012 - Swiss Cheese Organizing - Organize 365® Research Findings

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.

This week's mailbag comes to us from Jessica. Jessica says, I just wanted to write to Lisa and say thank you. I purchased the Sunday Basket System a little while ago and I recently purchased All Access. Now the Productive Home Solution, and I started it. Lisa's humble, nonjudgmental, clear, focused plan is incredible. I'm almost 50, divorced with 2 kids who are my world, and I'm a clinical social worker. I always knew my clinical skills were strong, but in COVID, when my sessions went remote, I came to my knees. What also happened during COVID was my ADHD, home organization, or lack thereof, and financial mess came to an all-time low. I've joined at least 4 other self-organizing programs before I found Lisa. I found Lisa by just happening to get her book about ADHD and organizing on Audible. Then I listened to some podcasts and it was like for the first time someone understood me. Lisa, your comments about it being incumbent upon the teacher to learn how to teach the child and learning to teach math 7 different ways just knocked me to my core. I 1,000% agree. I never felt like anyone could help me and that I was worse than anyone else. But thank you, Lisa. I just officially started this journey, but I have been pre-contemplating, absorbing, and prepping with Organized 365 for months now. I'm so excited about what the future holds. Thank you, Lisa Woodruff, ever so much. Do you have an Organized 365 success story? If so, we would love to hear 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 Organize 365.

Welcome to the Organize 365 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. Last week on the podcast, I talked to you about the history of teaching home organization over the last decade. Oh my gosh, it makes me feel old. Well, I kind of am old. I'm 50. And I want to live until I'm 100. Like, the good Lord willing, I hope to be 100 years old, which means I'm only halfway done with my entire existence on the planet, which in some ways means I'm very, very young. And along these first 50 years of living on the planet and organizing myself and organizing my family of origin and then organizing my married family and the kids and and organizing people in Cincinnati and maybe helping you get organized through the podcast and the Organized 365 products and services, I've observed a lot of things. And in the next few podcast episodes, I'm going to start to unpack the new research that we have done about what does it mean to be organized? What does it mean to live in an organized home? What is the definition of that? How do we know when we are done? No one's ever defined it, so. I decided I will. Last week we talked about how my personal organization from the age of 40 to 50, how I took my internal being able to organize and reorganize myself, physically organize people in Cincinnati, and then figured out how to translate what I knew how to do one-on-one in person to something that you could experience online and achieve that same organization in your home. And along the ways, I've named the programs different things. And as of today, 2022, currently the Organize365 Home Organization Program is called The Productive Home Solution. I wanna start in this first podcast before I really start to give you the nitty-gritty statistics in our research, which you can find at organize365.com/research. I wanna give you a broader picture of how I have perceived organization happens for Americans and what my perception of that is. And I call it Swiss cheese organizing. So I have to give credit to Barbara Hunter. She was the director of technology at Springer School and Center where my kids went to elementary school. It's a learning disability school here in Cincinnati and a high preponderance of the students that attend Springer Springer School and Center, in addition to having learning disabilities, also have ADHD. And I've talked many times about how you get organized when you have ADHD. And let's just start with the basics. ADHD is a spectrum disorder, meaning that there is no one that is 100% ADHD and no one that has zero ADHD. So whether you're diagnosed or not, we all use the same 8 executive functions in our brain, which are in the prefrontal cortex. In order to create organization inside of our brain, like little file folders inside of your brain, to store information and retrieve information. And that storage and retrieval process can be measured in, um, some subsets of the IQ tests, and then also through observation and through interviews with psychiatrists. And when your retrieval systems and your internal brain organization systems are not optimized for how we traditionally today use work and school, then the medical community will give you a diagnosis of ADHD, meaning that your brain is neurodivergent from what the brains are that have been developed that utilize the school and the work system today. And the reason why I'm fumbling over my words is because for years and years and years and years and years, I have been saying that I believe that ADHD is an evolution of the brain. I don't think it's a disability at all. And the more I learn about how our brain organizes information and retrieves information, people who are diagnosed with ADHD or suspect they have ADHD usually are the people that create every single thing that we buy and participate in in society. So I don't see it as a disability in any way, shape, or form, but it definitely is how the brain organizes information and then retrieves it when it needs it. So what am I talking about? When Joey, who has ADHD, is comfortable with me sharing that with you, because he says that if this will help anybody else, Mom, you can share my story. So when he was a kid, I tried to teach him his shapes: circle, square, triangle, rectangle. Now I'm an educator, so I know sometimes kids get mixed up with squares and rectangles. They both have lines, they both have 90-degree angles. They kind of look the same. But that was not Joey's struggle. Joey would forget what a circle was, or he would say that a triangle was a square. And the most frustrating thing about it, before we knew he had learning disabilities and ADHD, was some days he would get it. Like some days he would have 3 out of 4 of the shapes, and the next day he would have 2 out of the 4. And then every once in a blue moon, he would know all 4 shapes, but that was only for like an hour. And it was always a different shape that he didn't know. The circle was the one that he was usually most consistent with knowing a circle is a circle, but a triangle, a rectangle, and a square, like, I don't know, toss a coin and he would know the words he was supposed to say went with these shapes, but he did not know what the shapes were. I will say one of the things that I think we did that really helped him in learning to read was we sent him to a Montessori preschool. So in a Montessori preschool, they skip the step of learning the names of the letters. So the B sound makes a /b/ sound, and the D sound makes a /d/ sound. In traditional school, you learn A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and then you learn A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and you learn the sound that goes with the letter. That is two kinds of learning. If you just skip straight to the sounds, then you move from what sound what sound does this shape make to sounding out words. Thank goodness we did that because the memorization of letters would've taken way too long. Truth be told, my kids don't know their math facts. They never did. And finally, in 6th grade, I said, could we stop beating this dead horse? Like, they have iPhones that have calculators on them. We're not going to learn our multiplication facts. It was just too much memorization. And memorization is really, it really constricts the brain capacity of especially children who are diagnosed with ADHD because ADHD affects your working memory. That is your retrieval, being able to take information you've stored in your brain and pull it back out again. This is something that you can see in an IQ test and this is how children get diagnosed with ADHD in school because you can see that gap between their working memory score and their overall IQ score, there's a gap there that usually indicates that there should be a referral made to a pediatrician. So Barbara Hunter explained this kind of learning where the kids have learned this information like they know it, but their brain will just not deliver the information when it is supposed to be retrieved as Swiss cheese learning. Like one day they have it, the next they don't, the next day they do. And it's really, really frustrating for kids who have ADHD because when the test comes along, sometimes they don't know the answer, but before and after the test, they do know the answer and it's not test-taking anxiety. It is actually that their brain will just not produce on demand the information that they need in order to take a test. Well, I was thinking about this Swiss cheese learning. I mean, that picture has stuck in my head ever since Barbara explained it that night, and it just gave me so much more empathy for my kids and frankly allowed me to push back once we got into traditional school and say, look, if the kid knows the information but they don't know it when you're doing the test, stop pressuring them. And I think about myself as a kid. I have never been diagnosed with ADHD yet, but when I was a kid, I would know the answers to the test, but not necessarily during the test. And I remember having this one test where I took the test And I got a bad grade, probably a D or something. And I brought it home and that was definitely not acceptable to my mother who had straight A's, by the way. My dad, I found out later, did not, but that was not mentioned to me at the time. So my mother is a very astute woman and was very good in school. And I said to my mom, I said, you know, I went up to the teacher after I got my test back and I went over all the questions and answers with her. And I said, you can ask me any question on that test and I know the information. Are you just frustrated that I have this letter grade that showed that I didn't know the information when the test was given? Or are you more concerned that I actually have the knowledge in my brain because I know the answers to the test now and I have the knowledge? So do you want the score or do you want the knowledge? Yeah, that's kind of a precocious little kid. I didn't get in much trouble, but I did kind of question authority when I thought I was right. What in the world does this have to do with organizing, Lisa Woodruff? Oh, So much. Once you listen to these next couple of podcasts, you will never be able to see organization again. And just like how I have explained how Swiss cheese learning really can frustrate a student trying to remember information in a timely fashion that they know, but they just can't retrieve at that time, you are going to feel the same sense of relief and understood when I explain to you over the next few episodes why we have such a hard time saying we are organized. And the reason why is this: we have Swiss cheese organizing. Are you organized? Can you confidently say, yep, I'm organized? You know why we can't say that we're organized and we hesitate when people say, are you organized? It's for these reasons. Number 1, You're thinking about some perfectionistic TV show, magazine, Pinterest image of what organized looks like, and your current reality does not reflect that image. And so you say, kind of. That's the typical response. Are you organized? Kind of. Meaning, don't come in my house and judge me because it doesn't look like a magazine. That's not organized. That is being perfect. We equate organization with perfection. And throughout the years I've said that organization has nothing to do with labels and containers. It's a sense of, it's a mindset. And that's true. And we're all like, yeah, that's adorable. But when somebody asks me, are you organized? And they're walking through my front door, they're then gonna see the 3 things that are out of place and they're gonna say, you are not organized. And it's almost like this absolute, either you're perfectly Pinterest magazine TV show organized or you are not. And there's nothing in the middle. So we just say, kind of, 'cause also we don't qualify for hoarders. So if we don't qualify for the hoarders TV show, but we're not the Better Homes and Gardens Picture Perfect TV show, what are we? And that is the problem. The question is, are you organized? The answer is either I'm a hoarder or I am a perfect person, and there's no language for what happens in the middle. The second thing I wanna bring to your attention is not just this idea of perfect, but the idea of done. Like, what does done look like? If you're organized, what does it look like when you're done? Think about an organization project that you did, like a binder you were creating or a closet you were organizing or a drawer you were organizing in your kitchen. And when you were done, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Ugh, it's done. Like, there are no breadcrumbs in the silverware drawer. By the way, still can't figure out how that happens. How do they get in there? I don't know how they get in there, but you've cleaned all that out. There's no mismatched silverware. Everything's clean. All the little forks are lined up like they're going to bed in the drawer and the spoons are perfectly nested together. Like it's done. It looks great. It is. Oh, did you say perfect? You did. I know you did. It's like this idea of perfect. And then we have to redo that organizing, that, that silverware drawer a couple of times a year. So What does done look like when you're organizing? Is it done for the moment? Or is it that this is where silverware goes and this is my general organization of silverware, and I know that I need to clean out the crumbs and reorder it about every 4 months, and that's okay. My silverware is perpetually organized and done even though it's not perfect. Ooh. Can we accept that as a definition? Is it organized if it doesn't last in a perfect form? I think so. I think so. But do the people who are evaluating your organization think so? So organization, what does it mean to be organized? To be organized is that you have a habit of organization. You have a mindset of exhibiting order on your home. You are confident to declare you are organizing because you are decluttering. You know where your stuff is. Fun fact, Greg, my husband, does not think I'm an organized person. I know, I keep trying to tell him I am and I have a whole company about it. He's like, yeah, um, no, because he was raised literally by a perfect mother who literally still has a perfect house and he has a perfect sister who also has a perfect house and their idea of organization is perfection. So why does Greg think that I am not organized? There are multiple reasons why. Number 1, I am multi-passionate and I have lots of projects in process in the business, in the home, in my parenting, in everything. He is, he says to me on a weekly basis, you need to do less. You need to stop packing so much into your calendar. You need to say no. You need to, And I'm like, why? I love all these things. He's like, because you work like all day long and you work on the weekends. We're— I was like, I love it though. And I'm making such big impact and I'm doing all the things I want to do. Like I want to be the grandmother that I am to Grayson. I want to help Joey move and do his finances. I want to talk to Abby about, you know, what she is doing in her life. I want to do organized, like I want to do all these things. I know that I am doing a lot. But I love everything that I'm doing and I don't regret anything that I'm doing. And if I wasn't doing them, I would regret it. And I— none of these things can be put off. They're all time sensitive. But he wants more rest and relaxation time in his life. He doesn't want to be going, going, going and only have an hour or two of TV at night. Like, to him, that is not restful. To me, I have worked my energy muscles up to be able to do that and still sleep well at night, and I love it. So our definitions of how much time we work and how much time we relax are different. And so because of that, Greg equates that to me not being organized because I have so many things I'm doing at one time. Another way in which he says I'm not organized is because our house is not perfect because I'm a human. I, I, I don't know how people have perfect houses. My house is literally perfect at 11:30 on Thursdays. 11:30 on Thursday, feel free to come on over to my house. It will have just been cleaned and it is as perfect as it is gonna get for the next 7 days. The dog is at daycare, the house has been perfectly cleaned. Everything that's Abby's and Grayson's is down in the basement in her glorious apartment down there. Like it looks, Amazing until noon. And that's when Greg comes home for lunch. By the time I get home from work at 5, it's already not perfect anymore. So for me, an organized house does not mean a perfect house, but there is a cadence to it getting cleaned and organized again. So every Thursday, the house is basically perfect and clean and organized. And then there is another 7 days where we use our house and it becomes a little cluttered with our daily clutter, and then I clean it up on Wednesday night or Thursday morning, and then it gets cleaned again. That is our cadence of our organization. So this is a funny story, and take it in the humor in which it was given. My husband is such a laid-back, loving, loyal man. He does not have a mean bone in his entire body. But when I was early on organizing, so this was probably 6, 7 years ago, Craig says to me, "How much money do you make as a professional organizer?" I was like, "Oh, oh, oh, yes, we're gonna talk business. He's interested in my business." I was like, "$50 an hour. I make $50 an hour. What else do you wanna know? Let's talk about my business." He goes, "Great, here's 50 bucks. Go clean the garage." And I was like, "Oh, Greg." And he was not saying it in a condescending way at all. He's like, "As in like you're organizing everybody else." we can't walk through our garage right now. And I took it in the vein he was giving it, but it made me realize very quickly that I was growing a business. At that time, I was not very profitable and he didn't really see it as a business. He saw it more as in you pay people to establish order in a space and that I did not have our home as organized as he wanted it to be. So even if you are a professional organizer and you're organizing people, Your house isn't usually perfect. And I always tell people who want to be professional organizers, do not wait until your house is perfect 'cause that's never gonna happen. But you have a teaching gift that you could share with people in your area. So then what does Greg think is organized? Does he think he's organized? Well, first of all, he has very few possessions. He is definitely a minimalist. Joey follows along in this vein as well, We are moving Joey from one condo to the next. This will have already happened by the time you listen to this. I think the guy needs 10 boxes because basically he doesn't have very much stuff. Joey learned way early on it was much easier not to get and accumulate things than to have to clean and organize them. So he doesn't have a lot of things. Greg does not have a lot of things, but Greg will tell you he's not organized. He's not gone through his closet in like, I don't know, 6 years, like he just doesn't wanna go through his clothing. We had our bathroom done this spring, so we had to empty out the bottom of our closet, so he did go through his pants and he got rid of a lot of pants. So he knows that his things are not organized and also he loses things in his closet. But because he doesn't have a lot of things, he would probably say he is more organized than me. However, I think I am very organized, even though I own like 85% of what's in the house, and boy do I pack that house full. If I were ever to move, they would totally underestimate how big of a moving truck they would need because I have things squeezed in here like sardines is all I have to say. But I feel extremely organized because I know where everything is and I have a home for it. So Greg does less and he doesn't, pile a lot onto him so he knows where things are. I hire, delegate, task stack, and work more hours in the day in order to do all of the things I want to do and believe that I am more organized. So my question to you is this: do you now feel that you are organized? Not the amount of organization that you do, not the perfection. If it's not perfection, then what is organizing? So I want to give you a couple of statistics, first from our original research that was done back in the early winter of 2021, the January, February timeframe. And then I'm going to give you our newest research that was done in late fall of 2021. So back in our first research about housework, the definition of housework, here's some of the statistics that came out. 84% of Americans believe organization is a learnable skill. This is Awesome. I love so, so, so much that so many Americans believe that organization is a learnable skill. We asked that question again this fall and it was 86%. So that statistic has stayed consistent. High preponderance of people believe, 4 out of every 5 people that you meet on the street are going to say, yes, we believe organization is a learnable skill. And here's what they think about people who are organized. 72% of Americans think that a person who keeps a clean and organized house is better prepared to lead. 75% of Americans think that having an organized home is a sign of confidence. Ooh, so we like it when people are organized, have a clean and organized house. We feel that if they can keep their house in order, then they can keep us in order. Is that how you feel? So then in the spring I asked, how do you feel when your home is organized? Like, what is the internal feeling that you feel when you're like, yes, I am organized? How do you feel? Both men and women equally said they feel accomplished. That was their number one answer. They felt very accomplished when they had organized a space or had an organized home. Women also, their second emotion was they felt relieved. Like, ah, it's organized, I feel relieved. Men tied in their second emotion, and that was that they felt relaxed and in control. Organization makes us feel in control. So in the fall study that we're just releasing now, here are what some of the statistics people said when we asked them about creating organization systems and how they feel about their home organization. 71% reported that they put pressure on themselves to keep their home organized. Do you put pressure on yourself to keep your home organized? 70% said that they indicated they had a hard time getting started when they needed to organize an area. Do you have a hard time getting started? 60% said that they feel on edge or nervous when thinking about organizing their home. So if you're feeling like, "I have a hard time getting started, but I put my pressure on myself to do this, but I feel on edge or nervous when I'm gonna get ready to do this," this is totally normal. This is how Americans are feeling. 67% indicated they have a lot of areas in their home that they've started to organize but have never finished. This is a big one we're gonna be talking about in the next couple of weeks. We have a hard time getting started, and then when we get started, we don't finish, which leads to 68% of people, reported that they get sidetracked when they're in the middle of organizing their home, which is completely understandable. Organization takes time and we don't usually have buckets of free time in our life. And so it's hard for us to get started. We're nervous and we're on edge about doing it. And then we haven't had success in finishing other areas in our house that are all partially organized. So yeah, of course you're gonna get sidetracked. Right? Because you haven't got to done yet. And then 78% said that they wish they had more time to keep their house organized. It all comes down to time, right? And this is where the rubber meets the road. 69% of respondents were women who reported that they don't know how to create the organization system they desire. We want it. We know that we'll be more confident, better able to lead when we have it. We'll feel relaxed and relieved, but we don't know how to get it. Like, we just don't know how to get it. And I have not done a very good job of teaching you how to get it. I'm just gonna be honest with you. You heard in the last podcast episode how I did it in Cincinnati and created the 40 Weeks, One Whole House that became the 100 Day Program. That is now the Productive Home Solution. But even when you buy the Productive Home Solution today, the answer is I give you a whole bunch of courses and I say, okay, get started. And after you do this, like 18 months, you'll be done. So if you can hang in there and you can muscle through and you could self-motivate yourself for 12 to 18 months, you're going to be done. And people have done it. Like people have done it and people are in process and we have fun along the way. But it's still hard, right? Like, that's a long time. Even if you know at the end of 12 to 18 months you're going to be done, like, that's a hard time. And so we're left with this Swiss cheese organizing and we feel like a rat in a maze that has no idea how to get out. That's how we feel. Like, I'm in the rat race. The rat race is in my house. I get started, but I get sidetracked and I'm nervous and I don't even know how to do what I'm doing. And so I have a little bit of organization here and a little bit of organization there, but nothing's really done. And when you ask me if I'm organized, I know I'm not a hoarder, but other than that, I cannot confidently say I'm organized because I don't even know where I'm going. I don't have a roadmap. I don't feel like I'm set up for success. I feel like I'm just set up for failure and judgment, and I feel judged. And I feel like I'm not making the mark. Can somebody please, please, please make this easier for me? Make it more attainable? Give me smaller chunks that I can tackle and finish and get some confidence from so I can move on to the next chapter? Yeah, I could do that. So I was thinking about this. I was like, how do I do this? How do I? We clearly have the answer. Like, People go through the Productive Home Solution and they do get organized through sheer determination, grit, and refusing to not be organized anymore. But for the majority of people, like, it's just hard. And even in my own marketing, I know this. Like, how many times, if you've listened to the podcast, have I said, if you're just listening to the podcast and you haven't taken any action in your home, you're doing it right. I still believe you're doing it right. You're changing your mindset. The mindset is number one. Like you have to believe that you could become an organized person. You have to start thinking about your home differently. You have to start thinking about your time differently. You have to, because that's how you become successful. So that is true. That is 100% true. And then the second thing I have been saying for a long time is there is an order to getting organized. That's also true. The Sunday basket is step one because the Sunday Basket is what starts to get out of your head, your to-dos, your actionables, your projects, your thoughts onto paper, into a box so that you have the mental capacity in order to start to take action on some of this mindset change that you're doing in the podcast. That is definitely step 1. If you haven't gotten a Sunday Basket yet, I don't know what you're waiting for. Get a Sunday Basket. But then when we move into the Productive Home Solution, we start with, okay, there is an order to getting organized. We start in the kitchen and then we move into your bedroom, bathroom, and your bedroom, bathroom, and your closet. And I often would say, if you just get through those 42 days in the previous 100 Day Home Organization program, 80% of the spaces that you use on a daily basis will be organized and it will hugely impact your confidence and your organization. And that is Absolutely true. It's totally true. A Sunday basket, your kitchen, and your primary bedroom suite being organized, like game on. You could pretty much conquer the world. You could be done. You could even declare yourself organized if you want to. But most people are saying, but organized, Lisa Woodruff, means my paper is organized, my storage room is organized, my kids' toy room is organized, my linen closet is organized, my car is organized, my— work is organized. And to you, I would also say, yes, you are correct. Pursuing organization, living an organized life is something that is developed over time because it involves a lot of rewriting scripts in your head and creating habits, organizational habits that you can maintain over time. And we chunk those out. And while I still agree that the first 42 days of the former 100-Day Home Organization program are the most important, it doesn't really give you that sense of, ah, I'm organized. Like, ah, my closet's organized, ah, my kitchen's organized, but not I'm organized. And the reason why is because it still does not check off a single category of organization. It's just a couple more spaces in your Swiss cheese house, these little pockets of organization, and the rest that doesn't really have a plan. So I thought about other industries that have taken really large goals and broken them down effectively. And I want to give you two that you will be very familiar with that will help you with where we're going with home organization. The first is the Couch to 5K program, or if you know anybody who's ever run a marathon, Greg has run a marathon. I can't run a mile, so you know, there's that. But the Couch to 5K program is if you're a couch potato, which I'm like one step away from a couch potato, it basically gives you a plan for how you go from not even walking 5Ks to running a 5K. It's very step by step by step what you do in order to get your body and your mindset in preparation to running a 5K. And if you know anybody Or if you yourself have taken on any physical challenge to lose weight, to learn to run, to do a marathon, to get in shape, to learn Pilates, whatever, anything that you've ever done physically, you have a picture in your mind of how you did that. You did Weight Watchers, you did any of these programs. They're very systematic, as in you don't decide one day to lose 10 pounds and then you wake up a week later and you have lost 10 pounds. Like, I have a friend who's lost 100 pounds. I mean, that's a lot of weight. She did not do it overnight. It took 2 years. So to lose that kind of weight, it takes a mindset shift and then a lot of habits along the way. And there are different habits that you learn for the first 10 pounds than you learn for the last 10 pounds. Can we all agree on that? Another example that I've been thinking about a lot is Dave Ramsey's company. There are a lot of people who profess to help you get out of debt. But I would say that as far as people recognizing a program to get you out of debt, whether you use it or not, is the Dave Ramsey program. He took the idea of getting out of debt and he pulled a lot of research and a lot of things that were being taught in the financial world. I know he learned a lot from Larry Burkett. Oh my gosh, I loved Larry Burkett. The idea of the debt snowball and all of these things. And he organized all of these things that he found that everybody else was doing and that he himself had done personally in his life. And he organized them into the Baby Steps. Step 1, get an emergency fund. Step 2, pay off your consumer debt as fast as possible, which he says takes about 18 months. Step 3, you know, and you work your way towards the last step. Many people probably only get through steps 1 and 2. Get yourself an emergency fund, pay off your consumer debt. I have a mortgage, like I'm still on Baby Step 2, but I'm comfortable with saying that I, that's how far I wanna go right now in my life. I am using the debt system to my advantage in my business and in my personal life in order to fund what I wanna do. I'm not a cash-based person, but I do have an emergency fund and I do not have consumer debt. So that's where I am on the debt-free plan. And I love that for myself because up until I kind of made this association between what Dave Ramsey's doing and what I'm doing, I was thinking, well, I'm not debt-free because I have business debt, because I have a mortgage. But you know what? I'm fine with that. I don't desire to be mortgage-free at the age of 50. I desire to be mortgage-free at the age of 65, and I am on my plan, and I have a plan, and I'm doing it purposefully, so I'm fine with it. That is what these steps help you do. Not everyone is going to become a minimalist. Not everyone is going to have every single thing organized in their house, including photos into scrapbooks. Like, it's not what everybody desires to use their time, money, and energy for. But if you understand that there are these categories of organization, and you could say, yes, I am personally organized and I am storage organized. I'm not going to be paper organized. And being family organized is like shoveling snow in a snowstorm. So I'm skipping that one too. You could say, yeah, I'm organized because I have consciously looked at all the areas you can organize, what that looks like. I have purposely decided here's where I want to be organized in those areas and I'm moving on. I'm totally happy with my finances right now. I do not need to pay off my mortgage this year, so I don't put any time and effort in it. Am I debt-free? I'm consumer debt-free. See? See? There's a word for it. Are you debt-free? I am consumer debt-free. I could say that with confidence. Am I 100% debt-free? No, but it's not my desire to be, so I don't even care. Like, and when I used to say that a year or two ago, I'd be like, are you debt-free? Not that anybody normally asks you that question, But whenever I'm internally asking the question, which I think happens more often than somebody's gonna say, "Are you organized?" But you'll internally say, "Am I organized? Am I organized in that area?" When I used to ask myself that question, "Lisa, are you debt-free?" I'd think, well, I have the mortgage, I have the business debt, I have a car loan, you know. So according to Dave Ramsey, I'm net debt-free, and I would feel negative about that. And then I reframed it and I was like, Yeah, I have a car loan. How in the heck do you think you get 2 kids' cars and us 2 cars and still 2 other— like, yeah, we have car loans. I'm fine with that. I am comfortable with that. So am I debt-free? Yes, I'm consumer debt-free. Some people would say, well, car loans technically are consumer debt. So technically— and I'll be like, I am done with this conversation. I am. Like, I have no— I feel utter confidence when I share this information with you. Because I have consciously thought through all of the different ways I could be debt-free, all the different ways we could be using our money. Greg has been investing in his 401 since the day he graduated college. I started 2 years ago. I'm fine with it. When I look at our money, I know that Greg has taken care of the 401 bucket. I have taken care of the business ownership bucket. We have all 4 of our drivers in cars in the best way that we can financially swing it right now. That it is what it is. This is where I am. And I have decided that I'm happy with where I am on this continuum. That is what I want for you. In the next 4 podcasts, I am going to break down home organization into personal organization, family and communal space organization, storage organization, and paper management organization. And my desire is that at the end of each podcast episode, you will say, Yes, I am personally organized. Or no, I'm not personally organized. I didn't know that's what it meant. But now that you've defined what it meant, I would like to improve on that in these areas. And when I improve on it in these areas, I will be able to confidently say I am personally space organized. And bucketing it this way, you'll be able to pick out one kind of organization, go after that for 5 or 6 weeks, and literally check it off your list. It won't take 18 months to be completely completely organized, you'll be doing the baby steps. Which step do you want to work on? When can you declare that you're organized in that area? And then move on to the next and the next and the next. This is going to be a very, very empowering way of looking at our organization and being able to consciously decide, do we even want to have that organization? And if you don't, you could say you're organized because you've considered it and you've decided not worth your time, effort, and energy, and thank you very much. I'm still organized. You can be an organized person. The way that you defined organization and the way that I define organization in our research studies is, what does it mean to be organized? Both men and women agree that they consider their home to be organized most when everything appears to be in its place. AKA, you stop looking for things. Are you still looking for things and frustrated you can't find it and don't know what you have? Then yeah, you're probably not organized in whatever category that is yet. But there are definitely categories as we go through this series where you'll be like, "Oh, I didn't know that's what it meant to be family space organized. I'm definitely family space organized. I could check that one off my list." That is what I want from you, and that's what we're gonna do starting next week. Thanks for listening to this Organize 365 playlist. You can find more information about these podcast episodes organize365.com/glossary. I invite you to dive deeper into your organization journey by choosing another topic-specific playlist or listening to our latest revelations on the Organize 365 podcast.