In this segment Lisa Woodruff explains that the biggest obstacle to becoming organized is a lack of time. She proposes creating an "adult spring break"—a week when the rest of the family is occupied elsewhere—so she can focus on personal and household projects without interruptions. During this dedicated time she can implement organizational systems, such as the "Sunday basket" where all items are collected in one place, which after 4‑6 weeks yields measurable weekly time savings. Woodruff emphasizes that the solution requires temporarily cutting something out of the schedule to build the system, creating a chicken‑and‑egg loop: you need time to set up the system that will later give you more time. She invites listeners to share their own approaches, whether they use similar dedicated weeks, family spring‑break plans, or regular personal days, reinforcing that the desire and knowledge to be organized exist, but time is the limiting factor.
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All of these things that are just kind of on your list that you never get around to doing. So I started thinking, okay, an adult spring break week, which I already know you want to go to Aruba or Bermuda or Florida or somebody, fine. But for me, having a whole week impromptu where I get to work on any kind of project that I want at the house— and here's the big key— while Greg's at work and the kids are at school was amazing. Like, you definitely want to schedule your spring break where you're the only one at the house. Like, that was part of the fun of it. Like, I could have— one day I had music on really loud, and, um, I, I didn't have to answer to anybody's schedule. I wasn't interrupted by things because they weren't there to interrupt me. I was able to do whatever I wanted, and I thought, this is great. I don't really have it more thought out than what I've just shared with you, other than I'm definitely doing this every year going forward, and I'm gonna schedule it from here on out. I am gonna schedule a week where everybody is already otherwise occupied, and I am not going to do official work work, and I'm going to do stuff for me, stuff for the house, stuff for organization in my spring break week. I would love to hear what you guys think about this, if you've done this, or, oh yeah, Lisa, we all already do that, or if you spend your spring break at home as a family and you already have like a plan like this, or if you've or if you just take personal days and you take like one every other month and that is how you use these days. A lot of times what I see in the Facebook group or the emails that I get are— it is not that we are lacking in our desire to be organized, and I don't even think it's really that we are lacking in the knowledge of how to be organized. Like sometimes it's specific, like Lisa, how do I organize this one thing? But I think with the podcast and, you know, with the products that Organize 3 has come out with, it's not that you don't know how to get organized anymore. The number one issue that is keeping us from living a more organized life is time. Flat out time. Enough time to put the systems in place that we know will work so that we could save time in the future. And it's almost that chicken and the egg thing, like Well, I need the time to create the system to get more time in order to save time. And the only way to do it, unfortunately, is to cut something out for a period of time so that you could put the system in place. Like, there's no doubt in your mind if you've done the Sunday basket that having the Sunday basket and one place to put everything, after 4 to 6 weeks, you definitely get more time in your week.
