Organize 365 Podcast

I have been feeling the tug to share my personal experience with depression for quite a while. It may surprise you to hear that I have struggled with depression. I'm a pretty upbeat gal! Well, it surprised me too. In today's podcast, I share my personal story with depression and how it affects every area of your life. Here are 5 tips I gave myself and share with clients about how depression affects organization. 1. Give yourself grace. I cannot even put into words how depression zapped me of every shred of energy to do ANYTHING. And the thought of tackling an organization project was SO overwhelming. My "will power" got up and went - AWAY! 2. Get a friend to help you. Another friend's perspective, energy and motivation are contagious and can help you push through when you just want to watch TV. Used strategically, friends can help you get organized and stay functioning when your own initiative is low. Over 50% of the Organize 365 clients call us in to help because they just can't do the organizing themselves in their depressed state. 3. Pick ONE area and COMPLETE it before moving on no matter how long it takes. Slow and steady wins the race! Your home did not become a "mess" overnight, and it won't get organized overnight either. One step at a time. Pick an area where you can get a quick win and start there: Your night stand Your dresser The car The Master Closet The key is to MAINTAIN that area when you tackle area #2. The Productive Home Solution™ is ordered in a way so the areas you organize will stay organized as you move on to the next area of your home. 4. Acknowledge your limitations. I know how frustrated you are! Knowing what I USED to be able to do made me even MORE depressed when I couldn't seem to tackle even the basics when I was depressed. If it's a bad day... it's OK! You have time to get organized and take care of yourself. And when your desire is beyond your physical ability - hire help. 5. Surround yourself with positive people. I know it's easier to say than do, but I always felt better when I made myself go OUT and BE with people, even though I didn't want to. I can't even tell you how many times we will be laughing with clients and then they say, "I can't believe how fun you make organizing!" "I haven't been able to laugh like that in a long time." "If I knew how quickly you could get this organized I wouldn't have waited so long to call." and our favorite. "I can't believe there are people who actually LIKE to organize!" EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® Preorder your hard copy of Escaping Quicksand 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

Here it is, the first chapter of my latest book Escaping Quicksand. I thought it was necessary for the reader to understand that I too have found myself in quicksand and realized there was no rock bottom to hit. Through escaping "the quicksand", I learned the lesson of the unpopular truth that you have to make yourself a priority. How Did I Get In the Pit of Despair? I've always been a planner and organized. But the systems I brought into adulthood slowly started to break as the complexity of life increased by adding a spouse, a house, and children. I suppose it was around the time of the 2008 recession that life gave the final push into the pit of despair. My father had fallen which led to a decline in his health and ultimately his passing. My sister and I shared roles to care for him and then settle his estate but it was a lot financially, logistically, and emotionally. On top of that I had become a very negative person that no one really wanted to be around. The more I fought to not sink lower in the quicksand of the pit of despair, the deeper I fell. Grandma's Car As I was getting ready to turn 40 I realized that no one was coming to save me. If it was to be it was up to me! I remembered all the inspirational and motivational speakers I'd heard in the back seat of my grandma's car and when I'd been in tow with my mother at events. Some of their one liners started popping into my head. It was at that point that I realized I needed to support myself in the same way I support my family members in their daily lives, with their diet, physical fitness, and education! It was up to me to fix my broken life. We are so busy taking care of everyone else that we get lost in the mix and never get put on the list. The first thing I did was organize my physical spaces and that's when I wrote Organization is a Learnable Skill. Pampering Is Not Self Care Yes, a pedicure is nice, but we need to do so much more to take care of ourselves. There's child care and elder care — but when do we get to self-care? It's not selfish. When I realized no one was coming to save me, I was not ready to assume care for myself. My life was a mess, and I remember thinking, "How was this my life?" I had taken care of my family, of course, but something clicked and I knew, "If it was to be, it was up to me." That felt overwhelming because at that point I could only go day by day. I freed up time by quitting my job, and it became my mission to get out of the quicksand. This book explains how I took care of myself so that I could better take care of everyone else. We all know the cliché truth that on an airplane you have to put on your own air mask before helping a child. It's uncomfortable to focus on yourself — but you must. If you loved hearing this chapter, then you'll want to preorder your hard copy of Escaping Quicksand because you'll immediately join the book club. I'll be releasing the audio version one week at a time to allow you to process and implement the chapter. There will also be discussion questions for the community to chat about. I look forward to seeing you in the book club! EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® Preorder your hard copy of Escaping Quicksand 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've been talking about a book I've been writing and I'm here to tell you all the juicy details and that you can preorder it now! In the end, I realized the world didn't need a book on how to organize your home because you have no resources to complete the tasks. Escaping Quicksand will arm you with the tools to get your home organized and move to productivity! Thought Process and Creation This is my sixth book. I don't tell you that to brag. I tell you that to share that I have published each book in different ways. Not sure if you have written a book but I always like to share my journey and thought process in case it's something you have been thinking about doing too. I really struggled with feeling "set" on the book theme. I wrote two other versions of "the book" I thought I was going to publish. But one morning about 5am, it came to me. The first chapter was written in about an hour and it felt right. I finally nailed down what people needed. I wrote a book on shifting your mindset to accomplish your home organization goals! I shared the first paragraph with my team and they unanimously agreed, yes this is the book people need. I wrote it in two weeks. It was effortless and I felt passionate about what I was sharing. And when do people need it? In June of course. I insisted on having it released on June 23rd. Why? Because that's when our year is "wrapping up." The end of June is when I have our team week. It's when school is wrapping up, we're resetting, and dreaming. And July is a great month to read a new book. This is a thinking book. Secret: When you preorder, chapters will be released early! What's It About You will start reading the first three pre chapters. I started by sharing my quicksand story. I realized when you have hit "rock bottom", it turns out that you just keep going, like no end to the pit. You just keep sinking until the quicksand swallows you! I want to help you before you get too deep in the quicksand. Inevitably, it seems as though we hit 40 and reevaluate life; that come to Jesus conversation we have with ourselves. We've had enough and know there has to be a solution out there somewhere. And what about us? When do we put ourselves on the to do list? So, the next chapter is about self care. How do we care for our whole person? Our education, spiritual care, health, and all the other aspects of a whole person. The third prechapter is the fact that our household is an economic powerhouse. And then we get into the meat of the book explaining Swiss cheese organizing, being a woman of excellence, morning and afternoon routines, letting go of housework expectations, taking "center stage" when doing housework, weekly planning, and from to do lists to productivity! Get the Book and Join the Book Club Who loves a book club? There are already over 1,000 people who have preordered the book and have the opportunity to join the book club. You can preorder the book through the Organize 365® website or through your favorite book retailer. Then just upload your receipt and you too can join the book club. I am planning on releasing the chapters early each week for 13 weeks. I will release videos and will be posing questions out there for all of us to discuss about the chapters and how it applies to you as a household manager. This will allow you to change your mindset in real time. It's too easy to just keep reading and not take action. This slow release will give you a week to ruminate about what you read and what the community has said. EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® Preorder your hard copy of Escaping Quicksand 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

Ok, the line leader for executive functions is working memory. Remember? At the end of the line is the higher level executive function of planning. Planning is the ultimate self care because it ensures high priority tasks will get completed and gives you peace. I'm explaining how getting your working memory and prospective memory to play nice, will allow Planning to have a chance to play a role in your life and finally free up your full cognitive bandwidth! TMP Time management planning; plan for the day, prioritize, and set deadlines. You wrote your brian down on paper and you decided if it could wait. The items that could not wait need to be plugged into a time block in your week. This is Time management planning. The key to this is leaving a little white space for when life's inevitable interruptions pop up. Contingency Planning You uplevel your planning when you have a contingent plan. Choose which items, if need be, for tomorrow's plan can be pushed to the next day or put back in the Sunday Basket®. We all know we will be interrupted but have you made a contingency plan, a back up plan, for the day you are planning? Studies show that people who have contingency plans get more done than those who do not. Those same studies show, mind you this is in the workplace, that even with support staff and a cleaning crew, they still only complete their to-do list, 80% of the time. At least one day a week they are not completing their tasks. Now I ask you, do you think we are interrupted more at home or at work? At home we are definitely interrupted more and we are the support staff and the cleaning crew. I hope this is giving you insight as to why you are not completing your to do list. There is a lot demanding our time. The Sunday Basket® shines at contingent planning. On Sunday when you are making the week's plan, you can think through your meals, what if there is a snow day, what if a college doesn't meet their deadline. But you must plan at the end. We realized, in looking over the 80 questions submitted for the Sunday Basket® webinar in late December, that most of you aren't getting to the planning step. You should start with sorting index cards and going through slash pockets, then you do random tasks and managerial tasks, for me it's CFO stuff. Lastly, PLAN! I say it takes me 90 min to 3 hours because it depends on how much I do between sorting and planning. Pro tip: I plan Friday "in pencil." I take all the tasks I need to complete and fill them into time blocks based on importance of completion. I know though, that by Friday, some tasks will have overflowed to Friday. Life happened all week. Some items will have to go back to the Sunday Basket® and some items will be pushed to Friday. There has to be white space for flexibility. That's why we have to honestly answer, "Can it wait till Sunday?" This question may free up time that was already given to something you wanted to do not had to do. There just isn't enough time to get it all done but there is enough time, if you plan, to get all the important stuff done through planning. Strategic Planning Strategic planning is the long term planning, like what we do on Planning Day, in the Productive Home Solution™. When planning, it is best to have uninterrupted time because it requires our working memory. We cannot change people so we modify the environment. We cannot eliminate distractions so we must have daily/weekly plans. Planning will never become a habit. But you can use things like the beginning of the school week to plan your weeks and the school year as a reminder to get some long term planning done. Strategic planning is how we get a grounding system in place to tackle the three types of planning; TMP, contingency, and strategic. Planning is the ultimate self care. EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution Register for Webinar Replays 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.

Can goal attainment really be effortless? Yes! How? I'm sharing a science backed and real life proven strategy to, yes, attain your goals effortlessly with environment modification. Last week I told you to write everything down. Now what? Your Brain On Paper If you were a good lil student, you have started to write down all of your interruptive thoughts. Stop trying to remember everything, just write it down! Now you have all of these thoughts on paper, your brain on paper and you may be overwhelmed. The next step, is to decide can it wait till Sunday? If so, pop that baby into the Sunday Basket® for safe keeping until it can't wait. If not, add it to your to do list for the day. If you find you are always saying yes it can wait, but you don't have a lot of motivation to get it accomplished, it's ok to toss it. Our goals, energy, money, where we live, stage of family life, our house, and other factors change projects we want to do. You aren't going to get it all done because you aren't getting it all done now. Let yourself off the hook for projects you are not longer interested in finishing. Evolution of Systems Our families are ever changing and I was reminded of this during my grand-turnity. Abby had her baby and I am home more helping to take care of her and my grandsons. I don't cook. But I do make Thanksgiving dinner. I thought it would be nice to make until Greg pointed out that had I just asked Greg to do it, he would have. I abdicated cooking many years ago. Greg is used to cooking and didn't appreciate me taking up space in the fridge while the turkey defrosted. You see, back in the day saving money was the goal. My cooking and grocery shopping "reality" is from those days but our family has changed. I picked up a couple of turkeys while they were cheap around Thanksgiving knowing I'd be home after Abby had the baby. But I don't grocery shop or cook anymore. I could have saved a lot of my time and money had I just let Greg do it if I had just thought about today's reality of my family dynamics and roles. Ok the next thing to consider is your environment. First, do you still need the blender on the counter? You know it's not about the actual blender, it's just an appliance or thing you may have on the counter that you are no longer using. Smoothies may have been an everyday thing that is no longer. I moved ours to the basement, sometimes I forget, I should just pop a lil note inside the cupboard to remind me. I mean, no one is looking in my cupboards. Is your environment supporting your current goals? Could you modify your environment to better support your goals? Decluttering and Organizing Surfaces Thoughts I realized when I wanted to start adding collagen to my coffee that my environment was not set up to support my goals. I had about 9 steps to make my coffee, I'd get to my car and realize I had forgotten the collagen. If you are trying to lose weight, remove the cookies and put fruit in that same place. You can't eat what is not in your house. And you can't rely solely on willpower. AND it signals cues to your brain about your new goals. Science shows that when your environment is modified you can attain your goals effortlessly. As you realize what you want to modify you will need to declutter and organize that space. The Productive Home Solution may bring light to spaces you want to modify and it will walk you through the decluttering and functionality of that space. There is a caveat here. You will have more success if you have the foundation of the Sunday Basket® established because you will already be in the habit of writing down interruptive thoughts. I went through the thought process of setting up a coffee station. In moving things around, it brought to light the cup/bottle situation for my grandsons. I wrote things down and will take action on a Sunday. The time you spend modifying your spaces to match your goals will give back time to your future self. Then the systems you put in place will simply need to be maintained. The synergy between The Sunday Basket and The Productive Home Solution will have you saving time, cognitively offloading, gaining support for your goals and making better choices too! EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® The Productive Home Solution Register for Webinar Replays 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