201 | The Role of Decluttering and Home Organization in Interior Design With Lisa Woodruff

Organizing is decluttering, taking what you have left and organizing it, and then you get to put your design aesthetic on top of it. If they take a disorganized space, declutter it, and jump to a design aesthetic and the organization piece doesn't happen, then it looks pretty, but it ends up not functioning, and then they don't use it correctly, and then they're like, well, I don't really understand how to use it.

You're now listening to Design Curious. A place where you, creative one, are here to learn about what it really is like to be an interior designer. And I'm your host and mentor, Rebecca Ward. If you're worried about how to succeed in a creative career, if you're ready to learn your next steps to become an interior designer, and if you want the satisfaction of doing something you love every day, you are in the right place. Grab a coffee, a notebook, and let's dig into today's episode. Hello and welcome to episode 201 of Design Curious Podcast. Today on the podcast, we are continuing our guest series for the summer, and today we've got Lisa Woodruff. She is the founder and CEO of Organize 365. Lisa and 87% of Americans believe organization Is a learnable skill. See, there's still hope for you yet. Yet less than 18% of those same Americans feel that they are organized, me included. As the host of the top-rated Organized 365 podcast with 24 million downloads and counting, Lisa shares strategies for reducing the overwhelm, clearing the mental clutter, and living a productive and organized life. I have been very much into the thought of decluttering, organizing, going minimal on a lot of things in order to maximize the enjoyment of a home. So I think this conversation is very relevant. Let's get into it. Hey Lisa, welcome to Design Curious Podcast. It's great having you here today.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you today. You are a professional organizer. You have your own podcast and have so much information. Why don't we start there and tell me how you decide to get into the business of organizing?

It's funny, I probably got into the business of organizing all the way back when I was 12, 13, 14 years old, and I was babysitting and also organizing the kids' toys. And I moved on to organizing their parents' spaces, organizing my bedroom every time I was sent there for timeout, organizing my mom when she was a crafter. I loved organizing. It was a way I kept busy, kind of as a busybody. Became a teacher, helped organize other teachers' teacher closets, and then became a stay-at-home mom and would organize other people's playrooms when we had playdates. So it was just kind of one of those things I did. I had no idea it was actually a job. I just thought it was kind of like, you know, I love doing jigsaw puzzles. So everybody's house felt like a new undone jigsaw puzzle to me. So I just kept, you know, like organizing when I was anywhere just for fun. And then when I turned 40, I started my blog, Organized 365, to talk about organizing and the act of organizing, how to get organized. I was at the most disorganized I'd ever been in my life, and I realized I needed to kind of reset my whole household for the next, you know, 40, 50, 60 years of my life. And it wasn't until a couple months into running Organized 365, I was representing a direct sales company that sold acrylic containers. And there was this huge party. There were 25 people at this direct sales party. And I said to my friend, I was like, why are all these people here? I mean, like, I've been in direct sales for decades and you never have more than like 4, 6, 12 people there. And she said, well, Lisa, everyone wants to know what a professional organizer has to say. And I was like, I'm a professional organizer? Like, I didn't even know it was a thing.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm sure, you know, your listeners feel the same way. Like they've been designing their bedrooms and their friends and everything forever. And then you're like, I could get paid to design? Like, yeah, it's almost like getting paid to babysit. I couldn't believe people would pay me to watch their kids. I just wanted to play with their kids. So I think when you love what you do so much, you don't really realize it's a monetizable skill or it's actually people get paid for this. So that's kind of eventually just lucked into it, realizing that, oh, what I was doing was actually a service I could charge for.

Mm. Oh wow. Yeah. So first of all, I can imagine if I were hiring you as a babysitter, I would've loved it. I didn't have anything to reorganize all my things or the playroom or whatever, you know, while you were there. And also, I think that is a very common crossover for people who are passionate about it and what they do. And it's a service that could actually get paid. Same thing, like you said, for designers will often just be like, oh, I didn't know not everybody can do this. Right. Yeah. So For designers, often the struggle when crossing over from a passion into having your own business is making sure, you know, it's profitable, you're making enough money to make it a career. Did you have this similar struggle starting out?

Of course. I mean, of course, of course. Not only that, but also, you know, being female, like, oh, you know, you're gonna pay me for something. So when I started Organized 365, I was turning 40 years old. So I'd lived a couple of decades. We definitely needed me to make money. And I'd been a schoolteacher. So, you know, I wasn't used to being paid a lot for what I did. I would get paid a lot when I did tutoring. So I'd charge $50 an hour to do tutoring. And I sent my kids to a private learning disability school. So I started cleaning people's houses in my 30s, and I got paid $35 an hour to do that, you know, $100 per house. So those are kind of like the benchmarks of the dollars I was thinking about as I found out I was a professional organizer.

Mm-hmm.

And I was like, well, I should earn more than a cleaner because basically what a cleaner does every 2 weeks, you have to redo it again. Like it's not lasting. So I should charge more than $35. So of course I charged $40.

Yeah.

Because it's fun, right? I charged $40. But by the end of my first year, like I really ramped up the prices pretty quickly. And I think I did that one, because I desperately needed the money and two, because I was 40, not 20. So I started at $40, then I went to $50 an hour, a minimum 3 hours. So that was a $150 session. Then I expanded that to a minimum 4-hour session. So that was a $200 session. And then I went to $60 an hour and I brought someone on to organize along with me or on her own. And I earned a percentage of that. And when I ended 5 years later, I was charging $750 for 5 hours for 2 organizers to go. And I wasn't one of those organizers.

Okay. Yeah.

So I just give you the money because, like, I want to know.

Yeah.

No, I'm listening. I'm like, just tell me the money. Yeah.

No, I, yeah, my first job as a designer was similar on my own. It was a friend, you know, so I'm like, oh yeah, I'll charge you, uh, cause like right now, you know, when I was working for this other person, I was only making, you know, $20-something an hour. So I'll charge you $40 an hour, you know, or $50, you know? So it seems like a lot, but then you realize it's not when you actually are running a business and you have all this overhead and yeah. So many other factors too than just your time for money. Yeah. So I was very curious about that transition for you. Obviously parallels a lot of designers' path as well. So then you probably also had to deal with managing a business and managing your household as many designers do as well. I think, you know, organizing is great. I'm not naturally that way. I would have my sisters come and help me organize my room when I was little. So they were probably more like you, you know, they love to do it. I love it. So I'm like, yeah, you can come do my room too. So, but it is a challenge cuz you're using a lot of your mental capacity for your career and then you come home and then you're like, okay, I have to do this all over again. Right? So how can you help these women in these situations?

Yes. So I love that you said that running a household is a business. Running a household absolutely is a business. And I think that's why women make such great entrepreneurs.

Hmm.

And solo professionals because we are used to having to run our household. Like there's, the buck stops with us. Like you may have a supportive spouse, but usually you're the CEO of your household. And 68% of US GDP is household spending.

Hmm.

So you really are a significant contributor to society and making money or not making money in the marketplace as the head of the household, the amount of money that you are managing is whatever all of the income of all the adults in the household bringing into the household So if you work and your spouse works, combine that, that is the profit that the household is going to manage and distribute and save and all of those things during the year. So there's definitely a financial aspect to it. But then there's also the operations, like operationally running a household, making sure the household is clean, making sure all the people have what they need as far as food and cleanliness and laundry. And then also managing all the invisible load, all the scheduling, all the planning, all the—

Mm-hmm.

Holiday making, all of those things. Like, there's a lot of things you do as a household manager. So I often will say, for women to have their own businesses in addition to running the household, they are running 2 businesses because they just are. There's enough work there that you're running 2 whole businesses.

Oh yeah, I, I wholeheartedly agree with that. And even though, like, I do have a supportive spouse in everything, but it's still, it's like I, you know, gotta put on my other CEO hat to like manage all the things that are going on and schedules. And you're right. But knowing also that the effort that you put into keeping your house in order and on track, it really pays off for both businesses, right? Because then you have more mental capacity for running your other passion career, as it may be. So what are a lot of things that you're seeing as you go into people's houses and working with different people? What's not working and what do people think is going to work that's not working for them?

Such a great question. So I love what you said, that it is an investment to put the systems in place. That is what is not working.

Mm-hmm.

You can go to a store and buy things for design. You cannot go to a store and buy an organizational system. Now, you could buy like an Elfa closet, but you can't go and buy like a household management system. It doesn't exist. So that is what Organize 365 has created over the last 14 years. I no longer do in-home professional organizing. As I was doing that, my clients would tell me that they learned how to organize. They didn't need me to come back because they figured out the questions I was asking and now they finished organizing their house. And at first I was like, oh no, I need you to need me because I need your money.

Right.

And then I was like, oh wait, if this is learnable, I mean, I'm a teacher, so how do I reverse engineer this? How do I teach it? And then how can I do that on the internet? Like, how can I be teaching you on the internet and literally you're holding up whatever piece of paper you have or object that you have And I'm able to teach you enough that you know what to do with that object without me knowing what you're holding. That is a trick. And the podcast really is how I did that, because when you're listening to a podcast, you're thinking about your space. You're not looking at my kitchen and how it looks and making judgments or wishing you had it, or what, you know, my style isn't your style. You're just thinking about the space and how you use the space. So it's a learnable skill and it's something that you could teach online. And creating the systems, every single household manager from the beginning of time has cobbled together and created their own system. There is no system. Like if you go in a bedroom, you know that you need to get a bed, you need to get a dresser. You may have a different design aesthetic, but when you move into a household, there's literally nothing there to operationally run the household as far as like calendars and information management and paper management and the maintenance schedules and all of that. Like you have to figure it all out.

Mm-hmm.

create a schedule, remember it, do it on time, figure out how to pay for it. And that's what Organize 365 has done. They've taken all of those things and put them into a system.

That sounds great. Yeah, I love that. So it made me think as you were talking, what is it maybe that as designers we should know when we're going into a space to kind of help set up those systems easier? We're of course looking at the aesthetic and how things function well as you're moving through the space and hosting people in your space, but then it's just Some of the day-to-day systems that you may want to encourage people to put in place, we might not be aware of. So is there something that we as designers maybe should be looking at?

Yeah, very interesting. As soon as I would get a house done, like get it organized, I was always asked for 2 things. Number one, do you know somebody who can clean? Because they didn't have somebody cleaning before because it wasn't organized enough. And number 2, do you know a designer? Because until the space is organized, you can't really bring a designer in. I'm sure A lot of times as a designer, you're very frustrated because you have a really engaged client and they really want something. And you walk in the space and you're like, yeah, but first you need to organize.

Mm-hmm.

And so organization and design are similar but different. And organization comes before design. And ironically, the way organization is sold in the United States is as a design aesthetic. So what I mean by that is when you wanna get a space organized, you're sold an Elfa closet at The Container Store, or you're sold acrylic containers for your pantry, or you're sold A filing cabinet system, which looks good, but does not always solve the problem. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. And there aren't enough systems for every single space. Like there is no family room system, there's no living room system. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

So you could buy a specific system for a closet, but it's not gonna solve every problem. So organizing is decluttering, taking what you have left and organizing it, and then you get to put your design aesthetic on top of it. If they take a disorganized space, declutter it, and jump to a design aesthetic and the organization piece doesn't happen, then it looks pretty, but it ends up not functioning. And then they don't use it correctly. And then they're like, well, I don't really understand how to use it. So understanding that these are 2 totally different things, as designers, if you partner with a professional organizer that can get the organizing done, then you can come in. It's much easier to do the design. And they will naturally have clients that, as they get done with the organizing, will want design. And I— I am a terrible designer. Like, I would be a great partner for a decorator because my partner was a decorator. We would be leaving a house, she'd be like, did you see the blah blah blah, the color on those walls? I was like, the walls had color? Like, I could tell you every single item in that house because I have a visual memory, but I don't— like, she's like, oh, we need to move this, we need to do that. Like, I, I don't see any of that.

Hmm.

So if you have 2 professionals with different skill sets that can do referrals back and forth, It really helps you not try to be the other expertise and really partner to get the clients what they want in the end.

I love that. Yeah, really good. Okay, so what about these maybe designer business owners or their clients are going to start to focus on their home? What should be the first thing that maybe they're looking at?

Okay, so in organizing your own life, for me, I'll just speak for myself personally. When I was 39, about to turn 40, Literally nothing was going correct in my life. Like, it felt like all the wheels had come off my car and rolled down somewhere else, and I was just sitting there on the side of the road, you know, and couldn't go anywhere. I was like, oh my gosh, how am I going to get out from under this load that I'd created in the first 2 decades of adulthood? The parents, the kids, you know, my parents divorced, my father passing away, my weight, antidepressants, all this stuff. And I was like, okay, well, first I have to get a handle on my to-do list. And the way that I get a handle on my to-do list is a product I created called the Sunday Basket. Your to-do list is so much more than just the to-do list. It's like everything that you have on your kitchen counter that is in process that you can't possibly move because it's in process, and if you move it, then you'll forget it.

Mm-hmm.

And then it's also all the text messages, all the direct messages, all the emails, you know, that are coming in that you have to make decisions on. And so I printed all of that out and I laid it all out on the floor And I figured out like, okay, what is my total list of things I need to do? Not just things that I can remember on a list, but what are all of the things that I have committed to or need or want to do? And then how can I attack that? And so I do that on Sunday. I take all the requests of my time and money from the week, I review them, and then I decide, okay, the only question I ask myself is, can this task or this request for my time, money, or energy wait until next Sunday? And if it can, it must, because we don't have enough time. And that way you'll get down to just a handful of things that can't wait and are urgent and important. And I do those things. But I love the Sunday basket because like I'm multi-passionate. So I have business ideas and kids ideas and household ideas, and I wanna capture all the ideas.

Mm-hmm.

But I don't want 'em on a to-do list I'm looking at every day cuz it's like 4 years worth of work. I can't possibly do all of that.

Mm-hmm.

So the first system would be the Sunday basket, having a place to externalize and write down and capture All of the ideas you have, all the actionables you have, all the things you need to do so that you have more capacity to pick a couple of things and actually get them done without trying to hold all the rest of that in your head.

That's good advice. Yeah, I love that because you might think as those requests are coming in that something feels urgent, but if you can put off that decision until you see everything together, then you can have more wisdom to address that thing and say, like, I actually can wait a week, you know, like this other thing's more important for my time and energy. That's really good. I love that. Okay, so I was thinking about, you know, sometimes we'll redo a kitchen or something like that, and they have all this space, all this pantry space, and, you know, everything's open. And then they start moving in, and, you know, they might not be filling up all of their shelves and storage space and everything like that. Do you think it's hard for people to have empty shelves? Like, or just open space on their, in their organization? Because sometimes I, I'm like, if we add more storage here, everybody always asks for more storage, right? But then they just fill it up with stuff. And so it gets crowded and then they need an organizer to come in and declutter and all that stuff, you know? So. Yeah.

2 thoughts came to mind at the same time. One is that if you move into a new space, then yes, you can leave spaces empty because it's for future filling. And I think that as your life gets more complex, you know, our life goes through seasons where it's really hard and overwhelming, and then we're a little bit bored and we have a lot of time, a little hard and overwhelming. And these seasons are like years. It could be like 3 to 5 years of really hard and overwhelming and then really lonely and have some extra time and capacity. And so what I've noticed is in the really busy, hard years, you do have a lot of excess. Because you just don't have the time to maintain the system and/or you need the stuff. Even if you don't wanna have it, you have to have it. And so giving yourself some grace around that, that, you know, like it's not always gonna look like a magazine.

Yeah.

Like even if you want it to. And so more storage sometimes is people saying, and it could be with a door on it, like, I need to have this stuff, I just don't wanna look at this stuff. So can you give me more capacity?

Mm-hmm.

Then on the other side of that, that year I turned 40 and started the company. I also went through and I organized my house. It took a whole year to get through my house.

Mm-hmm.

And when we started that year, we'd lived in that house for 15 years. My kids were 11 and 12, and I was convinced we needed a bigger house and we had to move cuz we just had so much stuff and the kids were gonna get bigger and on and on. By the end of that year, I had empty cabinets and I was like, wow, like we don't need a bigger house.

Mm-hmm.

I just had to process out All the first decade of having kids that I did not keep up with, move those things out, upgrade the kids' rooms to teenage rooms, you know, just uplevel us for the next phase we were going into. And all of a sudden I had empty cabinets. And yeah, it was weird. It was weird to go from, I don't have enough space, we have to move, to I literally have empty cabinets. I don't have a lot of empty cabinets anymore. But the first time you have an empty cabinet, you don't have a space, you know, something to go in there. And then to just sit with that and go, Nope, that's going to be empty for a little bit of time until I figure out what that thing is going to be. It's a real growth opportunity.

Yeah, actually, I, because I kind of brought that question forward from personal experience because I was just cleaning out my pantry the other day and the baskets I got to put on the shelves. I don't have these nice roll-out drawers because I just, I haven't gotten to my own kitchen designing it yet. But so I have these deep shelves and I have baskets to help my kids access all the snacks and everything. Well, I kind of wanted the baskets to sit close to the front of it so they can see everything, you know, but then that left like 6 to 8 inches in the back of nothing being there. And I felt compelled to like, I might have to put something back there so that it needs to fill up that space. And then I realized like, no, that's just the space that's there and it doesn't have to be filled. But I would think that a lot of people might struggle with that as well, just to like hold that space and just be like, it doesn't have to be completely crammed to the gills.

Yeah.

And in fact, it gives you more flexibility. And, you know, so yeah, it's just, yeah, coming from my role.

And as an organizer, I have a couple of ideas of how you can use that space. So one, you could take rolled paper towel rolls and put them back there instead of putting them somewhere else. It'd be easier to reach. The other thing I like to do is you said the snacks are in the bins.

Yeah.

So then what I like to do is the replenishment snacks of the boxes that haven't been opened yet, store those behind the bins. So that as the bins get lower, you can just kind of restock. Because I'm always buying from Costco and I just have way too much. I don't have room for them. I did the same thing with cereal.

Yeah.

Like, I would take cereal. If you take a cereal out of a cereal box, every single cereal bag is clear. You don't realize that till you do it. And then you just put a clip on them and you have one basket that has like a couple of clipped cereals in it. And then I put the unopened boxes of cereals on the top shelf of the pantry. So that kids aren't opening a brand new box all the time. They look at the ones that are actually open. So anyway, sorry, I couldn't resist.

Yeah, no, I love that. That's brilliant. Yeah, really good ideas. And you know, that just shows that you are like, we need to be side by side when we're working through a client's home because we'll see things differently and have different ideas. I think that's so great.

Yeah.

And so you mentioned how like our house can't look picture perfect all the time. And of course designers love to have it like they want to drop in on their client and see the house looking like that. It's not always going to look like that all the time. So how can people deal with the, you know, actual lived-in house and not trying to be a perfectionist all the time and keeping it— yelling at the kids for like having one shoe on the floor, you know?

Yeah. So I think that you can have your house look pretty perfect, like especially if you're to the point in your life where you can afford to and have the desire to hire a designer. to make a design aesthetic in your house, then you also have the desire to have that design aesthetic viewed by others and enjoyed. Like, that is part of, like, what brings you joy. So something I would say to that is not every single space needs to be perfect. And also, some people have a better ability to maintain a more perfect-looking space than others.

Hmm.

So I was just talking to a friend of mine, She has one child that has all boys and one child that has all girls. You can imagine which house looks more like a designer house.

Yeah.

The one that has all girls. But also, as boys get a little bit bigger, boys are big and rambunctious, but they actually will have a more designer-looking house because they just don't have as much stuff because they're always like outside. Whereas girls, I mean, they have stuff falling off of them everywhere they go because everything has extra parts and pieces. And this person is a friend with whatever, like they just have so much stuff. So if you can designate like these are showrooms and these are lived-in rooms, especially if you have a bigger house and you have more people over on a regular basis, then you don't feel like you have to always have everything up to par all the time everywhere.

Mm-hmm.

And I really in my 40s had to make peace with the fact that I'm not a perfectionist. My house looks pretty good. You wouldn't even notice when you come in the house the things that I'm going to notice that are out of places. Now I live with my grandchildren, so you would notice all the baby stuff and the 4-year-old stuff.

Right.

But for the most part, when you walk in, you'd be like, oh, this is a nice looking home. You're not going to be judging and evaluating me the way that I'm going to judge and evaluate me. So just giving yourself grace and replacing perfection with excellence. Like, I am a woman of excellence. I do everything with excellent effort and I put forth my best effort in everything I do. But I know that perfection doesn't exist. And yes, I can get a house to look perfect right before we start a party. But as soon as the first person walks through the door, we're not gonna maintain that level of perfection. And I just wanna enjoy my friends. I wanna enjoy our household. And so you can have a really nice looking house and a really well-designed house without the judgment and the stress of perfection.

Yeah, good advice. I know in design we've had a lot of discussion lately about wellness and bringing in biophilic elements and designing around health and things that will promote longevity. And I know the conversation also extends into organizing with as far as like the mental load that clutter can have. Do you find that that is kind of an uptick in trends for organizing like that discussion of wellness?

Oh, I think yes, wellness is in everything that we're talking about. And I think when we talk about clutter, it's a couple of things. One, especially when you're in a busy season or if there are a lot of people living in your household, there's just a lot of stuff. There's just a lot of stuff. And let's be clear, we love our stuff and all of our family members' stuff we see as optional. And they love their stuff and they see our stuff as optional.

Yeah.

So we have a different perspective of what we think clutter is and what clutter isn't. So I'm a consumer. I like Amazon. They come to my house regularly, so I'm always bringing in new stuff. So if you're continually bringing in new stuff and you wanna have a clutterless life or less clutter, then you have to constantly be moving out old stuff. So it's a lot of in and out. Now, as far as clutter, as far as like kitchen counter clutter and things like that, I actually think we have less clutter than we used to. And I actually think it's a problem.

Oh.

So what I mean by, I know it's counter clutter.

Tell me more. Tell me more.

Like if you remember growing up, you know, all the papers would be on the kitchen counter. You'd come home and you'd empty out your backpack and there's just like papers coming everywhere. Well, we're very digital now and we're very much on our phones and techie now. And so actually, I think we actually do more today than we, ever did, but it's not visible.

Hmm.

So it's on your phone, it's in your email, it's in your head, it's the DM on your Instagram, it's a message on your phone. And so we're constantly trying to remember, where is that information? Where's that task? Who's that person I'm supposed to reply to? Is it already on the calendar? Not on the calendar. When it was just a big mess on your kitchen counter, you knew it was there, but also you could be like, all right, we're gonna tackle this. And you'd grab each piece of paper and you'd go ahead and do it. Now you have to remember where every task is. Okay, I'm gonna go through email. Now I'm gonna go through texts. Now I'm gonna go through DMs. Now I'm gonna go through all the different apps for all the different kids' sports. Now I'm gonna go through mail. Like, so what I like to do is I just print out my emails. Like, oh, this is gonna need a response. I just print it. And then when I do my Sunday basket, which is where I put all the kitchen counter clutter, everything that comes outta the backpacks and all those printed things, I'm not on my computer. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. Susie wanted to know if we could go to her birthday party in 3 weeks. Now I'm checking my paper planner and I'm like, okay, yeah, I think we can. And so I go ahead and I text that back. And I find that actually making the invisible visible reduces my mental load because now I'm dealing with the load on paper.

Mm-hmm.

I'm not mentally trying to remember in an app and make a decision and move to another app to put it on there. Like, to me, that's way too much digital. Could be because I'm in my 50s, but I was like this when I was younger too. I love to just sit down with a nice cup of coffee and just look at all the paper. Now, obviously you'd have to go back into those apps and put 'em on there, but I think that our mental load and a lot of the clutter we have is digital and in our heads. And if we can make it visible, we can actually make faster progress.

Mm-hmm. That's a really good point that like you don't keep track and really aware of all of the 50 things that you are juggling in the digital realm. Mm-hmm. And that having that in front of you. So do you have like a physical basket that you're actually putting all these things in?

Yes. So when you buy the Sunday Basket System, which is like Organized 365, it's like a school. So you get school supplies. So the basket is a box and it comes with 25 slash pockets in it, which are binder inserts. It has a big spot to hold all of the things that would be on your kitchen counter. And then this, it holds these files upright and it comes with an online course and a coworking time that we do on Sundays and a whole community, a lifetime community that you're in in order to keep this habit going. Oh, wow.

Okay. And you mentioned a physical planner. Do you have a planner system that you like?

So I don't have a regular planner that we sell because there are just so many different ones on the market. And depending on what season in your life, you'll find one that you love. We do have a trimester planning day. So 3 times a year we plan for the next 4 months. And I find as household managers that this is usually what we plan, January to April, May to August and September to December. And we really think through the big decisions that you need to make as a CEO of your household. What are the big lifts that you need to do in the next 4 months? And then that trickles down into your regular planner system.

That's really good because like as the CEO of my company, I set aside a quarterly day to kind of do that for my business, but didn't think about needing to really, I mean, well, I do, like I use the Full Focus Planner. planner system. So it does integrate personal and business life, but I didn't really think about being a full-on CEO approach for the household and, and it's, and looking at it that way. Yeah.

It's night and day difference. I mean, imagine the decisions that you make for your business. And also as a CEO of my business, same thing, plan quarterly. When you think about it, you're like, oh, I have all these great ideas. But you know, as a CEO of your business, that if you try to do 5 things, you will do none of them. But if you pick 1 or 2, that you can get 'em done in 90 days, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Take that mentality to your household. One, it lowers the expectations and the stress on you as the household manager that you can do, be, and have everything instantaneously. And second, it really focuses your effort at home and you're like, okay, well you guys both picked 2 sports this season, so this is 4 months of sports, but that means we're not doing sleepovers, we're not doing eating out dinner, we're not doing this, we're not doing this. And then you get to the next 4 months, you're like, oh, okay, we wanna do sleepovers and eating out. Okay, we're not doing sports. And I'm not, that's an example, right? Or like we're taking our big beach trip, so that means that we're not doing extracurriculars this next 4 months 'cause all of our money's going to the beach thing. It's much easier to explain that to your family also, and you can get buy-in. But when you're making these decisions every single day and having to decide everything without a big picture plan, it's exhausting, and you tend to make not as good decisions.

Yeah, and getting the whole team on board too, which is everyone living in your household, that's, that's genius. Yeah. Okay, so tell us a little more about Organize 365. You've already gone into like the Sunday basket, but Tell us all the things that we need to know.

Oh, thank you. So Organized 365 was started 14 years ago, the year I turned 40, and we help you set up the systems in your household, the operational systems in your household that don't exist. And I do it from the lens of a teacher. So very much you're gonna get school supplies and you're gonna get training, and then you're gonna have like a coworking time. So the Sunday Basket supports your weekly planning, managing your to-do list, all that kitchen counter clutter, all those reactive things that you're reacting to so you can be more proactive. After that, you move into the planning day, that trimester planning. Everyone is a live event. It's a 2-day live event where you really put on your CEO hat and you think about your household and what you want it to look like in the next 4 months. And then you make a plan and you add that into your Sunday basket. And then there are 2 different ways that you can organize your house. You can organize all the information management, which is digital and in your file cabinet papers, getting all that information organized, or your physical spaces, which is the productive home solution.

Okay, great. And I see a book behind you. Um, is that one of yours? That is—

Yes.

Quicksand. I can see it.

Yes. So our newest book is called Escaping Quicksand, and this is the mental mindset shifts that I made in my 40s. It's the 10 steps to overcome the overwhelm of modern life. So if you're like, okay, this sounds great, but I don't know if I'm ready for school yet, this book really talks about how do you shift from being Reactive and at the end of your rope and there's nothing left for yourself, how do you start to put yourself back on the to-do list? How do you start to insert yourself back into the family as one of the members that also needs to be cared for in addition to everyone else who's in your household? And so we talk about really simple things like setting up a morning and evening routine, having better nutrition, organizing different spaces in different orders so you don't have Swiss cheese organizing, just All of those things that really support you as a human so that you can come back to life and do all the other things.

Wow. I think that's gonna be really beneficial for our audience because a lot of people listening are thinking about shifting careers. So they're gonna be starting something really big, you know, or starting a new business as an interior designer and their personal life, you know, A lot of times they have young kids or different things. Their personal life could get left to the wayside or figure out how to balance both. And I think that that system would be really helpful to make sure that you're paying attention to the personal side as well as the business as you're going on this endeavor. So I think that's going to be great. Um, we'll put links for all of those things for people to take a look at in the show notes. And, um, where do you like to hang out on socials that people can chat with you if they're interested?

I like to hang out on Instagram. I'm @organized365 on Instagram.

Okay, great. Well, Lisa, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your wealth and your systems with us and insight. So I really enjoyed our conversation.

Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

So reach out to Lisa and check out her podcast if you'd like to get more From her on organizing and decluttering and staying on top of things. And don't forget to check out the links in the show notes because we've got free things for you there. We've got My Design Mentor, so you can sign up and work with me, have me as a mentor to help you get your career started the right way and help give you a leg up and all the information going into it. Eyes wide open and make sure that you have realistic expectations from the career. So sign up for that. And then next week we're going to have another guest interview, so stay tuned. And until then, stay creative. Thanks for listening. If you love this episode, please leave a rating and a review. This helps me reach other curious creatives like you. If you have a topic request or would like to contact me, simply head over to my website, rwarddesign.com, or email me at podcast@rwarddesign.com.