Asking for a Friend - Health, Fitness & Personal Growth Tips for Women in Midlife

Ep.119 Finding Peace Through Organization: Creating a Functional Home and Mental Well-being with Lisa Woodruff

• Michele Henning Folan • Episode 119

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We speak to entrepreneur Lisa Woodruff, CEO of Organize 365, who shares her inspiring journey from teacher and stay-at-home mom to organizational expert. Learn how she conquered challenges and built a thriving business dedicated to helping people rediscover the joy in a well-organized home.

Our discussion dives deep into the mental toll disorganization can take on your life. Lisa and I explore the pressures of living up to society's picture-perfect home ideals, often leading to feelings of inadequacy and isolation. We emphasize the importance of functional organization over aesthetics and introduce actionable strategies to reduce anxiety and cognitive load. Learn about the transformative power of structures like the Friday Workbox and Sunday Basket that make invisible tasks visible and manageable, enhancing productivity and freeing up time for self-care and personal activities.

We don't stop there. From tackling the "Sunday Scaries" to balancing professional and domestic responsibilities, this episode is packed with insights to help you lead a more organized and fulfilling life. Discover how evolving roles within the family and embracing organizational systems can serve as powerful forms of self-care. We also delve into the importance of maintaining a serene, clutter-free environment for mental well-being. Tune in for practical tips that will inspire you to create a balanced, peaceful home and life.

You can find Lisa Woodruff and Organize 365 at:
https://organize365.com/
https://www.instagram.com/organize365/
https://www.facebook.com/Organize365
Her very popular Organize 365 Podcast can be found wherever you get your podcasts

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Are you ready to reclaim your midlife body and health? I went through my own personal journey through menopause, the struggle with midsection weight gain, and feeling rundown. Faster Way, a transformative six-week group program, set me on the path to sustainable change. I'd love to work with you! Let me help you reach your health and fitness goals.
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Michele Folan:

Bathing suit shopping was far less painful this year. I hit 200 pounds and I haven't seen this weight in a really long time. I'm not craving sugar like I used to, and the energy I have is off the charts. Yes, these are just a few comments from my clients, but they all have one thing in common Each of them decided it was time to stop making excuses and to prioritize their health and well-being. We are in the driver's seat when it comes to fitness and nutrition. Let me show you what worked for my many clients and me. This is not a diet. These are sustainable strategies you can take with you for a healthier, fitter future. Join me for my next six-week midlife reset. Go to the show notes of the episode or reach out on Facebook or Instagram. I'll be waiting for you. Health, wellness, fitness and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. I'm your host, Michele Folan, and this is Asking for a Friend.

Michele Folan:

The kitchen junk drawer. It is a cherished part of most homes, but what if your proverbial junk drawer expands beyond that little nook in the kitchen? You have mail piled on the dining room table. Your desk is a disaster. You have bags of clothes that were supposed to go to charity eight months ago in the foyer or still in the trunk of your car. These are not extreme examples, of course, but there are people who happily or maybe not live amongst major clutter. And then there's the hoarder, but that's probably a topic for a whole other show.

Michele Folan:

It may get to the point where the thought of getting through the mess will cause extreme anxiety, and the thought of having people to your home creates monumental stress. Your children are perhaps embarrassed of the state of their home, or worse. Yet they are following in your footsteps of disorganization and the situation is causing a rift between you and your partner, or maybe they're the disorganized one. Getting to the root cause and wanting to do better is a wonderful first step. Lisa Woodruff is the CEO of Organize 365 and a podcast host. For over 10 years she has been helping clients get and stay organized with tried and true methods that bring people peace of mind and helps them love their homes again. Welcome to Asking for a Friend, lisa Woodruff.

Lisa Woodruff:

Michelle, thank you so much for having me.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, I crack up every time this happens, because I wanted to do a show on household organization for people that seem to be disorganized and how to kind of get them on the right path. I had reached out to someone and I was waiting to hear back and then you popped into my inbox. So I don't know why this keeps happening, but I swear I'm just putting something out into the universe and there's telepathy or something involved here. So thanks for being here, thanks.

Lisa Woodruff:

I totally agree. In one of Malcolm Gladwell's books he talks about that there was a perfect time to start the personal PC. So the fact that Apple and Microsoft started at the same time in two completely different locations, it was like just the right time for that. And I believe, the more that you are open to the possibilities of collaboration, you get an idea and somebody else could see idea and those two ideas come together. So I'm so glad we got our ideas got to meet in real life.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, me too. Before we get started, it would be nice for you to just tell the audience a little bit more about you, where you're from, schooling, anything you want to share? Yeah, so.

Lisa Woodruff:

I'm born and raised in Ohio and I went to Miami University and got an early childhood elementary degree and I taught for a few years and then became a mother and I adopted our children. I was able to be a stay-at-home mom, which is all I ever wanted to be in my entire life, and then life got moving faster and faster. The kids had some extra challenges at school Parents got divorced, my dad became sick and I became the power of healthcare and my sister and I became power of attorney and then settling the estate. And then all of a sudden I was 39, about to be 40. And I was like at the bottom of the pit of despair. I felt like the roadkill on the side of the road.

Lisa Woodruff:

I had been organized in the past. Every job I ever had I was successful at because I was organized or I helped someone else. Be organized, but I expect to live to be 100, god willing. Be organized, but I expect to live to be 100, god willing. And I could not imagine living my life another 60 years in the reactive life I was living. At that time I was the heaviest. I've ever been, the most in debt. I'd ever been the most not in control of my time in my life that I'd ever been, and so that's when I made the pivot to starting my own company and I named it Organize 365, because I thought I could talk about organization for the rest of my life. I had no idea how I'd make money with it. I had no idea what I would do. I started a blog and quit my teaching job and I thought that's what I'll do. I'll just start Organize 365. And that was in 2012.

Michele Folan:

I love a good pivot. I think it's amazing when women just say I'm just doing it, I'm taking the bull by the horns. I have to back up, though. Okay, where in Ohio did you grow up?

Lisa Woodruff:

So I was born in the Rocky River Bay Village area, I grew up in Akron, Ohio, and now I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm just coming South in Ohio.

Michele Folan:

I'm as far South as you can get in Ohio All right, so we never made this connection, but I live in Cincinnati.

Lisa Woodruff:

Right now you're in Cincinnati, like we could really be meeting in real life. Real life, oh my gosh, that's so funny.

Michele Folan:

See everyone listening. This is what happens when I don't do a lot of homework before I do one of these interviews. Sometimes I fly by the seat of my pants. Now I'm prepared. So I don't do a lot of homework before I do one of these interviews. Sometimes I fly by the seat of my pants Now I'm prepared. So I don't want you to think I'm not prepared, but I've got after two years I can kind of wing it. We can just jump in and start chatting. Yes, I'm aware the winging it. Yeah, lisa's also a podcaster. So I was like, eh, she'll get this, I don't need to have a pre-call or anything. Okay, this is so hilarious. When you said Miami university, I went to the university of Cincinnati. But yeah, anyway, I'm sure everybody's like rolling.

Lisa Woodruff:

So after this we'll actually have to have coffee in real life.

Michele Folan:

Yeah Well, and we'll definitely get that on the calendar. So, anyway, you did kind of talk a little bit how your path led to being a master organizer, and everyone has a story and I think this is fun. Like at what point did you say, okay, I've learned a lot. I really do need to share this with other people.

Lisa Woodruff:

So it's so funny, I've never even heard the term master organizer. And when I started Organize 365 here in Cincinnati you may not know this, but Cincinnati is like the startup capital of the world and it's because we have P&G and GE and Kroger and Luxottica and all these big companies, and people retire like in their early 50s and then they start all these other companies. And so in Cincinnati in 2008, 2009, I was in a blogging group and that's how I learned about SEO and I started a different blog. So when I started Organize 365, I named it Organize 365 for SEO and blogging and I thought I would be an affiliate marketer, but I had a history in selling direct sales products, specifically creative memories. I was a top leader in creative memories, but also I've been in 32 other direct sales companies and I've been a leader in five. I creative memories, but also I've been in 32 other direct sales companies and I've been a leader in five, like I'm obsessed.

Lisa Woodruff:

So when I started to organize 365, I joined a direct selling company that was selling organizing products, because I'm good at direct sales. However, it was 90 days into my business that I did a party. There were 25 people. If you've ever been to a home party like Mary Kay Tupperware, there's not 25 people. So I said to my friend I was like who are these people? I don't even know these people and why are they here? And she said well, Lisa, everyone wants to know what a professional organizer has to say. And I was like I'm a professional organizer. She's like, yeah, I had been in people's homes taking money for organizing for a decade but I never knew that was even a thing.

Lisa Woodruff:

So when I started Organize 365, I am a fourth generation female college graduate and all of those women owned their own businesses. My mother started a business in our basement when I was in second grade and sold it when I was in eighth grade. So being an entrepreneur, being a business owner, is like in my DNA. So when I was sitting on my bed about to turn 40 and I was like I'm going to quit my teaching job, what am I going to do? I picked a direct sales company. But I also was like I'm going to take this direct sales company on the internet. Like I was one of the first people with 31 gifts who started blogging about 31 gifts and sold it based on the contract. But it really made people in the company mad because I didn't break any of our rules but I wasn't doing direct person to person selling. I knew how to sell on the internet and they didn't and so I stopped doing that because it made too many people mad. But I understood how to reach people in different places.

Lisa Woodruff:

So, taking that entrepreneurial background and figuring out, I wanted to grow a company that would employ people. Like that was my original intent, not to be a professional organizer. And in the first couple of years, in the first three years, the company grew. The blog grew because I earned money as a service professional doing in-home organizing. But when I was doing the in-home organizing I realized that the way I organized an eight-year-old was different than the way I organized an 80-year-old. And in Cincinnati, you know, all the houses are the same, like maybe different color paint or outside, but when you get inside it's a one-story or two-story there, color paint or outside, but when you get inside it's a one story or two story. There's no difference in houses here, and so they were all the same. The difference was the life phase of the family in the home and the age of the household manager. And so when I would organize people, their houses got organized and stayed organized and within three years people are like, oh, we know how to do this now because of questions you asked me and I was like, oh, you can learn the skill of organizing, because up until that point I'd always heard through the ether either you were or you weren't organized. It wasn't something you could learn. You either had it or you didn't have it. And I was like, well, I'm a teacher Game on, I will teach this. How will I teach this? So that was 10 years ago.

Lisa Woodruff:

I decided to do a podcast for two reasons. Number one I didn't have to do a podcast for two reasons. Number one I didn't have to do my hair and makeup. I'm not good at like YouTube and all that stuff.

Lisa Woodruff:

But second, more importantly, is that when you are organizing, it is so vulnerable when you let someone into your home and a lot of people won't just because of that alone, but also the cost is so cost prohibitive to have a person in your home. So I thought how is the best way to teach this to people? And the best way to teach organizing is through audio, because I want you to be in your kitchen and listening to my questions about your kitchen looking at your kitchen, not looking at my kitchen, because if you're looking at my kitchen on YouTube, you're thinking I wish I had those counters, or oh, her kitchen is too small, her plates are outdated. Does she not know that her hair is like da-da-da? And so the podcast became if you took away the visual medium, their house became the visual medium, and then it was like an organizer was standing next to you as you were organizing your house.

Michele Folan:

Very interesting. You've really thought this through. I mean, I'm sure it has evolved over time, but you really have a process here. That is really kind of cool. I do have a quick question for you, Lisa. So when you started doing this, I mean, you have kids. How have they embraced this had? Have you been able to get your family on board with being?

Lisa Woodruff:

organized, so you're in Cincinnati. My kids attended Springer School and Center, which is a language learning disability school. Here it's the cost of college, by the way.

Michele Folan:

It is.

Lisa Woodruff:

My kids went there and thank goodness they did, because it really taught them a lot of strategies, and a large percentage of the children at that school who are diagnosed with learning disabilities also have ADHD. So that's when I started learning more about ADHD, executive functions and how they present in the classroom. Now I was a classroom teacher so I already knew some of this, but I learned more through my children. Well, inside of the homes I was organizing in Cincinnati, one out of every two women would either have an ADHD diagnosis or say they thought they had an ADHD diagnosis, and so I started connecting what was happening with my kids with what was happening with my clients, and I had taught my kids how to organize their bedroom. I call your bedroom your mini apartment, so I gave them jurisdiction, like we would change the paint color, and they really had ownership over that space. And my kids did not have the capability of organizing my house or keeping my house clean, so their only responsibility was their bedroom. One child decided to give up all of their possessions so that they could organize their room faster. The other one likes a lot of things, and so it took that child six months of me doing this every single week in order for them to learn the skill of organizing. So I knew going into this that organization was a learnable skill.

Lisa Woodruff:

When you let your space get overwhelming, everyone gets overwhelmed, and my kids are now 22 and 23. They were 10 and 12 when I started the company and so they will call me from their actual apartment and they'll say, mom, I'm so overwhelmed and I have a process through getting everyone started. I'm like, okay, go pick up all the trash and call me back, go start the laundry and call me back. And then they never call me back because they now are like their memory starts kicking in. They know how to organize a room.

Lisa Woodruff:

How long it takes you to learn the skill of organizing is individual, specific, but everyone can learn to organize period. And once you learn to organize, your life is different because you have these additional skill sets and tools in your belt. What I find in organizing people in Cincinnati when I was doing that, is if people had three children, one of those children was naturally organized and I said let's find that child and let's let that child organize your entire house and then you follow their system and don't make them mad because you'll mess up their system and children and spouses typically follow whoever is the household administrator, the household running the household. When they see that you're serious and you're actually going to put things back where they're supposed to go, someone else in the house is organized and they'll start following you and then usually the rest of the family will follow along, okay.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, I was curious about that because I know there are instances where kids are very aware of their surroundings and they may want their mom to be more organized and they may feel a little hesitant to have their friends over if the house cluttered, because they go to other people's homes and they don't see that. You brought up something very interesting about working with clients and half of them were either ADHD or thought they were. There are mental aspects and maybe some anxiety or hopelessness that can come from serious disorganization and clutter. Can you talk about that a little bit? When you have clients that are really struggling, how do you get through that first to try to get them to take action Sure.

Lisa Woodruff:

So first I have to say I'm not a psychologist or a clinician or a doctor in any way in that sense of the word. And also when we say you know when it gets to a certain level, I like to say like. I'm not a minimalist, I have stuff Like, I like stuff. I'm not a maximalist, I'm not a minimalist. I think that the way we typically talk about organization is based on an aesthetic the way things look. Does it look like a magazine? Does it look like a TV show? If, if it doesn't and you actually know where all of your stuff is, you still don't feel organized because you're not matching the aesthetic of what is popular today. So we need to separate being able to find yourself from the aesthetic of how houses look. That's number one. The other thing that is just generally pervasive in research is that most humans, the top two things humans feel, are isolated and alone. There's the top two problems we have. And in your home you're isolated and alone. You've gotten your house as organized as you can. Maybe you're out of time, maybe you're out of money, you're out of the skill set. You don't know how to go any further.

Lisa Woodruff:

Now I am in the process of pursuing my own PhD. I will not be a clinical PhD, I'll just have a psychology degree and be able to do a ridiculous amount of research is what I want to do, and I've already started doing academic research and reading a lot of the academic literature. And the specific research I want to do for my dissertation is really understanding the weight of the mental load inside of households, the anxiety and the executive function tasks. So can we, through the products that I've created, can we, through the products that I've created, reduce anxiety, reduce the cognitive load, support working memory by having external operational structures? So I mentioned to you before we started recording that after doing this for 12 years, one of the things I said early on was when I do Organize 365, I will have work-related products, but I will always stick with the homeowner because most professional organizers within five years move into corporations because that's where all the money is. There's not money in organizing homes and I want to stay in homes because I believe that's the problem that's not solved and the problem that we will be in for our entire life. From the time you're born until the time you die you'll be in a household, and so that problem needs to be solved. There are no operational systems, universal operational systems. You can't go to the store and buy how to organize your house. You just can't. But you could in anything else. So why don't we have that? We don't even have a good definition of what housework is in academia and my first study which I'll publish eventually, but it's still in the process realized that we're defining it way too broadly, but it's still in the process. Realize that we're defining it way too broadly. And when you survey Americans that match the US census not just married couples with children the amount of things we qualify as housework is only 15. It's not like 9,000 things, it's only 15 things. So how do we define it? How do we operationalize it? How do we really get to a conversation Like when you're talking about a house that is cluttered to who?

Lisa Woodruff:

Some people, like my one neighbor, when these two houses were for sale on my street it was so interesting. One was a minimalist and her house was completely empty of things and she cleaned with bleach. Like the house was so clean and people went into the house and they said that it was not clean, it was totally clean. And they went into the artistic house that had a whole bunch of things in it that was also clean, but it was very organized. And they said, oh, that's the cleanest house I've ever been in.

Lisa Woodruff:

And I realized, oh, people, equate clean to organization. There wasn't enough organization in the clean house to feel like homey and clean, even though it was clean house, to feel like homey and clean even though it was clean. So we really need to find better words to describe what we're trying to get to in our houses so we can realize when we're done. Here's the thing, michelle we're killing ourselves to get an A plus, to get a gold star on our housework checklist, and no one's checking our paper, yeah well. And so we need to stop doing all of that and go out and live your life and do what you were uniquely created to do. Let's do the minimum amount of housework necessary to keep your house as organized as it needs to be, so you can have your time back to do what you're uniquely created to do, like that's the mission of Organize 365.

Michele Folan:

Well, and I think too. So a couple things here. We don't often get appreciated for cleaning the kitchen floor or doing the laundry right. That satisfaction in getting that job done is internal, and we don't often get that pat on the back. There's one thing that I am curious about in your experience why are some people more comfortable amongst clutter? Because I'm curious if it's a genetic thing where they're just more comfortable with just stuff around them, or is that a learned trait from your upbringing?

Lisa Woodruff:

That's a great question. I do not have like a scientific answer. What I would say. Actually, I just interviewed someone in our audience for a paper that I need to write a case study I need to write and we were talking about like she got a dumpster and she just started emptying everything out of her house at one point in her organizing journey and I asked her how that felt and she said, well, it was great because we didn't need all this stuff. It was like old stuff. And I said, yes, but did it make you nervous? She said, oh, yeah, totally made me nervous and I got rid of these heritage baskets. Like she already knew some of the things she got rid of that maybe she wish she hadn't. And I said what would you do with them if you had them today?

Lisa Woodruff:

She goes of like a huge amount of stuff and I said how weird was it when you had some empty cabinets and empty drawers? She said, oh, it's so weird. And I remember that in my own journey, like when I cleaned out the kitchen, I was like I don't really need this, but I have space for it, so I'm going to get rid of it. So then the cabinet shelf was empty. It was the most bizarre feeling. And when I started organizing my house in 2012, it was the most bizarre feeling. And when I started organizing my house in 2012, we were like we're going to have to get a bigger house, like we have to move. There was so much stuff, but by the end of 2012, I had empty cabinets and empty drawers and it was just that I had not truly moved into the phase of life of having middle school kids. I still had grade school kids, babies, like. I still had everything from all the phases of my kid's childhood that needed to be cleaned out. I had past careers from before. I had kids that needed to be let go of so that I had the capacity for what was coming next, which is a process. So I think there's a process, but also, you know, like my neighbor, whose house sold for more than the neighbor that was a minimalist, she's an artist, like every square inch of that house had something in it and she loved it. She's an artist Like every square inch of that house had something in it and she loved it. So I don't think there's any problem with how much or how little you have, unless you have too little to actually live or you have too much to actually live, like if you go to either end of the spectrum and you're walking in little paths through your house.

Lisa Woodruff:

I remember there was a lady who followed our system online and she sent an email into customer service and she said thanks to you, this is the first Christmas we're not celebrating on my bed. She had a few children and the only place they could be was on her bed, like ate on her bed. They opened presents on her bed because the whole entire house you couldn't even walk through it. She never used a professional organizer. She did it on her own. Yes, it took her a lot longer, but they had Christmas. She said she did it on her own. Yes, it took her a lot longer, but they had Christmas. She said actually on the floor with a tree, not on her bed. And I don't even know how to reply to that.

Lisa Woodruff:

I would cry for that person and like be happy because that's huge, yes, but she did it. She did it Like she didn't have a professional organizer. Come in and if you can afford it, you should hire a professional organizer. But if you hire a professional organizer and you don't learn the organizational skills, you're going to be hiring that professional organizer again. So it's learning the skill, changing your mindset about how much stuff do you want? When do you want it. I never say to get rid of things. I'd rather you get rid of less than more, because if you get rid of things out of regret, you'll stop organizing. And the other thing that I observed with people who self-organize instead of using a professional organizer is that they over declutter, trying to get that minimalistic aesthetic, because they feel that that's how you're going to get organized.

Lisa Woodruff:

Now, the first time you go through your house, grab some black trash bags and get rid of as much as you can the broken stuff, the dirty stuff, the stuff that's never going to fit. The problem is that works really, really well. And then you need to move into organizing. But nobody teaches organizing. Everybody teaches decluttering. So now it's four months later.

Lisa Woodruff:

You're overwhelmed again. You're like, okay, I'm going to grab a black trash bag. But when you walk through your house after like 20 minutes everything else you're like well, I don't really know if I want to get rid of that. But you don't know how to organize. So you're like well, I guess I have to get rid of it because I feel disorganized and the only way to disorganize is to get rid of things. Wrong. That's wrong. You need to move into organizing. Decluttering is fast and easy and gives you a big wow. Organizing is hard and long and will take 18 months to three years, but it is worth it because after that amount of time you will live the rest of your life organized and if you never take the time to learn the skill at that level, you will always be trying to declutter to get that high again from decluttering. But it won't last.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, Lisa. When you start working with clients, what are most of them looking for? What are they asking you to help them with?

Lisa Woodruff:

Yeah. So when I was doing in-home organizing, it was usually a space and we would get a space organized. I haven't done in-home organizing in seven years. So now what people are usually looking for? They search a podcast player and they search organizing and they come over to Organize 365 and there are only like 10 podcasts about home organizing. They find the person that resonates with them and if I'm the person that resonates with them I've been doing this 10 years. Every Friday is a brand new them and if I'm the person that resonates with them, I've been doing this 10 years. Every Friday is a brand new podcast and it's all very analytical and looking at your house in a different way, looking at your stuff.

Lisa Woodruff:

The hardest thing you can do is teach people how to organize their house because they literally live there. They don't even see things that are there. So teaching them to see their house differently, to think about their children's bedrooms as mini apartments. When you rename things with different words, people are like oh yeah, you're right, that's like their little jurisdiction and their little household area. So first is that mental mindset shift and then the way that we work with clients is not one-on-one. After they've listened to the podcast, usually over a year, they'll get the Sunday basket and then all of our products have an online course, a physical component in an Sunday basket, and then all of our products have an online course, a physical component and an online community, and in those online communities, they have co-working times. So if you get the Sunday basket, which organizes your kitchen counter and moves you from reactive to proactive, you have a 90-minute co-working time on Sunday with someone on our team that will guide you through that process, which is not me.

Michele Folan:

Interesting and we'll dig into, like the Sunday basket and the Friday workbox here in a second. Would you recommend that you first need to ensure that the financial stuff and papers are being managed and organized, because that seems to me that that would be like a really critical thing in terms of just making sure bills are getting paid and insurance premiums have been addressed, and what are your thoughts about that?

Lisa Woodruff:

Yes. So usually the thing that will push people over the edge to actually be like, fine, I'll get the course or I'll sign up, is they have a significant life event they're going to have a baby, they're going to get married, they're getting divorced, they're getting remarried, they're getting new carpet, someone has passed away, someone has gotten sick or they've missed a big payment, or this is the last time their spouse is going to be able to tell them that they couldn't find something like they're going to fix this problem. So the Sunday basket is your active paper. So everything that you mentioned would be in the Sunday basket. But once you make sure that that insurance payment is paid and it's on autopay, then your insurance actually goes into a binder system that I have which is for archive paper. So we eliminate your file cabinet and we just replace it with four binders, which in Ohio we don't have evacuations, but, like in all the coastal areas from fires or hurricanes, you would grab the binders and leave, because that's going to be your substantiating information.

Michele Folan:

Ah, okay, that is interesting. When you said Sunday basket, it just brought something up. What about people that get Sunday scaries? You know how we are getting ready to start the week and it's the fear of the unknown. How can you help somebody just with Sunday scaries?

Lisa Woodruff:

Yeah, the whole thing is moving from proactive or reactive to proactive. So I think when we're children, at least I can just speak for myself. When I was a child I was like I can't wait to be an adult and move out of this home and you cannot tell me what I want to do, because I'm going to have my own home. Then you get your own home and you're like darn it, I have to clean this whole thing, I have to take care of it, I have to insure it. I don't know how to do anything I'm doing. And so at some point in your twenties or thirties life gets moving faster than you can keep up. And then that's when you move into reactive mode. And once you're in reactive mode in your household, it is really hard to get back into proactive mode. So that Sunday scary is like did I get everything done over the weekend that I needed to for my household and am I ready for the week work week for my work? And you don't know, you don't even have a checklist to check. That is solved by the Friday workbox for work and the Sunday basket for Sundays.

Lisa Woodruff:

Because you create we're lacking operational systems. We lack operational systems for employees to keep track of their administrative tasks. We only keep track of their projects, measure them and grade them on their projects, but 80% of their job is their administrative tasks in their household, their job description, and then in households. We know if you have the laundry or the dishes done, but that's like one-tenth of what you do as a household manager. There's bills and insurance and the calendaring and the planning, the week and the holidays and the back to school. None of that is visible. It's all invisible work. So Organize 365 makes visible all the invisible work and all of the different things that you do as a teacher, as an employee, as a household manager, so that it's visible to you, so that you can eliminate as much as possible, but also it becomes visible to your household so you can delegate or at least say look, I'm doing the box, it takes 90 minutes, go away.

Michele Folan:

Just from a personal standpoint with Sunday Scaries because I used to get Sunday Scaries, sunday scaries because I used to get Sunday scaries and sometimes it was just as simple as me looking ahead at the week, getting a snapshot in my head of what I had coming and having a plan, like doing a to-do list the night before. So on Sunday night I just make myself a very simple to-do list and I still do that now, even though I'm technically self-employed. It really does help with that. I hate to say, at 60 years old I'm still getting Sunday scaries. But you know you got to shift gears and make sure that you're ready for the week. So anyway, I'm glad you were able to address that. You have something I saw on your website. It was about task stacking. What does that mean exactly?

Lisa Woodruff:

So I'm like a productivity nut. I'm like how do we do this faster? How do we do more? How do I get more done in one day? And so I mean, I like to do laundry, I like to do dishes, I don't mind it. But I also wanted to start and grow a company. And so what I found was I early in Organize 365, I would take the kids to the schools and they were going to two different schools.

Lisa Woodruff:

I was spending 25 hours a week just driving them when I started the company. So I listened to a lot of podcasts. But when I got back from getting them to school I would only have like four or five hours before I started all that again. I would come in the house and I do laundry and I do dishes and like an hour later I would start working. Finally I realized, and then I'd be working at night and the family would be like you're always working. I was like, oh, I should be working while they're at work in school and they should be watching me do laundry when they're home. So I flip-flopped that and I said if nobody's in the house, I am working, and if they're in the house they can watch me do housework. So that was number one.

Lisa Woodruff:

But then I was like, how do I get all of these things that have to be done in less time? And so I created this task stacking. Number one you get all your machines working. So I would get the washing machine going, I would get the dishwasher going, I would get the crock pot going.

Lisa Woodruff:

Then, number two, I would do the household things that need to be done so that I could get over into my working. And I realized that if I did this in the morning, if I walked in the kitchen I turned on the hot water, so it'd get really hot and it's filling the sink. I would go and I would start a load of laundry. By the time I came back that water was really hot. Then I could put all the dishes in there to soak because they need to fill the dishwasher, and then I would go over and looking at everything you have to do, can you reorder what needs to be done and create a script for yourself that will take it from two hours down to 90 minutes, down to an hour, down to 45 minutes, like how fast can you get all those tasks done if you put them in the perfect order and just go through that order?

Michele Folan:

Ah, that's really that's really systematic. Very systematic, yes, Very systematic, yes. And the whole time, while you're sitting here talking, I'm visualizing. All right, how can I do this? So you're really. This is very thought provoking for me. I love this. I want to know your thoughts about the kitchen junk drawer. Does every house still get to have that kitchen junk drawer?

Lisa Woodruff:

Yes, they all get to have that junk drawer. Yeah, I think you have to have spots. You're not living in a museum. I mentioned at the beginning of this interview I loved being a stay-at-home mom, like I went to college because my mom said I had to go to college because I was a fourth generation female college graduate.

Lisa Woodruff:

I wanted to get married and have kids. I was like, fine, I'll go to college, I'll find a husband. I did. I got a missus degree. Nobody wants a missus degree like a missus. Whatever I did, that's what I wanted. And then we got these children. I loved being a stay-at-home mom and I turned my job at home being a mom and a homemaker into a full-time job. But as those kids reached middle school and I wanted to start Organize 365, I had to slowly shed the things that I loved doing when they were children and they were home with me so that I could have more time to grow Organize 365. And it was a long process and they were not happy and my spouse probably is still not happy. He would like me to be a stay-at-home dog mom. I'm like, no, I work in an office now because they liked that version of me.

Lisa Woodruff:

You as a woman are going to go through many, many iterations, many, many versions of yourself. As you go through each of these versions, you are going to change your role at home. So then I was like, well, I still want to do all these things at home. Can I do them in less time? So I have more time to do Organize 365. The other thing is we're always living in our houses. So, yes, they're going.

Lisa Woodruff:

Right now my house looks terrible because we're renovating the basement and I'm doing team week and we just traveled to england like there are so many piles. You'd be like no way, this woman is actually organized, but I am. I'm an organized person. You will have Project piles in your house. You will have junk drawers. Sometimes your junk drawer will be very organized.

Lisa Woodruff:

Mine right now is not. I open up my junk drawer. Half the stuff that's supposed to be in there isn't even in there and all the pens are literally everywhere, because my daughter's been living upstairs and she's normally in the basement and so it's terrible. But eventually my junk drawer will get reorganized again. But you have to have a place for all those things. Yeah, we don't live perfect lights. Stop thinking about how to get something perfect. I like people to use the word excellent instead of perfect. How can you live a life of excellence? How can you be more excellent? You'll never be perfect, and once you just make that one shift, you're like oh yeah, I'm going to have a junk drawer. Sometimes it's going to look good, sometimes it's not going to, but that's where I'm always going to find the scissors.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, my junk drawer looks pretty good. Lisa, you'd be proud of me, right? Yeah, yeah, I, I, I. My kitchen junk drawer is. That was a work in progress for a long time and now I know where everything is, to the point where if my husband were to take the tape measure out, I would immediately notice and say where is my tape measure? It needs to go back in this spot, would immediately notice and say where is my tape measure? It needs to go back in this spot. I mean, I'm that anal about my tape measure. So, anyway, I want to know how you work with clients. I know you have your podcast. Do you do one-on-one though, like through, like Zoom, and that sort of thing? I do not.

Lisa Woodruff:

Okay, so we only have an online program now. There are three different kinds of learners. So there's the do it myself learner someone who will listen to our podcast. They'll be like, oh, that's a good idea, I'm just going to implement that on my own. I'll never even know they exist. Then there's the do it with me client, and that's the person that's going to buy the Sunday basket. Come to the Sunday basket club. They might come to a paper organizing retreat. And then there's the Do it For Me client, and the Do it For Me client wants to hire a professional organizer. We actually have a certification program, so we have certified organizers that also have their own businesses. They may do in-home organizing, but they definitely can help you set up the organized 365 systems or set them up for you. So those are the three different kinds of learners, but I myself don't do any one-on-one organizing anymore.

Michele Folan:

Okay, I wasn't sure. If someone said, hey, I really need help, can we do this through Zoom Certified organizers will do that yeah, okay.

Lisa Woodruff:

Okay.

Michele Folan:

Got it. I would like to know what one of your important pillars of self-care is.

Lisa Woodruff:

So I have always taken a hot bath and I did that before we had kids. When the kids were little, my husband would come home and he would give them their baths and I would start mine and he always would like man the children while I took my bath. I can? I mean maybe five times in my life I have not taken a hot bath.

Michele Folan:

Sometimes they're only five minutes, sometimes they're an hour and a half long, but I always take a hot bath an hour and a half long, but I always take a hot bath. You know what? I've been asking guests that question for about a year now and that's the first one. That's not a repeat, let's just put it that way. No one's ever said a hot bath.

Lisa Woodruff:

Now, interestingly, on my podcast and I'm playing with this idea in my PhD as well you know we say self-care and I do get my nails done, get my hair done. You know people say, oh, I'm going to have self-care, I'm going to go get a massage or something like that.

Lisa Woodruff:

The only other time that you see care with another word in it in literature is childcare and elder care, and so my proposal and what I put into my podcast was your entire life is self-care. You have child care until you start to take care of yourself at around 18, until sometime in the future where you no longer can take care of yourself and someone will step in and you will have elder care. So your entire life is self-care, unless someone else is responsible for your care, power of health care or you are a dependent of some kind. So the way that we say self-care, like it is my bath and the time when I prioritize myself over anyone else in my family. However, your entire life is self-care unless you are dependent on someone else.

Michele Folan:

I would like to add that I think being organized and having a tidy house is a form of self-care.

Lisa Woodruff:

My team would be very happy that you said that They'd be like Lisa. That is the response. Why are you not answering the response correctly, like Michelle did? You're talking about your bath.

Michele Folan:

Well, it's important to me. Maybe that's why I chose this topic, because I cannot live in clutter, I cannot live in disorganization. It would set me on edge and I think it's a form of self-care is having a serene environment around you. But that's why I asked you can some people just live in that kind of environment just because that's how they're wired?

Lisa Woodruff:

Yeah, I think you definitely have a continuum. If you were looking at weight, some people are okay being overweight, underweight, that's their happy weight medium. Some people want to have no debt whatsoever, including no mortgage. And some people like me are like if it's business debt, mortgage debt, some consumer debt, I'm okay with that. But I have a number that when the consumer debt gets to this number then I'm like, oh, that's not okay, like I think it's a very personal.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, I agree, where can people find you, lisa?

Lisa Woodruff:

Well, if you like podcasts, the Organize 365 podcast has a lot of content on it. And then, if you like, social media, I'm most active on Instagram and they're both Organize 365.

Michele Folan:

I'm most active on Instagram and they're both organized 365. Wonderful. Lisa Woodruff, this was very interesting and I am really glad that we got to meet. Yes, thank you so much.

Lisa Woodruff:

We could be neighbors and we'll have to chat about that. We might be. We'll have to check that out.

Michele Folan:

Okay, lisa, thanks. I am so grateful for the ratings and reviews from our listeners. Did you know that your reviews help other people find Asking for a Friend? If you like what you hear, won't you please leave a review on Spotify or Apple? Thank you from the bottom of my heart.