Lisa Woodruff keeps a TV, office, and food in her bedroom to support parenting and work without following conventional rules. She uses her condo's separate spaces to manage her kids' separation anxiety and carve out productive time after bedtime. For her, organization is a tool to free up time for what matters, not a quest for a perfect house.
Chapters
I am so excited to tell you today about my condo. Did you know that I have a condo? Okay, this is kind of a longer story today, and it's— there aren't really any actionable go do this after you hear this story. This is more how I have preserved my sanity, I guess, in my teenage, 20s, 30s, and 40s so far. Like, the way that I have preserved my sanity is by having a condo. And I think for a lot of you, once you hear me say how I use my condo and explain to you how it has evolved over time, this is going to give you the permission you need to put yourself first. One of them had separation anxiety and they did not like the fact that we would put them to bed and then Greg and I would go downstairs. They would cry. They just had a really, really hard time with us not being on the same floor. It took me a while to realize what it was. But it was, I needed to be on the same floor as this child. I couldn't be on a different floor. And you know, I like to be productive. And when you have babies, the only time you have to be productive is after they go to bed. So I was like, fine, I will. Uh, well, actually both the kids had separation anxiety. So I said, I will work in my bedroom until they fall asleep and then I'll go back downstairs. But I'm a morning person. And so by the time we got to 9 o'clock, when both the kids were asleep, I was too tired to go downstairs and work on a project. So slowly I realized that I was upstairs in my bedroom around 7 o'clock every night while we did bath and bed, and I would be in my room around 7 o'clock waiting for the kids to fall asleep so that they were comfortable that somebody was on the same floor with them. I will tell you, I break all of the bedroom rules. I have a TV in my bedroom, as a matter of fact, a big TV in my bedroom. I have my office in my bedroom. I have food in my bedroom. Are there any more rules I could break about your bedroom? What do they say? Have no TV, don't put any food in your bedroom, and definitely don't work in your bedroom. I do all of those things, so turn it off now if you don't want to hear it. The whole purpose of getting organized, the entire purpose, is not so you have a perfect house and so then you could go figure out how to spend your time for others. The whole point of getting organized Is so that you have extra time so that you can live out your purpose that you were uniquely created to do.
You have purpose. You have value. You have something you were uniquely created to do.
I don't know how you feel about it, but I kind of like the idea that this house is like a mini apartment building. Like downstairs is our little cafe, and we've got a little movie room if you want to go into the family room, and But upstairs, we all have our own individual spaces, and I personally decorate my kids' spaces based on their taste.
