Fri, 29 July 2022
Over the last several weeks, we've been talking about the history and importance of Home Economics. Listen to all of the episodes in this series:
I left you last week with the promise of the story of how my house didn’t fall apart while I was on the book tour last summer. This story really begins in 2012. So, back in 2012, I started getting organized. In Organization is a Learnable Skill, I share this story and how I went from being overweight and depressed to organized and starting a company. What happened next was the realization that I could teach this skill of organization through a podcast and courses. The problem? Well, about 5 or 6 years ago, I found that I was out of time. With everything I was doing at home, I only had about 6 hours a day to devote to Organize 365®. I tried working until late at night. I tried working on the weekends. My family wasn't happy because they only saw my working hours and it looked like I was always working. I just didn't have any additional time in my days to grow my business and I didn't have the finances to hire any more people. In this episode, I want to share with you how I worked myself out of jobs at home to make time to do what I'm uniquely created to do! At that time, my kids were in high school and I was driving them 25 hours a week. I was doing all of the household chores except taking out the trash and mowing the lawn. So, I made some decisions. I abdicated everything related to cooking, except doing the dishes. Greg took this area on. I delegated the house cleaning to a housekeeper. For a period of time, I even hired out most of the laundry to our local dry cleaner. The Sunday Basket® and my weekly Sunday Basket® routine took the load of many of the invisible things. The routine running of the household takes place during my Sunday Basket® time. Bill paying, holiday planning, date night planning, vacation planning, reordering prescriptions, making doctor appointments, placing online orders, scheduling car maintenance, and more. Anything related to running errands, I place orders to be shipped or picked up instead of running around town. As far as organization is concerned, there wasn't much left. My husband and kids handled their own personal organization, I was personally organized, the storage area was organized, and my paper was organized. These things only needed maintenance. That only left family and communal spaces. Because I have a house cleaner, all that's left is for me to just make sure that those spaces are picked up regularly. When I left for the book tour last summer, Greg was sure that the house would fall apart without me. But, it didn't! Everyone continued to do the things they do and they figured out how to handle the dishes. Every member of our family is now capable of making a meal, cleaning, and doing their laundry. They handle their own personal and paper organizing needs. I have worked myself out of these jobs! What job can you start working yourself out of so you have more time to do what YOU are uniquely created to do? The Productive Home Solution™ and the Sunday Basket® System can help you take control of your home and paper starting today! The Sunday Basket® System alone can give you back 5 hours a week of your time! |
Wed, 27 July 2022
Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! This week I am sharing my conversation with Lauren S. She lives with her husband and 4 kids. She has a daughter who is non-verbal and wheelchair-bound from a genetic condition. Lauren shares the chaos of the last couple of years from two job changes for her husband to issues with access to services and changes to special ed teachers for her daughter during the pandemic. She decided that she could not continue to live in survival mode permanently! She joined The Productive Home Solution™ and jumped in with both feet. This self-proclaimed creative who struggled with organization decided that organization is a learnable skill. She made organizing her part-time job and plowed through the 100 Day Home Organization Program and more in less than 100 Days! Lauren pushed past grief and faced the emotional paperwork for her daughter to create her Warrior Mama Binder in time for an IEP meeting as well as boxing up belongings of her late brother for safekeeping that had been taking up space in her home office. The community app and the Sunday Basket® Club were essential to her success especially when she struggled with figuring out what her next step should be. Can you relate to Lauren's story? Do you have a special needs family member for whom you are the primary caregiver? Are you tired of living in the chaos of survival mode? Regain control of your home and paper with The Productive Home Solution™ and the Sunday Basket® System like Lauren did! I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links: The Paper Solution® Warrior MAMA Binder I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins! |
Tue, 26 July 2022
We're bringing back in-person Paper Organizing Retreats! I'm so ready to start traveling again to see you and help you get your paper organized! I would love for you to join me at one of these upcoming corporate Paper Organizing Retreats: 10/1-2: Phoenix, AZ 10/8-9: Orlando, FL 12/10-11: Cincinnati, OH Gather up and fill your car with all of your paper to join me at one of these Paper Organizing Retreats. We will start Saturday morning by bringing in all of your paper and pairing 1-2 retreat attendees with a certified organizer who will personally guide you through the weekend. Until lunchtime, you will declutter and prepare for shredding. Then we have lunch and a shredding company will come to do all of the shredding on-site. The rest of Saturday and most of Sunday will be spent separating your paper into projects. We will end our time on Sunday with a Sunday Basket® time. You can expect me to be on-site on Saturdays at these retreats. We plan to have time to take pictures together, do a book signing, and have a mini Organize 365® store open for you. Please note that there are a limited number of seats available at the Paper Organizing Retreats. Start planning now! You can learn more and register for the retreat near you at https://organize365.com/paperorganizingretreat. Our certification program is changing too! On the Fridays before these Paper Organizing Retreats, Monique will guide new certified organizers through their training so they will be ready to assist attendees. I'll be there to get a picture with you for our website and have lunch with you. If you're interested in certification, learn more at https://www.thepapersolutioncertification.com/. If an in-person Paper Organization Retreat isn't a good fit for you at this time, check out the virtual Paper Organizing Retreats that our certified organizers are hosting here: https://organize365.com/paper-organizing-retreats.
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Fri, 22 July 2022
This is the third episode is a series on Home Economics and the book The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger. In the first episode, I talked to you about my personal family history. In the last episode, we talked about how Home Economics grew and moved outside of personal homes in the 1800s and early 1900s. Listen to all of the episodes in this series:
In this episode, we pick up the timeline at World War II. The ending of the war brought a change with fewer women in the workforce and fewer women going to college. Two-thirds of women were married by the time they reached age 24. Despite new technology, in the 1950s, these women were still spending 52 hours a week on housework. At this time the American Home Economics Association defined Home Economics as being concerned with strengthening family life. A divide emerged. On one side were women who understood the original definition of Home Economics. They believed that what happens at home is important, is a science, and should be studied in higher education. On the other hand, there were children of the next generation like me who were taught that Home Economics was about socialization and based on what the government and consumer brands wanted for society. You either had to be a fulltime homemaker or have a fulltime career. Jobs held by men generally brought in enough income for women to have the luxury of being primary homemakers. There were still scientific advancements being made in the field of Home Economics during this time period, but brands like Betty Crocker and Johnson & Johnson were driving the narrative of what it meant to run your family. I love digging into the history of divides in thinking like this. My grandmother never understood the controversy. She said to just do the work! It doesn't matter where the work is or what the work pays. Just do the work. As we move forward, I want to talk more about the division of housework. How did housework go from being all women's work to now being a discussion about having equity at home? What I really want you to see is the invisible work that is being done at home. Much of what we do is on autopilot and was learned from our mothers and grandmothers. There is a shift in process. Everyone in the family wants to feel valued for the work that they are contributing to the family. In the next episode, I'll share how I worked myself out of being a fulltime stay-at-home mom to being a working mom who traveled for six weeks last summer. (Spoiler alert! Nothing fell apart at home while I was gone!) |
Wed, 20 July 2022
Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! This week I am sharing my conversation with Tracy S. She lives with her husband and three high school and college-age kids. Tracy is a former special education teacher and homeschooler. She used to have so much anxiety at night that it would drive her out of bed. Everything was in her brain and she was terrified of forgetting an important piece of information or not being able to find an important piece of paper. The Sunday Basket® reduced her anxiety and helps her sleep better. Tracy also found the Kids Program helpful and wishes that she'd had that resource available when her kids were younger. Can you relate to Tracy's story? Do you have paper and informational stress and anxiety that keeps your brain awake at night? I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links: I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins! |
Tue, 19 July 2022
I'm going to get a little meta on you today. This is a podcast about podcasts. Stick with me! Take a journey with me and learn about some of the changes to podcasting over the years. I'm not a fan of asking you in every episode to rate and review and follow the podcast, but rating, reviewing, following, and sharing a podcast is what helps the podcast directories know that you find our content valuable. In turn, those directories like Apple and Spotify are more likely to put the Organize 365® podcast in searches and on charts where new people can find us. When you share on social media, I'd love it if you'd take a screenshot of the episode you're listening to and tag me in your post. It's not about the numbers themselves or the charts. Those are vanity metrics in many ways. The podcast crossed 16 million downloads last week (and that's amazing!), but more people need to hear our message! This is about reaching more people with the message that organization is a learnable skill, the invisible work needs to be made visible, and being organized gives you time back to do what you were uniquely created to do.
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Fri, 15 July 2022
Last week, I shared with you some of the history of my family of origin, which has given me the perspective that I have regarding home economics. You can listen to that episode here. In this episode, I'm diving into the content of The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger. This is a meaty book and a fascinating read! Home Economics was the path that was created for women to enter college and earn college degrees. Women like Catherine Beecher, Ellen Swallow, and Margaret Murray Washington led the way in the field. Home Economics at that time was about an ideal home life that was unhampered by tradition and which utilized modern science for better productivity. It was about the study of food properties and diets as well as experiments with bacteria, standardization of clothing measurements, and so much more. This is the time in which MY grandmothers were living and earning their Home Economics degrees. They were learning that what you do at home affects the larger American economy. Running your home like a business is a thing and it impacts more than just your family! I hope that you found this history as informative and as interesting as I did! I shared a few ways that we are making changes in our home to be better examples for and to teach our children how to stretch their budget and food supplies. How will you use this knowledge about Home Economics to make changes in how you run YOUR home? What missing skills will you be teaching your children now in light of the current state of the economy? In the next episode, we will talk about how the view of home economics shifted after World War II. The Launching Life Skills Bundle is a great resource for the young adults in your life! We’ve put together digital training and the essential portions of our physical resources to help your high schooler, college student, or young professional prepare to transition from living at home as a kid to being an independent adult. Learn more here about this and the rest of our Kids Program here. |
Wed, 13 July 2022
Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! This week I am sharing my conversation with Nancy B. She lives with her husband and their two young children. Nancy is a nurse practitioner in Canada. She first learned about Organize 365® through a former grad school professor who was sharing about her Sunday Basket®. Nancy had used the Marie Kondo method successfully for herself but quickly found that she needed something more to keep her growing family organized. She really saw the benefits of her new systems during a medical emergency when she was able to quickly gather medications and information for her husband when he experienced a heart attack a few weeks after their second child was born. Can you relate to Nancy's story? Are you a somewhat organized person but your systems aren't working now that you're a wife and mom? Have you had a medical emergency in your family and not been able to quickly gather the needed medical details and paperwork? This episode is for you! Related episodes: I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links: I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins! |
Fri, 8 July 2022
Welcome to the Organize 365® Podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Woodruff, CEO and Founder of Organize 365®
87% of Americans believe that organization is a learnable skill but they only give themselves a 1 in 6 chance of being organized in any particular area.
As a former educator, I'm taking on the challenge of uncovering how to make the invisible work at home visible, how to eliminate as much as possible, and to get our home from being in the process of being organized to finished being organized.
Join me for client success stories on Wednesdays and my latest thoughts on the state of the American home on Fridays, plus some bonus episodes from time to time.
Welcome to the Organize 365® Podcast. I'm so glad you're here!
Learn more about Organize 365® and our programs:
Visit the Organize 365® podcast channel to see all of our podcasts and playlists.
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Fri, 8 July 2022
Last summer while I was on The Paper Solution® book tour in Chicago, an attendee recommended that I read The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger. It sounded interesting so I grabbed the audiobook. Oh my! I couldn't listen fast enough! When I got home, I had to have a paper copy of the book to take notes and dive deeper. Over the last year, I've been digesting and contemplating what I read in this book. I'm now ready to share my thoughts and reflections over the course of several podcast episodes this month. First, I want to talk to you about my latest reflection on my family of origin and how this reflection has created a greater understanding for me of the role women in my history have had and then next week we will dive into the content of the book. In this episode, I share about the families on both my dad's side and my mom's side and the difference between the two in terms of average life span, education, and family practices. I go into depth about my mom's side of the family where we have a long history of women going to college and becoming entrepreneurs. The Secret History of Home Economics helped me understand why each generation in my family thought about and experienced a different college and work experience - even with the same college subject degree! This was the foundation from which I went to college, became an entrepreneur, developed a love for travel, and now understand home economics. I also share with you the origin of my "grandma name" that I hope Grayson will use once he starts talking! - but so far I respond to anything!! What was your family of origin like? What is your background in understanding home economics? History is SO fascinating! There is an economy at home and work to be done at home that is valuable. At Organize 365®, we're figuring out what that work is, defining it, and eliminating Swiss Cheese organization. The journey begins with the Sunday Basket® System to organize your actionable paper and continues to organizing the rest of your home with The Productive Home Solution™. Then you can take that success into your work with the Friday Workbox®. Join me as I teach you the skill of home organization and make visible the invisible work that is done at home! |
Wed, 6 July 2022
Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! This week I am sharing my conversation with Laurie W. She lives with her husband. They are empty nesters with boys who come home frequently for long visits. Laurie found Organize 365® through the podcast. She was about to start working on organizing her youngest son's room while listening to an episode of the podcast when she heard me say to work first on the room where you spend the most time. Laurie dropped everything and moved to the living room to start her journey to a lasting organization. We talk about the pandemic, family working from home, organizing storage spaces, how bigger houses just mean more places to put things, Sunday Basket® insights, The Paper Solution® book, Home Planning Day, and more. Can you relate to Laurie's story? Are you an empty nester ready to take advantage of this golden window? Are you surrounded by family working and schooling from home? Are you struggling to get your Sunday Basket® habit started? I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365® community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links: I look forward to helping YOU get Organized! PS - Be sure to share YOUR unique way of using #myextra5 and tag your post on Instagram so we can share your wins! Read the full show notes with links here: https://organize365.com/podcast/transformation-with-laurie-w |
Fri, 1 July 2022
I'm changing and iterating again! I'm a teacher and a life-long learner and it's time to pass new knowledge on to you. We are finally ready to release to you the changes to The Productive Home Solution™ that I've been talking about in some of the recent podcasts. Over the last 18 months, our Organize 365® Research has revealed that 87% of you believe that organization is a learnable skill, but only 13-18% of you feel organized in any of the four essential areas of organization. So, a large percentage of us feel like horrific failures when it comes to organization! It's time for that to change! It's now time for The Productive Home Solution™ to be re-organized to reflect these four essential areas of organization. Beginning today, The Productive Home Solution™ Dashboard will have the content and videos from the 100 Day Home Organization Program split into Slash Pockets for the four essential areas of organization. Now you get to decide which area you want to organize first and declare that you are organized in that space. You'll also find four new corresponding groups in our community app where you can share and chat with others who are working on that same essential organizational space with you. In this episode, I give you more background and information about these changes. I also give you some advice and considerations for which space to tackle first. If you've not yet taken the leap to join The Productive Home Solution™, now is the perfect time! No more waiting for the next session to start. You can begin with any of the 4 organizational spaces starting today! Learn more here. Which area will you choose to get fully organized first this fall? Your personal spaces? Your family & communal spaces? Your storage spaces? Your paper management? Read the full show notes with links here: https://organize365.com/podcast/bite-size-organizing-how-to-declare-you-are-organized- |