008 - The Lisa Glossary Part 8: Special Circumstances that Impact Your Organization

Thanks for listening to this special playlist of the Organized 365 Podcast. The Organized 365 Podcast started in 2014. With over 500 episodes and 15 million downloads, we know there is a lot of content to sift through. This taste of the Organized 365 Podcast is just a taste of what you can find in the full podcast and is easy to share with your family and friends who want to join you on your quest to learn the skill of organizing and grow your mindset of what is possible as you move into a proactive and purposeful life. Enjoy this podcast curation of the Organized 365 podcast that will take you through all the big ideas we have uncovered in the last 7+ years of podcasting. Along the way, I, Lisa Woodruff, have created a whole new glossary of terms for us to use to define and understand the invisible work and belief systems we have from our childhoods and how and why homes function the way they do. Happy New Year. Oh my goodness. The number one question I get from people who listen to the podcast is, how do I introduce a new person to Organize 365? Lisa says so many things, like where would you even start? So 18 months ago, I recorded 8 podcasts that were called the Lisa Glossary. Basically all these words that I just kind of made up and have turned into what Organized 365 is today. And guess what? This week we are turning 10 years old. Oh my goodness. Organized 365 is 10 years old. And for the first 8 days of January, I am going to re-air these glossary podcasts that we recorded in the summer of 2020 that will tell you how Organized 365 got to be what it is today and our philosophy, our outlook, our methodology on organization. And in the 18 months since we recorded these podcasts, there have been a lot more terms and things that I have created. So for the rest of January on the Fridays, the last 3 Fridays in January, I will be recording a new glossary podcast, number 9, 10, and 11. We'll be talking about the Paper Solution, the binders, and the research that Organize 365 is doing now. So sit back and listen and get motivated to take back your house this year and finally get organized.

This week's mailbag comes to us from Simone. I have to brag, my husband and I have several medical issues, which brings overwhelming amounts of medical paperwork into our home. My husband has always expected me to handle everything. This past Sunday, I handed him a huge stack of medical stuff I've been holding on to until I have the time and energy to go through. I handed him the pocket folders I created for our separate medical basket. Then I went to work a 12-hour shift. After an hour into my shift, he had them sorted correctly. On Monday, a medical office that is well known for not filing insurance correctly and just billing the patient instead sent us a bill online. My hubby was able to locate the bill and the EOB very quickly on his own, and he was even able to settle the bill all while I was at work. He called me because he was very proud of himself. This system works and is the reason I became a certified Sunday Basket paper organizer. Do you have an Organize365 success story? If so, we would love to hear about it. Please send us an email at customerservice@organize365.com and tell us how you have taken back your home, your paper, and your life with Organize365.

Welcome to the Organize365 podcast. I'm your host, professional organizer, productivity expert, and motivational speaker Lisa Woodruff. This podcast will help you embrace progress over perfection and create lasting functional organizing in your home. I have so much to share with you, so let's get started. Do you remember your favorite teacher and your favorite class growing up in school? I'm sure there are a lot of qualities that that teacher had, but you just were hungry for the knowledge that was in that class. You You did better, you tried harder, you showed up early, you stayed later, you loved learning from this specific teacher. Here at Organized 365, we are an education company. I'm a teacher by trade, and I want to teach you to love and be really great at the skill of organizing and increase productivity. And along the way, as your teacher, I've created my own systems, methodologies, and a lot of terms. I mean, a lot of terms. There are a lot of things that I say that nobody else says, and you're like, "What is a golden window? What is functional organizing?" These are the things that I'm going to unpack for you in the next 8 episodes. Now, don't worry, it isn't going to be just a list of vocabulary with definitions. I have organized the next 8 episodes in order so that you kind of go from how Organized 365 started and has grown over the last 8 years, and how you find organizing and learn and grow and get organized as well. So sit back, relax, and let's get started organizing. Well, you must be a super fan if you have listened to this 8-part series about the story of Organized 365. I have so enjoyed diving deep into these topics. You know, over 8 and a half years, I've come up with a lot of theories on organizing and things that I have found that have worked specifically for different age groups and different sets of the population as I strive to teach you the skill of organizing and becoming productive in many areas of your life, including work, home, parenting, and such. One of the things I said when I first started this podcast 5 years ago is my intro would say, helping you organize life stages and unexpected events. And the reason that I said that was because I had determined there were different life stages. Your 20s and 30s are different than your 40s and 50s are different than your 50s 60s. Like, there just are things that you organize differently as you age in, uh, your homes. But the other thing I knew to be true was that we have these unexpected events. We have unexpected events that really shouldn't be unexpected because everybody's going to experience them at some point in their life, but they're unexpected in the timing and how we react to them. And then there are also unexpected events that had already happened to me by the time I started Organized 365 that I didn't anticipate, but I found to be true for many people. So like I've already told you my story about having infertility and adopting our children, like that was an unexpected event. I didn't expect to have infertility. I didn't expect to be blessed by being an adoptive mom, but that was unexpected and how that impacted my organization. I also have talked about, you know, my parents getting divorced when I was in my 30s, and then my father falling ill, and then needing to settle my father's estate after he passed away. Now, are you going to have to settle someone's estate in your lifetime? Probably. So is it really that unexpected? I guess not. But no one ever talks about it. Like, nobody says, 'And someone— sometime in your 40s and 50s, you'll be settling the estate of one of your family members, and here's how you do it.' Nobody says— nobody tells us that. No, we don't have that on our to-do list. We don't have that on like, 'This is going to happen,' or 'This isn't going to happen.' But we probably will experience it over time. Right now, as we're listening to this, I'm recording this in May, you're going to listen to it in early June, we are all experiencing the unexpected pandemic that is global. Now that one, I will say, maybe some people said we should have been expecting this, or people have been talking about— no one I know ever thought like, and sometime in your life you'll experience a global pandemic where you'll be stuck in your house for 10 weeks and people will run out of toilet paper. Like, I would say that that's an unexpected unexpected event that we could never expect, correct? Like, very few, a minuscule amount of people were thinking that there would ever be a pandemic like this and that it would impact our society. But we had to organize during this time, right? Like, I know even for me during the global pandemic, what shocked me the most, or was disconcerting to me the most, is the fact that I could not plan. Like, not only could I not plan like what was going to happen 5 years from now, I couldn't plan what was going to happen later that day. I could not believe how fast the information that was coming at us in March and early April would change. And the panic and the fear, and it was, it was unnerving to say the least. The amount of naps that I needed, um, it's just so hard to get through the end of April, uh, of March and April. And in May, I started to realize, okay, we have no idea what new normal is going to be, if there's a normal. We have no idea what's going on, but I've got to make a plan and I have to figure out what my plan for the summer is. Now that I'm recording this in mid-May, I'm able to see now what the book tour might look like in quarter 3 of this year, but what's going to happen in November of 2020? I have no idea. I have no idea. All I know is by the time you listen to this, we will have already moved to our new website. We are hiring 2 new people. A new product I'm going to talk to you about next week will already be in our warehouse and ready to be shipped. That's what I know. I know what's happening through the end of June. That's all I am able to plan at this point. But I'd like to talk to you about a couple of other unexpected events that I have been through and that I speak about in the Organized 365 podcast inside of our programs as well that might help you. And there are 3. One is being a warrior mama. Two is how ADHD affects home organization. And 3 is organizing with chronic illness. So the first one is being a warrior mama. So I have already done a podcast about this. I know that we just re-aired in late May, the warrior mama interview that Monique and I did about raising children who have IEPs. And a Warrior Mama, the reason why I say mama is because mama stands for managing all medical alternatives. There is not a medical alternative that I have not explored. I have spent college-level money on alternative therapies for my kids as they were growing up, um, trying to quote unquote solve the problem that I saw at the time. One of the, you know, I don't want to go too much into this, but a warrior mama, why I say warrior mama, and of course you could be a warrior dada, the reason it's mama is managing all medical alternatives, is that in any parenting whatsoever, there is no like, oh, I had this child and everything just happened and they were 18 and they moved out and they got a job and that's the end. There's no parenting story like that. Every child is unique, every parent is unique, and I feel that parents and children are matched purposefully. Because there's something that you have inside of you that is for that child, and there's something that that child inside has inside of them that is for your learning as well. And the two of you together and your family, whatever that family looks like, is created on purpose for the benefit of all. That's just my personal philosophy. And everyone is different. Just like when I talked about work boxes last episode, I talked about how, you know, we, we set up these work boxes We give you the basics of how to get started in your Workbox, but there are no two Workboxes the same in the entire world because your unique way of working and the company that you're in or the volunteer organization that you have or the business that you're starting is unique in some way to everyone else's. And so your Workbox is always going to be just a little bit different than everybody else's. And I find this true to be parenting as well. Your parenting style, what your child needs at different times, and how much you do or don't advocate for them is unique to you. And the only message I want to give to you about this warrior momminess is that if you feel there is something you're supposed to be doing, if you feel there is, um, a different tact you need to take with your child, do it. Do it. The, the best instance I could tell of this is I, I knew when my kids were 4 that I had some different ideas than some medical professionals, and I continued to follow the medical professionals And then when my father did pass away in 2009, I used a portion of our inheritance to take our children to the Pfeiffer Institute, which is a place where they will run all kinds of nutritional tests and then they will give you compounded vitamins for you to help your children feel better, or anybody. They work with a lot of different diseases. And when I went to the Pfeiffer Institute, before my father passed away, I had been researching vitamins. It's so unique. I have a— I still have it. I have a binder in the basement with A to Z tabs in it, and I could tell you why biotin makes your hair grow. But also, biotin, which is a B vitamin, is the precursor to probiotics. So while Abby can't have yogurt because probiotics impact her negatively, she can take biotin, and the body can use biotin to create its own probiotics, which helps her leaky gut. Weird, right? I know. Pick a vitamin, any vitamin. So I can tell you all of this stuff. I know which vitamins cross the blood-brain barrier. I know that GABA will, um, help you feel more calm, and inositol also. And these can be used in place of ADHD medicines or to supplement ADHD medicines. Like, I had researched all these vitamins. And because I had more time than I had money, I made this notebook and I did my internet research. Oh my goodness, there was a period from 2004 to 2009 where I would literally spend 3 or 4 hours a day on message boards. You guys remember what message boards were? Yahoo message boards? Oh my goodness, I have a PhD in those. And I learned all about how to use food and how to use supplements to eliminate behaviors. And I knew that if I gave either of my children— I kept journals of the doses of different vitamins I would give them and then the impact it would have in their behavior or how they tolerated different foods. And then I knew whether to titrate up or eliminate supplements. And titrate up means to increase slowly over time to when you get to a therapeutic dose. And the same supplement for each of my kids could have different reactions. And I was doing all this kind of like a mad scientist, kind of. So when we went to the Pfeiffer Institute, this is the fast track to that. Like, they just run— basically, it's not the DNA, maybe it is now, but they run saliva and urine and blood, and they know what vitamins they're deficient in that would help. It just moves it through a lot faster. Well, I had Joey on a medicine called 5-HTP, and 5-HTP, uh, is one of those supplements that you start at 50 milligrams, I think, and then you go to 100 and then 150, and you titrate it up slowly and then you watch for behavioral changes and things like that. And so he was on 150 milligrams when we went to the Pfeiffer Institute. And you're supposed to go off of your supplements for this testing, but I had not taken him off because I knew it worked because I had done my mad scientist thing, and I knew he needed it, and it was really, really helping him. So we got there and they did— they were getting ready to do the test and they had taken all of their notes, and they said, well, we haven't run any of the tests yet, obviously, because we just got there. It takes like 4 to 6 weeks to get the test back. And they said, but we know he doesn't need to be on 5-HTP, so take him off. I said, cold turkey? And they were like, yeah. I said, but that's supposed to be titrated down. They're like, no, no, it's no big deal, just take him off. I thought, hmm, and my mama gut said leave him on that. But I didn't because, you know, I mean, when medical professionals tell you something, you do what medical professionals tell you. So I took him off of it. 10 days later, I get a call. And they say, "Put him back on the 5-HTP." And I said, "Oh, did we get the blood results back? Do you have the test back?" They said, "No, we don't have any of your tests back, but we know that he needs that and you need to put him back on it." And I was like, "Dang it, I knew it, I knew it." So sometimes you know things that even the medical professionals don't know. And so what I say to you, the whole story of that is if you know your kids need something or you need something or your spouse needs something or your mom needs something or whoever you're the caregiver for,. And just because you cannot scientifically prove it and give them a certification letter, if you know in your gut that you're right, trust yourself. That is what a warrior mama is. The second thing I want to talk about is ADHD. And, uh, both Joey and Abby went to Springer School and Center in Cincinnati, which is a language learning disability school. That has only 12 children per classroom with a teacher and an aide. Joey was there for 6 years, Abby was there for 4, and it's phenomenal school. They do a great job with language learning disabilities. And in addition to that, a large population at the school has also ADHD. And because a large subset of the children that go to Springer have ADHD, Springer is one of the best places to go and learn about how ADHD affects learning and just how, um, it affects every portion of life because they deal with this on a regular basis. Springer works in conjunction with Cincinnati Children's Medical Center, and every year they bring in a renowned expert in the field of ADHD to do a presentation where teachers from all over Cincinnati will come and hear this presenter, medical professionals will come and hear the presenter, and also parents are invited if they want to come. And so I would go and I would learn from these ADHD experts who have written the books and run the studies and done the medication trials. And I learned about ADHD from the best of the best as a parent at Springer. And then I also started doing my own research. And Joey is fine with me sharing that he has ADHD and he has pretty severe ADHD. And so I learned a lot about how ADHD affects the 8 executive functions of the brain. And as a parent, what I needed to do in order to help Joey circumvent vent those executive functions that were not functioning well for him as a child, and also how we support them in him as an adult and how we have grown and developed those over time. What— one of the most interesting things I learned about ADHD is, um, Dr. Barkley said that ADHD is a disorder of time and that time passes differently for people who have ADHD. And we knew this to be true for Joey. And he also says that people who have ADHD can do anything anybody else can do. It just sometimes takes longer. It sometimes takes longer for them to do it, like it'll take an hour and a half instead of 30 minutes, which is why on an IEP you'll get more time on your tests. But also sometimes it just takes longer. And Dr. Barkley said that not only is ADHD a disorder in time, in that passing of time happens differently for people who have ADHD than don't, like sometimes a minute feels like a year and sometimes a year feels like a minute. We all have had that experience before, but for people who are diagnosed with ADHD, that's like everyday normal. It's not like a one-off occurrence, it happens often. And so we would say, hurry up, Joey. There's no such thing. There's no hurry up button installed. But also, Dr. Barkley said that you need to look at, um, depending on how many executive functions are impacted It not only takes longer to do a skill, skills will all be developed in children over time, it just may happen later. So this is why you would have a 4th grade student that would be maybe doing some behaviors of a 2nd grade student. Or Dr. Barkley said, you know, like, uh, people who are diagnosed with ADHD maybe shouldn't drive at the age of 16. And so our children did not get their driver's license until they were 18. We did a lot longer getting ready for driving. They both have driver's license, it's great. And they're doing great job driving. But I knew after hearing Dr. Barkley when the kids were just 11 and 12 that we would push off driving and not do it right at 15 and a half and 16, that we were going to need a little bit more time to let the brain develop a little bit more for some of those higher level skills like driving. So I am not an expert in ADHD. I'm not a scientist. I'm not a doctor. But I am a teacher who's had many children with ADHD. I'm a parent who has children with ADHD, and I've written a book called How ADHD Affects Home Organization. And in that book, I take 6 of the 8 executive functions and I specifically relate them to what that looks like inside of your home. And one of the things I'm passionate about, and eventually will rise to the top of my to-do list but is not yet, um, is I really want to do some studies and create some, um, answers for people who are dealing with ADHD at home and how that impacts home organization. So, so much of what is researched and done in ADHD is all about how it impacts work environments or how it impacts school settings. And what I have found to be true in my work in homes with people who either are traditionally diagnosed or self-diagnosed with ADHD is that once you get into the house, you don't have the structure of a work environment, you don't have the structure of school, you don't have the accountability of a teacher or an aide or someone else. And how do we provide those structures and helps and supports at home for people who have ADHD so that they can be more successful. What I found when I was a professional organizer was that when I could go into these homes and I could listen and I could ask a bunch of questions, I could then set up a system at home that they could then maintain. But it was hard for those who were diagnosed with ADHD that I went in to help for them to figure out what kind of system they needed and set up the system on their own. But if I could ask enough questions and make the system custom to them and set up the system for them, they could maintain it for a period of time depending on their level of ADHD and how it impacted them in different executive functions. Some people could maintain that system for a full year, and I would just come back and help freshen it up for them. Some people would need me to come in quarterly because they needed me to reset that system for them and reset that system for them. And I did that with my kids when they were in school, you know, like that's when at the end of the month I would go through the notebook with Joey and I would clear out anything he didn't need and I would reorganize it. And then he could get through another month and get through another month, but he had a hard time clearing out that notebook himself. Both of my kids now can maintain their— Abby lives in a base— her basement, that's her mini apartment. Joey's in an actual apartment. They both can maintain their apartments on their own. Organization is a learnable skill. It just takes longer. And if you are impacted with ADHD, it's going to take you longer to learn the skill of organization because organization is actually one of the 8 executive functions. So if this interests you and you're like, oh, that is so interesting, you can get as a Kindle book, an Audible book, or a printed book from Amazon. Just Google, uh, Lisa Woodruff or look for How ADHD Affects Home Organization. And the last special circumstance that I want to talk about is the idea of having a chronic illness. Again, when I was a professional organizer, sometimes I was called in as a professional organizer because the person that needed to get organized just did not have the physical stamina and energy in order to do the organization that needed to be done because they lived alone and they had a chronic illness. And you can, you can want, you can hope, you can wish that you would have the energy to get your house organized, but in some circumstances you just don't. Like, you just don't. It just is. It's not a judgment on you, it's a fact. Like, it's just a fact of life. And it's frustrating. It's, it's frustrating for you because you're like, but I know what I want to be done and I know how to do it, but I just physically cannot will myself to do it. And I cannot even imagine how frustrating that must be. I mean, it just be horribly frustrating. And I have an episode, um, 244, where I talk about what it's like to organize with chronic illness. And it's this theory, the spoon theory, and I'm forgetting whose theory it is, but it's in that episode about how everyone has a certain amount of energy every morning when you wake up, a certain amount of spoons. And I have a lot of spoons. Like, I have a lot of energy. I'm a go-go-go person. I do sleep like 9 hours a night, like a a lot of hours at night, but when I'm awake, I'm awake. And when I'm awake, I am learning, I'm talking, I'm doing. Like, I'm not zoning. I don't know how to relax. I'm horrible at relaxing. If you follow me when I go on vacation, it's pathetic. I just don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do small talk. I could care less about sports and weather. Like, everything I am about— how do I learn, how do I grow, how do I develop, how do I do? And while I'm doing all that, I'm walking or I'm cleaning or I'm, you know, I'm just always doing. I have a lot of spoon and this theory is that when you wake up in the morning, you have a certain amount of energy level, and this author equates them to how many spoons you have in. Everything you do is worth a certain number of spoons. So taking a shower is a spoon, doing your hair is a spoon, doing your makeup is a spoon. And when you have chronic illness, you don't have that much energy. So let's say you have 10, 10 spoons for the entire day. I probably use 10 spoons in my first hour of my day, and So then you have to say, I only have this much energy, and if I use this much energy to take a shower and do my makeup and do my hair, then that means I cannot do something later in the day. And you have to really manage your energy level. So that is episode 244. And what I would say to you about that is this: everyone can learn to be organized, and everyone can maximize the energy that they have and the spoons that they have but also you just have to give yourself permission sometimes to say, that's great, in a perfect world with the good, better, best goals, I would have this perfectly organized house and I would do all these things. But if you have fibromyalgia and some other chronic illness, or that unexplained— um, I have a friend who has this, is allergic to mold and just cannot, has no energy to do anything. Like, obviously there some, some reason I feel that, that you have this that you're supposed to discover and share with everybody. Um, and I feel for you. It's very frustrating and it's very hard. And I hope that you're not comparing yourself to me or that I'm setting an expectation that you aren't able to reach. Everyone can get organized. Everyone can learn to be organized. And even if what you are doing is just thinking about how could I make this easier? So I'll, I'll stop with this one thing. When I was doing in-home organizing, I also did virtual organizing. And I had a client in Germany. She called me from Germany. Um, and she had a chronic illness. And she lived on her own. And she said, Lisa, I just cannot get anything done, and I need, I need help organizationally. And so there were a couple of things that we did. Number one, she had someone coming to the house 2 to 3 times a week, and that person was, I think, like bringing her food and bringing her some things, but they stayed for like an hour. And I said, okay, is the person that you have coming to the house, are they paid only to bring you food or are they paid to help you for 90 minutes? And she said, help me for 90 minutes. And I said, and is this person who's paid to come and help you for 90 minutes, um, do you think she would, she would like helping you with other things? Do you think she could move some things around? Do you think she could help you in some ways? She was like, yeah, I can ask her about this. And we, we did these virtual organizing sessions for a while, so she was able to get answers for me. And what we ended up doing over the course of 4 weeks in these virtual organizing sessions was this. She was in a, um, couch-like bed in her family room. She had a bedroom, but she wasn't going to a bedroom. So she was in like what I imagined in my head to be like a, um, a fold-out couch. She's on the couch, she's on that bed, and her laundry room is right next to that. But in order to bring the laundry to her and to fold it and to put it away, like, that's all she could do one day. Or the kitchen was right around the corner, but to go into the kitchen and get the crackers and bring the crackers back, uh, was taking too much energy. And she also had, like, I think she was in— in my mind, I obviously don't know, she was in Germany. I think it was like a carriage-style house. Like, I imagine she said a basement or garage. I imagine these boxes in a garage below her that needed to be brought up these steps. And here's the plan that we had by the end of this 4 weeks that we were working together. She was using all of her spoons in her chronic illness to try to get her laundry done and try to feed herself, and there was no time for anything else. But what she wanted to be doing was going through all of her boxes and this is what we ended up doing. Number 1, the person that came to help her 90 minutes, 3 times a week did the laundry. So what they did was they brought in the groceries, they started a load of laundry, then they took back into the kitchen what we had created as kind of like a staging area. So we had her get a tray where she could carry the tray into the kitchen and she could put like a glass of water and crackers and M&Ms or whatever, like a bunch of snacks, and carry the whole tray into her bed versus going to the kitchen for crackers, coming back, going in the kitchen for water, coming back, going to there, coming back. And then we created like a bucket, like a wash bin kind of, in the family room where when she was done with the glass of water, she would just put the glass of water in there. She would not take it back into the kitchen and clean it. And we also got her a trash can. She didn't have a trash can, like not a little waste can, like a trash can, a big trash can right next to her in the family room. So instead of her spending all of her effort walking dishes back in, walking trash back in, now she could throw away things that were trash right next to her. She could take dishes that were done and put them in the bin knowing that those needed to go back in and those need to be washed. And now we had the person who was coming in would start a load of laundry, then would take all the dishes in, clean the dishes, empty the trash, change the laundry. And then in the second 45 minutes she was there, we had the person who was coming to help go in the basement and bring up 3 boxes every time she came to the house. Didn't matter what the boxes were, we had no idea what the boxes were. She would bring up 3 boxes and put them in the family room. Now, what my client did during the day instead of laundry, instead of dishes, instead of that, was when she was hungry, like once or twice a day, she would go in the kitchen and she would load up her tray with crackers and peanut butter and a juice box or whatever she wanted and bring that in. Then she would put her box on her bed and she would open it up and she would start to go through the box. And she had two boxes on the other side of her bed. One was trash or recycle and the other one was keep. And her only job was to go through that box and decide what was to be kept. And by the time the worker came back a day or two later, Sometimes she would have been through all 3 of those boxes. Sometimes she wouldn't have gotten through any. That didn't matter. If she got through all 3, then the worker would take the trash and recycle. She would take the one that was keep and move it back in the basement in the keep pile and bring up 3 more so that if my client had energy over those 2 days, she could possibly get through 3 boxes because the laundry was already being done for her and her dishes were being done and she could throw away her trash without reducing any of her spoons. So I tell you that story because how you spend your spoons, what you spend your spoons on, is important. We have to feed ourselves, we have to clothe ourselves, we have to get ready, right? And sometimes those take all of your spoons. But I hope in this story you realize that you don't have to be the one doing the dishes. If you move the trash can right next to your bed, you don't have to walk in another room to throw away the trash. There is always a way to maximize the amount of energy that you have in order to make a difference. When I was a Creative Memories consultant, one of our consultants was diagnosed with cancer and she ultimately passed away. She had 5 children. And her goal, once she was diagnosed with this cancer the second time, was to complete all of the kids' baby books before she passed away. One of the babies was actually conceived in between the 2 diagnoses. And of course our team did the albums. Because the most important part of the memory books for her babies was not that she had made every single scrapbook from scratch and she picked all the pictures and she cut all the pictures. The most important part of that baby album was her writing the stories. So our team went, we got all the photos, we made gorgeous baby albums, and then she used all of her energy and the spoons that she had left to write love notes to her children in these albums. You have inside of you the energy and the spoons that you need to do the most important work. To decide what needs to be kept in the boxes or not kept in the boxes. To write the stories that go with the photos. To record audibly a message to your family. To talk to your sister on the phone even if that takes one of your spoons. And let other people do the things that anybody can do. Anybody can do dishes. Anybody can do laundry. Really anybody can put photos in an album. Anybody can carry boxes. Anybody can recycle stuff. Anybody can take stuff to, you know, but you, what is it that is uniquely the essence of you? And how do you use your spoons to further your message in the world, to speak into the people that you've been put purposely in communication with so that they know how you feel and that you get the benefit from them that, uh, is due to you? And I would also say that as you're doing this, as you're going through these hard circumstances is understanding what is really important and, um, prioritizing that is the most important thing. All right, well, thank you so much for indulging me on this 8-part series of the Organized 365 story. Uh, we— there are so many words that I've just created out of thin air that I use to articulate how we are feeling in our houses that I've created my own glossary. And Amy and Mary have made an amazing word wall and a whole page that you can get to if you go to organize365.com/glossary. So going forward, as I continue to do what I'm uniquely created to do in the world, which I believe is to give a voice to what we're doing inside of our homes— I don't feel like there's anybody that really is talking about what it is like to be a homeowner and to juggle all of these different various jobs and responsibilities and The amount of spoons we have, that's what I'm uniquely created to do. And in order to share that message, in order to articulate that, I had to create my own glossary. And these were the 8 episodes that we did to really be able to go back to as foundational episodes for what do I mean by spoons? What does it mean to be a Warrior Mama? This is the episode I will send people back to in the future so that they know what we mean by that. Next week, I have a big, exciting announcement. Get ready. See you next week. Thanks for listening to this Organize 365 playlist. You can find more information about these podcast episodes at organize365.com/glossary. I invite you to dive deeper into your organization journey