets those comments. 

Heather had been successfully using a DIY Sunday Basket® with her large family, so Heather and her husband agreed to invest in the Organize 365® Sunday Basket to get additional support. She shared about how she does Christmas. She shared her hacks on how not have to wrap presents the night before, how she makes her kids lists, and how to not overspending! And wait till she explains her sick box, genius solutions!  And since that was such a success, it made sense to invest in the old All Access program to get their house in order to sell. It made $20,000 in sense! Once they decluttered and met with their realtor again, they added $20,000 to the selling value of their home by just painting and decluttering! Then they moved, Heather got her Masters, added some dogs, and a child!! 

The last half of our conversation was about Embrace, currently the self-guided retreat until I am done with the PhD. She pointed out how important it is to do the journaling and coming to terms with your past. Through journaling we can all notice what we say to ourselves, the lies we tell ourselves, and look at what we wrote to decide if it’s true. We can journal to explore what we want. And specifically with Embrace, it made so much sense to Heather because she’s done that hard work of journaling and reflecting. And there is are many scientific benefits of pen to paper. The reality is you can’t get to “What is my unique purpose and how can I share it?” until you have accepted that you are worthy and have great value to give. 

She lost her father shortly after having her 5th child. How does one grieve and celebrate a new life at the same time? Heather had to use her planning and journaling skills to work through that grief while still taking care of her family the way she wanted to.  She scheduled her grieving time and you may need to do the same. Take the time to process your past to get to the place where you can feel worthy of organization. You can then realize you have so much to offer this world. And finally with embrace, explore how you can impact the world with your unique gifts and talents. Heather has this great 6 step art therapy journal prompting process that she takes her clients through.  She really shared a lot about the process and I believe so many people would benefit from doing the internal work before diving into Embrace. We are all worthy and valuable. 

Heather’s advice is, “We need to start with the internal work. Sitting and taking time to do the internal work first will let you stay motivated and on track to do what you need to do.” 

Heather shared her desire to do so in collaboration with Organize 365® someday.  If you liked Heather and her ideas, you DON’T want to miss the next Coffee Chat!! 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Embrace

• 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!

We’re spending all this time invisibly planning. I desire for it to be more visible. For home, I have always planned in these trimesters, 120 day chunks. You can hear all about it in ep. 132. I call these chunks summer, fall, and winter. When the PhD is finished (hopefully in Dec.) I will have planned 9 chunks. Each chunk of time starts with this natural break in the hustle of life and gives us these organic bursts of energy to declutter, organize, and reset. It became very clear to me the energy of each season during this PhD journey. What did I plan? How did it go? And how am I leaving this PhD phase of life? 

Summer (May-August)

Sing it with me “Schoooooool’s out for summer”...these are the more relaxed months of the year. The invisible work you would have done for this chunk was planning how to keep the kids busy, summer vacations, and this is usually a personal development time for me. The PhD is all personal development. Summer of ‘23 was “Busy” because I’d applied and been accepted into the PhD and lil Grayson turned two so he was into everything! I had each minute planned with the goal of getting my PhD that I basically missed summer! This summer was the hardest. I took less time to plan because Greg and I went to England. And I don’t regret it! Grayson was 3 and he was on to me. He KNEW when I was home and he wanted to play. But I’d made the choice to pursue this PhD and I had to choose it over Grayson for this season. So I moved almost everything to the office. Another lost summer.

Fall (September-December)

Fall seems to be an easy chunk of time for me. This season you have planned for back to school and the holidays. Things seem to go easier and thank God for football. Because Greg loves football and that means I don’t have guilt getting in a few more hours of studying or completing more assignments. I’d only taken 2 classes which lightened the PhD demand on me. In fall of 2024, I had to ask myself “How do I not do again, what I just did in summer?” I took a trip with Greg, I only took 2 classes and focused on the holidays. 

Winter (January-April/Mayish)

Winter starts with all of us coming back from Christmas/Holiday breaks. In 2023, I planned to change all my habits and routines to be a PhD student, you can hear all about that in ep. 519 and/or the Monday PhD episodes I did around that same time. I knew it was going to take me 25 hours so I blocked that time off my calendar. It's no good to set a goal but not set aside time to achieve it.  For my 2024 winter chunk, I’m calling it “treading water”. This was a really hard chunk of time because Greg had rotator cuff surgery, we’d remodeled Joey’s condo, and we were planning to remodel Abby’s space downstairs next.  

How I’m Ending My PhD Phase

I’m calling this last chunk of time “the grind”. I have finished the classes portion of completing the PhD.  As I see the finish line in sight for the PhD, I am walking away so happy and proud! I’m proud of myself for the mental capacity I’ve grown. I am so proud that I put earning a PhD as one of my priorities. I would cheer anyone on in my family to do the same for themselves. It forced me to set better boundaries with my family. I encourage you all to do Planning Day and I do it for myself too to make sure I am pouring into my marriage and family, that I am prioritizing self care, to travel, and breakdown a big project I want to accomplish. Sometimes you get that project done in one 120 chunk and sometimes it’s multiple chunks over the course of 3 years. Just make sure you prioritize your family and have good communication so they have accurate expectations. None of this happens accidentally, like a PhD, you have to plan for it!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Home Planning Day

• 120 - Productivity #6 - 10 Ways to Find More Time

• Ep. 519 - Organizing my PhD journey Part 1

• 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!

PLANNING…it’s the one thing that you can control in these unsettling times. Planning Days are now 20% OFF! The best part is, when you sign up for the subscription, that price is locked in for future planning days. Planning will help you to make better choices and establish routines and new habits. Routines and habits take a little more time to become second nature. Routines and habits change your character of who you are over time through intention and discipline. That’s what we do in Planning Day.  There are three types that Organize 365® offers; Home, Friday Workbox® and now the little sister…Teacher Planning Day. 

Planning days help you to look at your time and plan ahead for the next 120 days for the Home or 90 days for Work. You will establish routines that will lead to habits that end up freeing up your cognitive load. You will look at how you are currently spending your time and think about how you want to spend your time. Each planning day comes with a workbook to work through what your next 120 or 90 will look like. 

You all may be familiar with Home and Work Planning Days but I want to share with you a little bit about what to expect in the Teacher Planning Day.  You will look at the personal development goals you have for yourself, not the ones given to you by your administrator.  You’ll look at theme days, your planning time, and how to be productive.  I’ll go over the Teacher Workbox with you and we’ll talk about the pink slash pockets and what you want to do for personal development or ideas for your classroom. The purple slash pockets used for 3-5 projects you want to complete. With the blue slash pocket you’ll think about a communication goal, your team, and maybe a goal you all set together. And then the green slash pocket, I’ll explain how to use it for administrative tasks and your checklists. 

OOOPS…we made a mistake and I have decided to roll with it. I know how planning will help you to feel in control in a time when you may feel uneasy. So the Complete Home Organization Bundle accidentally got included in this sale. I feel so strongly that planning is what we all need right now so I’m keeping this on sale too. If you have been interested in the bundle, now is your time to get it. And at this price your planning day is almost free.  You will get the Productive Home Solution® as well as a Sunday Basket®, the Paper Solution, Binders, and the workbooks, check out the link below for full details. 

If you wanna be around other go-getters, driven,  and positive people then Planning Day is the day you don’t wanna miss. Once the Planning Day has happened pricing will go back up. So take advantage of this deal and get in the driver’s seat and get the Planning Day that is right for you! 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Home Planning Day

• Friday Workbox® Planning Day

• Teacher Planning Day

• Complete Home Organization Bundle

• 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.

Happy Monday! Today we’re talking all about habits like what ones do we have, how they are  established, some really interesting studies about habits and routines, and how you too can reprogram yourself to have productive habits. Brown University defines a habit as a repeated action that becomes an automatic behavior with little to no thought.

Life Long Intentionality Setter 

As a child, I was in charge of my fun. I remember going to the stationary store and getting planners about three times a year. Anna pointed out the coincidence of Friday Workbox® Planning Day happening three times a year as well.  I like to maximize my time. I get my planner out and fill in the tasks that need to be accomplished and then I start thinking about what I want my routines to be. I intentionally set routines to include somethings I’d like to end up as a habit with the understanding these things will make me more productive and achieve my goals. I feel like a person can successfully add a new habit each Planning Day. On average it takes a person 66 days to establish a new habit. 

Effortless Self Control

Habits are stronger than your beliefs. You may believe fruits and vegetables are better for you. However if you habitually eat cookies…that habit will likely continue unless you make environmental changes. Remove the cookie jar and put healthy food in its place. Now when you habitually visit where the cookie jar was you will grab a piece of fruit. 

And with our habits we have lower emotional reactions. We talked about a study where students’ habits were questioned. They determined 43% of their day was habitual. Your emotional response to waking up early on daily is reduced when you have done it for a long time. And once you decide to clean your kitchen, the routine is habitual and you can sing along to music or think about something else because you have a routine to how you clean your kitchen. 

Context Clues also support effortless self control. If you have a habit of putting on your deodorant after you brush your teeth, your toothbrush is the clue. But let’s say on vacation you have all your toiletries in a bag. You brush your teeth but because your deodorant isn’t in plain sight, you go sight seeing and remember you forgot to put on deodorant. 

Prospective Memory

This is the theory I’m thinking I will do my dissertation about. It’s something you are reminded you need to do but in the future. Say you are talking to someone about the grocery store and that reminds you that you need to pick up a card for a wedding next time you are there. It’s like you are trying to remember things for the future. They are related to a location or a time. You could be reminded about the card by time as in the wedding is a 5pm and you need the card by then. 

Are You Maxed Out on Habits?

A person can only do so much everyday, even the amount of habits they have. Are you programmed correctly? Planning Day, with Organize 365®, really helps you to analyze your time and look at what you are currently doing. You may see some changes you need to make and then plan how you will do it . To do lists and diaries have been found to be inefficient because there’s no place for holding things like a card for an upcoming wedding or ideas you are simmering on. When you write one task on an index card and throw it in your Sunday Basket®, you are able to categorize, make a plan of completing those tasks, and delay decision making until necessary. I hope you can join us May 3rd for Home Planning Day or June 6th for Friday Workbox® Planning day to get productive habits in place so you have more cognitive space for other areas of your life. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• https://www.brownhealth.org/be-well/why-habits-can-be-good-thing

• https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230417155750.htm 

• https://www.apa.org/monitor/2020/11/career-lab-habits

• https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ejsp.674

• Wood, W., Quinn, J. M., & Kashy, D. A. (2002). Habits in everyday life: Thought, emotion, and action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(6), 1281–1297. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1281

• Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

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

This important update is being recorded on April 8th at 3pm. I hope there haven’t been too many changes by the time you listen to this episode. There have been so many economic changes and the atmosphere is starting to feel a little uncertain like it did about 5 years ago when Covid reared its ugly head. There are 3 types of responses to what’s going on. Those who know too much and they are thinking way too far in the future, those who stick their head in the sand and don’t want to know about any of it, and those who know just enough to make positive, proactive, profitable choices for their homes. As a CEO I am in the last category. I’m in preservation mode to preserve Organize 365® and my employees' jobs. I tried to give you different perspectives of what is going on from the overall economy, from a CEO, and as a household manager. 

Job Security & The Stock Market

There are three things people are worried about right now. Two of them are job security and the stock market. Come to find out federal jobs aren’t secure! In 2008/2009, people didn’t think it was possible to lose your house. In 2020, people didn’t think we could be locked in our homes. 

I told you in a previous episode that I don't understand the stock market so I don’t have much advice. Greg and I decided long ago to invest in the stock market, Greg takes care of that. Our children are invested in the stock market. And historically the stock market always comes back. 

Supply Chain

There was never a toiler paper supply issue. We had plenty of toilet paper because it’s made here in the U.S. Size was the problem…it was only available in industrial sizes for like schools and stadiums. But where we are going to see supply chain issues will be from items that come from China. We are in an economic war. My recent order from China is going to be tariffed at 121%!!!  That’s right! Half of this episode is about sourcing my supplies and how & how it has changed. Due to the tariffs, expect to see fewer choices at come point and quantity available to decrease if it comes from China. I explained a lot about how the tariffs came to be, how they added up, and what they mean for the American supply chain. I offered solutions to keep your household supply chain supple. 

How is Organize 365® responding? 

As a CEO that looks into the future, I always have an 18 month to 2 year supply of physical products. Organize 365® isn’t going anywhere! We aren’t passing the tariff expenses to our customers, we don’t have to, as I explained, because of the way I have financially structured Organize 365®. And we aren’t ordering from China for now. 

I am anticipating working with an American company for our Sunday Baskets® in addition to other products and may continue to work with them once this whole thing blows over. I speculate it will be a good 18 months till our economy stabilizes again.  We’re running leaner with daily operations. And we’re thankful we didn’t raise expenses by moving like we wanted or getting the ERP system. 

And most of all, always wondering as economics are changing, how can we meet our customers where they are. So, we have decided to offer upcoming planning days for home (5/3) and Friday Workbox® (6/6) and Teacher planning day (7/9) for a 20% discount from $250. You will get the planning prep day, additional videos, the 4 hour planning day live webinar with replay access for 6 weeks, and the workbook. Stop spiraling, think about the root cause of the supply shortage you experienced during Covid, and start planning. The sky is not falling. Planning is the one thing you can do that will give you more time, help you make better decisions, make your money go further, and make you feel like you are in the driver’s seat. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Home Planning Day

• Friday Workbox Planning Day

• Teacher Planning Day

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Julie D. Julie and her husband have, in their home, a daughter, a son, and Maggie their dog. Julie heard someone talking about the Sunday Basket® and was intrigued and figured she could figure it out. Julie wasn’t looking for organization as much as she desired systems. Before the interview, Julie drew out a mind map. She wanted to make sure to share ALL of the products and ways that Organize 365® has benefitted her life. Make sure you catch the episode to hear all the areas that have been impacted in Julie’s life. 

Julie came from 20 years in the retail space where she used to be in charge of 13 week projects that consisted of resetting a store or setting up new stores. The way the Organize 365® systems break down 90 (for business) and 120 (for home) days, was familiar to Julie. That is how they would organize the resetting of the stores. They’d make a plan and then run that plan for the next chunk of time. 

Your home is like a small business right? So your family members we joked are like employees uninterested in the success of your small business. It’s harder to get them motivated to keep things organized. We talked about how men from the Boomers generation who witnessed a stay at home mom, AKA the primary parent taking care of the home and children and a dad “bringing home the bacon.”  So their expectations were similar for their families. The systems let her do just that as they’d planned. The kids program has helped her to have them do some of the organizing. She’s invested in the kid program to which the kids know a lot of “what Lisa says.” 

Julie has thoughtfully implemented all of the Organize 365® systems.  She has multiple Sunday Baskets® and even got her mom and big sister to invest in Sunday Baskets®. She loves spreading the “gospel of Organize 365®.” It was a way for them to do life together till her mother passed away. Of course, she inherited her moms. She feels the Sunday Basket® is so important in her life that when they remodeled her kitchen she had to make sure she knew where she’d be able to put it once it was finished. During the remodel, she had a Sunday Basket® dedicated to the remodel and it was convenient for her and her contractors. It kept the remodel moving along and organized. 

Julie’s son, John, has level 3 autism and that has added to the demand for systems. She values the Warrior Mama binder to have in DON (determination of needs) meetings. She made a point to put a picture of John as a baby on the front to remind administrators and physicians in the meetings that her son is a person and he has come a long way. She’s got a Friday Workbox® for her daughter in regards to Julie being leader of the parent council (Canadian speak for the PTO), being the pizza mom, girl guide leader, and as the registrar for speed skating. Once she realized she wasn’t going to continue being the leader of the parent council, she could see taking off that train car gave her more capacity for something else. She’s got a financial binder for each kid to keep track of receipts and medical visits. And John throws her plenty of challenges too, but, she has peace of mind that she’s basically created playbooks for everything so when the wheels start to look like they may fall off she knows how to prevent it and get back to smooth sailing. 

Julie often wonders how 20 year old Julie would have benefited from the Organize 365® products and systems. She was in a chaotic period of time and wonders how things would be different. What’s different now? Julie has more peace of mind and capacity to prioritize her crafts. She’s able to “do more projects that make me feel like me.” This is one line item in the budget that will not go away. 

Julie’s advice is, “Do a blitz. Then it’s not a huge commitment to some ongoing system you have to learn.” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Household Manager 21 Day Bootcamp

• 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!

The PhD is almost over and I’ve been thinking about “What do I want?” When I committed to the PhD, I knew it was a lengthy commitment of time and hefty commitment of money. There are things we agree to in life and we know the long term commitment it will require! And now that the PhD finish line is in sight, I know it’s project time again!!  I love a meaty project and I’ve identified what I want to do over the next 120 days. I want to redo my living spaces, WITH a budget in mind so it doesn’t get crazy like it did last year with one project expense leading to another project expense. 

Do you struggle with this too? 

Up until I abdicated grocery store shopping and cooking, I hadn’t really been on the list. I’d always put my family’s needs before my own. If I wanted something, I’d think about the price, and I’d decide we could use the money towards something else the family needed. I’d also give them my time before using it for myself or business.  We took care of the kids’ living spaces last year. Joey’s plumbing got an upgrade which meant his bathrooms got an upgrade too. Then Abby’s space basically got completely remodeled, but honestly her life was demanding it. And now I feel like we have finished launching them.  And then I got to looking around my living space. And I am choosing to use available time and money for myself and Greg, I’m on the list again. 

My Wish List on a Budget

When Grayson came along, Greg and I started sleeping in separate rooms so I could help with the baby. And we like it, so, we are keeping it that way. Remember, use your home for your current phase of life! I want to cement Greg and I into the empty nest/grandparent phase. In my room, I look around and see all hand me down things.  I’ve dreamed of what this space could be and here’s what I came up with. I’d like to have a household manager command center, an office space dedicated to running our house!  I’d like to bring up all my Sunday Baskets® and binders upstairs and put them all in one bookshelf for easy access. And new bedding that makes me feel like a girl.  I want to rearrange the room to be able to open the curtains and make room for said bookshelf. And I want more light in this room for projects and scrapbooking. I’d like as much upstairs as possible because if I want to get anything done I have to hide from Grayson. He loves to play with me and I love to play with him but, but…I like to get projects done too! My dreaming didn’t stop there…  

Rezoning in the Woodruff Household

I’ve decided the room between Greg and I, which used to be the nursery and then a guest room,  should be reimagined into a gift wrapping room. On a previous episode, I suggested HDX shelving with a long counter top to be used as a gift wrapping station. I have not stopped thinking about that and I finally will have time to make this transition happen. I’m no longer using the kitchen as our home office so I’ll move those resources upstairs. I’d like to make communal items more easily available to Abby on the first level like band aids and things, maybe in the laundry room. I just need to go through the laundry room period now that Abby has her own and I’m doing all of this reimagining and functionality of our living spaces. 

Speaking of the laundry room, there’s more project supplies that I will move upstairs that aren’t for Grayson and I. Gifts for Grayson will go up because he knows the laundry room is my hiding place. AND, all in one washer dryer upgrade. It arrives tomorrow!!  I can’t believe I hit the purchase button. I did the cost analysis and it’s not good but boy is my lil heart excited! We got to talking about it in the small business mastermind and everyone encouraged me to get it saying how much they loved theirs. Also I’m keeping the dryer so I can get two loads done at once. So that justifies the cost a little too.  I wanted to get Abby her own washer dryer so I could get mine back. In the process of sharing my washer door would get stuck and then it started to stink! Now the washer smells despite my efforts to correct it. It annoys me! So it’s on it’s way! And Lastly, I think I’ll clean out the closet downstairs. Most of it will end up in my household manager command center and then Abby can get more storage. I hope you’ll join me for planning day to get your next projects planned for your next 120 days!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Lisa’s Favorite Things

• Home Planning Day

• 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!

Happy Monday!  Today I get to introduce you to Elaine Willing, who is officially on staff as teh lead for our new PCS (Permanent Change of Station) initative. At Organize 365®, we’ve developed a course to help spouses, supporting their soldiers, to find community faster and make each move a little easier. I first met Elaine through her father in law at a home school co-op conference. He was sent to get a picture with me. Elaine found Organize 365® about 10 years ago when she was maxed out and looking for solutions. Then I got to meet Elaine and the rest is history! I share in her desire to help military spouses through the PCS process. Elaine has supported her husband for many years, is raising her three boys, and now it’s her turn to do something that fills her cup! She sees how spouses just kind of circle in the lower levels of Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs and never get to rise to the level where you explore your purpose, what you are uniquely created to do. Elaine knows all too well about PCSing (13 times) and understands the struggle with #alltheemotions, #allthepaperwork and is eager to get to spouses organized and in community sooner.

The Emotional Toll 

Elaine was very vulnerable in sharing her experience, to this point, being a military spouse. She shared aspects of her life I had never thought of! I never considered the friendships they have to build quickly and let go at a moment’s notice. The grieving process you go through as you leave your current station (although she joked that sometimes you are relieved to leave if it just wasn’t a good fit) and anxiety or excitement about what lies ahead with a new duty station. Think of how much you trust the people you put down for your children’s emergency contact…Elaine has to find that stranger quickly, as all the forms continue to request it, as she gets her family settled in each new location. There’s a different at home cadence with each location based on the soldier’s new job. My jaw was on the floor as she explained to me how she got to fly home to see family. Yes they get free SA (space available) flights, but I’m not sure that’s a flight I want to take. And their stations overseas, they’ve only had one car which made daily activities challenging with little ones in tow. 

All the Moving Pieces

Oh the checklists we’ve accumulated and compiled to assist with the repetitive nature of PCS’ing. There are checklists for utilities, vehicles, homes, packing the house, and what not to pack.  I included 10 steps to an organized move. When military families move, lots times they are living out of a suitcases for 30 days. You better believe there’s a checklist for those suitcases. Some bases are equipped with a lending closet for basic things like maybe some toys for your kids or small appliances that weren’t necessities.  And then where do you get groceries in your new location (tricky for Elaine with her family having food allergies), house keepers, after school activities, sports, babysitters, and even for you to find friends. There’s a checklist of services you’ll need to find and establish. A lot of the post-move checklists you could review on the plane ride to your new duty station. The very last checklist “Just tell me what to do” for when you are drained but know you need to keep going. 

What to Expect

Over the many moves, Elaine has found a way to mentally process PCS. She’s figured out how to stop the spinning in your brain with the mention of PCS and turn it into productive actions. The workbook helps you to process your emotions and proactively make a plan for the relocation. PCS’ing can be a lonely isolating process that only builds in complexity as your family grows and you “survive” another duty station. We realize the need to get to community quicker in these moves. The places Elaine has been pained to leave were those when she had a supportive community. 

Two Opportunities to Build Community:

*4 Hr. Virtual Planning Day for your base via zoom.

*6 Hr in person (in the 48 continuous states), on base training. Includes the PCS bundle. Two hours will be interactive with me in a questions and answer or book signing interactive capacity. 

*With this in person opportunity you get the PCS Planning Course, Workbook & The PCS  Productivity Bundle which includes a Portable Sunday Basket, 2.0 slash pockets (pink, purple, blue, green), and 2.0 Productivity tabs. Your pink slash pocket is for travel, purple slash pockets is for all things related to your home, blue slash pocket for your family and pets, and green for finances including an expense tracker so you get things paid for that should be by the military.

**If you have questions and/or interest in one of these opportunities please email military@organize365.com

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• PCS Planning Course

• PCS Productivity Bundle

• 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.

Your home is like “home base” in tag, it’s the safe spot. In 2024, we spent resources on Joey and Abby’s homes. In 2025, I want to do some renovations on the second floor of our home, where Greg and I spend a lot of time. I wanted to share how I plan to attack those renovations but first I felt it appropriate to offer this bonus economic episode to give insight to all this Tariffs talk and the swift changing of the government right now. I based my choices off of the large picture and this is how you can too as the household manager!

Hire It Out vs. DIY

There is a direct relationship between the money you have to invest and the amount of time a project will take. Either you hire a contractor to complete the task with a timeline shorter than you could’ve done. Or you do it yourself but it will take longer usually.  And then there’s a hybrid option somewhere in there. I have decided on the projects I want to complete upstairs, however if I hire it all out like I did with the kids’ projects I’ll be broke soon!  Next episode I’ll tell you all about it. 

YOUR House

When considering your household budget and anything you want to do you need to look at what is going on in your household budget. Just because the economy is bad doesn’t mean your household is. The example I share here was the Organize 365® budget (remember our homes are small businesses) in regards to shipping costs, de minimis value, and taxes. I also shared how physical nexus and economic nexus affects Organize 365® sales and taxes so you could get an understanding of the complexity of what seems like a simple purchase or subscription from our community. You GOTTA hear the episode. And I say that to encourage learning. Always be moving forward. 

Everyone may not be happy about this adjustment but when I looked at the entire shipping process and considering what the customer has to pay, in addition to their receiving end, it does not make sense to continue shipping internationally. If I don’t make this adjustment and Organize 365® does under, then there’s no money anyway. Better to adjust and make unpopular decisions. You may be looking ahead and realize that in order to celebrate your child's graduation like you may have for a previous child you need to cancel the annual summer vacation. As the household manager, in order to keep the budget afloat, this decision may make the most responsible financial sense. This is where you need to cut costs first, at the household level. 

Economic Outlook

Are we in a recession or not? I talked about my opinion of the stock market.  It may be an indicator of the emotional climate but not the economy. Right now, everyone can feel how volatile the economy feels. The President is making changes more quickly than people are used to. There is a lot going on with Tariffs and we are toeing the line with financial war. This is not in our control. My best advice, with all the economical uncertainty, is to attend planning day so you can plan out and allocate money for the next 120 days AND look over the next 3 years. 

What Do You Need?

As a household manager, looking at the current economy, I would not embark on the PhD. I know for my household budget and looking into the future over the next three years, now would not be a financially responsible time to tie up funds for that. However, I offered multiple ideas for how to continue personal development. If you can’t attend a conference this year like you normally do, try a different mode of learning. I know I want to do some renovating this year as my time is becoming available. If there is a financially hefty project you want to do, you may need to contribute some blood sweat and tears this time, in addition to or instead of hiring someone to complete the task. Can you invest more time and still get what you want?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Home Planning Day 

• The Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, Monique is here to tell you all about her experience at Small Business Mastermind. You know how I always say I am where work comes from? Well Monique is where in person events have come from in the past and you’ve probably heard her on the podcast. She’s been a professional organizer, certified by Organize 365®, for 12 years now! She has attended our events as a customer, as staff, as an organizer, and now, a small business owner looking to grow an online business.

From the moment everyone arrived at the hotel, everyone just jumped right in. Due to the private chat set up in the app before the mastermind they all had a chance to connect. They were able to connect prior to the mastermind.  Monique shared her surprise that more attendees weren’t organizers. But they all were women creating business.  

Day one started with an  energy in the room like a bunch of old friends reuniting, even for me because of all the Voxer conversations I’d had with all the women. And because of all of those conversations and the extensive survey everyone had filled out I knew the main struggle for everyone attending was green work.  Everyone was asking “How do you get it all done?” We had a lengthy conversion about Executive Assistants and Chiefs of Staff and how you know which you need. Monique shared how she got so much value out of the first session. Everyone looked at their admin tasks and they calculated a dollar value for that task. It’s like I shared about economic stage 6, it may make more sense to pay someone to do something you are capable of doing because it takes you out of your business. Monique said that was one of the most impactful things she learned. We joked, once we had that session Monique was ready to go home and conquer her business! 

I’ve shared transparently that on day 2, I didn’t really know what I was going to teach but I had no doubt that it was going to be meaningful. As we try new things, if we keep the person we are doing it for in mind, it will be impactful because we want better for them. That’s when I decided to do 12 minutes with Lisa to really drill down on one struggle or thought or project.  I didn’t know till Monique shared but as people came out they all shared what they asked and what we came up with. 

Monique brought to the table an online business that she wanted to grow. I advised that was a tough road if she wanted to go down it due to social media being such a beast like a part time job itself, all the noise online in general, and all the back office automations and such she would need would take years to build out. But Monique really did want to incorporate her coaching, paper organizing and productivity. But it’s funny both Monique and Lisa D. couldn’t remember their original idea they came to me with because what we imagined together was so much better and a perfect solution that they were so excited about. The day ended with the women attending Friday Workbox Planning Day live.  I’ve never had applause at the end of Planning Day. 

Monique is offering an amazing package to come to your house for a week and organize. But we all know how easy it is to fall off the wagon after a reset like that. So you will also get 3 months of coaching on the systems and staying organized. So once you get it organized it can pretty much stay that way! She’s only taking 10 clients per year so make sure you get your package booked today!!  We pay people to do a lot of things for us like watching our kids, cleaning, our accounting so why not for organizing our homes and coaching to support this change?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Small Business Mastermind

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

What have you thought of this series so far? At the beginning of this episode, I recapped economic stages 1-5. It’s important to understand them and how to advance if you’d like. But also if you find that your economic stage was once 4 and you are back to 1, you are not alone. It can happen to anyone and honestly I think all of America is in stage one, trying to reduce expenses to match their income. The economy changed which affected our small business AKA our homes. It’s important to understand and own the economic impact our home has on the global economy. Thinking about stage 6 should prompt you to look at your expenses and set expectations for what you can expect financially.  

Stage 6: A business bigger than yourself; but there’s no playbook

If you choose to go to stage 6, get ready for a life long journey of development. You may make some expensive mistakes or have some hires not work out.  In stage 6, your business becomes bigger than just you and your household budget. You are looking at your budget and realizing you can increase your expenses to (in the long run) make more money. It’s time to start interviewing people, explore their uniquenesses, and hire accordingly. And get ready for your income to decrease. In growing your business and getting structure in place, just know you will likely have little to no income for about 3-5 years. I wish there was a playbook that could have warned me. Take heart, in America, the 4 positions that can provide exponential wealth are doctor, lawyer, sales, and business owner. So if you are embarking on stage 6, there’s a lot of income potential due to all the extra help you have in your company now. 

Stage 6: Taxes

And with structuring your company, you will become a W2 employee, at least that is how I set up Organize 365®. My income was capped by my salary. I have learned more about the IRS than you ever wanted to know. There will be new tax implications on your business’s income. And your business income is not solely yours anymore. Due to the structure you put in place, you will pay yourself, your employees AND employment taxes.  You get to learn about human resources and you’ll be where benefits come from! Remember, life long journey of learning and development. 

Stage 6: It’s so fun!

Even if I had known the growing pains I could expect, no one could have stopped me. I love having a company, a team, and leading them!!  Details aren’t my strength and it makes me really happy to hire those tasks out. It’s time to get your home in order to give way to the time and attention you need to direct towards your business. Get that home train running smooth to allow capacity at work so you can really make an impact.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Friday Workbox®

• POTT START

• 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!

Happy 7th Birthday to the Sunday Basket®, let’s all break out in song. Just kidding…I am so excited to tell you the Paper Organization Certification course is 20% off till April 1st. Once you have finished the certification and get your license, you can charge for your services and receive 30% commission on products you sell.  

Once upon a time I was a very frustrated mama. Joey was only 6 months old and Abby was 2. Lil Joey didn’t like to nap very long and I had a pile of actionable papers but no time to go through them much less accomplish anything. One night the Sunday Basket® was born. I knew the more planned, organized, and efficient with my time I could multiply the amount of tasks I could conquer. Links below to hear the evolution of the Sunday Basket®.

Once the Sunday Basket® took off and people were implementing it in their lives they were longing for more training. So I started to offer workshops. But I knew in my heart of hearts that with the growth of my company, there would not be enough Lisa one day. That’s when the opportunity to become a certified paper organizer started to be offered.

 Some people can DIY it and implement it successfully. Some people, like me, prefer 1:1 explanations and don’t mind paying for the speed of implementation. And yet others want to be tricked into it with a little get together, snacks, music, and friends. I used to be a part of Creative Memories, a scrapbooking company. I loved our monthly Friday night workshops and envisioned the certified organizers taking a playbook from Creative Memories. We had such rich connections and were really doing life with each other. And with simply learning to ask “Can this wait till Sunday?” you have a safe place to hold all your actionable papers till Sunday and externalize all the things you want to do. 

When people come to the paper organizing retreats that are just one day mind you, they walk away with friends. It is a non-judgmental space. It’s a safe place to ask questions about the paper you have with you.  Lots of times another attendee has organized the type of  paper in question. And it’s through those conversations that friendships are developed. 

Depending on the stage of life you are in, it can be really hard to make friends. I think of how my mom and myself have made friends over the years. I have never really been in the phase of life to plan or attend girls nights out. Those Creative Memory workshops were that for me. And the Paper Organizing Retreat or the other in person event may be that for you. 50% of the people attending are usually settling an estate which can be isolating and lonely and sometimes it’s their spouses. You can’t make friends in the walls of your homes. 5 years after COVID, it’s time to get back to in person events. People are in need of people more than ever right now. And it’s us, the people and community of Organize 365® that makes it so unique.

So if you are interested, you have the heart of a teacher or a friend, and you want to become a Certified Paper Organizer now is your time!!  You will be certified in the Sunday Basket®, and the Financial, Medical, Household Reference, and Household Operation Binders. Once you are certified, you can even add on certifications like The Friday Workbox®, Teacher Workbox, and The Productive Home solution. We need more certified paper organizers! If you want to take it a step further, become a professional organizer; we have a course for that too called POTT START, check it out. If you just need to talk it out or ask more questions please reach out to customer service at customerservice@organize365.com.  

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Paper Solution Certification

• POTT Start for Professional Organizer Certification

• 521-Lisa's Organization Story 2002

• 522-Lisa's Organization Story 2007

• 523-Lisa's Organization Story 2012

• 524-Lisa's Organization Story 2017

• 525-Lisa's Organization Story 2022

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

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

Today on the Connections Episodes from Organize 365®, I’m talking to Corie Weathers, author of “Military Culture Shift”. Once Corie was married she and her husband desired to invest in marriages, in a private practice. That was until he decided to pursue being a chaplain in the Military. And so began a life long adventure of serving and PCS’ing with two boys. Corie is currently gearing up to PCS soon and vulnerably shared how she feels about it.  Corie’s strength is not in adjusting to change. As a therapist, Corie advises others to adjust their expectations and look for the things you are excited about in the new location. It’s important to grieve the loss of your current lifestyle, feel it, process it, and then climb out of those feelings by looking for purpose in the new. And while it is a military family’s choice to serve, she pointed out there are a lot of sacrifices and choices you forfeit. Corie is deeply committed to serving the military community. 

Military Culture Shift

We talked about the culture shift among military families over the years. It used to be that 1 in 4 people knew someone serving and now it’s 1 in 200 that know someone serving in the Military. Americans had a better understanding of the sacrifice service men and women and their families make, on a daily basis. The overall support system used to be greater. Because military families know the struggle of moving so often, when you arrived in your new location, you could count on the community to embrace you. The spouses acted as the backbone and placed on the back burner for their families. They volunteered so their active duty servicemember could focus on the mission. Honestly, the Military relies on the volunteers. It’s volunteers who help the families settle in. Also as spouses, you need to get your family established, then you could explore work opportunities. But by that time it was almost time to move again.  In the 80’s the marketing had a fatherly figure kind of message as in you could count on the military to supply all your needs. 

That shifted to “we take care of our families so they can take care of themselves” kinda vibe. They were trying to break the dependency of families on them for every need. Families were starting to get used to 2 income households so they didn’t have to rely on the military so much and because spouses wanted to work.  Spouses face many challenges in relocating and often that second income is undependable. Where the spouse has a license or certification, in some cases they aren’t recognized in other states or countries. We got into a deep discussion about possible solutions and whose job is it to develop and implement those solutions. Social media has filled some of the gaps but due to more spouses working, volunteerism went down and community decreased. 

Military Initiative Funding

We also talked about how funding gets assigned to different buckets. And the appropriation process to make sure the money gets spent as intended. And what happens when money is supposed to be set aside but comes up short and then some programs don’t actually get fully funded. It directly affects those that protect us. We talked a lot about the process. And that goes for every bill that becomes law, not just for the Department of Defense (DOD) initiatives. And when families fall on hard times due to programs not getting funded, now they no longer have that tight knit community to lean on. 

Corie’s Challenge: “Who is going to be the people group that implements this thing that is so important to me?”

We agreed that it’s time for everyone to look at the issues with fresh eyes and come up with outside of the box ideas as solutions. As states are starting to have more control, it’s time for us and private institutions to step up and provide actionable solutions for those who protect our freedom. Could you be part of the solution for an issue personal to you?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Military Culture Shift by Corie Weathers

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

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

In this episode, Lisa J. and I sat down to recap the Small Business Mastermind;  If you remember,  she owns a farm in Australia. Lisa J.’s farm and life has been improved by the products and systems from Organize 365®. When she heard there was an in person opportunity to work with me, she jumped on the opportunity!! Lisa J. was also excited to be in a room with like minded accomplished women but what she didn’t expect to walk away with was so much more self confidence in business.

I put out a survey asking the attendees what they were hoping to learn. Glad I asked because I was on the wrong track as far as what I had planned to teach. I love learning about other people’s businesses and consulting them how to move forward and grow and I wanted to address what they needed. I decided to hop on voxer with everyone and get a better understanding of who they were and their businesses. This also got them talking with their teams and more focused on what they wanted out of the mastermind. Once they arrived, I opened with me introducing them to the group. And then we talked about all the ways I analyze time. It was time for lunch and I needed a break because Imposture’s Syndrome was setting in. These were amazing accomplished women. What could I teach them?  

Coming back from lunch they introduced themselves to the group and talked about their strengths and weaknesses. I talked about the Kolby Index test. Once they took that and heard them explain themselves, it opened the door for authentic conversations in a safe space, advising each other how to overcome their weaknesses, strengths they saw in each other, and true camaraderie. 

That was a huge success but how would I continue to provide value to these women going into day 2? I knew what to do, 12 minutes - one to one with me. I remember from my coaching days that by 8 minutes people would be so overwhelmed with actionable to-do’s that they wanted to go start strategizing on ways to implement those ideas. I also knew we needed a couple of minutes to say hi and hug. But then what would everyone do while I was tied up in these one to one’s? I had Tanya available for remote work conversations, Steph for Chief of Staff conversations, and Anna was available for information and documentation conversations. They could shop or tour the warehouse and of course check out Joey’s car.  Lisa J. said they all agreed that the 12 min one to one’s were genius because it gave a deadline as to when the conversation was going to end so you really needed to be prepared going into the coaching session. She said everyone should have been recorded leaving the one to one’s because of the confidence they exuded. 

One of the biggest benefits was all of the networking all of the attendees got to do during the day and at night. They all stayed at the same hotel, chose to have meals together, and explore the area a little. Due to being connected before the mastermind via the app, they were able to get the backstory of everyone and know what they needed help with. They are now a group of 20 friends doing business together and making connections in business. From our one to one, Lisa J is working on a retreat for farmers where they can work on the transfer of their farm to another owner or a younger generation. Can’t wait to catch up later this year. If you too are looking for guidance and a network of like minded business owners, get signed up to attend the next Small Business Mastermind!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Friday Workbox®

• Transformation with Lisa J. 

• Small Business Mastermind

• 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!

You have found pockets of time to make a little extra money here and there. Now you are enjoying making the extra money and even are relying on it. This new stream of income is usually a little unconventional in the sense that it’s not W2 work. Your family loves how flexible it is because you are still available for them and there’s extra money. You are challenged by how flexible it is. You still have all of your previous responsibilities but now you the additional ones the new stream of income demands too. It’s time for a “reorganizing of the company.”

Just the Facts

This is just the facts people, no one is debating that women do more house work than men. Men normally go to work for 8-10 hours and the rest of their time is considered to be leisure. How much leisure time do women claim to have? Women on the other hand (generally speaking) do the house work and take care of children or pets, doesn’t leave much leisure time. And once you have a side hustle that is consistently bringing in money for your family, YOU have more responsibilities and almost no leisure time. This was mirrored in my childhood. Dad worked then golfed…a lot! And mom took care of the home, my sister and I, and she created a business in our basement. She was always working. As a business owner, which we established you are now, you are thinking about the daily operations of your business, ways to develop your business skill set, ways to grow the business, additional services or products you want to offer, and possibly being responsible for workers.

Fire Yourself

Let’s revisit stage 1. Remember you didn’t have a lot of extra money but you did have time? You were the one painting the walls or making the things you wanted. It may be time to evaluate all those tasks and hire someone to do them instead. Does it make sense for you to spend a day painting your walls OR would the time be better spent on your business because now you can afford to pay someone instead? Even if your family is counting on the money you bring in, could you do one more organizing job to pay to get that room painted? You spend more time in your business AND you get the room painted? It’s the same thing with hiring a house keeper or book keeper.  

The Tradeoff

There is always a trade off right? Either you spend time or money. I say spend your money on tasks that don’t take you out of your business hours and instead use that time to get more experience in your business. In Home Planning Day, you can evaluate just the next 120 days. What do you want accomplished? How much will it cost? And who will do it? Then all you have to do is run that plan. 

It doesn’t mean you are boujie because you hire someone in your home.  The first hires I always recommend are a house keeper, book keeper, or an executive assistant. And my first hires were contractors for only like 5 hours a week. 

A. That person is likely grateful for the work. I was so thankful that people let me clean their homes so I could send my kids to private school. You could really be helping someone out. 

B. Hiring someone to do those tasks not associated with your business or the non CEO tasks reduces your task switching and increases your focus on your business. 

In stage 5, you are focusing on finding body doubles to give you more time to commit to overseeing your business and be more cognitively available for your family.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Home Planning Day

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

You’re a business owner - Congratulations!!  In stage 4, there needs to be a mindset shift. You are no longer just doing this little side hustle, you are an entrepreneur! I will never forget when a  friend said to me that I was a home organizer. That was it!! The common thread of all my side hustles was some aspect of home organizing. But I identified as a stay at home mom. However, she was right and that’s when my mindset shifted because now my unique talents had an identity. Did you know that 39.1% of all businesses are owned by women? Those women, on average, are 42 and have been in business for 11 years. The most common reasons people start new businesses are to pursue a passion, seeking financial freedom, and to increase flexibility in their life. 

Do you do this?

Now that your household is counting on this income, you need to get the math straight. The trap a lot of us fall into is still thinking like a W2 employee. Before we got a $2000 paycheck and all of that was for our house. Now, as an entrepreneur, you need to account for your business expenses AND taxes. So if your business had $500 in expenses and you need to save $500 for taxes, all your house really gets is $1000. In stage 4 you may need to evaluate your services or product offerings to make sure you are working smarter not harder. Because you are both the business owner and the admin, it can make it challenging to hit income goals.

Entrepreneurs

As an entrepreneur, you are officially dedicating time outside of your W2 employment and all your time is no longer for household tasks and leisure.  This can include volunteer/charity work where you are dedicating your time to benefit people outside your home. And the longer you are in this work, the more you will narrow down the services or products you want to offer, keeping the ones with the best money exchanged for your time. That’s the beauty of entrepreneurship, flexibility. You also have flexibility in your time.  This can be a double edged sword because since you are likely working from home, all your household tasks are there, begging for your attention.  When you go to your W2 work they don’t expect you to clean the bathrooms. But at home…

How to Organize Administration and Track Profitability

And you may think your business isn’t taking that much time. But you probably aren’t tracking how long it takes for your administration tasks. Just like in your home, you use the Sunday Basket® to get it all done, you need a Friday Workbox® at work to get everything done. You are wearing a lot of hats in your business now. There are 4 types of work I teach you about in the Friday Workbox® and they are color coded. 

The pink slash pockets are a safe place for ideas you have for the business, future products or services, and personal development you’d like to consider. The purple slash pockets are for projects with deadlines or products that are making money. With all of your paid work is plenty of invisible unpaid work too. And all of those tasks fall into administrative work which is in green slash pockets. Administrative work is bookkeeping, invoicing, emails, leads, tracking expenses, monthly P&L, and more. And blue is for the team we will talk about in stage 5.

In stage 4, it’s time to legitimize your business by organizing all of your tasks and creating an LLC. Administration is the key in stage 4. You need systems in place to free up capacity to be more productive and profitable. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Friday Workbox®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

One of the inspirations for me to pursue my PhD was “The Secret of Home Economics” by Danielle Drelinger and I got to interview her for this episode. Danielle and I were able to discuss some of the topics but, honestly, you gotta read the book!!  Danielle wanted to write this book, because she covered education as a journalist. She knew she wanted it to be about education, include all races, all genres, all economic classes, and cover history. Thus was born “The Secret History of Home Economics”!

Origins of Home Economics Pre World Wars 

The first thing I wanted to discuss was the role of home economics pre-wars. From the 1800’s leading up to the wars, home economics was really for any person, AKA not gender specific. Home economics was more the actual tasks and how labor intensive they were due to lack of electricity, running water, and staff.  That staff was often immigrants and black women once slavery had ended. A black student I know, from a different PhD program, joked that they have always done laundry. Not even a question to outsource it, black women remember were slaves first but then hired help. But even in those days, it was common to outsource your laundry. It was outsourced to locations that had running water and other conveniences.

Importance of Home Economics During the Wars - Science of Food

The discussion shifted more towards home economics during WWII. It was during this time that women entered the work force in America. Home economics was teaching these women how to cook and maintain their homes with the additional demands of working. Women were creating clothing patterns to make work clothes and teaching clothes how to mend and make do due to limited supplies. They were also experimenting with food to keep their families fed and feed our soldiers. Home economists wrote cookbooks for each arm of the military. The Angels of Bataan, planted to supplement prisoners of war rations in the Philippines. At home, they had victory gardens to supplement rations too. Canning discovered through home economics was discovered and became popular to ensure food supply.  

And the industrial revolution brought home appliances to help with labor intensive tasks like laundry and ovens that had temperature regulation. Along with conveniences came higher expectations. This is where I pointed out that I am working on the definition of housework because some of the “male tasks” seem more to me like “household ownership”. And it’s peculiar how the definition of home economics became mostly a woman’s role after the war. 

The Deliberateness of Stay At Home Mom Depiction

The men had come back, they fired a majority of the women, and men were back to work. Now stay at home moms were in charge of emotionally supporting their children and the care of their upbringing and all the text books reflected that. “Kids need their moms and moms need to be available all the time.” It was then I realized that I have a degree in Family and Consumer Sciences but the only thing that schooling taught me was early childhood education! The bureau of Home Economics that once was making patterns for adjustable bib overalls for women in the workforce was now selling patterns for shopping coats for women to wear while shopping for groceries. 

How Should We Move Forward? 

Danielle feels strongly and I agree that the name should be changed back to Home Economics. A majority of people Danielle speaks to feels this is a class that should be added back to the curriculum of school - to teach basic life skills. And considering all of the subdisciplines, we should be offering a more holistic teaching of home economics; like eating healthy more affordably and consuming more responsibly. You guys…you gotta read or listen to the whole book!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Secret History of Home Economics

• The Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

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

In stage 2, you were starting to think about small pockets of time that you could make random amounts of money because there isn’t enough income to cover the expenses that you have reduced as much as possible. There may be something that has become more steady and you are making more than $600/year. This is a Schedule C on your taxes, where you submit a 1099 or claim the money earned. In 2009, I had 11 schedule C’s that I eventually combined under one LLC.  

Do You Like Chicken Cacciatore?

I do! My mother-in-law gave me her recipe. I found I liked to bake it a little differently than her. I re-wrote her two sided index instructions, down to one side, the way I make it for my family.  I like that it’s no longer stored in my brain. I just grab my instructions and make dinner, in fact anyone in my family could do the same. This is the same idea as an SOP (standard operating procedures) for your business. You should write down the process to complete the tasks for your job/household manager role. In the event there is someone new taking over one of your tasks, audit the steps to make sure it’s accurate before you hand it off to the new person, child or spouse. 

Passion Turned Side Hustle

Now let’s say I make it for my neighbors and they love it. Let’s say they start to pay me to bake for them. I start making pretty good money each week cooking for them. I could also be baking my family the same meal at the same time. My invisible work I originally did for my family has become paid work that I now report to Uncle Sam through my taxes. It’s important to track all of my expenses in making the meals like mileage to the grocery store, the grocery bill, portion of my gas bill for using my oven, and when I start to expand to other people the mileage for delivery. This information is added into the monthly P & L, which you can track in the Organize 365® Income & Expense Binder. If you aren’t a good cook, you could babysit, clean homes, tutor, dog sit, Uber, Door Dash, bookkeeping, Fairy Godmother for a family, or direct sales **but make sure you are profitable. What do you have a passion for and you are good at? Will people pay you to do that? Be confident completing the job (that saves them time) and accept the money for a task you may do for your family for free. I suggest any side hustle you could charge at least $20/hr up to $60/hr or an amount per day like $100/day. 

The Value of a Systems

If unpaid work is not optimized, then you cannot add in paid work because paid work (side hustle like baking for your neighbors) will always supersede unpaid work (your personal house work and baking Chicken Cacciatore). The complete Home Organizational Bundle; Sunday Basket® for weekly checks and balance, The Paper Solution for information management, and The Productive Home Solution to set up your house to effectively serve your family for the phase of life you are in, and planning days to audit your systems. Good operating systems in place allow unexpected events to feel like speed bumps instead of falling off of a cliff. Now you are ready for stage 3. Your systems are in place, you are documenting your income and expenses, and you have freed capacity to focus on making your side hustle more profitable. Now you can bake Chicken Cacciatore for everyone!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Complete Home Organization Bundle

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Kim B. who just celebrated her 44th wedding anniversary!  Kim and her hubby have lived in their farmhouse for the past 35 years. Her daughter is all grown up and busy raising 4 young daughters of her own. When her daughter told her about Organize 365®, Kim was all ears. Kim has always been organized but always open to ways of more efficiency. 

In April of ‘21, Kim retired. We talked about that transition. There are no good sources or guides to tell us what to expect in these times of transition. Kim has stayed very busy with helping on the farm, watching her granddaughters 3 days a week, watching after her father’s finances and visiting him at his living facility, and of course learning all kinds of skills she never had the time to before. She took a charcuterie board and sour dough class. What’s next? Scrapbooking!

After learning more about Organize 365® products, Kim crafted her own Sunday Basket® to make sure she’d use it. But she shared that, 4 weeks later when she got the Sunday Basket®, that the actual Sunday Basket® took her organization to a whole new level and the folders stand up! She loved that in the real Sunday Basket® she can place things like ink cartridges and pill bottles in it for Sunday. She even convinced her sister to get a Sunday Basket®. Kim feels good that when it comes time for her daughter to care for her and her husband, it’ll be easier due to the organization she’s doing now and the Medical, Home Resource, and Financial binders. She has more peace of mind knowing where paper work is for easy access and that the right paperwork is in order for the future.

She took one week, working about 8 hours each day, and organized her storage. She’d set aside a few bins that she needed to have her husband go through. One night she treated it like date night and they went to the storage room together and “walked down memory lane” by going through those bins. Yes they got rid of stuff but even better he was happy they did that. Because in the beginning he wasn’t too fond of her getting rid of things. Kim loves her life and is thankful that she can focus on things that are important to her and time with her family.

Kim’s advice is, “You just do a little bit at a time, one day at a time.” As her mother used to always say about everything she did for the holidays.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution® 

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

Ok now it’s time for Swiss Cheese Organizing Family Edition, this Friday, February 28th @ Noon EST!  It’d mean a lot to have you attend live but there will be a replay. By attending live you will have the opportunity to ask any questions. Swiss Cheese Organizing in any home or business is ineffective. Just like I taught in the business edition webinar, the order in which you organize is way more important than the time you invest in organizing. And even more so with children under foot. Children provide a very unpredictable variable to life and how long your spaces stay organized. 

I’m going to teach you to organize your summer organizing efforts. Get your kids spaces set (like age appropriate toys and clothes) and your summer calendar set so you can have a little fun too. Once the replay of the webinar is available, the Summer Planning Guide will be available too. It’s a grid I used to use to see all of summer in one snapshot. I will be offering a video to take you through setting up your Summer Planning Guide too. That way, once school starts again, you’ll be able to focus on your household organizing. 

You can access everything at Organize365.com/summer2025. What’s everything? Sign up to attend this webinar plus see what all is being offered this summer for planning and organizing in Organize 365®! I’m talking to parents, homeowners, business professionals, teachers, military men and women. Start planning now with the Swiss Cheese Organizing Family Edition, don’t forget to sign up! 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• CustomerService@organize365.com

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

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

You are in stage one but you have decreased your expenses as much as possible and still there’s too much month left at the end of the money. What do you do? Hello Stage2. You start to look for small pockets of time when you can make random amounts of money. You want to increase your income but you are not yet ready to commit to a part time job of sorts. 

Profit and Loss

In business, you do a monthly check of profit and loss. How much did your business make, how much did your business spend, and are you in the green still? You do not have a budget because business fluctuates month to month. After you have been a business owner for some time you may see patterns when your business brings in more and when your business is not profitable. And we need to be doing this in our homes too. Remember the most powerful small business is our homes. If you are anything like our house, we have a lot of fun in November and December and then spend Q1 paying it all off. And you may just find you need to find extra sources of income to plug that hole of expense. You may have already had the experience but it’s an expense because the money needs to get paid back. But you don’t have enough. 

Random Amounts of Money

I remember the first time I learned about random money that I could get, being a full time stay at home mom with no desire to have an official job, was when a friend recommended for me to take part in diaper studies. I don’t think I ever paid for diapers. I didn’t always make money but I also was not spending money on diapers. I also made random money doing surveys in persona and online. And retail arbitrage. I’d shop the garage sales and in a few months I’d resell the items I’d bought because my kids were ready for the next stage of toys. It was income neutral but again I wasn’t spending money. I made money selling things on Ebay and Craigslist and eventually in direct sales. 

Stage 2 is all about finding little pockets of time to make random amounts of money. It’s things that need to get done but also ok if they don’t. These tasks are 100% flexible. How can you make a little extra income to get P&L neutral? It’s a mindset shift on how to add income instead of reducing expenses. And for whatever reason stage 1 is no longer where you want to be. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

You know how you hear people, on the Wednesday Transformation episodes, say to just get the Sunday Basket® instead of DIY? Yes, it’s because of the mindset that comes with the purchase. The basket is simply the school supply. And it’s the same for the Friday Workbox®. 

You may be thinking you have the Sunday Basket® and it’s the same as the Friday Workbox®, right? Wrong. With the Friday Workbox® the slash pockets mean something different, you get access to the online dashboard and course for the Friday Workbox®, and the co-working time every Friday much like the Sunday Basket® Club on Sundays. The Friday Workbox® will help you, the lifeblood of your business, explore personal development and the dreams you have for your business. It helps you to treat your team like the royalty they are and to be loyal to your customers and create ways to surprise and delight them. And most importantly it helps you to see that you are in fact profitable every month, or not, and then there’s time for course correction. So here’s all the deals I have for you!!

Friday Workbox: 50% discount, now just $250!!  You’ll get the Friday Workbox®, slash pockets, online dashboard, Friday Co-working time, and the course to teach you how to gain capacity in your business for more, remember life in abundance!

Meeting Agenda Course: 50% discount, now just $499!!  It kills me when people say I don’t have meetings so I don’t need it but wait! Yes, you do! This is for all the details of purple project management in informational form and digital documents. Think of links you need for a project, they wouldn’t do you much good on paper in a slash pocket, right? I know, some things just can’t fit in a slash pocket!

Work All In Bundle: Best Deal!! $750 discount, now just $997!! Are you ready? You get the Friday Workbox®, Work Planning Day, Income and Expense Binder, and the Meeting Agenda Course. Don’t wait too long to take advantage of this because it’s while supplies last with the Income and Expense Binders and I don’t want you to miss out if you have been wanting to get one.

Friday Workbox Productivity Pack: 50% discount, now just $90!! You’ll get three stand alone Friday Workboxes®; Sapphire, Navy, and Plum. You can do what you want with Sapphire and Navy. I suggest treating them like employees or dedicate them to different businesses that you run. I gave plenty of examples in this episode to get you thinking about what that could look like. The Plum one will come with orange slash pockets for each month and purple slash pockets for the project you do cyclically and extras for new projects. For example, in July, you’d have a purple slash pocket for back to school, paper organizing retreat, and any other projects you have for July. Purple work isn’t always new work! 

Small Business Mastermind: $2500 Introductory pricing is only until March 10th!! The first session is in March. It will also be offered the first week of June and the first week of September. After this year, this mastermind will no longer be offered. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Friday Workbox

• Workbox Planning Day

• Friday Meeting Agenda Course

• Work All In Bundle

• Friday Workbox Productivity Pack

• Small Business Mastermind

• CustomerService@organize365.com

• 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.

Is color coding just busy work?  We were curious if there were any studies to back up our stance that color coding helps with learning. Anna found a few and she’s here discussing them with me. Do you think in color? Anna and I do! We did a quick response activity where Anna said a color and I responded what I associate with that color. The Organize 365® products are colorful but not without intentionality. 

Color Coding Helps with Recall

Teachers often color code subjects. When you are looking for supplies for their class you know to look for the designated color of items like a folder. When I was in school I used white index cards and then wrote in different colors to remember what I needed. I had to remember because this brain I have, it’s dyslexic and doesn’t understand phoenix. I had to remember for sake of the test! 

I had a student that was really struggling to pass his spelling tests. Once we color coded the syllables, he started to pass his spelling tests. Again, color coding helps a person to recall what they have learned. This is the example I really think of when I think of the significance of color coding. I was blown aware at the effectiveness of color coding for that student. And when adults are students, your work is self paced. Color coding your work can help you stay organized and retrieve what you have learned when you need to use that information.

When Joey and Abby were little I would color code all their things. Having one boy and one girl made that pretty easy. If you had two boys one could be blue and the other boy could be orange. Reduce your cognitive load!

When things are color coded it reduces the cognitive load. Imagine a bin dedicated to toy cars. When you go to the toy organizer you look for that bin and then look for the specific car you want. The same is true with the Sunday Basket®. You are going to retrieve something related to a person in your family so instantly you know to look at the blue slash pockets, thus reducing the cognitive load to find what you need. 

The Evolution of Color Within Organize 365®

When I first started to ship out slash pockets I was getting them at Walmart, taking out the company’s information and passing them off as my own.One day it dawned on me that Walmart could change what they sold and I’d be up a creek. So I got to work. I took a bet on myself and ordered a huge pallet of 1.0 slash pockets. Would you believe the day they arrived is the day Walmart changed what they were selling?  This order was so large I couldn't fit it all in the garage with my car. So I got an office space. I had no idea what I was doing, I was learning. That’s when the Sunday Baskets® arrived and we had to move to a warehouse. 

The last thing I ordered was the 2.0 Slash Pockets. Green for money and admin tasks that move the money. I have always thought blue was for people. And Pink was for me. Pink and blue make purple, right? Purple was for the home the people and I, my family, lived in and the projects I would need to do in and on that house. It was then that I understood the house to be a separate entity from my family. When you get a system from Organize 365®, you get the whole kit. You can mix and match the systems too because the colors translate across all the systems.  All the Organize 365® colors have been intentionally selected. Color aids in organization being a learnable skill!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• APA citation: Lamberski, R. J. & Dwyer, F. M. (1983). The instructional effect of coding (color and black and white) on information acquisition and retrieval. ECTJ. 31(1): 9-21.

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Tami T. who is married with two children at home. A few years before the pre-pandemic, Tami was doing a lot of driving for her work teaching private (band) lessons in schools. It took Tami about a year to listen to all of the Organize 365® episodes. Tami invested in the Whole Home program that we now know as The Productive Home Solution. 

Tami would watch the videos beforehand and listen to episodes, while driving, about the specific space that was next in the program. By the time she got home she knew exactly what she wanted to do in that space. It dawned on Tami that she kept doing the kitchen. By the third time she started the program, she focused on all the other spaces. She’s tackled all of her spaces and even gotten rid of her filing cabinets. Tami attended a paper retreat and organized all her paper but one bin. She’s since tackled that too with the help of a virtual organizer that she found in the Organize 365® directory. She found with getting organized it freed up capacity to be able to mentally process that one last bin. 

When the pandemic hit, her organization was really challenged. She had to teach her band classes AND she had two young children at home trying to attend school too. What did she do? She got a Sunday Basket® for each of them so Tami could keep everyone and all the assignments organized. Tami shared that now instead of just being a day or two ahead, she’s now months ahead. Again with more capacity and being planned a few months out, it has given her the time and energy to do some small tasks she’s always wanted to do. For example with all the planning completed she was able to make a program for the band concerts that she can repurpose in the future. And she could schedule refreshments and treats. She’s been able to make a little flyer to promote the performance to faculty. She can make the event better and be more present. 

Tami did the kids program with her kids too. They have been able to learn the life skill of going through their closets and organization. The first attempt was a garage sale that didn’t go so well. Now they donate. If they have an item(s) it gets donated on Tuesdays when Tami is driving by Goodwill. Tami, as most moms do, has always had so much on her plate. By the kids learning those skills it actually reduces tasks from her plate. And this she wished she’d known sooner. Put those kids to work learning skills they will need in the future.

They took a family trip to Egypt and then Switzerland this past summer. Tami was able to pre plan all their summer activities. They took their trip and when they came home Tami had time to follow up on documentaries about Egypt because the summer was planned. She’s even been able to complete two scrapbooks from their trip. She finds she has more capacity and down time due to her Sunday Basket® and Education Workbox®.

Tami’s advice is, “Do the Sunday Basket® first, then the binders and sheet protectors.” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Teacher Friday Workbox®

• Kids Program

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

Last year, two of our key leaders and I attended a Dave Ramsey Summit. This is how I have gotten some of my best CEO training. I really think about the topics the speaker is bringing up and think of Organize 365® and have I implemented something similar? Have I done that thing? Or maybe is that idea an improvement we should consider? It was great for us to be hearing the same information at the same time and be able to discuss. We even changed our Monday morning meeting a little to catch our staff at a better time of day. And then I thought “Is there anything I need to add to our values?”

What is Busy Work?

When I thought about staffing and when someone leaves Organize 354®, is there a way to eliminate busy work. Do their job tasks still need to be done or were they busy work? Is there someone else on the team that can do those tasks? It got me thinking of all the busy work teachers do. It’s cute to put the little bubbles at the “end” of each stroke of the letters but is it necessary? I’d do it once, then copy the paper the rest of the year, otherwise it would become busy work. Revisiting a closet you’ve done recently thinking you’ll get the same high will let you down because the transformation is not nearly as dramatic. Busy work is that unnecessary re-working of tasks. As long as your work is not done, even if it’s busy work,  you won’t have the excess time, capacity, and boredom to seek out what you are uniquely gifted and created to do.

Operationalizing 

The flip side of busy work that can appear as busy work is operationalizing your tasks. I started out organizing my sister and I’s rooms. Then I graduated to organizing the homes I babysat in. I have always loved gifting an act of service. I organized the “craft area” by the fire place at my house and my mom loved it. So I did it annually around Christmas for her. But then my parents expanded the house and she got a larger space. My mom is an artists and that was definitely a challenge to understand what was valuable and not. I asked a lot of questions!! I would help other teachers to organize their classrooms. And eventually organized my clients. But in each of those instances I was growing my skill set. I was learning how the spaces were used and why the items were in there. I was operationalizing how I helped other get organized. You can do the same with repeated tasks. That’s why on Planning Day I tell you to stock up your storage for the trimester. Don’t order one of the same thing each month, operationalize it. 

The Sunday Basket Replaces Your Checklists

First of all, there is a time and place for checklists. Checklists can be useful if you are trying to establish a new routine. Be careful not to let it become a crutch. Don’t be so stuck on the list that it supersedes your role in the company. And not everything needs to go on the list, just big things you can’t forget. And checklists are good for something you don’t do often. My best example I shared was our packing list for Florida each year. As we grow and change the list does too. We edit when necessary so we don’t forget for the next time we need to use the checklist. 

I can remember the last time I used a master to do list. In 2014, I wrote 10 legal pad pages of all my to do’s. I organized them by family member or entity and then prioritized them. I transferred each item to an index card. And I filed them away to deal with on Sunday. It is nice to look at all tasks individually and decide on importance, my time, and my money. I may write down the same task multiple times and that’s ok because I got it out of my head and who cares if I wrote it multiple times. I place them in the appropriate slash pock. I take action on the actionable items. Then once I complete the task I get to toss it in the recycling. Lists never go away, with index cards you can complete them and toss them. The Sunday Basket is safe keeping till you can take action. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Friday Workbox®

• 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!

As many of you know, following one organizer will bring you to another. In fact, that’s how some of you ended up in my community. So many of you reached out suggesting Kendra Adachi with The Lazy Genius podcast for an interview for the Monday Connections episodes. Thank you so much for the recommendation and we had an insightful conversation.  

Lazy Genius

Kendra Adachi was a perfectionist to the extreme. She was teacher’s pet, valedictorian, and voted most dependable by her peers. In 2015, she started a lifestyle blog. The podcast, The Lazy Genius, followed not even a full year later. She teaches women to “Be a genius about the things that matter, and and lazy about the things that don’t.” Once she became a parent she learned that rule. She was so used to doing everything perfectly but once her second child came along she realized you can’t be perfect at everything. And that’s how she got to pointing out to women how to find a happy medium between Boss Babe and Hot Mess. 

We agreed how nice it is to come on an episode with an idea and through the recording think out loud. Inevitably we end up with feedback from the community that results in solutions or next steps. When I asked her if she worries about running out of episode topics. She replied with the fact that the perspective on laundry changes with your lifestyle. For example, she may be talking about endless stained laundry from toddlers and grow to sharing about how she is teaching her teenagers how to do laundry. We commented on the value our listeners get from hearing how a female is doing things. Kendra shared that 93% of time management books are from male authors. It’s time for women to learn from each other. 

And Kendra shared about “Big Black Trash Bag Energy”. You know when you’re just over it and so you get out the big trash bag with the internet to toss everything and just start over? No need. Just start small. Work on one thing. 

Women Have Always Ran the World

Kendra shared the point of view that maybe there’s a stigma to the importance of the female role and how much men value what women do. And I agreed through the lens that  women have always ran the world but now that women are in the workforce, it’s coming to light how much women are really doing. And sorry guys, it’s more than you. Men get to watch a football game but women feel like they need to be productive making the meal plan or planning car pool while watching that same football game. We have been the CEO’s of the households but now all that invisible work is being identified. We have these never ending tasks that replenish themselves and leads to weary spirits. Planning is essential for women to manage the household and take care of everyone. Kendra pointed out you are inherently a preparer, an adjuster, or a notice-er. And then we talked about the mindsets and lifestyles of being 30, 40, and in your 50’s. And the two scenarios determine how you got about what you gotta get done.

You Only Know What You Know

I find it so difficult to find other women CEO’s to learn from. We joked those women are too busy to sit down to write a book or record a podcast. My hope is for all women in the 20’s and 30’s to find a community to show them systems on how to be a household manager. You get a new job, you get training. You buy your first house and you’re responsible for the payments but no guidelines on how to care for it. Up to you to hopefully stumble across the Household Operations Binder. Don’t get intimidated by the CEO role. It’s not meant to be this manly corporate role. You only know what you have been taught. Women need to be in community with each other, doing life together. We are the experts in this role! 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

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

It’s 2017, I’m on the plane home from California. I just attended a conference, a mastermind with a virtual friend of mine, Chris Ducker, and I’m writing down the 5th value that I want for Organize 365®. The Power of Community: In community, everyone can learn to be organized, action is easier, and happens exponentially. Organize 365® believes organization is a learnable skill. 

I’m a CEO

After the investment I had made in that 6 days in California, it sunk in, I’m a real CEO. I was making money and needed to structure my company to be able to purchase inventory. After considering our current phase of life and how I envisioned Organize 365® would grow, I was advised to structure it as a C-Corp. All the details and thought process I shared in this episode. I also decided on the way home that I was going to need to hire 7 contractors for areas that were not my strength. In community with these contractors I grew Organize 365®

Virtual Friends

I had a really hard time in the friends category really my whole life. I shared a really vulnerable time in my life in Catholic school where the girls weren’t so nice to me. Maybe it was me? I was used to talking to adults. The place in my family where I was born had me surrounded by adults all the time. I had my successful female lineage, my father who owned his own business, and then the smart men on my dad’s side of the family. I was so mature in conversation but naive in interacting with kids my same age. I finally had a pretty solid friend once I was married.  Around 2012, my pit of despair, I was back to no community. My parents divorced and it kind of blew up the whole family, I ditched my friends so I would not be around negativity, we were in a tough parenting season so church had become less, and I wasn’t teaching anymore. I didn’t even have my Creative Memory parties anymore, the women I had scrapbook with once a month for years. 

So I turned to authors. I listened to their audio books. I gleaned all they were talking about and trying to apply it to my business. And then I found podcasts. Like, what? It was an endless supply of basically audiobooks.  They were my virtual friends, Pat Flynn with Smart Passive Income, John Lee Dumas with Entrepreneur on Fire,  Chris Ducker with Youpreneur, to name a few.  I would mull over the questions Chris Ducker would ask his guests and then I would practice answering them. But then I got to thinking how the female lived experience is so much different than a male’s. So I searched out women to follow and listen to. Life is so flat when you don’t have friends. I couldn’t seem to make any friends so this was what I had. I was always talking with them, they just couldn’t hear my side of the conversation. 

Organize 365® Community

Being such a fan of community and understanding community helps others to learn, I knew it had to be a core value of my company. I also knew that the growth I was expecting and the experience I wanted for my customers,  I would not be able to hold the community together alone. I’m still very much involved with the Planning Days, Embrace, and other webinars n such. But you see team members running some of the clubs and other things. Life is better in community, connecting with other humans. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Sharon T. who is married and at the time of this interview was caring for her special needs sister, full time. Sharon has always been organized but was looking to “up her game.” Fun fact; Sharon lives in Singapore, joined me at night for this episode, and there they spell organization with an “s.” She was looking for help with both spellings. She found the Organize 365® podcast and felt like language was being given to what she was going through. 

She and I talked about how women in general try to straddle home and work life balance. But to what degree is it talked about? There are subcultures with in races, right? I talked about being White Irish, wonder where my sarcasm comes from, and White English, who tend to be more reserved. We felt it important not to generalize cultures. But it did bring up the fact that some cultures talk about the struggle of doing it all as a women and others “suffer in quiet.” This is the language that was speaking to Sharon so much. 

Sharon watched her cousin take his last breath in 2019. The doctor said his diet was in part due to his passing. That really forced Sharon to take a look at her life and listen to what she felt she was being called to do and that was to help the special needs community. Diet can affect people positively that have special needs. And diet can support those care givers to take care of themselves. To combat the “Woe is me” mentality. Sharon thought about this as she considered her mom’s caregiving life to her sister. She and her sister started their business, Possible Nutrition. 

In 2022, Sharon looked at the pile of papers and decided to finally systematize them with the Friday Workbox® she had treated herself to for her birthday the year before. Sharon loves to write things down and reflect on them. Is it possible? Is it needed? Does it make sense? Then she can share it with her sister or whoever. She finds it very cathartic to seasonally review the business and plan for what is coming up. And it’s so important to document care. As we change so too will our care. If I was going to babysit, I’d have the parents fill out a little form such as nap time, foods, pacifier or not? If it had been 6 months or more, a lot could have changed!

It was a dentist's findings that really got Sharon thinking about how our diet really affects our bodies. We need to eat for nutrition and in a manner that facilitates absorption. With the right diet she’s seen symptoms subside quite easily. Well this opened a big can of worms and I started picking her brain about macros and what she considers a nutrient rich diet. Then I asked a burning question about protein. We talked about the order in which to consume your meal. And it’s pretty cool how the order alone can affect your glucose, if it spikes or not and how quickly you resume your baseline glucose level. 

There is no universal diet or organizational system because we are not all the same. And life changes which means the way we eat and organize will too! We shouldn’t view our health as our idol rather to be good stewards of our bodies so we can do what we were uniquely created to do. 

Sharon’s advice is, “ I think that if you're just starting out maybe say establishing a home or, just getting a first job, start with Sunday Basket®.  We need to get our own personal lives in order before we can look at managing a home, before we can go out there and do anything else.” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Friday Workbox®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

There are two ways you can proactively anticipate. You can act like it’s Y2K again. When the 1000’s place in computers was switching to 2 at the end of 1999, Greg and I proactively anticipated from the stance of lack. We stocked up on water and toilet paper in the event the world ran out. OR you can proactively anticipate with a positive mindset and life in abundance.  You know where you are going and what you want and plan how to get there. 

Get What You Want

I love holding babies! So when I was younger I thought how can I get to be the one to hold the babies because others in my family too like to hold the babies. I anticipated no one wanted to change the stinky diaper, so I did. Then after I took them to the bedroom or somewhere away from everyone, I’d change the diaper and then steal my cuddles. “Lisa, are you bringing back the baby?” they’d ask. I also anticipated that people like to sleep. So when my aunts started having babies, I’d offer to stay over to take care of the baby during the night. I knew they baby would be up in the middle of the night and my aunts wanted to sleep. What do you want and how can you be helpful? Maybe by giving an act of service that fills your cup too. If you remember last week’s episode, I did this with babysitting too. I wanted to be the babysitter of their choice each summer. I made sure I lined it up in plenty of time for the parents to be able to line up summer camps or whatever on the days I would be watching their children so they could rely on me for transportation and care of their children. 

What Can You Do In 20 Minutes?

Thank God Abby was a sleeper but my lil Joey only took 20 minute naps. I had so many plates in the air and without a sufficient nap time to address anything, lots of things were falling through the cracks. I had, literally, a foot of paper piled at the end of my kitchen counter. One night I decided to tackle it by sorting it in to 40 categories. By the time I was done, it was late, I needed to pick up my mess but also have it accessible. I threw the sorted and paper clipped papers into a Lonaberger basket till the next day at nap time. I knew I was going to have a small window to accomplish something. I was proactively anticipating this nap and I was ready. Slowly over the next six weeks I was able to get caught up one paper packet per nap time. Having my paper organized I was able to get systems in place so I could keep growing Organize 365® because I realized that is what I was uniquely created to do. 

Proactive Anticipation Go Hand in Hand with Planning

I have always had the ability to look into the future and anticipate what is coming for the female American Household Manager. I have been in many homes, of all types. I know things like the energy during different times of the year, how supply chain works, and kids! The Sunday Basket helps you to proactively anticipate the next week. Planning days help you to proactively plan for the next 120 days. I found these systems to be effective for my house and then created ways to teach them to others in the Organize 365® Community. Once you find what you are uniquely created to do you need the systems more than ever. At first they give you time to find out what you are created to do. You could dive into the fulfillment of what you discover but then you may have your train go off the rails. The systems continue to provide time to keep doing what you are uniquely created to do, in combination with everything else a Household Manager must do. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

Anna, our lead researcher is back and we are talking about the American Household and looking at the data from the Census of the past. We came across this info graphic that is interactive. You can slide the dial to see stats based on where you have placed the pointer. We were entertained with the results we were seeing and we wanted to talk about what we found on the podcast. How much has the American household changed over time? 

What continues to blow my mind is 2 things. These studies keep being conducted proving what we already know while no studies are being done to support a solution. There is only about ¼ of the population that is even being addressed because the focus for solutions and the conversation is for houses with married couples and children. Children are usually identified as being under the age of 18 and living at home. Our best guess says that this data is based on people 18-55 years old. I guess that’s one more thing that blows my mind, “adulthood” ends at 55. And “old age” starts at 65. So from 55-65 there is a dearth (using my big PhD words), as in not very much, of information for people 55-65. But as you will hear in the episode people are getting married and having babies later, so some 65 year olds could still have children under 18 at home.

So many numbers 

So when we look at this information, the breakdown was in 1960 30% of the population was married without children and today about the same at 29.4% of the population. We talked about a lot of demographics, “other household” types. We looked at the 50 ‘s and 60’s vs. 2023. The biggest change we noticed was in the age men and women are getting married. Women in the 50’s were getting married at age 20 but today they are waiting till around age 28. And it’s the same for men. In the 50’s, men used to get married around age 24 but are now waiting till around 30. People are waiting longer to get married which means they are having children at a later age, if they are having children at all - DINKs. Anna reminded me of that acronym DINK, that stands for dual income-no kids. And we discussed possible reasons for this. Who is going to take care of these people as they age? 

I’m going to be a doctor!

It recently dawned on me that people will call me doctor after I get this PhD. I didn’t realize how science-y it was going to be, but I will know the brain when all is said and done. I lost sight of that because my goal in all of this was to have a seat at the table and do research to come up with solutions. My studies will include people 18 - 85 year olds so that I can get the full picture of how our houses are operating and who is in them. I want to change the conversation to include all household types. Our housework will never be done but I do want to be able to offer solutions how to plan for success that anyone can apply. I’m turning academia on it’s head with everything from funding, maybe finding where planning is in the brain, to coming up with solutions to problems that have redundantly been proven.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• 559 - What Do You Mean I May Settle 7 Estates?! - Organize 365 Team Unexpected Events - Virginia
• https://usafacts.org/articles/how-has-the-structure-of-american-households-changed-over-time/
• https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/emerging-trends-and-enduring-patterns-in-american-family-life/
• https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/09/14/the-modern-american-family/
• https://www.parents.com/parenting/dynamics/the-changing-face-of-the-american-family/
• https://www.nbcnews.com/health/parenting/how-modern-us-family-size-changing-charts-map-rcna65421
• 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.

“We have a hard time just wanting what we want.” Transformational Freedom is my driving force through personal development and unapologetic gumption to pursue the things I want. Our houses are holding us back. When we feel like we are taking care of our primary role of household manager, spouse, and parent, then we feel free to pursue what we want.

4 Generations of Ambitious Women

When you have a great grandmother who gets her teaching degree because it’s the only degree a woman can get, you learn to succeed despite limitations. She went on to run a floral shop, a restaurant, and a gift shop which is definitely not what other women were doing those days. AND she divorced her husband! And then you have a grandmother who gets her Home Economics degree because again, limitations. And see her and her husband start a student loan - ish business, you see an example of a woman not waiting for permission. But then goes on to set an even greater example when she remarries and starts up a home economic kit mail order business of sorts out of her home. Like how did people order? She figured it out because it’s what she wanted to do. And a mother like mine. She was so focused on business. She started The Fine Line out of our basement and created cases of clothes she bought one weekend in NYC. She did that for 6 years and then sold it for a profit. 

Didn’t Get Permission, I Went After What I Wanted

Which gave me the gumption to start my own babysitting business. The examples of women in my life I saw growing up didn’t wait for permission to pursue what they were uniquely created to do. I didn’t wait for permission or see someone else doing it. No, I paved my own path to filling up my summer calendar with baby sitting positions. I saw a need and solved a problem for moms who needed to get tasks done and take care of themselves per my suggestion. I used my unique skills of loving children to make money on my terms. 

Transformational Freedom

At Organize 365® we say “As you let go of one thing, you are open to receiving the next. We strive to unlock your life’s purpose through the process of decluttering, organizing, and increasing productivity.” You also don’t know what you haven't experienced. I acknowledge that if you haven’t seen, for example, a healthy marriage then you don’t believe they exist and don’t know what they look like. I love the Organize 365® community for this reason. Hopefully you are hearing healthy examples on the podcast and then being exposed to more in the community. Community opens our eyes to possibilities. And because we don’t believe in those possibilities, we cling to what we currently have. That’s why it’s so important to acknowledge letting go of one thing, only to experience something even better. Remember this life is not happening to us, it’s happening for us. 

Permission Granted

Greg didn’t flinch when I told him I was going to quit because he knew I would make money still. I had replaced my teaching salary with Creative Memories and planned to grow my organizing business to contribute to the family finances. In my organizing experiences, one client broke down when the last area was done, saying she could finally go back to work. What? The emotional weight of our homes on us women is great. Ladies, our houses hold us back because whether or not you work, you view your household manager role as primary. Organize 365® is here to get you decluttered and organized so you can be productive. Here is your permission to explore what you want and to pursue it. Fly out of your golden cage. Return as much as you want but you are free. Permission granted. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Nita M. who is married and employed as a stay at home mom by her two young daughters. Nita first found Organize 365® through the podcast. Nita had just turned 40 in February of 2024, after having a baby in November 2020. There was just an energy that she wanted to get back on track. Postpartum had derailed her normally organized life. She’d been watching another organization show when she saw me being interviewed. Nita has her MBA and she connected with the language we use at work being applied to the home. It also clicked that our kitchens are like restaurants and our storage is like a prepaid store. The analogy of the work and home train resonated with Nita, too.

The way you think of your home changes the way you operate. Profitable businesses are always planning, iterating, and looking at the target market they serve; our homes are no different. With these two schools of thought in mind, Nita adopted what her supply chain looks like and is now more prepared. She realized she had to buy toilet paper no matter what so what was the difference of doing it over 120 days or just purchasing it all up front, or set up a subscription through Amazon? When supplies came in, she used to just have them throughout the house, until she realized her guest bedroom closet was being underutilized. Now it’s storage (AKA Nita’s prepaid store) for each 120 days. 

I brought up the study by Wayne et al that speaks to the “Invisible Family Load.” Household managers seem to have a positive disposition to the cognitive and management of the invisible load, but a negative disposition to the emotional cost of the invisible load. Nita shared the story of going to an amusement park with her daughters and getting rained out. Her oldest daughter complimented her when she realized how organized Nita was with her car closet. She was prepared with towels and snacks. With systems in place, Nita feels positive towards the emotional cost of “getting” to do all the invisible tasks for her family.

In an effort to learn it all and understand my brain, Nita has invested in all the products. She agrees that for a stay at home mom, The Productive Home Solution® would be a natural place to start. Nita liked that she was able to get her foundation settled, then move on to the Sunday Basket®. Some nights as she and her daughter drift off to sleep, they listen to the podcast, per her daughter’s request. Nita cleans on Saturdays, plans on Sundays, and processes her basket on Mondays. She has two portable Sunday Basket®s that travel with her in her second home, her car. She loves knowing how to create the flow, the manipulation of time that makes her life more smooth. She even gave me an idea to check out the delay start feature on my washing machine. Get those machines working before you even wake up!

Nita’s advice is, “Trust the process. Lisa knows!” She’s constantly quoting Lisa and this is what she says to her friends. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Organize 365® Podcast Resources

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

In Organize 365® we say “Resources are not limited, they are limitless. Through collaboration, Organize 365® connects the right people and resources for maximum benefit and sustainability.” We know there is enough for everyone and growing up that is what I saw. I guess it’s true when it comes to our kids, more is caught than what is taught. 

Abundance through the eyes of a child

Knowing what I know now I could have probably figured out that our family was not rich. But I never felt it as a child. We had what we needed and we got to participate in extra-curricular activities. I watched my mother work her business. I watched my dad ”get recruited” by his friends to be a sales person for them. And when they sold the company to their sons, the sons added my dad as one of their partners because they knew he was valuable and consistently brought in a lot of new sales. It was then we had extra money.  But my dad was good at managing the money so that our family and the company had enough money even in times of lack. As a kid I always felt that we had enough resiliency and ability to overcome lack. 

Abundant Energy

Our desires and plans don’t always play out the way we want or think, but with an Abundance Mindset, they will come to be. I wanted to be a mother so bad. I had an abundant mindset and had to embrace the opportunity that adoption would provide, which was me becoming a mother. We had situations come our way through the adoption process. I could have clung to each one and thought this is my one opportunity I have to take it! But, I knew that I would be a mother, I just didn’t know how. I was open minded. What is going to be will be and I knew at the end of all of it, I would be a mother! An abundance frequency attracts abundance. Everything is just energy. I gave multiple examples of it in this episode because I see so much abundance in my life. I’m not trying to brag, I want you to see it’s there for you too.

The Pie Factory

You are only in competition with yourself. There is only one you with your unique skill set. Imagine a pie factory and they are just spitting out pies regularly. You don’t get just one slice. You don’t have to share a pie with anyone. You can have as much pie as you want.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

Happy Monday!  Introducing the Connections Episodes from Organize 365®. Every other Monday I will be talking to people and the Organize 365® research staff about topics, books, studies, and other valuable materials that are connected to our goals at Organize 365®. Today I picked Anna, our education and research lead. When she first brought up this topic I wasn’t super jazzed, but after learning about the history of new year’s resolutions and why people started setting them…well it led to a great conversation. 

When and why did people start setting new year's resolutions? 

The Babylonians were the first we see making new year’s resolutions to their gods. They’d set the intention to return farm equipment or pay off their debts in hopes of a profitable crop that year. It was after harvest time that they’d do this as they prepared their field for new crops. And then we see the Romans setting intentions to their god, Janus, who had two faces. One face looked towards the past and encouraged reflection of the past year. And one face facing forward to plan ahead. They’d do this March 15th when, maybe due to their climate, they were preparing for a new crop. And then in 1582, Pope Gregory the 8th developed the Gregorian calendar we use today and he set the new year for January 1st. 

Yesteryear’s common new year’s resolutions versus today

When I look at the top 10 goals from 1947, I like to think about life then. They were coming out of World War II, they had food being rationed, and manual housework. So it’s no surprise that last on the list was to lose weight. It was a stressful time and people wanted to break bad habits, such as smoking and drinking, which was first on the list. 

Nowadays life is easier. We have machines that do a lot for us, ability to live in the suburbs (off laborious farms), less generational living, cars, school buses, and catering to our children more so they are doing less, although we noted this is likely cultural. And we are addicted to our food. So it’s no surprise that top of the list now is to lose weight. Followed by organization because our children are involved in more activities, women now work, social media shows a standard that is not realistic but we are striving for it, and life is just faster paced. Need to be organized to stay on top of it all!

One category, besides the ones I always notice like weight loss, money, and organization/productivity, is intrinsic/personal development. This is the introspective type of new year’s resolutions that was on the list. People want to help others and grow in their faith. I will start including this fourth category. 

Organize 365® is there for you for your new year’s resolutions

Planning day sets you up for almost 3 mini years. The human brain doesn’t like to think past about 100 days. It’s easier to set one new, new year’s resolution each time. You can set up actionable steps to accomplish that goal, too. You can try out new tasks or routines that become habits, stacking small steps that in the end accomplish a big goal. 

Anna’s New Year’s Resolution: Drink more water

Lisa’s New Year’s Resolution: Continue to implement more habits to support my health

EPISODE RESOURCES:

•  Outlived by Peter Attia MD

• 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 was on a plane in 2017 for a 5 hour flight from Los Angeles to Cincinnati when I committed to 5 values that I wanted to have within Organize 365®. This will be a 6-part series to share why I chose those 5 values plus one extra value that I felt needed to be added. I can trace my positivity back to 6th grade at church camp when I accepted Christ as my savior. But when my dad picked me up he said “No you didn’t, now get in the car.” I was always a positive child so I wasn’t mad or hurt, I knew it was just this special relationship I had with God. 

Sharing my dad’s belief in me

“Dad, I’d like to run daycare centers in corporate buildings.” I explained as dad had asked me what I wanted to go to college for. My dad had so much belief in me at just 17. He proposed that I take the money they were going to spend on college, which was about $100,000, and invest it in me and this business idea. I ran into the kitchen to pitch the idea to my mom, but she stood her ground. My mother was hell bent on me being the 4th generation of female college graduates in our family. 

The decline

As a little kid I was so positive, there was so much natural optimism. Even at 17 I had so much faith in myself, plus my dad’s belief in me. But then life…I was so excited for the MRS (Mrs. Woodruff) degree and was ready to start our life. But children didn’t come despite our desperate desire and so we adopted. But then more life was handed to me when my parents decided to get divorced, then my dad passed away, and I had to settle his estate. 

I did inherit a little bit of money where we were able to remodel the kitchen and afford some more medical testing. I was always fighting a battle with people. They thought I was crazy because of everything I was doing for my kids and their health. Which got me thinking, “Am I the problem here?” (Funny how today’s society supports all the measures I took so many years ago.) I went from positive Lisa to cynical! Another blow was when my supervisor informed me that I wasn’t a good teacher. I made up my mind that I was going to quit. I wasn’t doing good at anything. I had become so negative and not fun to be around. Greg supported me quitting even though we had the most debt we have ever had. I turned in my resignation the next day.

It’s not happening to you it’s happening for you

The final straw was that first Monday while the kids were at school. I looked around and thought, whose house is this? I was so disconnected from my life. I realized that I, and my attitude, was the problem. Then and there I decided to take my life back and to be positive. I changed all the inputs, like the friends I kept, the shows I watched, the things I read.  I knew I wanted to stay Greg’s wife and the mother to my children. I ended up writing my book “Organization Is A Learnable Skill" to document how I took my life back. I now know that life is not happening to me, it’s happening for me. I sat down and wrote down 40 areas I was going to address. I remembered that belief my dad had in me to start a business and I was now going to do just that. And from that list one of my first programs was born, the 40 Weeks One Whole House Challenge (now incorporated into The Productive Home Solution®).

Being positive is a core value for Organize 365®. It’s funny how fast a negative person can infiltrate the staff in a matter of days. I can’t have that and I don’t want to turn that ship around. My experience has been that positivity leads to success. So we are positive at Organize 365®.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Allison G. who lives with her husband, daughter, son, and a furry kid. Allison found the Organize 365® Podcast after hearing my name a few times in two other organization/productivity podcasts. Allison felt organized at work but didn’t realize she wasn’t at home. She kept her calendar full and leaned on being busy if she forgot anything. 

In January 2022, Allison fell while skiing. That really slowed her down and plopped her on her couch for some time. She noticed all of the physical chaos in her home. Allison has been a teacher for 21 years. Listening to the other two podcasts, she understood the big picture of organization and productivity. But by listening to Organize 365®, she’s been able to figure out how to apply those principles specifically to her life. Allison also turned 40 in 2022, which is one of those pivotal times in a woman’s life when I tend to see them want to declutter, get organized, and be productive. 

Allison got the Sunday Basket®, quickly followed by the entire system. In March of 2022, Allison was very diligent and kept up on homework and training. She started with the 1.0 slash pockets for the first 6-8 months. Then she added in the 2.0 slash pockets. Allison says she passively went through The Productive Home Solution® the first time and has started her second round. She feels the reason for her organizational success is she gave herself time and took it slow. We make all these plans and framework for work, but not usually for home. Why? The Sunday Basket® and The Productive Home Solution® gives you a framework to get systems in place at home.

After seeing results at home, of course she had to get the Teacher Friday Workbox®. She loves using the rainbow tear pad and planner for her classes. As a teacher, you could see all the paper work and books for all classes as overwhelming. You could look at your lesson plan and just see a lot of text. But when you color code them, now it’s 7 categories or 7 classes. Allison raved over the layout of the products and the quality of the paper. And she can match the slash pockets to the colors on the tear pad. 

Allison is no longer faking being organized, she IS organized! She has systems in place at home to find important paperwork, like the insurance policy for earrings she lost. She’s been able to free up time to dream which led to her learning mahjong this past fall. Her family knows all about the Sunday Basket® even though they always call them buckets. She only wishes she’d known sooner it didn’t have to be the way it was before. And she’s gained so much confidence by knowing she’ll finish what she starts and not using her cognitive “power” to hopefully remember things that need to get done!

Allison’s advice is, “If you are motivated and excited, get going! But if you think you need time, give yourself time. ” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Teacher Friday Workbox®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

I look into my crystal ball and let me tell you what I see. Ok, no crystal ball but I have always kind of had my finger on the pulse of the future. I have a knack for seeing what is happening and how the economy will be impacted. And of course when the economy is impacted, so is the household manager. So what do I predict? 

AI is not coming for your home in 2025

Changes happen in houses last! There’s a reason all of the literature I find about housework is so old. No one is studying the home and how to improve it. AI is not going to be sorting your paper or organizing your storage rooms in 2025. 

Analog is the answer for information

Do you remember when the elderly had to register to get some of the first vaccines? The problem was most of them didn’t know how to access the technology to set up the appointments to get the vaccine. Technology is not always best. And in an emergency situation, it’s critical to have paper to back up what you know to be true so the medical community can trust what you say is true. Paper is here to stay, analog is paper and it’s still the answer.

Home is where you are the safest

Disclaimer, I know this is not true for everyone. But for the most part, your home is where you decide what you want to do. Just because we can know everything instantly all the time does not mean you have to “subscribe” to it all. 

You get to create your own reality

You don’t have to be inundated with the news or negative messages. You can choose what feeds into your family in your home. You can switch up the algorithms on YouTube or completely get off of social media. You can choose what you eat and your routines, what you feel is right and safe for your family. It’s what we can control because we can’t control other people and their actions. You also get to choose where you interact with people. Maybe you attend a virtual meeting, go to yoga, date online, or you are a part of the Organize 365® community. But that’s just it, we all need connection and to belong to a community of like minded people. 

Changes are going to keep coming faster and faster

We can set our own pace at home, but the speed of information at our fingertips is just going to keep coming faster and faster. Originally I was going to say this means we need to make decisions faster, but do you know where decisions come from? They come from knowing what you want. When you know what you want, you can make a decision about something that is in line with making that thing you want to happen! Slow down and understand what you want. 

Bonus: All homes will have a side hustle

What do you think? It will be interesting to see if I was right on any of these at the end of 2025.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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.

In this episode, I introduce you to Carrie T. who is married with two children. She has a daughter away at college and her son is still at home. Carrie travels a lot to see her daughter compete and listens to the podcast during those long drives. Carrie actually found the podcast many years ago when she was looking for organization podcasts. She loved the advice that “Your brain is working while you are listening and the solution will come to you.” She valued other organizational programs, but gravitated towards Organize 365® because of The Paper Solution®. 

Carrie started with a DIY Sunday Basket®. It was fine, but she couldn’t find the right colored folders so she had to create labels in the color instead. She realized she was doing a lot of work for something that she could just purchase. She asked for the official Sunday Basket® one year for Christmas and dove into setting it up on Christmas day. She valued that everything was in one place. She wasn’t looking for papers. She could almost always find whatever she was looking for in her Sunday Basket®. She admitted she may have over slash pocketed, but she’s definitely got the hang of it now. She’s looking forward to the tax write off of getting a Friday Workbox® next.

Another reason Carrie asked for the official Sunday Basket® was for the community that she desired. She loves attending the Sunday Basket® Club. She likes to attend live, but also uses the replay to pause the recording and finish each task in her time. Then she hits play and continues on. We talked a little bit about how each week you go through all of the rainbow slash pockets, but the 2.0 slash pockets don’t need weekly attention. We agreed on average it takes about 90 minutes to process each Sunday. And I know about every 4-6 weeks I thoroughly go through my Sunday Basket® and that can take me about 3 hours. She also values the division of workboxes in quarter 4 for the holidays, the next year, and taxes. It’s like 3 external brains for the different hats you wear as a household manager. 

Carrie wishes she’d just gotten the official Sunday Basket® sooner. She has so much more peace of mind now because she knows “It’s in the Sunday Basket®.” With her extra pockets of time and her children getting older, she’s playing with the idea of getting her pilots license. She wants to be able to fly to see her children and attend their sporting events. 

Carrie’s advice is, “Keep listening, and if you feel like the Sunday Basket® is the right thing to do, just do it! Do it now.” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

In business, this was the year in neutral! Try as I might to move forward with initiative, the universe wouldn’t allow it. But I had great success in other areas! 

“Lovie, Are You?”

You may be wondering how the PhD is going. Let me tell ya. I was warned that the second year is tough and it really was because the time I was giving to the PhD had to come from somewhere, right? I shared how I was dividing my time in previous episodes. But also, I traveled. Because I traveled, I didn’t do my normal home reset during my break from school and it was so bothersome, I did a whole episode about it. Baby Grayson got smarter this year, too. He now knows if my car is home, I, Lovie is home. He’s no longer fooled by “outta sight, outta mind.” So I moved all my stuff to the office for school, too. You may have thought in the past, “How does Lisa do it all?” I humbly explained how this year, I didn’t.

Purple Work That Didn’t Work

All of Organize 365® worked on two purple projects for a whole 10 months, that took lots of time and money, only to have neither get fully completed. So for years I’ve been told I need to go to an ERP system. This was the year. We worked with an accounting firm to get things and policies in place only to have the ERP team tell us that our bank and the system don’t play well together. So, I started thinking and came up with an idea. Once proposed, they said yes, I think we can use that solution to make Quickbooks work for you since we know Quickbooks plays nice with your bank. And we got to keep our super secure website. All was not lost because the company is better having gone through all of that. 

And then there was our lease that was expiring. It got me looking at other spaces. I practiced driving to them like it was our new location. Kind of tried it on for size. I started dreaming of additional live events I’d like to host. They were ok, but then the cost of moving was setting in. Would our landlord extend the lease, just increase the price? They said yes, but to different terms of course. So here we are in the same building for the next four years, not moving. Again, all was not lost because we upgraded our current space and made it more functional for us for the season we are in. And stay tuned to attend some of the live events I dreamed up, like the Small Business Planning Mastermind on March 5th & 6th.

Milestones Hit in This Neutral Year

I am so excited with the milestones the company hit this year in quarter four, despite the purple projects failing. Such HUGE things!!! The podcast turned 10! The podcast is often about the Sunday Basket® in one way or another. And we say the Sunday Basket® saves people 260 hours annually. We also know that we have sold 12,000 Complete Sunday Basket®s, equating to saving “officially documented purchasers” 10 MILLION HOURS!!  That is so amazing!! That’s what I want, to give women back their time by delaying decision making so they don’t derail themselves.  And since we were going to have a party to celebrate the podcast, we decided to celebrate my award, too! 

I saw Miami University was awarding Cincinnati Female Entrepreneur of the Year. With a short deadline to submit an application and three references, I didn’t know if I’d have everything in time. But my instagram followers are amazing and I actually received SIX overnight! I was so surprised to be in the top 3 being considered for the award, and even more shocked to be awarded the first ever Cincinnati Female Entrepreneur of the Year! I had all female entrepreneurs stand and I accepted the award on behalf of all of us. It wasn’t about who won, it was about all the women in that room being acknowledged for what they are doing and how they are growing Cincinnati.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Small Business Planning Mastermind

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to April R. She is a single mom of 5 children with a cat and dog to love on, too. April was watching someone on social media talking about the habits of people with ADHD and April identified with many. Then she came across the episodes about ADHD and naturally listened to the ones that followed. She used to think organization meant cleaning. She now knows organization means productivity. 

April’s proudest accomplishment as a result of learning from Organize 365® is her beloved drink station!  She has a tiny kitchen and there are lots of people in the house. But April took it a step further by placing it in another room. I pointed out that also takes it away from the triangle of cooking. April repurposed a hutch she got off Facebook Marketplace. She was able to accommodate all of her children and their drink preferences. She has gotten a lot of compliments from friends, but now with her sister (who had handyman skills) she wants to take it up a notch with cabinets instead, floating shelves, and a mini fridge. 

April shared a lot of lessons she’s learned. Or is it one lesson applied in multiple locations?  She’s improved her flexible thinking executive function. She’s applied the drink station organization to her work and other spaces in her home. After her success with the drink station, she invested in the Sunday Basket®. And even though she didn’t use it effectively in the beginning, she was collecting in it the way she was supposed to. Then she would go through it every so often. Would you believe she found thousands of dollars just waiting in there for her? You've got to hear the episode to understand or maybe you have too!

It dawned on her how her oldest daughter had a bigger bedroom than the two that shared. So she swapped them. That also gave the older daughter, who goes to school online, a better connection to their wi-fi and more privacy. April and the girls got the benefit of sharing a bathroom space instead of just April using it, as well as the connections she’s building with her two youngest as they get ready for their day together.

April also shared about how she touches base with all her kids on Sunday to plan ahead. And how she developed an A/B meal plan (with a little help from Chat GPT) for when her kids are with her and when they are at their dads. But she knew what to ask for due to what she has learned through Organize 365®.

She’s been prepared for the unexpected. When hurricane Beryl was coming their way, she was able to plan ahead and be prepared to ride it out. I told her about the snow day box I developed when my kids were younger to make it exciting to have the kids home. She’s realized that just because she’s organized it doesn’t mean it’ll keep things from happening.

She has so much more joy and awareness now. She feels confident when one of the kids needs something from her and she can go get it from her Sunday Basket®. She has so much joy with the intentionality of how she’s spending her time with her kids and she’s so excited about the future. 

April’s advice is, “If you don’t know if you should get the Sunday Basket®, do the drink station or just try one thing.” It’s true in the midst of your overwhelm of thinking you need all the systems. Just start with one thing or it seems too overwhelming to even start. All the systems are independent of each other. And as April added, then it just gets easier to add another system. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Home Planning Day

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

I love when the podcasters I follow do a year in review and so I thought I’d try my hand at it this year. This year was the year of renovations, like I have mentioned a few times. But when I look back collectively on all that was done in addition to the renovations, I realize how blessed I am. I had been warned the second year of the PhD was going to be hard and it was. And just for funzies, we threw in some travel and medical events too!

New Bathrooms…

We were all wide awake by the time Joey called, told us about a fizzy sound behind his toilet, but not to worry. He was going to go back to bed and would call us when he got back up. Oh no ya don’t! Joey is on the third floor and we don’t need a trickle down effect, pun intended. I had always had the dream to set our kids up with their first places, not knowing how but just that I’d like to. It was my dream. After considering rent, it was still the better financial decision to get Joey a condo at the height of the market. We were fortunate enough to get him one of the biggest units with a garage for his precious car. We knew there may be some renovations down the line, but they happened this year because as it turns out, there was sprinkler plumbing instead of the good stuff. It needed to be replaced.  

New Living Spaces

It wasn’t too long there after that I got to noticing that Grayson, while he technically fit in his converted-from-the-crib toddler bed, he didn’t fit. And Grayson is of the large variety. He was 4 weeks early being delivered and came in at 8lbs. This is a large child. But do I just put in a twin sized bed? I mean, it could fit in the cubby we’d had him in. No, I decided in the long run we needed to get him a twin XL to continue to suit him for many years. But that bed wouldn’t fit and at the end of the day he needed his own room. Well this scenario turned into the Money Pit; you know the movie? 

One thing led to another which in the end was a bedroom big enough for two twin beds, a new kitchen, gas fireplace and gas line removed, new fridge, washer, dryer, and dishwasher. More appliances meant that if we were going to already be making a mess, we might as well make the biggest mess by adding more power to our electrical box! And now it is so nice and safe for them down there with more smoke detectors and a carbon monoxide detector. Abby said “You may not like this, but this is so nice I may never leave.” That was the point. I figured after 12 months we’d be revenue neutral versus moving her to a place of her own. Money well invested. 

But once Abby’s kitchen was done, Greg and I really wanted a nice beautiful fridge like Abby had bought herself. So we refaced the cabinets in the kitchen and got our new fridge, only to find this one couldn’t open just like our old one. So why not start another small renovation to adjust the wall to accommodate our new fridge? 

And Life, Oh My!

But if your grandchild isn’t moving for a while, you get them a playset for the backyard. Which of course meant a new fence! Got to keep the coyotes out and Grayson in. We managed to squeeze in a trip to England and a few other travel adventures. And then little baby Grayson had a few allergic reactions. That meant a few hospital visits and red allergy stickers all over the house to avoid more trips to the hospital.

But that’s all. LOL We had a full and busy year, can’t wait to see how we will thrive in 2025!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, we’re catching up with Monique H. who was a long standing Organize 365® member who went to work for that same community and has run the Sunday Basket Club for the last 7 years. Monique has so many fun projects in the works and we really wanted to talk about exploring new opportunities and reinventing yourself…what’s holding you back? 

Monique and I connected on a trip to a conference. Being in the car for a while gave us the opportunity to dive deep into each other’s lives and realize we were going through a lot of the same things. It’s funny how due to life circumstances you can be in a room full of people and still feel lonely. And we agree that’s what the Organize 365® communities offer, the opportunity to connect and know you aren’t alone in your “hard.” The opportunity to connect with other people experiencing your same struggles and find solutions. 

There is something about a face-to-face conversation and I desperately wanted that for Organize 365®, but I also knew what you do for one you have to do for all. In anticipation of Organize 365® growing, I knew not to offer that. I find myself having more authentic conversations when I know I’m not being recorded for, I don’t know…a podcast. My biggest struggle with offering face-to-face services was that my family needed me frequently. So when Covid made us all go virtual, it opened the door to explore the effectiveness of online offerings; it started with Monique leading a paper organizing retreat. What we found was some people didn’t have the ability to travel and they felt thankful and included by being able to attend virtually. We have been fortunate enough to fully develop each product line through online offerings. 

Monique has gone through many iterations during her career as an organizer. When she moved to Nashville, she decided to stop offering in-home organization. We talked about how different phases of life can change your bandwidth and with growth our desires of what we want to do for work changes. And as you are coming up with new services or products, it is so important we all remember our value. Like every time you leave your house, you are trading money for time with your family. Make sure it’s worth your family’s time for you to be gone. And over the years you have gained skills that are valuable. Monique gave permission to us all to pull out skills from our toolboxes that we have used and offered in the past. And that’s exactly what she’s up to now! 

She’s offering organization as a certified paper organizer. No shame in her game and no explanation needed. If it has made you money in the past and people still need or want it, pick it back up! Don’t let the things we have to maintain like our houses be a barrier to following your dreams. Monique stressed the importance of building the plane while you are flying it. Create, get feedback, iterate, repeat. It doesn’t have to be perfect! She’s helping other women to realize this through her coaching services. She’s helping women to see success with consistency in their actions in business and life. Get organized with Monique or any of the other certified organizers in the Organize 365® directory.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Paper Solution® Certified Organizer Directory

• Organizing Your Chaos with Monique

• 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!

This time of year we have a lot on our plates and a new perspective can always be helpful. I recorded this episode to give examples of what I presume is happening in all households, but in our minds we conjure up a totally different scenario. In this episode, I am talking about the homes with a married couple with children, which I realize is a small population, with lessons that anyone can apply to life.

Failed Delegation

I think it’s fair to say that no one is doing nothing in the house. Some people do less, like in my family, but my little Lisa heart is happy doing all the things, even at home. But when I do feel my capacity waning, I decide to delegate or delete since I know I can’t get it done. The other day Greg said, “You do a lot, let me do something for you. How can I help?” So I gave him a couple of small tasks and he asked for more. I thought I was giving him the task of getting the fence installed, but Greg thought it would be a collaborative effort. Then things were lost in communication or lack there of. The fresh perspective here is, if you delegate, delegate the whole task otherwise you end up micromanaging to ensure the task was completed!

Motivational Shift

In my studies I have come across this Self Determination Theory by Ryan and Deci. It explains the 6 levels of motivation. I chose Sunday dinner at our house to show the shift from Amotivation (total lack of motivation) up 4 levels to Integration Motivation (meaning in congruence of goals.)  When we started family dinner at our house, Greg was the cook and I felt obligated to help with some aspect of the meal (AKA Introjection Motivation - do it for approval of clothes-guilt). I would help with the salad and rolls thinking about how much the meal cost us and do the dishes because that’s how it was when I was a kid. Whoever didn’t cook, cleaned up.

Over time, it has become something that is a part of our family. It’s weird if due to a trip or another reason, we don’t have Sunday dinner. It’s like something is missing. At Sunday dinner I take care of the salad and rolls. I then clean up the dishes and get dessert ready. Identification Motivation - I do the salad, rolls, and dishes because you identify as the person in the family that does those things. My motivation changed. 

Not too long ago, I was blissfully washing dishes after Sunday dinner. My heart was so content with gratitude. It wasn’t because I got to wash dishes. It was because Sunday dinner started earlier due to a football game. We had appetizers on all the fun dishes we’ve collected over the past couple years. Grayson and our dog get so excited when Nana, Greg’s mom, comes over. I was washing the dishes we used to dish out the meal that Greg had cooked and it made him so happy. It’s great to have our children join us and sometimes their friends will join us, too. We all look forward to it and it’s rewarding to everyone. I now experience Integration Motivation, meaning it’s in congruence with our family’s (or a group's) goal. Our family’s goal is Sunday dinner.

As the household CEO, there’s always something to do. You need to decide to do it, delegate it or delete it. I’m always trying to gain perspective on why I do the things I do. I’m a fan of longevity and significance. I ask myself what is the significance of this task? How does it help others? Is it necessary? When I consider these questions I can make the decision on what to do about the task at hand, like going to the grocery store, delegating new tasks to a family member, or helping with Sunday dinner. It’ll give you a new perspective on that task! 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Organize 365® Podcast Resources

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, we’re back with part two of the conversation with my sister, Emily Kelly. The Kelly girls were known for providing good service. We knew good etiquette from all the parties mom threw and the ones we attended with mom and dad. I wanted to babysit for all the party going parents and Emily wanted to execute the parties they were attending. We didn’t have a lot of toys. Our mom paid us for 50 cent words (IYKYK, otherwise listen to the full episode) and took us on a lot of learning experiences. We weren’t your average kids. We were pretty mature. We learned from an early age about entrepreneurship and business. It’s really no surprise that today we are entrepreneurs.

As we mentioned in part one, EMK Incorporated has been reignited and provides household managerial support. To get started again, Emily shared that she made flyers for her condo complex and advertised in their newsletter what services she could offer. Then she worked on contacting her networking list. You could hold workshops at the library or speaking opportunities for people to get a quick win, like get some paper organized. Then you can explain that you do more. People know who you are and are more comfortable continuing to do business with you.  Emily didn’t promote her services on social media and you don’t have to either. She pointed out to let people know what you have to offer, have conversations about how you could help them, and let them know you will be there to help them when they are ready. She recognizes the emotional component to paper organizing and wants them to be ready. And due to her empathy and excellent results, she continues to get referrals and calls from people who are ready. 

It was funny when Emily started to tell me everything she’s been doing, I said “That’s The Paper Solution® Certification!" And as we think about that certification, I want you to think, are you short on time or money? If you say time, then think about what you could hire out to give yourself back some time. You can check the Certified Organizers on the Organize 365® website. If you say money, what tasks as a home manager are you already doing that you enjoy, that you could offer to do for someone else? That’s what Emily did when she offered to organize people, when she offered to watch their dogs, when she offered to make their scrapbooks. Eventually,  you could get certified and listed on the Organize 365® directory to get more clients. And as I pointed out, the Baby Boomer generation will be needing help with their paper as they age. And Gen X with fewer siblings and it being a small population compared to the generation before and after, will need help too. 

I’d love for the people who need help to easily access help through the directory. And people who need to make money, to help them get their paper organized. Click on the link below to check out the Professional Organizer’s Think Tank Podcast (now located in POTT Start) to learn how I started my in-home organizing business so you can get started, too. I just have this vision, wouldn’t it be cool if it was common to have paper organizing workshops or retreats going on all over the nation all the time? It’s your time to get certified and use your skills to do what you are uniquely created to do.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution® Certification

• Certified Organizer Directory

• POTT Start

• EMK Incorporated

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

I’m  super excited to announce a tiny baby step we have been able to take at Organize 365®. This coffee chat explains all the hoops we have jumped through to get this accomplished. If you are international, you can now participate in Planning Day for Home or Work or Both! We’ve been testing the direct shipping process and have had great success with the planning day workbooks. 

You guys…something changed in 2019 and we have been working behind the scenes since then trying to make headway on shipping our products directly to you instead of through a parcel forwarder. And it’s pretty quick. We are so excited to have you join us for Workbox Planning Day at the beginning of December and Home Planning Day at the end of December. 

We have been having conversations with all kinds of shipping companies trying to avoid extra shipping costs. As of right now, if your country is part of UPS World Wide, you will go to international planning day to purchase work or home. You will also be able to purchase the subscription which will save you 20%. 

I am so excited! I hope you are so excited! We are working with UPS World Wide and I have listed the 50 countries that can participate in the upcoming Planning Days in December!!!

This is just the beginning! We are excited about being able to ship even more items in 2025!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• International Shipping - Planning Day Subscriptions

• CustomerService@organize365.com

• 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.

Lucky! That’s all I have to say about all the gaps in insurance I found out about recently. You see, when your insurance guy retires it forces you to look at your policies. I had an eye opening little string of insurance mishaps that will have me thoroughly going through our binders and policies this winter. These are my cautionary tales so you don’t find yourself over or underinsured.

The Retirement Party

So our State Farm agent tells us he’s retiring and invites us to his party to celebrate. When I asked him what was going to happen to my 11 policies, he suggested I meet all the other agents that were there. I was bamboozled into attending so I could find a new agent. Oh no, no! I asked people that I trust who they use and found my own new State Farm agent. I had all my policies transferred over to him and asked to review the policies and make sure we were all set. 

Paper Validates What You Say

You know how I always say that physical paper validates what you say when you are in the doctor’s office? Well now I can share how it works with the Financial Binder, too! I actually have a business binder. So when said new agent came, he discovered I didn’t have business insurance. But I could have sworn I already had it. Once he asked me the questions to set up a new policy, I KNEW I already had it! Once I finally remembered to check the business binder at home, I found it. I showed it to the new agent. And putting two and two together, we discovered the first policy was in the business name and I had only transferred my personal policies. Now to find that missing bond. The paper validated what I said. I was able to void the second policy and that saved me $2700!

Poor Abby

I don’t know how, but in all of this reviewing of policies it was revealed that I had not added Abby as a driver to our policy. So in the event there had been an accident, the car would have been covered, but not her medical expenses. FIVE YEARS! For five years, Abby has been driving around completely uninsured! I added Joey, but total household manager fail, I did not add Abby. As the COO of this house, I missed crossing this “t.”

2024: The Year of Overcommitting

You know we have remodeled and upgraded things around the house so much this year. Which also means we opened a few lines of credit and that led to the question, how much is our mortgage? Greg had one number and I had one $200 less! How could that be? The bank statements showed we were both right, but that made me have a lot of questions. The State Farm agent was able to explain that, ever since we purchased Joey’s condo (which was underinsured), we’ve been paying escrow but we have never escrowed!  So we had to get that all straightened out, too. 

Even the Best Fall Down Sometimes

I discovered incorrect beneficiaries. We added Greg to all the Organize 365® accounts because I was the only signer on those accounts. I mean, I had my eyes opened to so much; you’ve got to listen to the full episode to hear all the things. As much as you may feel you are set for today, are you “set” for the future? It just goes to show no one has it all together. With that being said, at the end of the day it’s up to you as the household manager to dot all the “i’s” and cross the “t’s” because no one cares what you intended to do. It’s up to you to make sure the paperwork is correct. Do you know that song “Collide” by Howie Day? All I can think of is the line in that song that says “Even the best fall down sometimes.” Did you sing it? LOL Yes, even Lisa with Organize 365® can fall sometimes. But I am back up and ready to take on whatever “blessings” life gives me.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, the Emily Kelly, my sister, is back! It’s been a minute since her raving Organize 365® fans have been caught up on what Emily Kelly is up to these days. Put your surprised faces on when I tell you she’s back to being an entrepreneur. BUT she has not settled on just one and I think that is so important to spotlight. Many Americans have a 9 to 5 and a side hustle. Or many people like Emily find purpose and passion and excel in multiple areas. “A man of many talents rarely goes hungry.” Such a valid point in today’s economy.

Emily was ready to be done at her previous employer and they were ready to part ways, too. She brought up a good point; based on my past experience, America is set up for married people. When you are single, it’s scary to leave a steady position. There is no one else to fill in any financial gaps. I had the opportunity to explore what I was uniquely created to do because I had Greg, my husband, supporting our family. We discussed how, just because inflation goes crazy, doesn’t mean your salary goes up with it. I shared the gas stipend I gave to full time Organize 365® employees when gas prices went so crazy in 2022. For some people, just coming to work was a huge inconvenience due to gas prices. 

So she has officially fired up EMK Incorporated which is business-to-client relationships. She takes care of anything within your home. People have commented to her that it’s good to see her working for herself again and I agree. Emily has a natural skill to build relationships in person. It’s a dying art. Relationships are built on trust. Trust will never be replaced with a higher commodity. Relationships are free and your long term investment of time and effort will last a lot longer than ads. And with all the relationships she’s built and maintained, she was able to get clients started and start a few businesses on the right path, too. 

Cue Emily’s other company Rainmaker, a marketing agency and fractional CMO services, which is business-to-business relationships. She enjoys teaching business owners to fish rather than just giving them the fish. There are so many nuances to marketing and Emily is happy to do the work for them. But she’s just as happy to show her clients the ropes and understand how to focus on what makes their business unique and who they are targeting those messages to. She’s helping them to look at what they have to offer in print, person, on land, and online to see what marketing makes sense for their business. 

And she’s launched Rainmaker Academy! It’s a 6-week comprehensive program to really learn the ins and outs of marketing. She’ll be offering each week individually so business owners don’t have to commit to 6 weeks and they can learn the skills they are looking for. It is a well rounded explanation of all things marketing for a business owner. She and her panel of experts are explaining things like identifying your vision, SEO, successful sales strategy, promotional items, merchandise to sell, and it all ends with a celebration! 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution® Certification Course

• EMK Incorporated

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

I’m excited to announce that The Productive Home Solution® Certification is here! Way back when I started the company, I could foresee that the community would grow and I would not have the bandwidth to provide one-to-one or small group training that most people crave. Once I realized that organization was a learnable skill, I started honing in a way to train others online. When I saw so many MLM and Direct Marketing companies go out of business, I knew this was the time to open certification at this level. It was originally an initiative for 2025, but the market is providing the demand now. I wanted to offer a license that would allow you to offer a class or workshop where people can get to know you and then take advantage of your full range of offerings. They may attend to learn how to organize a child’s room and then see you offer in-home organizing or some related services.

Win-Win-Win

In Organize 365®, I always want it to be a win-win-win scenario for you, the certified organizers, and Organize 365®. In this episode, I shared the evolution of my thinking and how we got to here today with this offering. You win because we have a plethora of certified organizers to help you. And if you are looking for an income opportunity, this may be a fit for you.

Certified organizers win because they get all the great products, training, and this opens the door for potential clients to get to know you because we like to do business with people we know, like, and trust. Do you think someone will just let you into their home and expose you to all their personal spaces if they don’t know you? Likely, not. You also will earn 30% off all purchases made through your affiliate link, but that is not the main avenue that we expect you’ll make an income. As I shared from all my days in direct sales, most don’t make money. I want you to make money. It has also been our experience that our certified organizers get a majority of their clients through the directory. Someone has bought the product and now just needs a person to help them or motivate them.

Obviously, Organize 365® wins because product is sold, but more importantly there is help for everyone. There can be one-to-one help. There is a directory that will continue to fill up with certified organizers in your area that can help you with your Sunday Basket® in a way that I cannot anymore. We are excited you will get your questions answered in a timely manner. And we know for a fact that when people get organized, it frees them up to explore what they are uniquely created to do.  

What Questions Do You Have? 

December 20th, I will be live answering your questions. Please submit questions in advance to certification@organize365.com. Submit them now so I can get them answered on Friday the 20th at 10:30-11:30a Eastern. Once I have finished the live Q&A, we will get replays out to the people who submitted a question. 

What is the Process? 

Complete the online courses through your dashboard. Take a quiz at the end to make sure you understand what we say you are certified to teach. Get HIPPA training (about a $35 fee) because after all, you are dealing with sensitive paperwork and we want you to feel comfortable with how to process it. If you decide to attend the paper organizing retreat in July, you will then be added to the Organize 365® directory of certified organizers. There is a $475 annual licensing fee. 

What’s Included? 

Teal Sunday Basket - including access to dashboard, course, and club

The Paper Solution® Book and 4 The Paper Solution® Binders again with access to dashboard, course, and club

Warrior Mama Binder

Slash Pockets

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Additional Certifications: The Productive Home Solution®, Business Friday Workbox®, Launch and Kids Program, and Education Friday Workbox®

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• CustomerService@organize365.com

• The Paper Solution Certification®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

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

By the end of this summer, I knew my trains were not running at full speed. But what had happened? How did I get off course? Even ultra productive people can have seasons that get the better of them. I can’t believe how much I accomplished in spite of feeling less productive.  It was one of those seasons where one project led to another and no other area of life helped the situation.

2024: The Year of Overcommitting

It all started in February with Joey’s condo needing new plumbing, which led to the perfect time to redo his shower. Then Abby’s shower was suspected to have mold and that meant another bathroom remodel. And if we were opening that can of worms, then we wanted to add on an official bedroom for our giant toddler grandchild, Grayson. This kid needed a bigger bed and his own little apartment within his mom’s apartment. And while we were doing all of that, it just made sense to give Abby a proper kitchen, minus an oven. Which meant we needed to upgrade our electrical panel for the house. All these projects were supposed to be completed in time for Greg and I’s trip to Europe. But you know, permits and whatever, it kept getting delayed. So we decided to take care of all of Abby’s stuff when we got back. Who wants to be in contact with a contractor while on vacation? Not me! 

And then there was school demanding more of my time. And a little extra pressure from my family. I had started to do school work at the office because “little baby Grayson” now knows that if my car is home, Lovie is home. And normally Greg wouldn’t care if I was not home because he’d be golfing. But due to shoulder surgery in December, he wasn’t playing golf. Needless to say, everyone was verbal about noticing I wasn’t home as much. I also may have had 3 classes this summer instead of 2 like I’d done in the past; I want to get through this PhD already! I like when my time is at my discretion. I had this productivity debt starting to accumulate and no time to make any of it up, even at work. I could not catch a break!  And believe it or not, we decided to do a little something to our own kitchen, treat Grayson to a playground set for his birthday, which obviously meant a fence, but first we had to take down a shed and a tree. And I was so excited when WOW Window Boxes were at Homearama, we got one of those, too! Like, who am I coordinating all of these projects that normally would have taken me 4 years? It felt good to take some things off the “some day list.”

What I Did

I give myself credit for prioritizing tasks this whole time and knowing what can wait. And nightly planning of the most important tasks that need to be accomplished the next day. I exercised planned neglect, like eating out during the kitchen “remodeling” in my kitchen. And ruthlessly going through my calendar. And once you have survived one of these challenging seasons, the trick is to reflect and realize how much stronger you are because of it. Realize the lessons.

Blessings

Upon reflection of this season, I was overwhelmed with the amount of blessings this season provided. I’m very blessed in my life and that is not lost on me. These were all blessings slowing me down and it’s a season I’m happy to be coming out of so I can get back to being ultra productive. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Friday Workbox®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Christine F. who lives with her daughter and their dog. Christine was listening to “The Art of Decluttering” in May 2023 and heard me speaking about ADHD. Her daughter had just been diagnosed so Christine’s ears perked up. Christine, in education for the past 26 years but currently a counselor for seniors, just kept listening, thinking “Wow, that’s a lot!” 

But January 2024 was a turning point for Christine when suddenly she couldn’t get enough of the podcast because there was an episode about The Paper Solution® Binders. She had been watching her stepmother settle her father’s estate and realized the value of the binders and how these systems helped life. How valuable it could have been if her father had the Financial Binder.

In March 2024, it really clicked as the school pilot programs were being discussed on the podcast about the Education Workboxes. She took the plunge and ordered the Sunday Basket® and Teacher Friday Workbox®. Being a counselor of seniors (who were preparing to graduate and it was nearing the end of the school year) and getting ready to transition to a different teaching position, this gave her order and a system. In her desperation to survive and function, she saw the light of what the Teacher Friday Workbox® could do and that provided motivation to get so much completed so quickly. No one could see how frazzled she was on the inside, but now she had found internal organization.

Shortly thereafter, she purchased everything. She’d always been fairly organized, but she realized she’d been missing systems. Christine is visual so it’s best if things are left out so she can see them to remember to take care of them. A friend of hers even noticed a difference in Christine. She no longer had a messy desk. All of her paper had a home and it was accounted for weekly. She loves that she can grab and go. If she has an IEP meeting, she can bring just the slash pocket. And the “Waiting For” slash pocket has been a game changer for her! 

Since the other systems were proven, she decided to go to a Home Planning Day. The biggest take away for her was the number of different ways you look at your time in Home Planning Day. It was clear to her why she could never get all the Sunday tasks done. She changed the timing of some tasks and switched others to different days. Now she gets to enjoy Sunday. It’s a resetting of your time and expectations every 120 days, not the rest of your life. There are different energies at different times of the year. Christine knows she’ll accomplish nothing in August and now she won’t even try after knowing that and planning accordingly. Now she has more time and bandwidth.

Christine’s advice is, “Trust the system and just get all of it. If you can only start small, start with the Sunday Basket®. But really, if you get the whole system it can literally organize your entire life.” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• Teacher Friday Workbox®

• Organize 365® Home Planning Day

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

It’s time for the last three planning days Organize 365® will offer this year. You are probably thinking “Oh, come on! How much more could we plan the holidays?” So much more! So many layers to planning!!

Holiday Blitz Mini Planning Day

Think of the Holiday Blitz Mini Planning Day like a taste of what we do in the Planning Days for Home and the Friday Workbox®. You will download the workbook and join the webinar. I start with having you think, what do you want the holidays to look like for YOU? Why are you doing what you are doing? Do you like the things you are doing for the holidays? Are there traditions or tasks others enjoy doing that you don’t? Could they take them over? You are going to decide if you can adjust expectations, do housework less frequently during this time, how you want to spend this time during the holidays. Where do you have room to accomplish all your goals for the holidays and have fun? My words for the Holiday Blitz Mini Planning Day are Projects and Play!! And how can you monopolize on Black Friday to keep your supply chain stocked while saving money? 

The Sunday Basket® is a system that hopefully you have used and have seen the time savings on a weekly basis. And you know it’s a replicable system to run your home and delay decision making. But by this time, your Sunday Basket® is bursting at the seams so it’s time to get the Holiday Blitz Bundle, a Hunter Green Sunday Basket® and Sapphire Blue Sunday Basket® and a set of Rainbow 1.0 Slash Pockets, to set aside paperwork for 2025 and keep holiday actionable papers at the forefront to execute the holidays the way you want to. 

Friday Workbox® Planning Day

With the year winding down, all critical work should be done by November 21st because people are going to start mentally checking out. So with that in mind, no meetings are going to be terribly productive so take the time to plan 2025…the first quarter, anyway. Scratch the itch to plan by attending Friday Workbox® Planning Day on December 6th. I have recorded new videos that you can start watching as soon as you get signed up to prepare for this planning day.  Prep your calendars, revisit all your administration work in the green slash pockets, update any systems to start 2025 feeling prepared to be ultra productive. 

Home Planning Day Prep & Home Planning Day 

We will have Home Planning Day Prep on December 27th. The first hour you will process through your holiday basket which we will transition to a tax basket. And you will combine the sapphire basket back to your regular Sunday Basket®. And all the archive papers will go into your The Paper Solution® Binders, keeping them up to date.

The 4 hour live webinar for Home Planning Day is on Saturday, December 28th. We will be planning the next 120 days, 4 months of your household manager responsibilities, your small business. Lots of new videos for this planning day, too! Joey even put together a playlist so you can get started watching videos and listening to the podcast just as soon as you are registered.

I try to be your economic forecaster, giving awareness to upcoming events that may catch you off guard otherwise. Each 120 days that we plan for in Home Planning Day have different energies. Think of any Golden Windows you may have coming up. Is this the time to plan on a meaty project? You will ask yourself, what are the advantages and limitations of the current season of life that you are in? We spend a lot of time analyzing your time! Breaking it down and looking at multiple ways you could be using it. You will create routines for morning, afternoon and evening for Monday through Friday and for the weekend. Our Saturday and Sunday energy is different, too! 

Won’t you join me in my maze of planning days?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Holiday Blitz Mini Planning Day

• Holiday Blitz Bundle

• Friday Workbox® Planning Day

• Organize 365 Home Planning Day Prep & Home Planning Day

• The Paper 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!

In this episode, I reintroduce you to Lorie G. Lorie lives with her dad but still has her own place, too. I hope you remember previous episodes with Lorie. There were some fun things going on in her and her dad’s life that I thought would be fun to share with you!

Lorie and her 95 year old dad decided to take a trip from southern California to Dallas to see family. Lorie was so prepared. She created a whole binder for the trip complete with daily itineraries, pre-selected outfits, and medical information about her father. Lorie had created a little to-go packet (small version of the The Paper Solution® Medical Binder) that was more convenient to travel with. Lorie noted that all this planning allowed her to be present on the trip. But nothing could have prepared them for all the car troubles they encountered. She was thankful they traveled with cash because that was the only way to pay the tow truck out in the middle of the desert. 

In the Medical Binder, Lorie keeps a vitals check tracker sheet she made. We both agreed it’s important to know what is normal for the person you help care for. Let’s say she brings her dad in and his blood pressure is high. It might be high for the average person, but she has physical evidence showing a history of this being his normal. Lorie knew something was off with her dad one morning before one of his appointments. She called ahead to tell the doctor, they called ahead to the hospital, and Lorie brought his Medical Binder. Her dad asked why and she said just because she wanted to. If they needed paperwork, she’d have it. In the past they have not been able to access test results, but Lorie has had the physical copy. And there’s something to be said for a doctor to look at the paperwork and be able to carry on a conversation with you, too. But sure enough, unbeknownst to him, he needed to go to the hospital and they were already expecting him. It was a smooth transfer all because Lorie knew what was normal for her dad. 

Lorie loves her dad dearly and keeping him in top shape is what she’s doing. She took a room that wasn’t being utilized well and turned it into a “fun zone” with wellness stations to encourage him to move. Lorie put a tv in so they could do workouts together; he’s got a recumbent bike, tension bands, and room to stretch. 

Along with movement, Lorie makes sure she and her dad eat well. Back when she was a teacher and had an hour commute, she’d be too tired to cook when she got home. This birthed “Crazy Cooking Day.” Much like how I like to get all my machines working for me at one time, Lorie gets her crock pot, insta-pot, stove top, and oven all working at the same time. In 4 hours, she can prep up to 60 meals for them to eat well for awhile. She makes individual servings. And she saves money by bulking up on sale items that go into those dishes. She’s mentioned it many times in the Organize 365® community app - go look for the directions. And if it’s a going out night, they just scratch off a circle from the sheet Lorie made to see what restaurant they are going to! Lorie created one for field trips too so they can get movement somewhere other than just the fun zone.

Lorie’s advice is, “The Medical Binder is critical for everyone in your family.” And I added that it may just be you who needs one. If something happens to you, then your family has all the pertinent information. If you are adopted like Lorie, it’s even more valuable. It’s so important for us to know our own medical data to be more participatory with our wellness/illnesses course of action.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

I’ve stopped apologizing for my natural energy that drives me to want to be productive. And I want the same for you. Ultra productive people are so proactive that they have a plan B, C, D, and so on. They are prepared to zig, zag, and pivot at a moment’s notice whenever plans change.

What Do You Do Now? 

Ultra productive people capture all their ideas for a rainy day (eh hum, pink work). For me, that “rainy day” came this year when I was supposed to have jury duty. I went through my slash pockets and planned all those tasks for the week(s) I knew I was going to have jury duty. If I didn’t get summoned, I had work to do but it didn’t need to get done. When I arrived at the courthouse, they announced there would be no case and we were absolved from the remaining two days that week. If this happened to you, what would you do? I think a lot of people sit in “I don’t know what to do” and the day gets wasted. I however, thought through my options and decided going into work and finishing some important administrative tasks was the most beneficial use of my time. 

When I was still doing in home organization. I developed an A/B schedule. It never failed that a client would cancel. I wouldn’t know what to do because I had planned on working. So my day would go to waste. That is, until I came up with what I needed to do on the days I wasn’t scheduled for out of the house work and days I worked from home. If an out of the house day became a work from home day, I knew exactly what I needed to do. It was like my plan B. 

Time for Everyone Including Me

Seems like the mom is always offering to help and pour into their family, but does the family ask the same to the mom? No. It’s just facts, I think. So go ahead and pour into yourself too!  I am pouring into me the same way I pour into them. I think about my time A LOT! I think about tomorrow, the week, the month, the next 6 months. I look at my color coded calendar and make sure everyone I love is getting time, that I have set aside enough time for the PhD and work, and now I include ME!  

Sunday Basket®/Friday Workbox® Love

I have bountiful pink slash pockets. I have a lot of house projects, trips I want to take, and things I want to try/do. They are in a safe place, the Sunday Basket® for my house and the Friday Workbox® for work ideas. Greg and I went to Home-A-Rama and there we saw Wow Window Boxes. I knew all about Wow Window Boxes because it’s been tucked away in my Sunday Basket® since 2017 when I had received an estimate. I spilled the beans that I was going to ask for it for Christmas. Much to my surprise, Greg said we could do it now. So we did it in time for Thanksgiving!!  

You know when you have a plan for your day and then something takes it off track? I always struggle with how annoying it is. But then, I dig into my Sunday Basket® or the Friday Workbox® and there are all my ideas and slash pockets waiting to be executed. They turn into my plan B, C, or sometimes D. I have proactively filed them away in the correct slash pocket, then I can decide how much time I have and what kind of energy I am feeling.

These are just a few ways I am unapologetically proactive so I can be ultra productive. For my family and Organize 365®, I am where work comes from. I love it. I am uniquely created to help others become ultra productive, too! 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Friday Workbox®

• Podcast 10 Year Anniversary Giveaway 

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Mary H. who is married with two sons and a dog. Mary has always been a fairly organized person, but she was looking for productivity tips. She listened to “Best of Both Worlds” and heard about the Sunday Basket®, but first invested in The Productive Home Solution®. 

On her 40th birthday, she was ready to burn it all down. There was a lot of change from switching up her position at work, to the world coming out of Covid, to retiring from a side business. She decided to revisit old podcast episodes. She was looking for new ways to do things. Before, when Mary had heard about the Sunday Basket®, she questioned, “Why would you delay what you can do today?” But after revisiting the podcast and trying new ways, she experienced the benefits. When her husband mentioned taking the boys mini golfing, she was able to help him locate the free round of golf she knew she had. It was a win-win. She could easily tell him where it was and they got to use the coupon.  

When we started recording, Mary shared she was packing for a Make-A-Wish trip granted to her son. Her son has recently recovered from cancer. But we talked about that unsure time and the systems Mary had in place to keep her son comfortable and her family going. When her son was diagnosed they gave her a binder, but Mary added useful things like checklists and it took the place of a would be Medical Binder. I just had to reference one of mine the other day. How cool is it that information from 20 years ago can help us make informed decisions for today and the future?  

Mary also invested in the Kids Program. She admits her kids haven’t participated so much in learning, but it has helped her understand how to facilitate them decluttering and organizing. She used the system 1) to keep the item and keep it in his room, 2) to say the child wants to keep it but not in their room, and 3) to toss or donate. Mary and her son were surprised with how much he got rid of. They were able to donate those toys to another child. 

Mary is thankful for the voice of reason through the podcast to focus on the important stuff and continually be thinking of how to always be improving. Mary has always been good to take time for herself, but she can enjoy it now without guilt knowing all the things will get done. She wishes she’d valued trying things in different ways. Just because one way works doesn't mean another way could be even better and more efficient. While she admits she hasn’t used all of the products to their fullest potential, she’s found immense benefit from the items she’s purchased and all of the free content constantly offered from Organize 365®. 

Mary’s advice is, “Don’t be afraid to invest in all of the Organize 365® stuff.” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• The Paper Solution®

• Organize 365® Kids 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!

I recently hosted this webinar for those of you who have been displaced by a direct sales company closing their doors or anyone else looking for a new opportunity. In my years of being a household manager, a profitable direct sales team leader, and now running Organize 365®, I realized how similar running a house and running a business are when it comes to the significance of systems. I know recently some direct sales companies have closed their doors or have announced they will soon. There are three ways I shop and I’m sure you do, too ... Amazon, an ad on social media recommends something, or a friend mentions a product and you order it. After Covid, we never really went back to shopping at the in-home parties. People seem to purchase directly from the company and it’s collapsing the direct sales model.

Revenue 

I started in Mary Kay and then tried my hand, successfully I might add, in many other direct sales companies; twenty three to be exact! In talking to my teams, it became clear they weren’t making much money and some weren’t making any. You see, you are the direct sales company customer and your customers are your customers. They market to you the consultant with all the latest and greatest products. You stock up in hopes of sales that lots of times never happen. Then you are left with last season’s products. I started teaching my teams how to be profitable. Profitability gets your spouse’s “buy-in” and you get to keep doing the thing. I’ve explained a lot of Lisa Math or Economics to my teams, which I did in this episode too. Too much to fit in here; definitely give this a listen. You have to be profitable to call it work or a business. Not how much have you sold or what work activities you have completed. In whatever company has recently made announcements about closing their doors, were you profitable?

This coffee chat is for the consultant that is displaced and wondering what’s next? I want to say from the bottom of my heart, you are amazing. This is happening for you not to you! Second, get all the emails you can from your current clients. Get the last orders you can and continue to grow those relationships and your unique personal brand. We buy from people we like. Yes, they like the product, but they are buying from you because they like you. After the final days, just enjoy the holidays. Enjoy your family. You are going to be ok! I wanted to get this information out to help you understand the market shifts and how to make an informed decision on your next move. I’d love for you to consider gaining certification to be an organizer through Organize 365®. 

What do you want? 

End of the year may be the perfect time to attend a planning day and get a plan in action for 2025. If you were making money in the previous company, what were those funds going to? What are you willing to do to replace that income? Clean houses? Tutor? Think of what services you could offer for $40/hour. Once you know how much you need weekly or monthly, you can figure out how many hours or services you need to complete. And then you can start to focus on what you are uniquely created to do which may not be the products you were previously selling. You can explore all of that in Planning Day.

Community 

People feel lonely and isolated. We all want community and connection. This is something Organize 365® can readily provide. If you know you were uniquely created to help others get organized, please consider getting certified. This is not direct sales or multi-level marketing. It’s a license you receive with affiliate commissions. We offer community through the app, others who are certified and our retreats. I loved the retreats and the women I was doing business alongside and I want that for people in Organize 365®, too. 

In my opinion, hands down, community is the most difficult to grow or replace. Like minded people who resonate around one product and where you can authentically be yourself. You can grow your community in groups of people with the same interest as yourself, church, or maybe the parents of the kids on your child’s sports team. I can’t wait to hear what everyone does who is facing a new opportunity!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Organize 365® Home Planning Day

• The Paper Solution® Certification

• CustomerService@organize365.com

• 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.

Ultra productive people think about time differently and likely have kids that are older and are not totally dependent on them. When you are aware of HOW time passes, you can be very intentional and that results in productivity on a whole other level. I wanted to share how a normal person, a productive person, and an ultra productive person sees time. 42% of our lives are lived habitually. Ultra productive people audit their habits to support their goals to accomplish them faster. 

One Day

A normal person has a general idea of how their day will go and they’ll try to check everything off the to-do list that never gets done. A productive person usually has a morning and night time routine that is habitual - they’re on autopilot. They have all of their work on their calendar, too. 

However, an ultra productive person will have reviewed the plans the night before and have overarching goals for each day. I shared that mine are Monday/Thursday/Saturday; I am focused on the PhD. If a little free time comes my way on one of those days, I will do something to move my studies forward. Tuesday and Wednesday are for Organize 365®. Fridays are catch all to take care of loose ends or finish a task that kept getting pushed off earlier in the week. And Sundays are for family. However, if football is on I know I am off the hook and I can do something I’d like to do, like a puzzle or whatever. 

One Week

Now let’s look at the differences when it comes to one week. Normal people are looking for anything out of the ordinary that may be coming up. Productive people know how to accurately anticipate how long tasks will take them and schedule the work accordingly. 

But next level, ultra productive people have everything on their calendars. They have reviewed the week and are prepped and ready. They know drive time, how long breakfast takes, if they have time to start a new task, where they can squeeze in a bathroom break, when they are paying bills, and things like how much time they spend with their families. This also allows flexibility because they know how long things take and what they can squeeze into small pockets of time that become available, possibly something from next week to get further faster.  

One Month

Again, a normal person is going to look for anything special, out of the ordinary that they will need to plan, like birthdays, holidays, or meetings. This person also has a monthly grocery list and to-do list and chores. 

An ultra productive person is aware of the energy of that time of year. Summer may not be the best time for a remodel with the kids home. Or maybe it is because you can play outside. They think ahead of ways to reduce anxiety. Are trips scheduled too close? Do you have the right balance of activities to keep your kids happy? Before amazon, I’d buy the kids things from their wish lists to avoid the stress of trying to find it at a good price during Black Friday or, heaven forbid, telling the kids the store sold out. 

Two Months/Quarterly

Some months lump together. A great example is November and December. Just look at those two months like an 8-week month. Which leads me to the planning days that we do three times a year. That’s the cycle because that’s how the energy is broken up. Three mini years, LOL. We plan for the most productive weeks and the holidays/winter being September to December, then January to  April where you may plan a spring break trip or a house project, and then May to August, when the kids are out of school and it’s summer. Tag you’re it, the camp counselor; hope you planned on it! But you also consider time. Does Monday to Friday look different than Saturday or Sunday? Do you need to change chores to a different day? Will you be experiencing a Golden Window? When we understand time, we can better plan to get ultra productive. And that’s why we prep planning day and have planning day. 

Food for thought until next week - I got called into jury duty. Right before we were to be seated, we were notified the parties had reached a settlement and we were done for the day and actually the next two days; so basically three days. What would you do if you got all that time back? 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Sunday Basket® Weekly Planning Sheet

• Rainbow Weekly Planning Sheet

• Rainbow 52 Week Planner

• The Productive Home Solution® Monthly Planning Sheet

• 2 Year Dated Planning Calendar (through 2026)

• Organize 365® Home Planning Day

• Podcast 10 Year Anniversary Giveaway

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Ashley M. who is married and has two little boys running around the house. Ashley, an executive director of a Montessori teacher education program, has always been a fairly organized person and interested in efficiency. But when she stumbled upon Organize 365® in the fall of 2022, she was interested in productivity. She’d been listening to the Best Laid Plans Podcast and had read The Paper Solution book, both of which mention the Sunday Basket®. Ashley loves to read and one Organize 365® product led to another; she enjoys the podcast, too!

Ashley found peace in letting the Sunday Basket® be her external brain. She noted as moms, there’s constantly a lot coming at you because you are caring for a lot of heartbeats. She also has The Paper Solution® Binders which is what Ashley valued the most because again as moms, there is a lot of paperwork. She likes that with the Sunday Basket® she is only dealing with actionable paperwork. She knows all of her ideas have been captured and can be revisited later. Ashley also pointed out that the Sunday Basket® helps her to execute big plans as well as daily life tasks; and the fact that it grows with your family.

In 2021, they bought a larger home and then she had her second son. With the Sunday Basket®, you just add a slash pocket for a new child or sport. And in the binders, you add traditions or health progress as the children grow. I also pointed out that you can do the same if you start caring for a family member. It’s customizable for the phase of life you are in. Again, that’s why we do Home Planning Day, to adjust.

And the same thing holds true for The Productive Home Solution®. Ashley has established a lunch/treat station so she doesn’t have to think so much about it when preparing lunches. With Ashley’s husband being taller, she’s placed the items he uses in the higher cabinets. And for her one year old, his sippy cups are lower, which adds to efficiency in their kitchen. Efficiency is a muscle Ashley has been growing as she has become aware of patterns and cycles. She loves that all the products together remind her when to think about what; like reminders about dentist visit times, household chores, traditions for holidays, and even a special birthday treat that she’d probably otherwise forget about. 

Ashley said that if she feels at peace, then she knows she can do something for herself with any extra time. But if she’s feeling chaos creep in, she knows she can easily get back on track with a little tidying or planning. Or she can look at her calendar and decide what she wants to “put back” and tackle another time. She has so much more calm and confidence that she’s keeping track of things. There’s more space for dreaming now that she’s out of survival mode. She’s thankful the system just works and there’s no need for rewriting it, no improvements needed.

Ashley’s advice is, “You can get on the other side outside of anxiety, chaos, and overwhelm with Organize 365®” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• Organize 365® Home Planning Day

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

Hurricanes get a lot of my attention. I think about the people affected, how I can help them, and of course praying for them. I cannot wrap my mind around rebuilding a home, a life.  If I’d had the time for Helene, I would have offered child care services so parents could have a break. Instead an opportunity presented itself.

#PostANeed

I’ve been following a few people on Instagram to get first hand accounts of how the conditions are, the challenges, and how they are coping day to day. But then, in the Sunday Basket® Club there was a single mom who was sharing her story. She shared how she had no cash, no stove, her SNAP card didn’t work to get food, winter is upon her and her children, no heat yet. One mom replied from one single mom to another. Everyone responded to her post asking how they could help. This is what that community is, positive, supportive, and encouraging. I mean, everyone in the Sunday Basket® Club is invested in personal development and decluttering their homes. I thought, “What if the things we would normally donate locally, we could ship to people in need?” 

#FillANeed

She asked for a camp stove and another member replied she could get her one! She didn't have one to donate, but wanted to help, so she purchased one instead. To her surprise upon checkout, Amazon offered her $150 if she got the credit card. She did and she was able to supply three cans of gas, too! We used to call the members Sunday Basket® Sisters. So we’ve decided to use the #’s #postaneed #fillaneed #sundaybasketsisters #donations #hurricane

There are simple rules on how to conduct filling a wish in the Sunday Basket® Club. Please note this is not just for people affected by Helene.

Please feel free to share one post to share your story about your needs, and then every single need needs to be an individual post.

• In the individual post, please specify exactly what you need.

• Then, if someone can fulfill that need from their storage, feel free to reply to the post and send a DM to the person who has the need.

• Exchange addresses for shipping in direct messages and then go back into the post when the item is shipped to let the recipient know that you have shipped the item.

• Once the item is received, please delete the post so that we only have posts of items that still need to be received.

• If you find a post that already has someone fulfilling that request, you can also fill that request. Go ahead and list yourself as a secondary backup in case anything happens in the first case.

I really hope it works, but I have no idea if it will. I just know that I really want to do something meaningful, and this community of 10,000 members is so powerful.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• CustomerService@organize365.com

• 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.

Ultra productive people act in real life how normal people act before they go on vacation. Before you go on vacation, you think about your paid work and how to set your business up for success in your absence. I know before we go on vacation, we have checklists for packing. It’s this constant anticipation of roadblocks. I shared some examples to give real life instances when anticipating roadblocks has come into play. 

Roadblocks

One roadblock I have gotten used to encountering is jury duty; I have been summoned like 8-10 times. Tip: This last time I was summoned for the dates while we were supposed to be in London, but then I saw a “pick your dates” button. Once I knew the dates, I started to delay administrative tasks in anticipation of jury duty. I am careful to still fill up my calendar during jury duty possible dates, but I have the mindset that, if they get done, it’s a bonus and if not, that’s ok too. I schedule things like cleaning up my inbox and admin tasks; it’s kind of fun because I don’t normally have time to do those kinds of things. 

Moving Without Moving

I’ve not moved from my physical address for decades, but in that time I have moved a lot. 2024 has become the year of remodeling. When your kid calls at 6:30am and says a pipe is making a hissing sound but he’s going to go back to sleep, you say no! It was simply time to replace the pipes. And while we were at it, the bathroom makeover I wanted to do one day became now. I anticipated the hardwood floors getting ruined so I threw out a crazy solution and the plumber was able to execute it. I also knew it was going to take longer than quoted because it just usually does.

Then baby Grayson grew and grew and grew and now he can no longer use a toddler bed/mattress. He’s going to keep growing so we looked at our basement and reimagined the space to include a room for Grayson. The way the floor plan worked out, it lends itself to a galley kitchen. It was kind of like that movie “The Money Pit” where one repair led to another. Next, we upgraded our electrical panel to accommodate all the new appliances. It was originally scheduled to happen before and during our trip to London; I said no way. I anticipated that if the contractor needed me, how it could cut into our vacation. Also by delaying it, Abby would be out for summer from work and we’d have better weather for Grayson to play outside while their home was torn up. Now it’s beautiful and will suit Abby and Grayson for years. When you remodel, you move everything out and come back to an upgraded space. It’s like you moved, but really didn’t. 

Past Informs the Present

We all remember the toilet paper “shortage” during Covid. It was really just the size of the roll. And everyone panicked with the shoremen going on strike. If you understand the supply chain, you can understand when and what to panic about. I knew after everything came to a halt with Covid, that it would be 18 months to three years before we were back to “normal”, before the backlog would be cleared. You can be concerned for stuff from China when the western ports are experiencing delays. You can be concerned for medicine, wine, sugar, and other things from Europe when the eastern ports are experiencing delays. And those products are usually here 2-3 months before we are anticipated to purchase them. But toilet paper? That’s made right here in the US of A, baby!! No.Need.To.Panic.

Sickness Playbook

The minute I or someone in my family gets sick, I look 7-10 days out to see what needs to get accomplished. Another type of roadblock similar to this is if my mother in law would fall or if  someone goes to the ER. My laundry may get a little backed up or meetings may get canceled, but I work ahead at Organize 365® in anticipation of roadblocks so the necessary work is always done. Our house is fully stocked with medicine, food, and nowadays home delivery services make it even easier to get what you need. I have these wellness pills I pop the minute I think I’m getting sick. Also, my family has bought into the fact that you can talk yourself out of sickness. It’s very inconvenient for everyone; don’t be sick! LOL 

Anticipating roadblocks is only possible if you understand how time passes which we’ll talk about in the next episode.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Products For Getting Organized - Source Naturals Wellness Formula

• Podcast 10 Year Anniversary Giveaway

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Trisha D. who sometimes has a very full house of 8 and sometimes just 4 due to her step children and when they have dad time. Trisha was a follower of Cass with Clutterbug and she’d been talking about the Sunday Basket®. The way Lisa teaches and Lisa’s story resonated so strongly with Trisha. With 6 kids to keep track of, the Sunday Basket® really made sense to Trisha and helped with the overwhelm. 

Previously Trisha had been in an abusive relationship. In Organize 365® and Lisa, she found grace, encouragement, to be brave, to be transparent, progress over perfection, and to put herself first to get out of codependency. Trisha pointed out that if you have never been in a healthy organized environment, then you don’t know what that looks like. She learned what it looks like and how to accomplish it for herself through the Organize 365® products. 

Despite the differences in functionality of households, the Sunday Basket® can help anyone really, no matter what your situation. Trisha gained so much confidence from organizing and getting control of her life. In her recovery from her past relationship, she appreciates how the systems from Organize 365® can aid in a Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP). Which brought up the question, does the change in environment change emotion or vice versa? And is it easier to change your environment or emotions? Trisha experienced that once she started organizing, it gave her more bandwidth to focus on redefining reality and healing emotionally. 

Trisha was so impressed with Lisa, this woman who was once depressed and life was a “mess,” she started a business, went back to school, and vulnerably shared it all with her listeners. Trisha’s big take away from Embrace was when Lisa said, “If you doubt that anyone believes in you, I believe in you!” So Trisha started a Friday Workbox®. It became apparent that her employer didn’t appreciate the effectiveness of her using it. So she started her own business! Trisha believes Organize 365® is changing one person at a time, empowering them to follow their dreams. She’s been using the Friday Workbox® and it has helped her organize and prioritize the systems of a business. Listen to hear all she has accomplished in three short years. 

Trisha now has more hope, faith, time, capacity, a more full life. She truly learned how to create something from nothing. She values the Organize 365® products as roadmaps to life, like the Warrior MAMA Binder, the Friday Workbox®, and Sunday Basket®. Trish’s advice is, “Go for it, whatever way makes sense.” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Embrace Self-Guided Retreat

• Friday Workbox®

• The Paper Solution® Warrior MAMA Binder

• 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!

Once you are habitually scheduling tasks that lead to consistency with the ability to adapt and be flexible, you may start looking at how to optimize your systems. And once you optimize one system, it becomes a little addictive. I actually became a happier person with optimization. It’s like I was competing with myself and I kept winning! I kept asking, “Can I do it faster? Make it easier? Do it on a different day?” This is what truly productive people do, they optimize. 

Reward of Optimizing

Remember the literature I shared about the Invisible Family Load? It noted three aspects: cognitive, emotional, and managerial. The emotional aspect was negative because of the stress or worry you carry by taking care of your family, but the other two were positive. There’s a confidence that comes from being able to depend on yourself from planning, a happiness that things are getting produced, happiness from finding “me time,” and when you are the one managing it all effectively, that is so rewarding. 

You Can Make New Rules 

I remember when I was trying to optimize my laundry. I tried one load a day, which wasn’t right for me. I tried to get it all done over the weekend, but then I was thinking about laundry for three whole days. THEN, I tried to get all the laundry done in one day and that was it for me! I would do laundry on Saturdays while the kids were cleaning their rooms. This worked for a long time. Then when Abby and I were sharing the machines, we worked out a schedule. Now my laundry is optimized on Saturdays again for this phase of life I am in. This is the beauty of Home Planning Day. It’s the time to look at your current phase and optimize your systems and make new rules. Greg and I are traveling more frequently; that may push me to consider a different laundry day. I will re-evaluate this during the next Home Planning Day. Kids sports, holidays, work, or summer, all these seasons of life can affect the optimization of systems. 

I realized as summer was approaching this year, that Abby would be home on my normal work from home days because she works for the school system and has summers off. This is not really a problem except for the PhD and recording podcasts. I like to be home alone. This forced me to look at my systems and consider what I needed to do to keep my studying and recording optimized. I decided on a few new rules…Mondays and Thursdays I wear ponytails and that shaves a few minutes off of getting ready in the morning. I ended up moving all my PhD stuff to the office and I decided to study there. All of my supplies are in one space now and all work is done at the office. That way “little baby” Grayson can’t distract me either. 

And I will batch record episodes when possible to be 2-4 weeks ahead. I found that when I try to record any further, the energy is off. If it’s January and I’m trying to record episodes about March energy and tasks, my energy is off. I’m more passionate about the message when I am in the same energy, too. I played with trying to record first thing in the morning, but that didn’t work because that’s “Lisa time.” I’m not in the right energy yet. I also found by batch recording episodes, it takes less time each episode. I am more efficient when I sit down and crank them out. I can also reference “previous” episodes because I just recorded them!

These are just a few examples of what I have done to optimize my systems. Decide what needs to be in balance and what can be out of balance in this phase of your life to be truly productive.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Organize 365® Podcast Resources

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• Organize 365® Home Planning Day

• Podcast 10 Year Anniversary Giveaway

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Beatrix S. who lives alone after her husband was transferred to a nursing home where he could get care and supervision for dementia. Beatrix found Organize 365® years ago when Gretchen Rubin interviewed me about the book “The Paper Solution.” Her first thought was, “What, filing cabinets to binders? Prove it!” Beatrix had always struggled with paper. So she got the book, read it in a couple of days, and found herself joining the 100 Day Home Organization Program (which became The Productive Home Solution®) and getting a Sunday Basket®. Now she says she’s hooked.

In 2003, Beatrix reflected on her study and how cluttered it had become again. Please, you need to listen to this insightful poem she shares. She was a minister and has a great way of storytelling. You can hear it in this poem. It was clear imagery of the disarray her study was in. 

It took awhile for Beatrix to wrap her brain around the Sunday Basket® System. She’d not been a part of Organize 365® long when she attended her first Home Planning Day. She also had a couple of unexpected life events, including her husband having a stroke and moving to a nursing home. Beatrix also thought maybe she didn’t have anything left to declutter. It’d been a couple of years since she’d followed Marie Kondo’s way of decluttering her closet. I pointed out that Marie Kondo is great for decluttering and Organize 365® offers great organizational systems. Beatrix had plenty to declutter and organize. Beatrix was most shocked with her bathroom and how much she’d crammed in there! 

Through the years with Organize 365®, Beatrix has formed a support system of friends. They meet every month and she has found them invaluable with the tough season she is in. Life is good, she acknowledged, but she’s deeply sad and fatigued with loving and caring for her husband. Her advice for others in a similar situation is to surround yourself with as many support systems as you can. Beatrix has more time now; time for friends, beautification, exercise, and planning.

She was recently diagnosed with ADHD and it explains so much. Beatrix really wishes she’d had the Friday Workbox® when she was in ministry; she always struggled to finish projects. And she wishes she’d known how to organize paper. She’s appreciative of the replays so she can get additional takeaways and the “teacher’s approach” I take with the systems Organize 365® provides. We had a nice conversation about the evolution of school and how they support the ADHD brain/learning style. 

Beatrix’s advice is, “Start with the Sunday Basket®. If that doesn’t work then just start with one drawer.” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Home Planning Day

• The Paper Solution®

• Friday Workbox®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

You are scheduled and consistent, but can you be flexible? I am not talking about all of the stuff others want you to squeeze into your week, but you.The things you deemed important to get done and you scheduled, do you have the ability to be flexible in how and where in your day they can get completed? 

Flexibility in the Name of Productivity

Life is chaotic and throws lots of unexpected things at us, throwing a wrench in our perfect little plans. Are you able to overcome these obstacles or do they turn your day into a wasted day? A few ways I am flexible to still accomplish the goals of the day are ways I choose to be flexible. These unexpected changes keep me on my toes and force me to be disciplined to keep my eyes on my priorities.

You can be flexible in when. I wanted to record 4 episodes the other day until Abby needed me. Grayson came with me to the office where I knew I wasn’t going to record, but I could still be productive with a different goal of the day. Once Grayson was picked up, I could choose to count it as time with him and use my later in the day “Grayson time” to record. 

I also use “wasted days” to be productive. If I’m out of the office and have a technician coming for one item, why not schedule a few more? The other day I had a technician come for the furnace, A/C, and a person to finish where we modified the wall by the fridge. I did stuff around the house while all these technicians were at my house. 

Another example I’d like to share is if someone in our house gets sick. I’m the mom and it’s nice to have mom when you are sick. And I want to be there for my family. So then I look at what’s coming up in the week. It’s all about the flexible thinking of pivoting. What has to get done, moved to next week, go back in the Sunday Basket®, or scratched off the list forever? 

Pat jokes that at Organize 365®, we pivot so much it’s like we’re dancing. It’s not so much when in the day or how it gets done, it’s more about THAT it gets done! Productive people are about completing tasks thus being productive.

The To-Do List Will Never Be Done

Your Sunday Basket® is the keeper of the master to-do list items, right? You go through your basket and determine what must get done in the upcoming week. We like to load up our to-do list but we are frustrated it never seems to get done. Could you be the problem? The trick is to see what can wait, must wait. Let’s say you are left with three things that must get done, which is ok. Schedule those, be flexible to ensure they get completed and then…it’s up to you! Yes, you could say there’s more in the Sunday Basket® and you want to do more. 

But alternatively, what if you used that time for a hobby, relaxing, catching up with friends or family? And I have found the items I delay completing, end up getting done by someone else, are no longer relevant, or don’t need to be completed anymore. Also, I want you to think about the last time you completed the items on your to-do list. How did you feel? Like superwoman? Yes! Don’t you want that feeling more often? Take care of what must get done and the rest leave so you too have discretionary leisure time. 

Being flexible in the name of productivity is a skill of truly productive people. Truly productive people are also always optimizing. Join me next week as I explain how you too can always be optimizing to be truly productive. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Podcast 10 Year Anniversary Giveaway

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Summer K who lives with her son, husband, and dog. Summer originally found Organize 365® in the summer of 2020 through an ad on Instagram. She made the “mistake” of clicking on it and then it “followed” her. Eventually she visited the website and put a Sunday Basket® in the cart for her mom…annnnd one for herself! She knows the systems now and doesn’t fret if a system “breaks” because she can easily get it back up and running.

Summer now lives in Minnesota, but there were a few moves before now and when she found Organize 365®. Instead of decluttering and organizing along the way, she chose to put items in storage units. With the Sunday Basket®, Summer had moved away from filing cabinets. The transformation in her thinking, through implementing the Organize 365® systems, also helped her trim down to one storage unit that she left behind when she moved to Minnesota. After about a year, her brother loaded it up and delivered it to her. Summer had the whole basement set up ready to process that unit in hopes of getting rid of 50% of it…and she did! The systems help you to keep the stuff you want and use versus a filing cabinet or storage unit that allows you to store it and forget it long after it is still relevant. 

Summer is a self proclaimed binder snot. She appreciates a durable functioning binder as much as me! We laughed about how the manufacturers can’t figure out how to use quality products and allow all the products inside to function simultaneously. These are the school supplies we need for our life’s work. She pointed out that they are a fraction of the price of a filing cabinet and do not allow you to keep outdated papers. And as I shared, I even created a binder for Grayson because while he doesn’t have an IEP, he does have OT and other paperwork that is no longer relevant in Abby’s binder or the household binder. So where do you put it? You make that person their own binder. We also discussed different binders for different properties. The binders are there, make them work for you so you don’t have to think of all the filters you need to go through to get to important paperwork you need. Reduce your cognitive load. 

The Productive Home Solution® (then the 100 Day Home Organization Program) was so helpful for Summer because in the midst of her busy life, when she knew she’d have a 15 minute chunk of time, she’d just look at what she needed to complete next. She’d do it and go back to her busy life. The Productive Home Solution® has evolved over the years to be universal so any person gets the benefits of functional organization. One of the many improvements we have made is a 120 day checklist so you can check off tasks in any order for the amount of time you have. Summer loves this aspect as well as videos that show real life applications. How are real people actually completing the checklists? 

Summer finds so much value in the Sunday Basket® that she gets her assistant’s a Sunday Basket® and even has them complete a Friday Workbox® Planning Day. It is important to her that they are talking the same language. In planning, she wants them to know she’s talking pink or connections have been made and it’s now turning into purple work. Summer also realized she used to keep a very long to-do list until she started putting ideas only on one side and project tasks on the other side. Then she learned she’d separated her pink and purple work. Summer has been in the business of pink work so it was an “aha” moment when she learned about the color coding of the slash pockets. She shared at first she kept thinking her cobbled systems were better. Then she tried the suggested way and liked it better! She has found all of the systems to be very effective in work and home.

Summer’s advice is, “Do 6 weeks in a row to build the muscle to see the real value.” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• The Paper Solution®

• Friday Workbox Planning Day

• 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!

Building block #2 is consistency. I liken consistent people to dependable people. They keep a schedule and plug in things that they’ve said yes to into their current scaffolding which is their calendar, their current plan for the week, month, or year. They say yes, they do what they commit to, and you can count on them. Building block #1 gave you that solid plan, your schedule. Now how do you stay consistent when the unexpected requests come up? 

Consistent People Can Adapt

There was a time when I traded services with a friend. I did her laundry, she made my family meals. I love laundry and by trading for this “service,” I got to drop the cognitive load of prepping and cooking meals. However, I had to adjust my personal laundry schedule to accommodate what I agreed to do for her. 

Another example I shared was when the kids were at preschool I did errands. I would do my Sunday Basket® on Sunday. I would pay the bills, plan out meals, and “grant” the family’s wishes. Tuesdays, I would drop the kids off and that was my time to zip around town and get all my errands done. My family knew this was the cadence and to get all requests in by Monday at the very latest. Knowing Tuesday was errand day gave me the option to say yes to anyone that needed an errand that I was willing to do for them as well as my own. I knew how much time I had and if I could say yes to additional requests. 

Consistent People Can Say No

When you know where your time is going, you know when you can say yes or no. You know if you will have the capacity. Joey came to me this summer and requested my services (LOL). I looked and knew between trips that were scheduled, PhD assignments, work responsibilities, and managing the remodel of Abby’s “apartment,” I could not say yes for 6 weeks. I had to tell my own child no. I didn’t like doing that and it was a heads up to me to adjust the allocation of my time. 

On the other hand, because I know where my time goes and that I am very intentional to spend time with my family, I can say yes guilt free to something I want to do for myself. It is better for my family for me to be consistent rather than make a commitment every other week. I have a commitment that keeps me late one night every other week. But in the name of consistency for my family, the off weeks I stay at work and take a call with my colleagues. It fills my cup and keeps me consistent with my family. 

Stay Consistent Even When Your Energy is Low

Consistent people stay consistent even when their energy is low because they realize that their future time is as limited as their current time. One glance at your schedule and you can see that project you want to push off to next week, but then oops, you don’t have time to complete it next week. This mindset is that of maturity and self discipline. When I had low energy about recording some videos, I knew I’d feel better once I had them completed. And as I have said many times, I am where work comes from. My team could not start working on them until I had recorded them. I didn’t not want to put my team behind. And when I looked ahead there was no other time I could record them. You will feel so much better the next day knowing you did what you planned to do and knowing there really wasn’t any other time you could have “caught up” later. Just like at the house, I’ll see a few quick things I could do quickly. Your future self will thank you when you run that thing upstairs or put something away.

I have had such a full calendar for a while now. I always think, “What will I do if I or an employee gets sick?” I know my priorities and I know what I will delete or delay in the event it cannot be done. Consistency doesn’t mean you are consistent in every area, totally regimented. It means you are consistent in the areas of priority. Up next? How to be flexible within your schedule. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Podcast 10 Year Anniversary Giveaway 

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Michelle P. (the voice of the mailbags that you hear every Wednesday), one of our most veteran employees. Michelle was recently sharing how planning has changed her life. You see, Michelle works at Boston University by day and at Organize 365® at night and on the weekends. On her commute to work, she was listening to the episode about your trains and she had an “aha” moment thinking, “That’s me, both my trains are running at maximum productivity.”

Even in academia, they support the idea that physical organization of your spaces superchargers your planning. This is where Michelle found herself when listening to that episode. Recently, Michelle has even planned to be debt free in 2025! But she had time to plan that because she’s freed up so much cognitive load and established routines. When she gets ready in the morning, she can think about whatever she wants because she’s laid out her clothes for the week. There are no decisions to be made, she’s on autopilot. After covid, she knew she was headed back to the commute and back to the office. She uses the Sunday Basket® Weekly Planning Sheets to make sure she’s covered all the bases for her BU and Organize 365® responsibilities. She’s planned the days she needs to wash her hair, if she needs to accomplish anything during her lunches, and of course, what’s for dinner. Michelle has her organization in order, allowing room for her to plan. We do not apply the same planning importance or practices in the home that we do at work. And that is what I am working on, shining a light on the lack of planning at home and offering a system for it.

When you plan, we know it gives you time. As women, once we have fulfilled our responsibilities, we should absolutely do something enjoyable with the extra time. You can set the example now for your children so they don’t grow up thinking you can never stop and just enjoy. Once you get organized, you can look at your time. Once you get your time planned, you can give attention to your health. Mental health like doing something you enjoy, and physical health like planning a walk, and your grocery list to make more healthy meals according to your family’s phase of life. And I encourage you to be an observer of yourself. If you want to make a change, plan for it. Michelle knew she wanted to go back to the office for the early shift, so she planned accordingly and now she’s a morning person. And she likes it! 

I know in my planning, I am generous with the time I allow for tasks because inevitably something will pop up. I like to look at my time like lego blocks that I can move around. I can go with the energy. Michelle admitted she had a lazy Saturday, but she wasn’t stressed because she knew some things could get bumped to Sunday. She was able to allow for a lazy day because she planned. Because everything is planned, I too know that everything will get taken care of, it just may need to be rearranged, tweaked, or sandwiched somewhere else. 

Just when we thought we were done talking, we got on the subject of the holidays coming up. She is so excited this year. Michelle really benefited from the Mini Planning Day and the Holiday Blitz. She gathered information from her family to help her do less and yet meet everyone's expectations and honor traditions that were important. I cannot stress enough how little time there is between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. Planning will be crucial to a smooth holiday/winter season. Wait until you hear when Michelle puts her tree up and why this year may be a challenge. Do you have a plan in place? 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Sunday Basket® Weekly Planning Sheet

• Organize 365® Home Planning Day

• Holiday Blitz - Registration Coming Soon!

• Holiday Blitz Mini Planning Day

• Holiday Blitz Bundle + Holiday Blitz Mini Planning Day

• 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!

You love Organize 365® so much and you want to share it with everyone you know. There’s just one little problem. What is the best way for them to try it before they buy it? I got to thinking if I could offer just one thing, what would it be? I narrowed it down to a 21 day bootcamp for you, the household manager. 

Things Have Been Updated? 

I started Organize 365® 13 years ago and I have certainly changed as well as the programs have been revamped and improved. We changed where you access all of our offerings and in reviewing them during their migration, I decided some materials needed to be updated. If you have the Sunday Basket® access, I encourage you to go check out all the new material. What used to be offered for training is now all of just step 3!!!  And there are 6 steps now and new checklists. The workbook is new and improved too. These types of improvements apply to the other systems too. I just felt like I hadn’t shared enough of my invisible knowledge for you to thoroughly understand how to best run the systems for you. 

One Thing Leads to Another 

We offer the Holiday Blitz, Back to School Blitz, and other free events for you to see what it feels like to declutter, get organized and increase productivity. But we didn’t have anything for someone who wanted to get started that wasn’t prompted by a holiday or time of year? This summer, as we were revamping the location of the systems, got me thinking about a signal offer for anytime of year, for anyone to “try it before they buy it.” Our overall goal is to help you to professionalize the family load that we do at home as a household manager by being a leader in your family, running your household as a small business for productivity and profitability, and considering your role as a CEO and CFO. The bootcamp is designed to do that. So go ahead and share away with friends and family to help them discover functional organization. 

Simple Organizational Systems 

Organize 365® makes visible the invisible tasks that are weighing you down. In the bootcamp you’ll experience 3 whole weeks of decluttering, organizing, and optimizing your systems at home to increase productivity. Included is a bootcamp workbook that contains 1 sheet from The Productive Home Solution® Monthly Planning Sheet tear pad to look at your month in a 5-week snapshot. I walk you through the process through videos, webinars, and podcast episodes. You will do a little each day and at your pace. You will analyze how you use your spaces and where your time goes. You’ll look at your time in respect to working outside the home, being an entrepreneur, or a stay at home parent. You will then design routines like we do in Home and Workbox Planning Day to optimize time completing your responsibilities while also maintaining self care. You will see how the cycle of organization applies to the phase of life you are currently in. It’s free. It’s available now. It’s about the order that determines your success. Go check it out!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Household Manager 21 Day Bootcamp

• The Productive Home Solution Monthly Planning Sheet

• 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.

The first building block to becoming a truly productive person is scheduling. Gretchen Rubin’s personality test shows me as a questioner leaning towards a rebel. I love reinventing the wheel. As you know, I have been doing this through my PhD. And I recently came across a study that I have now read many times called “Who’s Remembering to Buy The Eggs?” by Julie Holliday Wayne et al. It uses the term Invisible Family Load.

Invisible Family Load

I just loved the intentionality and thoroughness of the words she selected to sum up the invisible work of household managers. She started with invisible instead of mental which would imply mental only, but what about scheduling? Planning or worrying? Invisible is inclusive and encompassing. And then she used the word family to include people outside the structure of the home that a household manager would be caring for, like a college student or elderly family member. And lastly, she selected load instead of labor. Labor you get paid to do. Load was explained as being put on, burdensome, or weighing down a mind, thus requiring cognitive load and not getting paid for it. Do you know the top two tasks people marked the most as invisible in a study? Planning (#1) and Scheduling (#2); I think I’m onto something!! 

Schedules Sunday Basket®

I explained a few times that I created different types of schedules I have had in this episode. When I was still in-home organizing, I developed two types of schedules. I had one for working outside my home and one for working from home. I found that when a client canceled at the last minute, I would get frustrated and I was stumped on how to move forward with my day. Once I developed schedules, or scaffolding, for outside or inside work, I would just move to my working from home schedule when clients canceled. For my family, we had a weekend schedule and weekday schedule. Schedules simply keep you on task and eliminate decision making. Every Sunday, I go through my Sunday Basket®. Depending on things that need to get done that week, I can fill in my schedule, keeping in mind the routines I have established. It’s a general guide or, as I mentioned, scaffolding. 

Scaffolding Planning Days

Schedules give you structure but keep in mind, they can be reevaluated. Planning Days give you an opportunity to tweak your schedules. The Sunday Basket® is weekly and Planning Days offer the scaffolding, zooming out a little. Maybe you notice you want to change activities on different days due to a sports schedule change or getting your PhD. In Home Planning Day, we develop routines for morning, afternoon, and evening. In Workbox Planning Day, we develop routines for starting your work day, mid day, and ending your work day. Those six routines reduce your cognitive load. You made a plan proactively, now all you have to do is run it, go on autopilot. 

Level Up Scheduling

Wanna take scheduling to the Nth degree? Schedule the people coming to your home. I mean, book them out far enough that you can get a complete list of all tasks before they come for the appointment. Once you know they are coming, you may find more tasks for them to complete. And schedule meetings with people. I used to want to connect with people but felt rude telling them it would have to wait two weeks, so I just wouldn’t reach out or reply. I found over time that people don’t mind at all. Book the meeting and connect. It may seem weird to book out two months, but the day will be there before you know it and you’ll be connecting like you desired.

Truly productive people are always looking at their schedules and realize they support them through scaffolding. Schedules do not limit them. Up next? Consistency!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Organize 365® Podcast Resources

• The Sunday Basket®

• Organize 365® Home Planning Day

• Friday Workbox® Planning Day

• Podcast 10 Year Anniversary Giveaway

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Lori R. who loves having her two adult children live with her. Lori learned her peers were really into podcasts. Lori was trying to keep a lot of balls in the air due to work, her children, and her husband was sick. She searched podcasts for productivity and found the Organize 365® Podcast. She listened repeatedly to the Sunday Basket® episodes and made a makeshift one of her own. Her biggest lesson? Think differently which goes against her engineering brain.  

Lori has learned a lot like DIY, hire it out, or delegate tasks. Like how she hired cleaners for her son far away at college. And you can just stop. This is the permission Lori needed to just stop projects or roles she no longer wanted to be doing. Lori’s daughter was in competitive cheer, on two teams. That meant a lot of time at the gym. To be more productive, she loaded up her paper and a camp chair and went through papers while her daughter practiced. When you are scheduling everything, be mindful of drive time and the best time to use the bathroom. And you don’t need to watch every practice. Let’s normalize getting ahead on house chores while kids are participating in afterschool activities.

The podcast challenged her to think of other things she could accomplish during her daughter’s hours at the gym, like the laundry that was bugging her and bringing a cooler to get groceries. As Lori told story after story of practical application of what she has learned, I realized she’s been creating operational systems to help her home be functional. She finally invested in an official Sunday Basket® in 2021. Even her daughter learned if she needed an important paper, it was in her slash pocket. 

Lori initially invested in a Medical Binder for her husband. She was happily surprised to have her documentation pay off during covid. He had to go by ambulance a couple of times. She was unable to be with him. She had the peace of mind to take out his list of medications, photocopy it, and send it with the paramedics. Her husband passed away in December of 2022. Lori leaned on the Sunday Basket® to collect all the mail of her deceased husband for later processing. Unfortunately she lost her mother 10 months later. Her mom now has a slash pocket to aid Lori in settling her estate. And that made her a caregiver to her dad. He got his own Sunday Basket® to help Lori in the functionality of his life, too. The statistics say you could outlive your husband. And most women as the household managers end up settling their spouses affairs as well as parents or other loved ones. The Sunday Basket® and Financial Binder are gifts to yourself in these times. After talking to Lori, we identified that her daughter is fairly organized. Thinking differently, I proposed that her daughter help with her father’s house and care.  

Lori’s advice is, Just get started. Just do a little bit at a time. It adds up. And to get a Medical Binder. Sometimes the apps don’t work at the medical facilities and it’s great to have it on paper. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

In the mindset trilogy of this series, “prepared” is the last part of mindset. We discussed going pro, being balanced, and now truly productive people are prepared, over prepared really. This level of being prepared can be weird to people or distance you from others, but you won’t be the one scrambling when an unexpected life event rears its head. I’m going to give you some examples.

Go Bag

A friend of mine is in the caregiver role and I said what she needed is a go bag; think diaper bag for you as an adult. When my dad was sick and I needed to leave when I got the call, I had a go bag. And in fact, I’m going to put one together now and just hang it in the hall. What will I put in it? I’m glad you asked. I’ll make sure there’s my protein and fig bars so I can have healthy food if I am in a hospital or something. I like to have water bottles in there so I don’t have to leave the person I am caring for, as well as a brush, hair clip, socks, sweatshirt or blanket (I’m always cold), battery to charge my phone and watch, and probably a notebook. You know, the things I like to have to keep me comfortable. It’s a form of self care as you are pouring yourself into someone else. 

Being Overprepared

Truly productive people like to have a month or better lead time in their supply chain. Greg and I recently got sick for 7-10 days. But our house was fine because it is always stocked for about a month. I replace the last one before it becomes the last one. At this point we’d be ok for about 2 weeks before we ran out of necessities.There’s plenty of crackers, ice pops, and other foods in the event we are sick or can’t get to the store; the staples. Snow storms or ice on the roads here in Cincinnati? No problem because we are stocked. There’s no need for my family or I to panic. When snow days or storms hit, truly productive people are prepared. They have anticipated unexpected life events and prepared as best as one can. The more prepared you are, the higher level of problems you can handle. Because you are prepared, you can handle a level 5 issue. But be unprepared and most problems can feel pretty chaotic. And truly productive people know their obligations, have them on their calendar, and can manipulate time and obligations to fulfill new responsibilities due to an unexpected event. If you aren’t running at this level, I suggest you participate in the 21 Day Household Manager Bootcamp next month. 

The Power of Paper

I cannot share enough times when paper has come in to save the day. You cannot use your recollection as proof of what you are saying. Doctors, professors, and the general population want physical paper/literature to back up what you are saying. It’s tricky because you know if you are out of milk or bread. But no one knows if your paper is not organized and prepared. You want to be at a point when important papers are required, you can grab them quickly. Recently, I needed OLD paperwork for one of the kids. The doctor was saying he didn’t have documentation that far back. I was able to locate it and provide it. I thought for sure that such a big medical group would have had it, but no. Guess who did? Lisa. Me. I did. That’s the power of paper. 

Truly productive people feel that whatever they are working on right now, their business, home, homeschool role, parenting, or their marriage, they decide to commit to it 100% for a productive outcome. Where is your focus? What is your mindset in these areas? Next? We’re digging into a 4-part series on the building blocks of organization. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Podcast 10 Year Anniversary Giveaway

• 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!

There are times when getting organized is going to be easier. I call these Golden Windows.

Some Golden Windows are given to all of us - like January (new year), spring, and fall. The new year is all about starting the year off with a fresh start and achieving new goals. Spring and fall are both times of the year when there are big season shifts and you get a burst of energy. The spring energy lends itself well to planning and the fall energy lends itself well to productivity.

Common Golden Windows include:

• Expecting a child

• Moving or selling your home

• When your youngest child starts school

• When your youngest child starts middle school

• When your youngest child starts driving

• Milestone birthdays

If you want to hear a more in-depth definition of Golden Windows, listen to this podcast.

Today’s episode is going to focus on a question I get a lot - how long do Golden Windows last?

This depends on the type of Golden Window you’re experiencing. There are long and short Golden Windows. A long Golden Window is something you can anticipate. A short Golden Window is one where you don’t realize you’re in a Golden Window until you’re already in it. In a short Golden Window, you don’t get to plan so the energy fizzles out fast.

• An example of a long Golden Window could be pregnancy. You know you are going to have a baby so you have months and months to plan, re-organize, nest, and prepare.

• An example of a short Golden Window could be adoption. When we adopted Joey, we got a call at 5 pm, and by 7 pm we had a baby!

Each Golden Window, no matter whether it is short or long, is an opportunity not to be overlooked! And while the length of time that Golden Window will be open for you depends on a lot of factors (outside of your control) there are certain things you can do to get the most out of it.

Here are my three recommendations for making the most of a Golden Window:

1. Anticipate

2. Optimize

3. Extend

Understanding your Golden Windows allows you to get so much more out of these amazing bursts of energy. Listen in to find out how to anticipate, optimize and extend your Golden Windows for maximum impact.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Golden Windows Podcast

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Organize 365® Home Planning Day

• The Paper Solution®

• Complete Home Organization Bundle

• Embrace - Self-Guide Retreat - now available on-demand

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

Truly productive people are always producing due to systems and routines they have established; I call these trains. They have their trains humming along which allows work-life balance. And balance means motion. If you are riding your bike, you are in motion while balancing. But when you slow down, you may lean to one side taking you out of balance. The same is true in life. But truly productive people can spot that imbalance and pivot and iterate to get back to balanced. 

It’s a lot harder to start a stopped train…

It’s a lot easier on your balance if you iterate, opposed to stopping and then trying to get the trains up and running again. Let me refresh your memory of March 2020 when all of our trains stopped. It took almost three years to get all the trains running again. Do you remember how much energy it took? Some trains slowed down too much and had to permanently pull into the station, going out of business. 

And recently with CrowdStrike going down for the airlines. It’s just not easy to get the planes back up in the air. There is a trickle down stacking effect. The earlier flights didn’t go out so they needed to get those people on their way before they could accommodate current time flights. It took a lot of manpower to get those planes back in the air and caught up on their scheduled flight times.

And the next likely time we can anticipate our trains stopping is the election…EEK!  You can choose to get tunnel vision and focus solely on the election and possible outcomes. And then get emotional for the few days that follow. You know what productive people will be doing? They will produce until election day, go vote, and go back to producing. Truly productive people recognize what is worth the investment of their time and money. They want to effectively and productively use their time. 

What took me out of balance

There I was chugging along with my trains. I survived Greg’s surgery in December, the quest to solve Grayson’s eczema for a while now, and other family needs for my time. I prepared the trains for the time I’d be gone in England. We had a fabulous trip and I jumped right into work when I got back. But something funny happened. You know I have told you your house will feel off and that is when it’s time to iterate or reset, because organization and balance is a feeling? Well, I didn’t do my normal summer reset. By the end of August, I had to take time off just to get the house back to normal. Why had my systems failed me? 

They did not fail me but I wasn’t accounting for how much my family had needed me, not to mention all the time I gave to the remodels of Joey’s condo and Abby’s downstairs apartment. I realized I was completely over committed. Productive people can look at their systems and routines and pivot due to recognizing something like being over committed. I started to lean towards home and needed to get back in balance. I made three big decisions to put me back in balance. I have altered some plans at work to allow more home time. I have decided to take one less class to again free up more time to give to my family who have been in a season of needing more of me. This will lighten my load and allow me to stay in balance. You have to know when to take some cars off the train and send them to the yard until you can maintain them again. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Podcast 10 Year Anniversary Giveaway

• 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!

Golden Windows are periods of opportunity that are compounded with energy and free time that, if seized, can propel you into organization and productivity. They’re as divine as they sound! If you’re looking for them, or know when they are coming, you can empower yourself with the resources and community you need (like in The Productive Home Solution®!) and capitalize on the opportunity to organize your home and make it a true haven for your family and your life’s unique purpose.

I will say, however, there are times in life when this is nearly impossible. New babies. Depression or other illness. Temporary crises. Short-term monopolies of one role or the other. During these times, you need to snap into survival mode, control disorganization, and just do what you can to ensure everyone is fed and treading water until the chaos clears a bit and you can come up for air.

There are also times when organization (and the energy to do it) just comes naturally. It becomes easy, almost effortless, and you seem to make progress quickly. I call these times Golden Windows. There are three types of Golden Windows: Chronological, Situational, and Seasonal.

Chronological

These Golden Windows are based on your chronological age. When we are younger it’s on the 5’s and 10’s birthdays and, as we get older, it seems to be the beginning of the new decades. The most prominent and productive one happens around the age of 40. I’m not sure why, but turning 40 brings with it a sense of peace and confidence in women’s sense of self and place in the world. Around 40, women stop worrying so much about what everyone else wants them to be and start thinking about what they want to do.

How do I want to spend my time? What am I really meant for? How do I want to spend the second half (or more) of my life? It’s a general trend, of course, but I’ve seen it happen with women who are married, single women, women with kids, and women without kids

Situational

These will naturally vary based on your life and your different roles, but many women see at least a few of these Golden Windows in their lifetime. Some are full of joy and satisfaction, others are heartbreaking and burdensome. A few examples that I detail in this episode are: moving, new babies, children going to school, children moving out, graduations, weddings, divorce, and remarriage.

Oftentimes, when the youngest child goes to all-day school, a woman who has previously been a stay-at-home mom decides to rejoin the workforce. I say, if you can, wait! This Golden Window is prime time for home organization, re-prioritization, and productivity. It’s a huge family transition and a great time to capitalize on the little extra freedom. Getting your home organized during this time will set you up for this new phase of life.

Seasonal

Every one of us gets three Golden Windows a year. Each season of the year brings with it a new energy that we can funnel into organizing our homes if we choose. Now is the time, from August to September, that we get the most intense organizational energy. For the next 10 weeks in America, we have that back to school, huge transition, productivity energy. End of December into the new year and as school gets ready to let out for summer break, you’ll experience 2 more approximately 6-week chunks of a Golden Window.

Understanding your Golden Windows allows you to get so much more out of these amazing bursts of energy. I hope you seize your next Golden Window and take small steps to true organization and productivity!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Organize 365® Home Planning Day

• The Paper Solution®

• Complete Home Organization Bundle

• Embrace - Self-Guide Retreat - now available on-demand

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

Welcome to the 10 most productive weeks of the year! About 4-5 years ago, I was able to identify this natural productivity energy cadence in America due to the years of routine from school. Summer is relaxed but when we head back to school, September to December is fast and furious! And once we get into business, it’s the same because businesses are ready to get out of the red and into the black regarding profits, hence Black Friday. 

Mindset

My family and other people have always given me a hard time about how productive I strive to be. I am happy when I am producing. I can’t stop and I don’t want to stop. I am where work comes from in Organize 365® and my home runs off my productivity. I do sleep and make time for my family, but my “normal” is being productive. And I have recently decided I am no longer apologetic for being productive. In fact, I’ve gone pro.

Going pro means being a truly productive person that is always effortlessly producing. It’s not that you are just going to run a marathon, but that you are going to finish that marathon. And when you go pro as the home manager, you and your family benefit. What is there to apologize for? I mean, if you hired an actual home manager, would you want them to sit around or would you be thinking, “The house isn’t going to take care of itself!” As a professional home manager, you give 100% effort and produce as a person striving for excellence not this pie in the sky idea or aesthetics of perfection. 

Be A Scientist Observing Yourself

You can learn so much if you just track where you spend your time. If you are running your marathon and feel the need for more time on a specific project, I encourage you to be a scientist of your own life. In my observation, I have decided I will not be getting extra productivity time by staying up late or getting up early. So where else could I gain time? I realized the other day how much time I could save if I didn’t do my hair everyday. Bun hair days mean I get almost an extra hour each day. That’s an extra hour to be more productive. At the same time, I felt something was off. After observing where my time was going, it became apparent that I was spending too much time in CFO tasks. I decided to knock them out in one Saturday to stop taking time away from my weekly objectives. That is what truly productive people do! Observe and iterate.

Marathon Energy

I am a big fan of Jesse Itzler. Jesse does all kinds of crazy athletic challenges. When I know Jesse is trying to complete one of these challenges, man, I watch him like it’s my job. I am so impressed with his mindset. It’s not a matter of if he’ll finish, just how. Athletes are such a good example of someone who has observed their performance and constantly makes slight improvements. They account for all variables like the best weather conditions, energy they need to be in, court or track or pool conditions to result in their best performance. We applaud it in athletics and we should applaud it in our work and homes. We are in the thick of marathon energy right now. Capitalize on it! Get your Sunday Basket® in order so you can be present because you know every thought or idea is accounted for and planned. Now own that you want to be a truly productive person and focus on your marathon. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Podcast 10 Year Anniversary Giveaway

• 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!

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

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!

How do you remember what you need to do for the people you need to do it for, I mean really? Information management is the organization that will allow you to make informed decisions for the people, appointments, and processes in your life. The Sunday Basket® takes care of active papers, but some papers you need to hang on to. There are no more actions to do with this type of paper, but they are critical for future reference. I have a binder system, within The Paper Solution, to help you manage all the informational papers.

Medical Binder

The Medical Binder has allowed me to have many informed conversations with doctors that have led to not needing tests they may have required otherwise or access to medications the doctor may not have considered. I wanted to try to go on Clonidine to help with my hot flashes due to a hunch I had. I had my medical history with me in my Medical Binder. You know why I had it with me? My doctor does not digitize my records. So there aren’t multiple medical records “talking to each other” or being updated. Being prepared for conversations with your doctor can elevate your conversations and the consideration your doctor gives to your concerns or desires. This worked to my advantage many times with my children as well while we tried to get them on a diet and medication that helped them to function their best. With the Medical Binder in hand, you can make critical decisions before you leave the hospital allowing you the best treatment. Let me tell you, you leave the hospital and change your mind? Your options are drastically different with higher price tags. This binder is a life saver!

Household Reference Binder

When we went to Europe, our smoke detectors went off. And Abby was going crazy so she called grandma, who called Joey. Joey really didn’t want to call us. But it ended up being an easy fix due to the Household Reference Binder. Had I not filled it out, there would have been a couple of annoying days or some expensive invoice from ADT to come out and change the batteries. The Household Reference Binder can also remind you when routine maintenance is due and where you can keep appliance user manuals. This binder can also work to your benefit in selling your house - interested buyers will have peace of mind investing in your home when they know you took care of it and that there’s a binder to help them take care of their new home. 

Financial Binder

We just talked about being the CFO of your home. The Financial Binder helps to organize all the financial aspects of your household economy. You can file away all your insurance documents as well as taxes in this binder for quick future reference. I have shared before that I file taxes for Abby and Joey. So this is where I store their license numbers, issue date, and expiration date to save me time when filing their taxes. I don’t need it any other time of the year so it goes in this binder. This becomes a valuable binder when it comes to settling an owner’s estate. This shaves so many billable hours off an attorney and saves you time, too!

Household Operations Binder

How does your home function on a yearly cadence? The Household Operations Binder is like your family’s standard operating procedures (SOP’s.) You may find papers from this binder go into “active status” in the Sunday Basket® for a season and back to the Household Operations Binder until the next time. These papers remind us of facts about holidays or annual events. This binder is also where your family could find information and complete tasks normally they could not because it would all be in your brain. But because of the Household Operations Binder, you have externalized the process thus lowering your cognitive load and sharing those tasks.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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®
• The Productive Home Solution®
• Organize 365® Home Planning 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!

It recently dawned on me that what takes most of my time when processing the Sunday Basket® is the CFO tasks. I used to spend time reconciling the checkbook, now paying bills that can’t be automated, and discussing with Greg what we’d like to do with any extra money. But also as the CFO, I considered the amount of time I think about our money, insurance, wills/trusts, and taxes. And you probably do too! This is a very important role in the part your small business (your home) plays in the nation’s economy.

You Must Prioritize Your CFO Role

You need to have life insurance, a will, and I talk about your taxes; all CFO responsibilities. What happens to your money in the event something happens to you or your spouse? I remember when I earned a cruise out of the country and we were discussing it with friends. It was brought to our attention that we should have a will and life insurance. When we really thought about how life would continue in the event Greg or I weren’t here, we realized this was a wise investment. And let me tell you that $32 to insure me for $100,000 almost killed us every month because we were down to the penny. And every December when we’d get the invoice for Greg’s much larger policy…ugh, I mean I still dread it!! But I understood the financial peace of mind it provided. Years later, I learned about trusts. And by that time we had a little money and some assets and that triggered me wanting a trust to explain our wishes of how the money would be dispersed to our children in the event it was necessary to access the trust. 

As the CEO of Organize 365® and my home, I am always thinking about how I can make us stronger and more resilient. And when I have asked that question in the past for Organize 365®, it has gotten the employees life insurance, Q-SEHRA health insurance, 401K, vision/dental, short term disability, and this year…long term disability for me. There are about 7 steps you need to take to get these safeguards in place for you and your family as the CFO. 

The Breakdown of Getting Financial Plans in Place

The Trigger - Maybe a friend goes through an unexpected event, you get advice, or you go on a trip and you realize it’s necessary. 

Research - Decide what you need and then when you find the right person, they can put all the paperwork in place. 

Contact Agent - Usually by the time I’m reaching out to someone, I’m ready to buy.

Fill Out Paperwork - They will give you the paperwork to get the information necessary to provide what you are hiring them for. 

Meet With and Pay The Agent - Bring the homework back to them and, of course, they want money for services rendered - this stuff ain’t free! 

Complete Actions - Once you get the final paperwork back, review it; update it when needed.

File It - File it for safekeeping and know where it is for quick access.

Knowing where you filed stuff brings me to the next topic of taxes. You all know I take care of a lot for Joey and Abby, including but not limited to their taxes. I have taught my children Organize 365® systems and we all use the same system of the Sunday Basket® and The Paper Solution® Binders. And I have organized my mother in law the same way. This makes it really easy for me to serve as everyone’s CFO. Multiple users, but one system. I look the same place for each person, just a different binder or Sunday Basket®. Now when it comes to Organize 365®’s taxes, things have gotten more complicated over the years and I have hired someone to help and provide advice on tax benefits I could take advantage of. Know when to consult the professional to protect your family’s financial health. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Betsy B. who lives in Portland, OR with her husband, daughter, 2 dogs, and one snake. Betsy has listened to the podcast for 10 years. She was inspired over the years as I grew Organize 365® that she too could start a business. Betsy is a deep thinker and loved the long episodes that lasted as long as her housework. And she loved that they were chock-full of insights. Betsy is an interior designer so she really took to a recent episode (#601) about how homes used to be constructed and how they supported the style of life then. Betsy gets paid to repurpose those designs to support phases of life her clients are experiencing. 

The homes in Betsy’s area usually do not have access to the backyard because people used to hang their laundry in their backyards. But now, we like to have get togethers in our backyards. Betsy joked about how the things she’s learned are “baked into Betsy” and her saying to herself “that’s because of Lisa.” I’ve talked in the podcast about iterating your spaces for the phase of life you are in. Betsy iterates the structure and I help you to iterate your spaces. For example, Betsy’s cabinet in her dining room has served as a place for her china, then as a craft station for her daughter, and now it’s where Betsy likes to work and “that’s because of Lisa.” She iterated her space.

We got into a discussion about remodeling spaces versus moving. It’s a lot cheaper to remodel. Prices have gone up since the pandemic and we aren’t returning to pre-2020 pricing. And still remodeling is cheaper than moving. Make your spaces work for you. I’m putting a second chandelier over my table and I’m not worried about resale. You know why? Because we aren’t moving! We have made our house work for the phase of life we are in over the years.  

And then we hit the highlight of our conversation about checklists. Betsy struggles with adrenal fatigue. She has used the Organize 365® systems to efficiently use her energy. For their groceries, she simply wrote out a list of staple items, copied it, and there’s a stack she pulls from before each trip to the grocery store and marks off the items they need. Betsy shared that she has more fun in her life now and added “obviously more time, peace, and space too.” She can take part in the fun stuff because of her checklists. She externalized the executive functions to lower her cognitive load, thus making the fun seem possible. AND due to the lists she has created as she packs, her family can now help also lighten Betsy’s cognitive load and energy required to do something like camping. The fun things don’t seem so overwhelming. She’s made it easy on herself with simple lists in page protectors and dry erase markers so they can reuse the lists. 

Betsy’s advice is, “Start slow and keep it simple; just do that one thing. Go slowly if it’s overwhelming. You don’t need to make it complicated.” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Home Planning Day

• The Paper Solution®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

Operational efficiency is where you get your time back. The Productive Home Solution® is a 52 week cadence to organize your home. I like to help change the thinking of our spaces about how we use them for our current phases of life. And with that in mind, some spaces can stay organized forever! I shared a few spaces that I want you to start thinking about differently and answered questions from you at the end. 

Can a Space Stay Organized Forever? 

Do you believe once you organize a space it could stay that way forever? Back in the day, Carol and I could walk into a storage space and reduce the amount of items by 50% in 90 minutes. How, you ask? We’d get rid of all those empty boxes for their tv, computers, phones, whatever. You will never need those boxes again. Then we’d toss broken items like furniture and electronics. Next, we’d install the HDX ventilated storage shelving with bins. We knew this worked, but why? Then it dawned on me, our storage spaces are like prepaid stores. You buy Christmas decorations once and get them out of your prepaid store each winter. Speaking of winter, we organize storage spaces in the winter because half of the stuff is out of the storage space at this time. This is also the time to toss things you no longer wish to use during the holidays. Once you tackle the storage space, it can stay organized forever with very little maintenance.

The Largest Space

The kitchen is one of the most used spaces in the home and efficiency is the name of the game for profitability and productivity. In The Productive Home Solution®, I challenge you to think about 21 specific areas within your kitchen. We set up stations like drink, baking, and lunch, as well as many others. And you will think about how your kitchen is being used for the phase of life your family is currently in. You will consider the staple items for your family. Remember, our homes are small businesses. And how do you stock this supply chain? This takes time! Three weeks at least, and then you will revisit it at least two more times as you go through The Productive Home Solution® again. Sadly, the first time you just won’t get “done” organizing; I never want to be misleading about that. Give yourself time and grace. Remember, you are striving for excellence not perfection. 

The Order In Which You Organize Matters

There is a rhythm and reason as to the 52 week cadence of The Productive Home Solution®. After organizing many homes, being in the education world, and running a business, there are certain energies I have observed that coincide with that 52 week cadence. You all want to do the instant gratification areas of organizing, but then get discouraged because they’re lots of times communal spaces that don’t stay organized. Or it’s July and you are trying to organize your storage spaces; wrong energy. I call this Swiss Cheese Organizing. There’s a link below to watch the webinar to better understand why your organizing probably isn’t working. The Productive Home Solution® sets you up for success by following the natural energy we all feel at different times of the year.

Lisa’s Secret Sauce

I believe my secret sauce is articulating what a functional home feels like, functions like, and looks like. That articulation comes in the form of all of the material in The Productive Home Solution®, a private podcast, planning days, your fellow classmates inside the program, and the Organize 365® community. Time capacity comes from planning. Space capacity comes from storage. And production capacity comes from knowing what’s coming up around the corner. Join The Productive Home Solution® and experience Home Planning Day for the upcoming most productive 10 weeks of the year to have more time for you to do what you were uniquely created to do!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Swiss Cheese Webinar

• 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!

In case you missed it, today I am sharing this audio replay of my recent Stay at Home Parent webinar.

I mentioned a previous webinar, Swiss Cheese Organizing. In this webinar, I share how the order in which you get organized makes a difference. I know it is hard to prioritize your limited time and resources, but you are worth it! AND your organization will help everyone around you! 

Now is the perfect time to join the Organize 365® community in the Complete Home Organization Bundle. This bundle includes all the essential tools for organizing, planning, and managing all the roles you play, as well as a FREE Complete Sunday Basket® System and The Paper Solution® book!

Sign up TODAY so we can ship out all your school supplies next week in time for Home Planning Day on August 24th!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Swiss Cheese Organizing Webinar

• Complete Home Organization Bundle

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

In case you missed it, today I am sharing this audio replay of my recent Female Employee webinar.

I mentioned a previous webinar, Swiss Cheese Organizing. In this webinar, I share how the order in which you get organized makes a difference. I know it is hard to prioritize your limited time and resources, but you are worth it! AND your organization will help everyone around you! 

Now is the perfect time to join the Organize 365® community in the Complete Home Organization Bundle. This bundle includes all the essential tools for organizing, planning, and managing all the roles you play, as well as a FREE Complete Sunday Basket® System and The Paper Solution® book!

Sign up TODAY so we can ship out all your school supplies next week in time for Home Planning Day on August 24th!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Swiss Cheese Organizing Webinar

• Complete Home Organization Bundle

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

In case you missed it, today I am sharing this audio replay of my recent Entrepreneur webinar.

I mentioned a previous webinar, Swiss Cheese Organizing. In this webinar, I share how the order in which you get organized makes a difference. I know it is hard to prioritize your limited time and resources, but you are worth it! AND your organization will help everyone around you! 

Now is the perfect time to join the Organize 365® community in the Complete Home Organization Bundle. This bundle includes all the essential tools for organizing, planning, and managing all the roles you play, as well as a FREE Complete Sunday Basket® System and The Paper Solution® book!

Sign up TODAY so we can ship out all your school supplies next week in time for Home Planning Day on August 24th!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Swiss Cheese Organizing Webinar

• Complete Home Organization Bundle

• 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!

Planning, planning, planning. Always planning, that’s me. Greg asks if you can over plan and I just don’t think so. As working women with children (or not), there is so much to consider and plan. That is what the Sunday Basket® does for you! Do you need to plan this much and have everything planned? No. But it will increase your intentionality and output. I talked about the idea of a train (momentum of productivity) that you can get moving; one for home and one for work. The idea is we can have it all, we can win at home and work through planning. Listen to episodes 570 and 571 to get the full explanation. 

How You Gain Time

In my active parenting years while growing Organize 365®, I was driving kids, helping with homework, did 100% of the house duties, had my direct sales business, my parents got divorced, my dad passed and I helped settle his estate, and I was just plain out of time. I wanted to share some ways I looked at my time and realized how to reclaim it. After about three years growing Organize 365®, I just came home and abruptly announced, “I am no longer cooking or going to the grocery store.” I gained time and we saved money. It didn’t take long before Greg assumed those duties. 

About 3-6 years after that, I had learned CFO and COO skills and started to apply them at home. I became more efficient with my time and resources. I think my family assumed a magic fairy came in and cleaned the house. I’d clean while they were away and then I’d work at night, but then my family thought all I did was work. So I flipped the script. I worked during the day while they were at school/work and cleaned while they were home. But I realized I could get those cleaning hours to work on growing Organize 365®, so I hired out my cleaning. And sometimes you just delay a task and see how long you can go without doing it to understand a better cadence for completing those tasks. Maybe it doesn’t need to be done as often as you thought. We are not going for perfection; the goal is excellence. I use my time very purposefully through lots and lots of planning. I eventually abdicated all of my responsibilities at work and home and that freed me up to complete my very own book tour in 2021. Organize 365® ran smoothly and so did my home. My trains were fueled up and knew the directions to go. 

Trimester Home Planning

The Sunday Basket® Home Planning Day is to help you plan, abdicate, and be intentional with your time to get your home train running smoothly. It’s trimester planning, which is what I realized we need to do for homes because quarterly planning never made sense to me. I have found that it is most natural to plan in January, Summer, and Fall for our homes. And that is due to all the school years where we start school at the end of summer, we have a winter break, and then a summer break. There is a certain energy that flows with those breaks and time of year. And I found I really like to sink my teeth into some sort of meaty project that could potentially take up the whole trimester. I broke down my planning and execution process of these meaty projects and the S.M.A.R.T.I.E.S. goal planning I use in episodes 596-599. I schedule our planning days due to that natural cadence I learned in my school years that continued into my teaching years. For Planning Days, we really take a look at your current phase of life. We are getting down to the details so when life tries to derail us, we have accounted for that and we just keep chugging along. Planning Day is the way to make goals realistic and possible. I strongly recommend Planning Day Prep. In Planning Day Prep, you will fill in holidays, birthdays, and other important dates in the planner. You will update your Sunday Basket® and update labels for your Sunday Basket®. You can move archive papers from your Sunday Basket® to your binders. Then on Planning Day, you aren’t distracted by trying to do those things while the webinar is in progress and you are all set up to execute the planning that comes from Planning Day. 

8/24 Sunday Basket® Home Planning Day - 9 Steps (10-2pm EST live webinar)

1. Where are you in your current phase of life?

2. Time - 5 different ways you will look at it 

3. Habits/Routines - AM, afternoon, and PM routines

4. Housework - Ideal cadence for laundry, cleaning, and meal planning

5. House Administration - Your Sunday Basket®

6. Plan - 3 years, 1 year, a project, 4 months

7. Detailed Week by Week Plan - To complete your meaty project

8. Detailed Weekly Agenda - Daily plan 

9. Look at your time additional ways

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Sunday Basket® Home Planning Day with Lisa

• Home Planning Day Prep

• The Sunday Basket® Home Planning Day with Lisa + Planning Day Prep

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

In this episode, I introduce you to Kailley S. who is a busy mom of 6 with number 7 on the way. Kailley has a dog, she’s married and her dad recently moved in with them. In 2021, Kailley was looking for an organization podcast. We actually met at a homeschool convention in Cincinnati. At the time, Kailley was expecting the twins (who are now 10 months); now she’s expecting again! Kailley is in the accumulation phase of life and discovered she actually is organized. She knows where things are but that’s just it, there are so many things with 6 kids. She’s learned she’s functionally organized. She gave the example of moving cups lower so the kids could get their own cups (which she wanted) and they didn’t have to climb on the countertops (which her husband wanted). She continues to iterate their spaces as their kids’ needs as they change and grow (SMART-I-ES).

Kailley used to go to her husband’s business every Friday to watch the replay and process her Sunday Basket® while her mom would watch the kids. Sometimes Kailley and her husband even got to go out for a lunch date. But Kailley’s mom’s health worsened and she couldn’t help on Fridays anymore. Unfortunately, her mother passed about 5 weeks before her twins were born. Kailley no longer took the time to process her Sunday Basket®, but she was still placing things in it for safekeeping. 

We pointed out at this point how important it is to know the phase of life you are in. Really busy phases of life may only allow for once a month processing. I know with the PhD right now, I am having to do my Sunday Basket® once a month. But organization is like riding a bike; the skill of organizing doesn’t leave you. When you have small children under the age of 5, life is just chaotic. It’s like once you get on a schedule, the kids change and the schedule is out the window! It’s a time of life to give yourself grace. Speaking of grace, that’s what Kailley wishes she would have known sooner. She was organized despite her spaces not being Pinterest perfect. We all need to give ourselves grace and not compare to others or what they are doing. This is something Kailley had struggled with in the past and the podcast reminded her of this lesson. 

Kailley homeschools her children, hosts a monthly co-op, and runs one of the ministries at church. Then Kailley added the twins as the holidays were approaching, her mother’s passing, going through her parent’s house, selling their house, and having her dad move in with them. Kailley’s siblings were very helpful in going through and selling her parent’s home. She purchased the Friday Workbox® for church and the Holiday Sunday Basket® Bundle too. Even with the addition of more Sunday Basket®s, she noticed all of them plus a laundry basket were overflowing. She’s been able to declutter all the baskets and is ready to start a routine with the Sunday Basket® again. After all of that, she claims she feels like she is starting to catch her breath. It’s the beginning of a new school year and she’s got a plan in place for Fridays, with her older two going into work with her husband and her dad as the “manny” with the next three; she’ll keep the baby. 

Kailley’s advice is, “Don’t let a perfect finish deter you from getting started. Start with just one small thing and often that leads to one more small thing. Before you know it, it’s one big thing. Just do it!” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Friday Workbox®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face, the Sunday Basket® is an essential operating system. Period. We are going to pull up our bootstraps and get prepared for the 10 most productive weeks of the year. We need to get home in order so we can get work in order. How do we do that? The Sunday Basket®. You had the summer to let your brain ooze and be relaxed on tasks, but now is the time to get back to organization and order. We are going to reset or start the Sunday Basket®, a system like no other. I have not found another system that can do what the Sunday Basket® can. Might I add, the Sunday Basket® is available for $179 right now! This is an easy and consistent way to keep overwhelm at bay. And when we are taking care of life, we have less negative self talk and more confidence.

A Safe Place to Delay Decisions

We delay decisions for many reasons. We get requests and ideas from ourselves, texts, DM’s, emails, communication from our kids’ schools and activities, friends, spouses, and work. They want answers but what if we say, “I’ll get back to you on Sunday.” One of the best reasons is that I find by the time Sunday comes, some of the decisions have been made or are no longer needing my attention. Also, when we see all the “demands for our time” at one time, we can prioritize and decide to commit or decline and pay or delay. It is a capacity creation machine!

Holding Ideas and Projects

Pink slash pockets are our friends. We have so many ideas and little time to do them, but we also don’t want to forget. The biggest thing for me is scrolling through social media and seeing a cute idea or recipe for a holiday that has just passed or is too far away to get supplies and implement. Or when you see the perfect gift for someone’s birthday or other holiday, you place the gift idea in their blue slash pocket! 

A Financial System for Your Family

We just got done talking about how our homes are small businesses fueling the American economy. The Sunday Basket® acts as a financial system for your home. You need a place to keep track of monthly bills (some are autopay and some need manual paying), your budget, and of course, all things taxes. It’s a great place to keep medical bills if you will be using them for your taxes, as well as investment documentation, and insurance.

Two New Videos

I have added two new videos to the Sunday Basket® Set Up in Organize 365®.

The first video is paper organizing. I recorded a guest at one of my paper organizing retreats. We sorted all of her paper into active or archive papers - for your The Paper Solution® Binders. Turns out some archive papers were in her Sunday Basket® and that was slowing her down each week when she reviewed the slash pockets. Then, with her active paper, we turned it into her improved Sunday Basket®. We did it in 90 minutes, but I broke these down into smaller videos. And we reviewed the rule - If it can wait until Sunday, it must wait.  

The second video that is new is processing the Sunday Basket® start to finish. You see me do everything - print to do’s, sort all the paper, label slash pockets, fill/review slash pockets in the Sunday Basket®, decide if projects and things for people can still wait, complete the tasks that must get done that week that aren’t errands, plan the week on paper like meals, when I’ll do my errands, and if I have any time to add a special project. There is a co-working time on Sundays at 5pm Eastern. The community is such an important aspect. You can process your Sunday Basket® while others do, too. You can ask questions, celebrate wins, and offer advice.

Invest in the Sunday Basket® and gain thinking capacity and 5 hours of time each week through planning, delaying decisions, and peace of mind.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Paper Solution®

• The Productive Home Solution

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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