Organize 365 Podcast

You all love when Emily comes on the podcast! Here’s the update…

Pretty safe to say the two of us like to plan. And there’s a cadence or a cycle to organizing. We dream, make it real, complete the idea, and then we get to start dreaming again. Emily shared that she looks at these areas of her life the last week of the year or the first week of the new year: financial, spiritual, relational, emotional, mental, and vocational. She decides the next steps she wants to take to improve those areas and then strives towards the next step over the next six weeks which takes her to her birthday. She can audition new ideas and keep what works and what needs to be revamped.

"Forcing things never prosper.” Emily and I agree I have a pretty high awareness of my intuition. I have always been more focused on the destination rather than how I get there. I asked Emily when she decided to start trusting her intuition. She acknowledged that she used to force things and go against her gut. And it was no surprise that things haven’t worked out with this strategy. At Quality IP, she was tired of forcing square pegs into round holes. Once she relinquished control, she felt God putting things into place to keep her afloat as she started down her entrepreneurial journey. She has hustled.

And let me tell you, in general, the hustle is back. The pandemic is over and we are back to the hustle and bustle of life. She has found a couple of marketing clients and she’s done some odd jobs to supplement. She’s always been a fantastic networker and those relationships are paying off. There’s no forcing anything and she’s listening to her intuition. She knows she’s not in control. She reminded us all that we are only in charge of our thoughts, attitude, and our efforts.

Emily pointed out not to count eggs that have not hatched. She shared that she had calls lined up that ended up canceling. But Emily didn’t sweat it because she’d taken advantage of all opportunities that had come her way. Don’t say no to a money making opportunity today because you may have money coming in a week or two. A Friday Workbox® can really help a person to keep track of odd jobs while organizing your main stream of income.

Emily has found herself to be more productive when she starts the day with a list of priorities from the end of yesterday’s work day. She made her list at the end of the day what was most important to complete the next day while it was fresh.

Emily took advantage of her good credit score before she was let go to get a bank loan as a safety net. Keep your credit score in good standings.

Things are moving faster since Covid. I remember many years ago learning about the Singularity Theory from Ray Kurzweil, that at some point everyone would know everything. I had the hardest time wrapping my brain around this concept. This has been made possible mostly due to the internet. The rate at which we learn new information is exponentially faster than 10 years ago. There’s not the lag of relaying of the information that there used to be. And now…

Visit organize365.com/EmilyKelly to read more.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Friday Workbox®
• 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More
• 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 did it! You made it to the end of 2023. What lies before us are all the hopes, dreams, and possibilities of 2024.

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

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

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

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

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

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

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Sunday Basket®

• Free 5-Day Mini Course

• Sign up for the Newsletter

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

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

Declutter → Organization → Productivity

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

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

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

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

You CAN spend too long decluttering…

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

Look into my crystal ball

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

Who are you gonna follow? 

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

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

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

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

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

First Thing’s First

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do we get this into the educational system?

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

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

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Kids Program

• Launch Program

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Organization is a Learnable Skill Book Club Event

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

• Organization is a Learnable Skill (book only)

• Audible Version

• Sign up for the Newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Business Friday Workbox®

Workbox Planning Day

Friday Workbox® Planning Day Monthly Subscription

Workbox Implementation Day

Sign up for the Newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, how did it go?

What I Discovered

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

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

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

What Puzzled Me

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

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

What I Would Love

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

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

What I Need to Move Forward

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

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

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

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

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

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Education Friday Workbox®

• Paper Organizing Retreat

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Sunday Basket®

• Business Friday Workbox®

• The Productive Home Solution®

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

• Kids Program

• The Productive Home Solution® Planning Day Prep

• Sign up for the Newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

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

EPISODE RESOURCES:

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

• Organization Is a Learnable Skill

• The Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Planning Day Prep Event

• Workbox Implementation Event

• Sign up for the Newsletter

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

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

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

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

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Friday Workbox®

• Sign up for the Newsletter

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

I’m excited to announce that the Complete Sunday Basket® will now be offered at a lower price of $179!!

Do you budget for organization? 

No, most people do not budget for organization. And when you think about spending money on organization, it usually means a professional is coming to your home to complete the organizing or you will be purchasing cute bins to make everything cute. But this, the Sunday Basket®, is a system for organization. We have not traditionally budgeted or thought about purchasing organization in this way. The Sunday Basket® is a system for your home that you are purchasing that most homes do not have. Placing value on learning the skill of organization is a new phenomenon. 

Same Great Basket with the Same Great Value

You as the person considering the purchase has to decide if this is of value or not, right? But it’s hard to determine that until you have used it and experienced all the benefits. But once you have, you realize I should charge a lot more because it’s chalked full of value and transformation. For only $179, you will still get everything you got before…the community, the online dashboard, the workbook, slash pockets, and of course the basket in the color you choose. But what you don’t know yet is the confidence you will get from being organized, the relief you will have knowing all things are taken care of or planned for, less negative self talk, and the time you will have for other things than just panicking about being organized. 

What Lisa? Why? 

In the beginning, I was able to offer lower pricing because I was personally mailing each box out from my home. Now I have the warehouse, labor, and supplies… you know - all the things! So as Organize 365® grew and I was able to offer more, I also needed to increase the price to cover those costs. And if you are feeling like you have no time, no money, like you are under water and overwhelmed…then I want to be able to help. This price point should be able to make this more accessible to more people out there who need more time so they can explore and do what they are uniquely created to do. 

Get Your Sunday Basket® now for only $179!

After you use your Sunday Basket® for 12 weeks, I promise you will have recouped the price of your Sunday Basket®!

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!

Happy Thanksgiving! I am so thankful for YOU!

Did you know that you can write a note to us when you place orders with Organize 365®? I love to read them! I also love to know what some of your orders are for...they can be so random sometimes! It makes me so curious - and it makes me want to know even more about you!

As you're listening to today's episode, I'm probably putting up our Christmas tree. I used to put it up the Monday before Thanksgiving, when the kids were in school. I'd grab my fountain Coke, turn on holiday music, and get to work. Things have definitely changed! 

Only in America do you have Thanksgiving, followed by a bazillion days where you spend money. We eat a lot of food and spend a lot of money! I spend an obscene amount of money on Black Friday. I couldn't believe how much money I spent last year, but also how much I saved! I finally realized when you're looking at your household economy (hello food prices!) you have to figure out how to make your money go further at home.

Here's my tip: shop for ANYTHING you need on Black Friday! 

Think of your house as a small business - when you spend money, you stimulate the economy. You are the CEO of your home; the business owner of your household. You have expenses and ways in which you can make your cashflow last longer. If you see anything that is being sold at a deep discount right now, and you know you will be using that item before March 1st - buy it NOW. Also, think about not only the gifts you can give that people want, but also the things that people need. Items like Apple watches or the Hero medication dispenser may be expensive purchases, but for loved ones who it could be incredibly beneficial to (think elderly parents) it would be a worthwhile purchase. Could you go in on big ticket items with other family members? Would it give you peace of mind or take any burden off of you (or them) in some way? You may come up with gift ideas of things that they don't even realize that they need! 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Black Friday Shop

• Holiday Blitz Shop

• 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!

Happy Anniversary Wednesday Podcast!

In this episode, I wanted to do something just a little different. Normally I talk to someone who shares their Organize 365®  transformational story. Some way, shape or form they found us, BUT not today’s guest. Today, I am introducing you to the editor of the Organize 365® Podcast, Tiffany Mason with Virtually You! She has been with Organize 365® for a year now. I wanted to know her thoughts about the time she has been with us and the effect we have had on her. She sends me Voxer messages often so I know she has fallen down the same organizational rabbit hole as the rest of us!

Recently, Virginia had to leave Organize 365®, but it was Virginia who connected us with Tiffany. There was an interview, we threw a lot at her, she didn’t blink, so we decided to give her a try. Initially, she shared that she felt a little overwhelmed; there were a lot of different episode formats, products she didn’t know about, and lingo she’d not heard before. After a few episodes, it made sense that we had a glossary playlist we needed her to republish for the sake of the Organize 365® Podcast listeners. 

It wasn’t long before I could tell she was hooked. I mean, she is paid to listen to the podcast, but I think she would listen regardless. But why? Tiffany shared that she feels seen by me. She feels like my mission is not to sell sell sell - but rather offer systems and products to free up time for my listeners so they can do what they are uniquely created to do. Tiffany can also relate to my husband Greg. Her husband is more like me and she finds humor in the things I share regarding Greg and I! And she shared how impressed she was to learn Organize 365® was the 32nd largest woman run business in Cincinnati. I am proud to share that this year we moved up to the 30th spot! Because Tiffany is in Florida and I am in Ohio, I shared that Cincinnati is the number 1 city for startups. She pointed out that our ranking is even more impressive, being in that environment and climbing. 

I wanted to know how her organization has changed. She said she started with the Friday Workbox® and after she was comfortable with that, she wanted to do a planning day. She has had such a great impact from the planning day that she joked about getting on her knees and calling it a PSA post for society that all women should attend a planning day! She saw what it could do for work so naturally she wanted a Sunday Basket® for home life. She aspires to train her family to put things in her Sunday Basket® as you have shared here on the Wednesday Podcast.

We got into an interesting conversation about the definition of home roles. Tiffany saw a post where a wife had the kitchen garbage and questioned if she’s crazy to think he should do all of the garbage, if his “chore” is to do garbage. But this is the problem. After the war in the late 40’s, marketing “brainwashed” us all into thinking a woman’s role was homemaker. The guys aren’t at fault either, they are just doing what they saw modeled. There are plenty of great fathers and husbands who are willing to do their part. Tiffany remembered a previous guest sharing that nowadays women are working and don’t only have the house to focus on. In business, job descriptions are written but at home…well??  And in my studies, I have uncovered this is a white woman problem. In other ethnicities, they have well defined roles and housework gets done! Even the children have roles.

Tiffany expressed so much gratitude for being a part of Organize 365®. She is impressed with the grace we all extend one another. She has been able to take some of our organization and implement it with her clients. There are so many moving pieces, but she’s proud to work with Organize 365®. She encouraged all of you to share an episode with someone on the drive to Thanksgiving dinner, like a spouse maybe (wink wink). OR if you have had enough Thanksgiving, get some fresh air while you catch up on the Organize 365® Podcast and feel free to tag us!

Tiffany’s advice is, “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, just get the products that Lisa has taken the time to perfect.” 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Home Planning Day

• Workbox Planning Day

• 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!

What do YOU want - and how do YOU want to show up at the holidays? We spend so much time, money, energy, thought, worry, and preparation for the holidays. Always outwardly focused, which is fine. It always seems as if we're constantly in the mindset of...what does the family need? What do elder members or extended members of the family need? What do the kids need? What do we need to keep doing, even though we don't want to do it anymore because somebody still wants us to do it? There are so many things that we spend our time and energy on that are outwardly focused; we do them out of service, out of respect, out of love, whatever it is. In this podcast, I want you to be selfish just for a few minutes. I want you to think about what you want and how do you want to show up at the holidays?

You probably just completed the Holiday Blitz. It was free, you got the printables, you watched the videos, you asked your family questions. Then, today at 11 am ET is our first annual Holiday Blitz Mini Planning Day. It's 90 minutes, and if you can't attend live the replay is available to watch through December 31st. This mini planning day will focus on the person we want to show up as at the holidays. Not what you're going to serve, what your house will be decorated like, not if you send out Christmas cards or not. All that was decided in the Holiday Blitz. That is the difference between the planning days and the product. So the Holiday Blitz identifies all the work, all the external, visible things that you see in the holidays - the food, the decorations, and everything in between. The Holiday Blitz Mini Planning Day is about YOU.

Planning days are selfish. That's ok. They are selfish because planning days are for you to plan your energy, your financial resources, your intellect, your energy level, your hopes and dreams and desires. I don't think we sit back often enough and ask ourselves what we want, because we're too busy doing all the things that are already on our to-do list and we say: "I'll figure out what I want after ALL this is done." It's time for that to end.

You're so used to being the orchestrator, the driver, the director, the doer, the giver, the server. What if someone coordinated the holidays for YOU? How would you want them to orchestrate it? I want to challenge you to give that to yourself because you're worth it and you deserve it. You should be able to enjoy the holidays just like you are making the merriment for everyone else. When you're happier - everybody else is happier too. Remember that.

In this episode, I introduce you to Trish K. Trish lives at home with her daughter and 3 year old grandson, Wolfie. Trish has a great relationship with her sister, Kathleen, who loves to try all kinds of organizational systems. When she tried Organize 365®, she believed Trish could utilize it too. So about a year ago, she “tricked” Trish into doing “a free thing.”  Once Trish was inspired to take her organizing one step further it got her wondering, what else could she learn from Organize 365®

Not only has Trish learned new ideas, but she has sustained her organization. That was the thing. With other organizing systems Trish had tried, she’d fall off the wagon. But with Organize 365®, she’s been keeping up with The Productive Home Solution®. Trish has taken advantage of most of the systems and products from Organize 365®. Lisa pointed out that holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, these all happen annually without fail. Trish expressed how she loved the planning days that help her to be proactive. Trish said she wants to live a proactive life. She loves that she gets to revisit her planning every 120 days. Lisa talked about the age old theory that simply writing down our goals “puts them on our radar.” And sometimes we even accidentally achieve them! Even if you do nothing after planning day, you thought about it and are aware now. No one knows what you are doing and no one knows if you took any action. No one is checking. Trish said it’s like planting seeds; over time they bloom.  Trish has found so much joy throughout her short time learning with Organize 365®.

She unintentionally planted seeds in her daughter, too. Trish was so excited about an organization project she had completed that she wanted to show her daughter. Trish’s daughter has ADHD and Autism, so organizational projects can be tough for her. Heck, school and life has been tough for her! Lots of times when Trish talks to her daughter, she feels like her daughter only hears Charlie Brown’s teacher speaking to her. Much to Trish’s surprise, her daughter is watching what she is doing and wants the same for herself. This brought out a lot of similarities for Trish and Lisa to talk about. They both have grown single moms, who have their own struggles, living with them with their grandchildren. 

And of course, the conversation turned to their grandsons. They compared weight, the types of beds they are in or about to grow out of, the sizes of clothes they are in, and the pure joy of living with them right now. As grandparents, you get to see life through their eyes because you aren’t worried about dinner or those daily tasks that we do to keep our houses running during the active parenting years. Trish is happy to see her daughter thriving too due to the example Trish is showing. 

Trish started with her closet and graduated to her kitchen. She goes by The Productive Home Solution® plan and has done the kitchen three times now. Trish described her old placement of items in the kitchen; how silly that she put the thing she uses the most on the highest shelf.  She has since learned to put those items in a more convenient spot. Trish also appreciates the freedom of “permission” to put into action functional organization over Pinterest organization where all the boxes match.  

Trish’s advice is, “Just start!” Even if it’s just one drawer, get started and it will give you energy to do just one more drawer. And that will feel so good, you’ll want to tackle a small closet or room. Get started before your brain has a chance to start coming up with excuses!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution® 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!

As a teacher, one of my favorite things to do is to figure out a word picture or to take something that is so close to you that you're literally living through it and make it so obvious that you can't unsee it going forward. A couple of months ago, I came up with the title for this podcast and I thought "Yes!" and I've been thinking about how email is the laundry and dishes of work. In this week's episode, I'll explain!

Doing laundry and dishes is administrative, it's repetitive, it's hard to outsource. Yet it is essential for your well-being and your cleanliness; and so that you won't be naked when you leave the house! Laundry and dishes are NEVER DONE. 

I'm a middle-of-the-road person. I'm not going to leave everything in my inbox, but I'm not going to use one single folder either. If it's in a folder, it doesn't exist to me. That's why file cabinets don't work for me. I had a beautiful color-coded file cabinet. It was pointless. That's my limitation - if it's out of sight, it's literally out of mind. For me, it doesn't exist. Everything in my email that's in process must be visual.

STEP ONE: You should only have companies and emails coming into your email inbox that you want to do business with. So that means UNSUBSCRIBE!

STEP TWO: Once you have emails coming into your inbox, you need to learn to triage and respond in the appropriate time.

I'll never get to inbox zero. I'm fine with it. Also, there's no need to respond to email within 24 hours. Scary, I know. Unless your company has a policy, you're not breaking any laws, I promise. My personal response rate? 7 days. Terrible, horrible I know...I can't believe I said that out loud! 

We need to give ourselves grace and understand that laundry, dishes, and email are never going to be done. We need to pace ourselves, and when you stop trying to get email, laundry, and dishes done - you free up so much mental capacity and time for things that are bigger that you're uniquely created to do. 

I'll leave you with a couple questions. What if you didn't reply to emails within 24 hours? What if you didn't reply to emails on Sundays? What if you didn't reply to emails from Friday at 5pm until Sunday at 5pm? 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Sunday Basket®

• Friday Workbox®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• Sign up for our 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 invited Lisa J. back for an update because she has some exciting news. She lives in Australia with her husband Kirk on their large farm, and their two teen children go to boarding school. She takes care of the administrative tasks for their farm. She loves what she does but got overwhelmed with all the tasks. If you recall from her previous episode, she got relief with the Sunday Basket® and Friday Workbox®. It’s not common for a farm in Australia to have more than one person taking care of the office and associated tasks. She took Lisa’s advice after being on the last podcast and has hired an executive assistant three days a week for the past 3 months. It’s going well and she is now looking more at the corporate farm structure. Family farm, one wife is usually taking care of the office. Corporate farm, there is a “team” doing all of the administrative tasks. She can see their farm going in the Corporate direction. 

The Lisas discussed what that may look like. Lisa Woodruff brought up the point that yes, there are a lot of tasks. Yes, you can hire help to get those tasks done BUT it must be in the name of growth. Or be aware that it may just simply enhance your lifestyle. Right? It will free up time that usually a business owner can then use towards strategy and growth. If you are content with where business is then just know you are paying for that extra time. And that is fine but Lisa made a brilliant point about hiring help in this respect. That being said, Lisa J. is in a growth mindset and since the last episode has been able to attend 4 planning days. She said the way Lisa W. breaks down the quarter really helps her. It helps her to spatially visualize what will be taking place. She likes to do a one year plan, break that down to one quarter, then one month, and lastly one week. The planning days help Lisa J. to do just that and accomplish goals.

Lisa J. has been able to transition some purple slash pockets to her assistant. Now that she’s in the thick of it, she and Lisa also talked about some blue and green slash pockets Lisa J. could hand over to her assistant. The Australian government has put a lot of paperwork back on the farms which has increased their workload exponentially. These are tasks her assistant can do, as well as handle technology and social media. Lisa J. was good to create slash pockets for her repetitive tasks and can now offload them one by one.

Lisa J. wants to share her organization with other farm offices. It’s usually the wife of the farmer. We all know mom’s wear a lot of hats and not all of them have the capacity or skill set to be #allthethings. Both Lisa’s agree the work that one woman is doing is easily the work of 5 people.  Just think of companies as big as Lisa’s farm and there are usually multiple people running HR, bookkeeping, administrative tasks, and more! The beautiful part about Organize 365® systems is that they are kind of like scaffolding and then you, the homeowner or business owner, can customize it to your needs. Anyone can apply these systems to their lives.

Drum rolllllll pllllllleassssse….Lisa J. is going to start a podcast to help other farm offices. It will be titled Farm Office Tool Box. She has a burning desire to help other wives/farm offices that may be trying to do it all and feel overwhelmed.  She wants to share how she uses the Sunday Basket® and Friday Workbox®, or really how she had kind of combined them to stay consistent and feel in control. And she wants to normalize more people running a farm office. Lisa J. shared that being organized really helps her to feel confident. She trusts herself to make good decisions for the farm. Lisa W. pointed out that all farms, not just Australian farms, will be able to utilize and implement the tips and advice Lisa J. will be sharing. 

Lisa’s advice will be in her podcast Farm Office Tool Box Podcast…check it out!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• 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 find it challenging, interesting and exciting to try to break down how I plan and win at home and work, which took me two decades to figure out. It's like working backwards with little Lego bricks that you can replicate to build your own productive and organized house. 

There are productivity courses and productivity gurus. For the most part, people who have learned to be productive have done so through a lot of trial and error, thinking, processing, and moving things around in their brains and in real life. Organization is essential for a productive life because if your physical space is disorganized, then it's harder to have enough mental capacity to organize invisible work - which is what productivity is. If your physical space is disorganized, then your productivity doesn't get enough traction to make enough of an impact in your life that you will persist long enough for it to become magical. 

The Sunday Basket® is the first step to becoming a productive person, because it moves you from day-to-day thinking to week-to-week thinking. Even if you only do it for 90 minutes on Sundays, it's a monumental lift because the day to day of running a household and being a homeowner is pervasive. There's an inherent, unending task of being a household manager. You can't systematize your house to the point that there's no work to be done. You can reduce your expectations, the amount of stuff you own, the size of the house you live in, outsource your meals, cleaning services...the list goes on and on. But still there's only so much you can automate in your life. You still need to buy clothing and take care of your body (shower, brush your teeth, etc.), eat, sleep, and the like. 

The final thing I want to reiterate is that the Sunday Basket® System moving you from day-to-day thinking to week-to-week thinking has a secondary benefit for your whole family. It creates this weekly cadence and this purposeful pause in requests and fulfillment of requests for yourself and your family. Being able to look at your finances on Sunday and then make decisions based on what everyone wants or needs helps you make better money decisions and also better time decisions. 

Next week I'm going to talk about why email is the laundry and dishes of work. Oh my gosh! And then in a few weeks I'm going to talk about how to move into season-to-season productivity, both at home and at work. What does it look like to take the Sunday Basket® and turn it into seasonal productivity? What about the Friday Workbox®? Why would you even want that? Stay tuned! 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution®

• 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!

In this episode, I introduce you to Kristi L. who has two daughters at home. Rachel is a high school senior and Lydia is in 8th grade. After losing her husband to cancer, Kristi decided to move closer to family in Indiana. Kristi is a rare gem who found Organize 365® before the podcast!  It’s so fun to meet someone who has seen and appreciated the evolution of Organize 365®. Kristi started with my eBook in 2012, then grew her organizing skills through the Sunday Basket®.

Kristi relied heavily on the Sunday Basket® to stay organized while she took care of her husband. After his passing and trying to do it all, Kristi decided to sell the horse farm and move. It didn’t sell overnight. While trying to keep the house “showing” ready, she moved a lot of stuff into a pod for later organizing which was smart because it took 2 years.  

She decided the taxes were just too high and was tired of spending a lot of time mowing the lawn, just a quick 8 hours! When they got to their new downsized home with only two garages, Kristi took her time settling in. She could have continued to get COBRA health insurance forever, but her girls needed coverage going into 2019. So Kristi decided to go back to work. It was a good thing too because shortly after her daughter, Lydia, would be diagnosed with epilepsy and she’d be using the Warrior MAMA Binder more than ever. She already had the binder because Lydia has an IEP for ADHD. 

This is when Kristi decided they needed more structure and she knew the 100 Day Challenge (now The Productive Home Solution®) was just the answer. Shortly after, she added the Friday Workbox® for organization and productivity at work too. She realized a lot of tasks were assigned digitally so admittedly she let the Friday Workbox® go. But then in her review, she was urged to get more training done. It dawned on her they weren’t getting done because it was something the Friday Workbox® used to help with! She was happy to share that she went back to the Friday Workbox® and now has the next three months scheduled, which allowed her to delegate work to others (in different time zones) to help with different tasks associated with the training. She learned her lesson and is sticking with the Friday Workbox®!

Kristi now has The Productive Home Solution®. After having a nightmare that she was passing and her daughters were going to have to take care of things and she wasn’t organized, she knew she needed the binders for peace of mind. She pointed out that the Sunday Basket® serves to accomplish actionable tasks while the binders keep your affairs in order. She felt it beneficial to get both which are included in the The Productive Home Solution®. Kristi has a lot less stress these days due to the products and systems from Organize 365®.

One the most recent things Kristi treated herself to was the Paper Organizing Retreat! Kristi loved the 1:1 help she received with her paper and binders. She had such a fabulous time at the retreat, not to mention the night in the hotel where she was finally able to charge her car. More importantly, she got to “be” with all her paper that next day and make more progress on what she started at the retreat! Next time she’s bringing her mom! Her mom is 80 and has a lifetime of paper. Kristi likes the idea of being able to shred what she predicts to be 99.99% of that paper at the retreat! Lisa joked that either way, Kristi will be taking care of that paper. So it can be with her mom’s help now or later because it’s not going anywhere otherwise.

Kristi’s advice is, “start with the Sunday Basket®, then buy it all.” Kristi says to start with pink and take care of yourself first. Get you organized for two reasons; as a woman you need to get organized first and it’ll take a long time before it needs to be touched up-you’re the only one using your personal space.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• The Productive Home Solution® 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!