The Sean Trace Show
Join host Sean Trace on The Sean Trace Show, where creativity and inspiration collide. Each episode features a diverse group of creatives sharing their personal stories, insights, and creative processes to help you ignite your own spark of inspiration. With a focus on authenticity, resilience, abundance, and health, Sean's goal is to help you discover your own unique journey and empower you to live a more inspired life. So tune in and get ready to be inspired.
The Sean Trace Show
ADHD Needs Structure | Lisa Woodruff | The Sean Trace Show
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
I sat down with Lisa Woodruff, founder of Organize 365 and author of The Paper Solution and Escaping Quicksand, to talk about why so many of us feel exhausted before the day even starts.
We got into the invisible workload that runs every household, the 20 to 40 hours a week it actually takes to keep a family functioning, and why treating your home like a business with real systems changes everything.
We also talk about parents putting themselves last, how organization is a learnable skill, and what it really means to run your household like the CEO you already are.
What's the one area of your household that always seems to fall apart, and what would it take to finally fix it?
And we devalue what we do in our household because we don't see the money changing hands. However, the US GDP, 68% of US GDP is household spending. So the money that we're spending for all those things that we're returning, the food that we're buying, the gas we're putting in our car, the birthday gifts that we're buying, that is real hard-earned money that's going back out into the economy to other people's businesses and then coming back into our household. So our household is an economic entity, a huge economic entity. And it takes 20 to 40 hours a week to run that business, but we don't think about that as a business because we're paying, not receiving. And so part of the overwhelm comes from we're prioritizing how we earn money, but we are not putting the same systems in place for how we spend money and spend our hard-earned time. And so we devalue that. And so we don't put the proper planning and operational systems in place that would make it easier.
SPEAKER_00All right. My name is Sean, by the way, if you didn't notice that part. Can you tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, my name is Lisa Woodruff. I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. I've lived in the same house for 30 years. I'm old. I'm 54. I am married. I have adult kids that are 25 and 26. I have grandkids that are five and five months who live with us. We live in a multi-generational household. And I'm basically a woman who has been studying households my entire life. My parents were both the oldest in their family. My dad, the oldest of six. I'm the oldest grandchild on both sides of the family. So I've always been interested in big families and different family dynamics. I ended up babysitting a lot of house in a lot of households, got a teaching degree, and then I did home visits in a lot of households, raised my kids for a decade as a stay-at-home mom. And then I did in-home professional organizing in Cincinnati in hundreds of households. And now I just podcast and research about how do we live in our households? What does it take to run a household? Why is it so much work?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yes to all that. So I wake up. I have ADD too. So I have to find my fidget toys, and I seem to have said it out. There it is. Um, I wake up, it's I start talking about my day, and I have to find my thing to fidget with because it's like I wake up and the anxiety starts. And from the moment I get up, I feel it. I'm like, it's time to get up. And it just is like and I'm just like, oh, good morning. Good morning, world. Oh, good morning, old friend. And it's it's there because there's just so much. I have a small business owner, I've got a team of about 20 video editors, and I'm like, today, today is gonna be a good day. And then the day hits, and it's just like, oh, everyone's got a crisis. And I'm just like, you know, trying to make it through the day, like so many people are, but I feel overwhelmed all the time. And I feel like I'm doing my best. I feel like I'm putting in like 10 out of 10 effort, but I feel overwhelmed. And I want to ask you this why do so many people, including myself, feel overwhelmed all the time, even when they're doing their best?
SPEAKER_01I think it is because I mean, I'm not sure, but I think a lot of it is because it takes so much time, literal time, to support our own adulthood in order to take care of our household. Even if we are just individuals living on our own, you're like, well, I live by myself. How much work could it possibly be? It's a lot of work. Like, it's about seven to ten hours a week just when you think about your food. Figuring out what you want to get, getting it from the grocery store, making sure it's prepared, preparing every meal, cleaning up after every meal, even if you only do it every other day like I do. Like, it's just a lot of work. Then there's laundry, then there's cleaning, and that's just what we can see visibly. Then there's all the invisible load of scheduling and ensuring and placing orders and returning things and scheduling the holidays and making sure you go out with your friends and sending that thank you note and buying the birthday gift for someone, like all of that is our responsibility as adults. And we think that that happens in the nooks and crannies, and it's just like 15 minutes a day. Like we think it's just like 15 minutes a day. So overwhelmed about work, like you're talking about. Um, and we see that on our calendar, and we can see an ROI on that. Either the project got delivered or it didn't, you got paid, you didn't get paid, you're paying your employees. You're like, okay, this is money transacting, this is real visible monetary work. And we devalue what we do in our household because we don't see the money changing hands. However, the US GDP, 68% of US GDP is household spending. So the money that we're spending for all those things that we're returning, the food that we're buying, the gas we're putting in our car, the birthday gifts that we're buying, that is real hard-earned money that's going back out into the economy to other people's businesses and then coming back into our household. So our household is an economic entity, a huge economic entity. And it takes 20 to 40 hours a week to run that business, but we don't think about that as a business because we're paying, not receiving. And so part of the overwhelm comes from we're prioritizing how we earn money, but we are not putting the same systems in place for how we spend money and spend our hard-earned time. And so we devalue that, and so we don't put the proper planning and operational systems in place that would make it easier.
SPEAKER_00I love systems. And I find that when I don't have them, chaos strikes. We had a uh a music video for my wife. My wife is a famous singer here in Vietnam. And I produce most of her videos and content and do have I've done this for years. And when you have a system, things flow. And even if it's not going right, it flows, and you can readapt and pull things back in. But if you have no system, chaos happens. And like at this last shoot that we had, um, I was sit filming this one part with my daughter, and she was in the music video, and one of the guys was like, uh, one of the teams for the stage was like, we're gonna move this in here right now. And I was like, when we're filming, the rule is that we finish the shot and then we do the next step. Like, you don't go on to the next thing until we finish this thing. It's just that. And it's like, it seemed really simple, but you gotta go step by step and you gotta follow the structure. And if you can do that, it makes things work. If you don't, then chaos ensues and things get done halfway because they're like, oh no, we need to put this up here now. And I said, Okay, we're gonna step back. They moved something in, and my daughter ran off, and then someone else started something, and we we missed half that shot. I was like, I said, we need to rewind, we have to get this, and we're gonna go back to that. But when people stopped following the system, things started falling apart. And I want to be, you know, and that's like in the house too. Good talk to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So uh you've already mentioned that you are diagnosed with ADHD or you have ADHD, correct?
SPEAKER_03Yes. 100%.
SPEAKER_01So the number the number one argument, because you said it. The number one argument I get from people who are highly creative and ADHD being one is that, oh my gosh, I don't want to put systems in my household, I don't want it to feel corporate, I don't want to be restricted. But you were mentioning how the system helps you in video production, which is a highly creative field. So when you have a strong system, you've thought it through and you know that you're running the system, it allows you to be even more creative, to be more spontaneous and to use that genius of the ADHD. You could see so many things that are going on outside of what's actually happening linearly, it becomes a superpower. But when you don't have any structure at home and you're like, oh, I want to be free flowing, I want to get done whenever I want to get done, you end up getting nothing done because there's too much free flowing and there is no system to support the spontaneity. Does that make sense? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00100%. I my daughter is probably one of the most creative people I know. She's just like me and her mom, but she takes the best and the worst from both of us. She's got my stubbornness, she's got my attitude, she's got her mom's like absolutely all over the place, and a little bit of that creative chaos. I'm very OCD. I am I have ADD and OCD, so I hyper focus on my distractions. It's wonderful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um but the the weird thing is for my daughter, she's super creative, but she's she's all over the place. Like she's distracted easy. But hands down, one of the single most creative kids I've ever known. And I've I, from an early age, saw that and said, we need to nurture this. So I put her into classes and tutoring that just allowed her to grow in that. And now she's got skills that allow her to express that creativity. You know, and one of the cool things, the other day she came in and she's like, Hey dad, uh, can I borrow your guitar? And it's my Fender Telecaster that's right over there. It's one of my favorite guitars. And I was like, What what do you need? And she's like, nothing. And I was like, nothing. You know, and she's like, and can I get the glue to gun too? And I was like, Whoa, glue gun and my guitar. And the same sentence, and she's like, No, I'm not gonna do anything in your guitar. I was like, You can look at my guitar here, but you're not taking downstairs to your area where you do a bunch of chaos.
SPEAKER_01But the good part is like Toy Story where that kid's like rearranging all the toys, you know, deconstructing the toys.
SPEAKER_00It it was that was my core fear. But what ended up happening was something way more cool. She had um a bunch of cardboard that she cut into pieces and she recreated a fender, telecaster out of um cardboard, painted it. It looked just like my guitar, which is wild.
SPEAKER_03She glad to see it.
SPEAKER_00She wanted to see it. She wanted to measure it on top just so she could, so she spotted it and it was still pretty close. Now, I just got her a new teacher because she's like, I want to do this craft, I want to do this thing. And she's watching all these things, making her own things. And I know the innate potential is there. Her grandmother had a wedding dress shop for many years, and she made thousands and thousands of wedding dresses that were just absolutely beautiful by hand. And so my daughter has those that that talent, that potential there, right? But it's unexpressed. And there was a little bit of this chaos. So I hired a sewing teacher to come and start teaching the basics. And so they today were just deconstructing, it's like, Dad, what old clothes do you have? And I was like, Well, luckily I've got some stuff for you. And so they were cutting up jeans and making things. Uh, why I'm bringing this up is that when she was learning to make things, she had to operate inside of a certain skill set, a skill box, right? And once you know these things, then you can create amazing things. But if you don't know this, the skill set, and I like to think about that as being a certain set of structures that are allowing us to succeed. If you can have these things, these are the tools that allow you to achieve great things. But if you don't have those foundations, if she doesn't know a certain stitch, you know, then she's not gonna be able to make that type of dress or product or whatever. You know, they're like, she's gonna make a blue jean uh purse out of my old blue jeans, which I think is kind of red. I love those jeans as well, which is super cool. But she needs to know how to do the things and have the right tools. And the teacher's like, these are the things we're gonna need. These are the things I'm gonna teach her. And with this skill set and this, she can make that. When you're talking about the systems in place to really get ahead, that's kind of where my brain goes.
SPEAKER_01Yes, exactly. Exactly. So we need two things. We need a schedule for the day, and then we need systems for the tasks that we repetitively do. So when you go to school, you know, like, okay, here's the schedule of the day, here are my eight classes or six classes, and then in each class, this is what this teacher expects, this is the cadence of the work, this is the amount of homework that I'm gonna have in that class. This class is really easy for me, this class is really hard for me. So when you go back all the way to that school structure, that's the kind of structure we want in our households, both the schedule and then also the how do we do each of those classes that we have. So in our schedule, we get up, we have our morning routine. That's class number one. What are the things you want to put in the morning routine? Another class would be like, okay, we have food services. And that's gonna be at least three times or four times a day. So every time we do food services, what is our cadence gonna be? What is our structure? And maybe we actually have those down as breakfast, lunch, dinner are different. Like breakfast is on your own. Lunch you're gonna eat like at your desk. Dinner is gonna be a family affair. So, like the family dinner is different than a lunch at your desk type thing. Um, how what is your view on snacks? What is your snacks rule gonna be? And then we'll have work blocks in there, and then we'll have laundry blocks or cleaning blocks. And then I like to have a household management block. Mine is on Sundays, and I take 90 minutes and anything that can wait until Sunday, I make it wait till Sunday so I can have my administrative hat on, have my calendar open, have my email open, you know, make a list of the phone calls I need to make on Monday. And when you start thinking about all these things you have to do in your household as like subjects, and then where do they fit on the schedule? Like you only had your after-school activity on Thursday afternoons. Okay, I like to do laundry Friday nights and Saturday. So laundry is only on my calendar, Friday nights and Saturday. It's not on my calendar any of the other days. When you start making concrete, some of these things are concrete tasks, some of these things are more um decision-making tasks. The more concrete you can make your subjects, your blocks, and the more you can have a nice structured schedule where these blocks go in. Then when the unexpected happens, like uh you get an opportunity to go to a concert, or somebody needs to go to the doctor, you know what school subjects you're moving somewhere else in the week, or you're eliminating those this week entirely.
SPEAKER_00And if I were to show a picture of my calendar and my daughter's calendar, um, so my daughter this summer is doing, let me see a list. Uh, and this is not just during the summer, this is during the school year. Um, this is where we're at for my daughter. Uh, give me 30 seconds.
SPEAKER_03And how old is she?
SPEAKER_00She's 10. She's 10. And so, but she she enjoys all of it. And it was one of the things that we, we, we, I think she had to enjoy she enjoys it. Otherwise, I give her the option to stop stuff if she wants to. But uh, one of the things that we do is we have a dance class. She does that on the weekends. She loves to do piano class. Uh, she has a math tutor, she has uh an English tutor and a Vietnamese tutor. She does art class, she does sewing class, and she does Muay Thai because she likes to learn self-defense. Now, she was like, Oh, but I wanted to try this volleyball, but you know what? The block didn't fit. And she was like really guilty, and she's like, Oh, I didn't get it done, and I feel so bad. I was like, You have a busy day. Like, don't feel bad about what you can't get done. Be excited about what we have done. Now, what my wife is tense about is like she likes to freestyle. Like, she's like, Well, let's try to do this today, let's do that today. And I was like, But if we have the structure, we can do that. Like, when you have that structure, you get the stuff done that you need to. And then, you know, you need to change, you need to change. This week, I had to start messaging some guests and apologizing because um Thursday and Friday, I had full podcast schedules done. I do four hours from 8 p.m. to midnight my time. And I had to reschedule a bunch of stuff because my wife, daughter, and I got invited to a fashion show. And that's not my thing. But my daughter and wife are like, we get to be fancy and you will come with us. And so I was like, Okay. Okay. But because I had that structure, it was easy to then slide people into other slots. Hey, I'm so sorry. Are you able to slide two hours later? Are you able to slide one hour later? You know, we can move things around because I know the slots that I have.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00But if you don't have that structure, like it's like, I don't know when I'll be free next. It's really challenging, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, totally. And so the more you can think about your household responsibilities, whether they be 10 hours a week or 40 hours a week, I mean, I know it's depressing to think about like, what do you what do you mean? First of all, I when I first heard that it takes the average family 28 hours per week to do housework, not including childcare, I was like, that's wrong. So I did my own time study, 36 hours for my husband and I to do the housework, not including childcare. Now, of course, we included cutting the grass and some of those things, but I was like, oh my gosh, we're spending 36 hours collectively a week just maintaining and running this household and everything we need to stay alive for a week. Like this is an amazing amount of work. It is overwhelming and kind of depressing when you first realize it. Just like when you're growing a business, you're like, oh my gosh, I have to do taxes, I have to do payroll, I have to like, you get overwhelmed when you start to grow a team, but then you're like, well, it's worth it because I want the team to help me grow and um I can better achieve my mission, vision, and values if I work with a team. So I'm gonna do the work in order to have a team. Same thing with your household. Like it is what it is. I didn't make it up. It's how much work you're already doing. Once you recognize how much work you're doing and you get serious with yourself about where that work is, number one, I want you to eliminate as much as possible. Like maybe you're doing work you don't even care about and your parents did, and you're like, why do I still do this? I'm just not gonna do it. Number two, can you do things less frequently and so it'll take less time? Like, so for example, I'll do a once-a-month big grocery shopping trip, and then every week you just pick up the little things that you need, not the staples, or like I'll do my supplements for two months at a time instead of doing them every week, you know, or dosing them out every single day. So you'll start to learn some of those efficiencies, just like you do in other things.
SPEAKER_00I like that. I wanted to ask you a question though, because you know, you said something that was interesting. I wanted to pick in on that because I see it. One of my pain points is the laundry. And I finally had to get to the point of like, I live in a multi-generational home. It's me, my wife, our daughter, my wife's sister, and her husband. We have a big house, they live downstairs, and my wife's parents live upstairs. There is definitely some stress at times. I respect everyone. My sister-in-law is one of my best friends and is a lifesaver for me so often. My in-laws are wonderful people, but there is tension at times just because we have cultural differences and other differences as well. But one of the pain points for me was laundry because I go and we have a shared laundry machine for my wife, my daughter, and I, and her mom and dad upstairs. My sister-in-law has her own one downstairs because there was too much stress there. And that was her solving of that problem. Now, every time I go up there, it's going into crossing into someone else's area and sphere of influence. That's my mother-in-law's area, and that's her space and her stuff. And she's actually really lovely and super helpful. But when she starts stewing the laundry, she'll take the laundry down and she'll take it into her room to fold it. And then I can't find anything. My daughter can't find anything. And, you know, we'll be like, uh, and I'm just like, I was gonna roll it down and go and fold it myself. But like, oh, and then I'm running my business. I finally got to the point where there's a laundromat up the street that does it for you. And I take it there. It is a small additional part to my budget, but when it's done, I know exactly where it's at. There's no sitting, there's no waiting, there's no extra stress. So when I ask this next question, I have that in mind. You say there's a lot of invisible work happening in the home. What do you mean by that? Because to me, I hear that and I'm thinking all about that laundry, you know?
SPEAKER_01Right. So the laundry is definitely visible. The visible things that are housework are food, laundry, and cleaning. And you already hit all of the suggestions that I would give. I'm also multi-generational household. We had the five-month-old, the four-year-old, my daughter who's 25, my husband and I living in the same family. Just like your sister-in-law, when we renovated the basement for my daughter and the two grandkids, we put a second washer dryer down there. Oh my gosh, it was life-changing. And when my kids were in high school and I was driving 25 hours a week, I did just like you, and I dropped the laundry off at the laundromat. It's about $40 to $60 a week in the United States to do that, to have your laundry. So it is an expense. But yeah, you've kidded on all of the ways that I would um handle that laundry. Also, if your mother-in-law doesn't mind folding your laundry, could you just accept that as a gift?
SPEAKER_00The challenge, yes, I could. And I do often. And I allow, I have her do my my wife and daughters because the we separate out, I keep my laundry separate and theirs, partially because I wear bigger, heavier clothes, like my jeans and stuff. And it's just it takes forever to dry, especially in the tropics of Vietnam, because we air dry a lot of stuff because it's hot and you save money. But there are other challenges. So I I do. And I take that as a gift and it's it's nice. But then my daughter's like, Where are these shorts? And she gets frustrated because her exercise clothes are not there. And I'm like, well, maybe they're in grandma's room. Don't go pull through that. So the two sides. I mean, I hear you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So invisible work. Invisible work is really like what is happening in your head that other people can't see. And my big thing is make it visible, even if you write it down on paper or print out the email or print out the form that you're filling out so that people can see it or you can see it. So invisible work would be like planning for the holidays, planning for a vacation, planning for special birthday parties, paying the bills, working on the budget, working on taxes, delegating things like even chores to your daughter, and then making sure that she does the chores.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um everything like information, like everything you'd have in a business, CIO, information related, CFO, finance related, COO, operations related, HR would be family related. And like every single thing you do in a business, what is the equivalent in the household? The only difference is you don't have employees in a household, but you have every other related responsibility. And it's more like a volunteer organization because there are no employees. And so what I like to do is uh you can say, hey, there's all this work, we're gonna evenly divide it or equitably divide it so that everybody's like pulling their fair share. I don't know if you've ever tried to get anybody else to do anything. It doesn't work very well. So I like to just say, like, I'm the CEO of the household, just like I'm the CEO of this business. If things don't happen in the business, even if I delegated to an employee, it still comes back to me, right? Maybe I didn't train them properly, didn't give them enough resources, didn't give them enough time. If the marketing effort doesn't work, that's on me. That's not on the economy or the clients or the CRM or whatever. Like it all comes back to me. And so I think the same thing in the household. Did I plan well enough? Did I prepare? Did I get the things that we needed? Do I did I have the information in a place that was accessible to my family? Or did I force the information to be only in my brain? So they have to use me as their Siri or the Google, hey Google, how do we, you know, like where's my birth certificate? How much mulch do we spread each year? Like all these questions that they have to ask me because it's not written down anywhere. They can't go find it.
SPEAKER_00Right. I I love that because I think on so many levels one of the biggest problems I have with my house, and then the way we fixed it is my wife and I changed the structure of our house and our family. Um we have a family that each has a role, and it's because it's an extended family, everyone kind of has a different role. It's more like a company than a family, you know, and the way we all help each other, we all provide different support to people in different ways. You know, my mother-in-law, she does the clean the cooking, she helps with laundry, she makes sure that people are fed. Um and then my wife is the business lead. I am running our my business here, but then we all have our roles. My sister-in-law supports my wife and supports me, and we have this dynamic, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But when I started thinking about people, who's the CEO? What does this person do? I had this that that a little bit once, and then it made it. I I created a family org chart with responsibilities just for me. And like when I had an you have it, you know, as well. A family org chart was such a great thing, and it allowed me to start making traction before I like uh could even get overwhelmed, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because you're not waiting on somebody else to doing it, or I delegated that. Yeah, I'm gonna, I don't want to overstep now. Like when you make an org chart, so a lot of times uh in heterosexual couples, things will be divided along male-female lines, like the stereotypical man cuts the grass, takes out the laundry, handles finances, woman handles, you know, sometimes that happens. That's the way it was in our household when we were first married. After I was a stay-at-home mom for a couple of years, I took the finances over from my husband because I was spending the majority of the money. And women usually do spend about 80% of the household money, like grocery store, whatever the kids needed. And men don't do as much spending as women do, especially when the kids are younger. And so now that we are older and our kids are grown, my husband's like, Do you want me to take back over the finances? I'm like, no. I like to keep them. Because he is a detail-oriented guy and he will be trying to find the penny that is missing when he is budgeting the checkbook. Like, I was never that, I have a general idea of where the money is. I've got a great shell game going on. I've got multiple entities. There's always money flowing from here, there, and everywhere. Um, it's very complex what I'm doing. He's in charge of retirement money. I'm in charge of daily operations money. So those roles in that organizational chart will change over time and throughout seasons. But when you do get on the same page of like, who's like making the decisions in that category? Like, we'll go to that person and ask for decisions. It's so much easier. And then that person has the freedom to just run that part of the business the way that as long as it gets done, they get to just run it.
SPEAKER_00Right? 100%. Like that's it. Like, stop asking, like, because that's the thing. With the laundry, like going back to mine, my mother-in-law has her system and it works. And as long as it gets done, and if I'm not happy with it, then I can find other systems. But yet as long as it's getting done and things are okay, then you gotta learn to just let those things go. But I wanted to ask you this like, why do some people feel exhausted before the day even starts?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think when you don't have any kind of a structure, like any kind of like flow to your day, and you haven't thought about all these different things we've thought about that happen in household as activities, as like, oh, I need to have a system for that. A system is really a bunch of pre-decided decisions. I call them rules. Like I make these rules, like here's my laundry rules, here's my cleaning rules, here's my this rules. You can change the rules whenever you want. You're the boss. So you can change the rules. But when you set up a rule, like for example, mine is I only dust every six weeks because dust doesn't accumulate more often than that. Actually, I just basically never dust until I could see dust. It's not something I regularly do.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Um, so then that's my rule. Now, if all of a sudden we got a big dog or we had a kid who was allergic to dust or something like that, well, then I would start to dust more frequently and I'd put it on a checklist, right? So you can make whatever rule you want. When you make a rule, then you don't have to decide every single time. If you don't have a day you do laundry, every day you wake up, you go, well, the laundry basket's three quarters of the way full. So am I gonna do the laundry today or am I gonna do it tomorrow? Well, the dishwasher isn't totally full. Am I gonna run it today or am I gonna run it tomorrow? So you're constantly make deciding, are you or aren't you? And so you get exhausted with all these decisions that could just become rules.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm, right?
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00Are you using the structure to just be structure? Or are you using the structure to get ahead? Like one of the things too, like with my daughter, we have the structure, but the structure's not just there to be annoying. The structure is there to help her succeed in her Vietnamese classes, to be better at math. And I have this super inspiring math teacher that we found because her teacher said, like, just go home and look things up on Google. And I was like, that's ridiculous, you know, her teacher at school. Like, my daughter's asking these pointed questions because she's a smart, inquiring kid. Um but the structure that I created for her is to like supercharge her creativity. You know, if the teacher came in today and it was her first class with the sewing teacher, and by the end of the class, they had already said, we're gonna make this, this, these, the, this, like, these gene, this gene perks, right? And it wouldn't have been able to be possible if we didn't go through those things. So the rules, the structure. And I told my wife, you can't take her to go off an adventure today because she's got this class. You can go off to an adventure. We're going off to an adventure Thursday and Friday when we have this fashion show, and we're gonna take off some of her classes for that big adventure. But it's like those rules are there to help you grow. And if they're just becoming rules that limit you, then it's not worth it.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I love this because so often, especially as household managers, women, when we put ourselves like, yes, that's right, I'm the CEO, I'm gonna be running this household, I'm gonna make this ultimate structure. And so what we do, instead of just looking at all the tasks we're already doing and trying to figure out where we're gonna put them in and what makes most sense, we're like, I'm gonna go to Pinterest. I'm gonna go download a cleaning book, I'm gonna go find a food plan or whatever. Then we download that and we learn it, and then we make this ultimate checklist of all these things we're gonna do that we never used to do. And then we're like checking off our list. And this is what I do on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. But a lot of the things we're doing we never used to do, we're just doing because we saw them online and we're gonna take our job seriously. Don't do it that way. Here's how I do it. Okay, so I am the person in my family that is in charge of dishes. I work in an office all day long. My daughter's home with grandkids and everything. She has her own kitchen, but also some of the dishes end up in our kitchen. My husband comes home for lunch. You know, there's there's dishes that accumulate when I'm not even home. Here's my dishes washing running the dishwasher rule. I wash the dishes and run the dishwasher on Wednesday night because Thursday morning our house gets cleaned. Then I wash the dishes and run them again on Friday night. Like I don't even wash dishes from Thursday morning all the way till Friday night. I like just walk through the kitchen. I wash them again on Friday night and I run the dishwasher because Saturday morning I get up with my grandson, make him breakfast, and we go to the gym together. So I have plenty of time to empty the dishwasher then. I do not do dishes on Saturday. Sunday morning, I get up, I do dishes, I start the dishwasher, I make breakfast for my husband and I. And when I come down in like around noon or one and I'm getting ready to play with my grandchild, I empty the dishwasher. Now, why do I wash it Sunday morning? Because we always have family dinner on Sunday night and we fill the dishwasher and then some because the whole family has dinner on Sunday at our house. So when we're getting ready to make dinner on Sunday and we're dirtying dishes, they're going into the dishwasher. Sometimes I start the dishwasher right as people are coming over for dinner, even though it takes two and a half hours to wash the dishwasher, because I know that there's not going to be enough room for all the dishes. Then I will do one more big load of either Sunday night or Monday morning running it and I empty that Monday night. I don't do dishes again until Wednesday night. That is the craziest dishwashing story you've ever heard. Nobody on the internet will be like, okay, we wash dishes Wednesday night, Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday night. Or I mean Sunday morning, Sunday night. No one, you'd never see that solution on the internet. But that is the perfect system and solution for our family and how much silverware and dishes and everything that we have. I wash and do just the dishwasher four times because I watched what I was doing. When did the dishes accumulate? When were people coming over? Thursday morning, Sunday night. That's when the kitchen needs to look good. When also do we have an abundance of dishes? You know, and I made the system fit how we use the house. And there have been many, many times that I've refined that system. When the system no longer works, like on Sunday night, it'd be great if we had two dishwashers, but we don't, then you have to create another system or modify the system as your family changes.
SPEAKER_00I love that. You got to modify things as they change. But I wanted to ask you this what's the biggest mistake people make when they try to get organized? You know, someone's like sitting there hearing us going, All right, I hear you. What should I do? What are the mistakes they make?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so everything pretty much that we've talked about so far is housework, which is visible, never ending. You're going to have to do it every week. Cleaning, uh, food related, laundry. And we touched a little bit on household administration, which is invisible work. Now we're going into a whole different category because we're not used to talking about all this work. So I've made it look kind of like a business. Household organization, totally different category of work. Household organization is completely optional. You don't have to organize your house if you don't want to. But I see organization kind of like the 401 inside of your household. So a 401k or a retirement plan when you're working, you'll take some of your money, you'll invest it. It'll grow faster than it could if you're just putting it in a savings account. So you'll have more money when you retire. So you're investing some money today, so you'll have more money later. I see organization as investing time now that will give you an exponential amount of time in the future. So for example, let's just think about, I mean, let me think about an example. I'll just do your closet. When you go into your closet and it's disorganized, you pull out a shirt, you're like, oh shoot, this is the one that has a stain on it, or I need to still fix this shirt, and you put it back, or you pull out a pair of jeans, you're like, oh, these are a little tight. I'm, I got to go to the size bigger. Or you pull out a pair of shoes, you put them on, you forgot, oh, these don't, you know, my I get a blister when I wear these shoes. I got to pick out different shoes. When your closet is organized, you've gone through and everything in your closet fits, is, you know, in good repair. You could put any of it on and walk out the door. You save all of that time from figuring out what's going to go. Also, if you organize your closet to the point where this shirt has a pair of pants and has shoes that match it. Like it's not just a one-off thing that doesn't have something that's going to match it. You've got a great dress, but no shoes that are going to match it. Like you can't wear the dress. Like you just can't wear it. So everything has a fit. Then every time you go in your closet, you save all that time. You save all that decision fatigue, you save all that time. Another great example. Take your pantry, wherever you keep your food. You know, over time things get expired. You put in a cereal box, it's pretty much empty, and like it gets disorganized. If you clean out the pantry, take out everything that is expired, put everything back in in an organized fashion, you get your meals done quicker. You don't get frustrated because, oh, I thought we had crackers, but there are only two crackers left in that box. So now I've got to change my appetizer and I don't have the right thing. Like you're not frustrated, you don't lose any time. So organization is a current investment of time for a future return on time.
SPEAKER_00I love that. I want to ask you this one though. Do you believe organization is a skill that can be learned instead of something you're born with?
SPEAKER_01I used to think that I was born organized and you weren't. So I would just have to come help you because everyone I knew that was disorganized would be like, oh, please come help me. And so I would come help them. They were like, oh, this is so great. Thank you so much. I could take it from here. But when I started organizing people in my 40s in Cincinnati, Ohio, my clients started canceling. And I was like, oh, maybe I upset them, maybe they ran out of money, like what happened here? And they started saying, No, we we figured out how you were teaching us and now we just know how to do it on our own. And I was like, Oh, well, that's really bad for me because this is how I earn my money. And then instantly I was like, this is great for me because I want to grow an online company anyway, and I have a teaching degree. So, how did I teach them in person? How can I then translate that and teach people online when I don't know what they're holding in their hand or what room they're in? How can I figure that out? So, yes, organizations learnable skill, everything is learnable, just like your daughter going, I mean, she obviously has innate talent for sewing from her grandmother, but you're still investing in teaching her the skills so that she can do it properly and not just through um sheer talent. So, some can be talent, some can be learned, and there's a combination of that.
SPEAKER_00I love that. I wanted to ask you this like you built a multi-million dollar company after being a stay-at-home mom. What gave you the confidence to start? Because that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01I'm crazy. Um, seriously, like I I remember my mom, my mom and dad were like, you just do anything you want to do. They always said that to me growing up, and I just believed them. I just believed I could do whatever I wanted to do. That was part of it. The other part of it is um, I am a fourth generation female college graduate, which is very unusual to have your great-grandmother go to college. But my great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother all went to college. And the other interesting thing that I was reflecting on in my late 30s is that they all started businesses. I knew my dad and my grandfather were successful salesmen and that I had, you know, that business gene in me. But when I really looked at the women in my family, they actually were more successful than the men. Because my dad went into a company that was established and through his sales skills, he was able to double their revenue the first year he worked there, which is phenomenal. But he didn't create the company from scratch. But my great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my mom all started companies from scratch, and my mom sold them. So, like when I was in second grade, my mom was like, I'm gonna start a company. She took a credit card to New York and she started buying samples, and then she sent samples all over the United States in cases until I was in eighth grade. And she was selling this clothing line that she had curated herself in 26 states, and she sold it in eighth grade. Like we went to Pennsylvania for a week and we stayed at this lady's house and played with her kids. My mom was teaching the woman how to run the company, and when we left, she had a big check, and that woman had it had a company. Like that was eighth grade for me. Like it was just normal. There were people working in our basement when I was a kid. Like having your mom employ people and create a company from scratch and then sell it in eighth grade was normal. And now I've come to find out that's what my grandmother did, and that's what my great grandmother did. They started businesses from nothing and eventually ended up selling them. And so when I was in my 40s, that's what I did. I was like, I'll just start Organize 365, no idea how it would make money. I just knew I was going to put all of my effort and my talent into growing this company and then see what became of it.
SPEAKER_00I love that. You never know unless you try, you know? And I want to ask you this why do so many parents end up putting themselves last?
SPEAKER_01So I think it happens organically and for good reason. Like when you have a baby, like literally the baby will die if you don't take care of the child, the child over yourself. So you feed them, you clothe them, you give up all your sleep. Like my daughter texted me this morning at 6:15. Oh my goodness, the five-year-old, four-year-old was up all night. Can you please take him to school? So I pushed back my meetings and I was like, yes. She's like, I'm so tired. And she has to take care of the baby all day. So like she's obviously not putting herself first. The best way she put herself first was like, hi, can I phone a friend? Can you take one of these two kids from me so I can like try to get a nap in there? But when we put all of our effort into our kids and then they grow up, like your daughter is 10 now, like a 10-year-old's pretty self-sufficient. Like, yeah, you need to enroll her in classes and take her where she needs to go. But clearly she's making a guitar over in the other room while you're working, or she could be doing that while you're also working out or reading a book or having a date with your wife, or, you know, there we tend to continue to focus on our children and making sure they have all of the opportunities that they can when they're under our roof. And we keep deferring when we are gonna do that for ourselves again until they're not under our roof. And I think that when they are in those grade school, middle school years, there are a lot of things we can do that don't cost any money, like start running for free, go to the library, read a book, start, you know, I just I'm gonna start needlepointing again. I do jigsaw puzzles, like having some time just to invest in ourselves, just like we do for our children. The longer we delay doing that, the more we forget what we even liked to do before we had kids.
SPEAKER_00I love that. I want to ask you another question. Like, parents listening, anyone listening, what's one simple change that they could make to feel like to their family life or in their life in general to feel less stressful?
SPEAKER_01So I think you could take um a couple of things from what we've talked about. One is if what I just said was like resonate with you and you're like, yeah, what do I like? I don't even, I mean, I used to read, I used to go for walks, like you don't even remember what you liked. Think about what hobby would you like to do and just put half an hour on a calendar next week. Like this half an hour every week is just for me to what, listen to new music, go for a walk, go to a museum, whatever you want to do, however long that is. The other thing is what is the one area in your life that always seems to fall apart or never seems to be done? It could be laundry, it could be meal planning, it could be bill paying, whatever, like never seems to get to the top of the list. And now it's like a dumpster fire. It's a big enough dumpster fire. I could see it from here. And you're like, I have got to get a handle on this. Just one thing. Okay, sit down, give yourself an hour, and think about like, okay, why is this going wrong? How do you want it to go? Are there any rules you could put in place? Does it need a time block on your calendar? Do you need to phone a friend? Like, how can you get this one thing in your life under control and make that plan and then put on your calendar how you're going to implement that plan? And then what kind of maintenance do you need in order to continue having that be successful and then do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing?
SPEAKER_00I love that. If you can just knock one thing down at a time, you can build a very, very big thing, build a house. You have some different books that you've written. Can you tell me about some of your books?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the paper solution is how do we get the information that's in our head and on our computers in a way that our family can reference them in binders? That's the paper solution. That's information management. And my newer book is called Escaping Quicksand. And this is how do you think differently and really recognize that you are running a household? How do you care for yourself while you're caring for your family members in a way that is not selfish?
SPEAKER_00Wow, that's really interesting. Where can people go to find out more about you and what you do?
SPEAKER_01Thanks. Everything is at Organize365. So the website is organized365.com. I have a podcast for 12 years called Organize 365, and I'm most active on Instagram under Organize365.