Organize 365 Podcast Episode 140 - The Mindset of Organization Audiobook

This episode is brought to you by Audible. Yay! The audiobook version of The Mindset of Organization is finally here. I hope you enjoy these sample chapters today, and you can get a free Audible copy of The Mindset of Organization and start a free 30-day trial at organize365.com/audible. Audible. That's A-U-D-I-B-L-E. Now let's listen to the book. A guide to this book. As a professional organizer and productivity expert, I have noticed that my clients go through 4 distinct phases of life when it comes to organization. Whether or not a woman chooses to marry or start a family, she will go through each of these phases at roughly the same time in her life. There really is no denying that as the decades go by, women's organizational needs and the demands on her time will change. Most organizational books on the market profess to have a one-size-fits-all solution to home organization. This one does not. I hate to break it to you, but as you transition from one phase of life to the next, You will need to reevaluate and change up your organizational systems. Knowing what phase of life you are in will help you to learn the skills you need to get organized. So what phase of life are you in? 7 to 21: Childhood and Adolescence. The first phase of organization is from the age of 7 to around 21. It is during this phase of life that you can learn to take care of your bedroom, Clothing, toys, and personal possessions. There are 4 basic steps to organizing your room— steps that you should do every single week. Accumulation. After you graduate from college and move out into the big wide world, you start to develop your own identity and life. You acquire houses, spouses, Children, careers, and all the pieces and parts that go along with those responsibilities. During these years, organization is all about creating new systems for all the new things that are coming into your life. And while some decluttering and purging does happen, more often you're looking for solutions to store items you're not currently using in case they're needed for additional children or a bigger house. 40 to 45. Survival. Somewhere around the age of 40, a switch flips in your mind and you suddenly have a different perspective than you did in your 20s and 30s. The woman in her 40s or early 50s has a great sense of perspective and a wealth of knowledge. What she does not have is time. Everyone needs her, and she wants to help everyone who is close to her. She is never at home. Her days are spent ferrying children here and there and providing for her household. The days spent at home with young children are long gone, and household projects pile up quickly. The organizational challenge for the woman in this phase of life is to create systems and order in her home so that she has as much time as possible available to help and serve others. 55 and up: Downsizing and Legacy. In this phase of life, a woman is focused on downsizing the house she is currently in, determining what items she wants to save and preserve for the future generations, and deciding what her legacy will be. It is in these years that she is of most service to the community. She can offer wisdom to future generations, and she has realized that that life is shorter than she ever expected it to be. Women in this phase of life often focus on organizing their photos and memorabilia, along with their children's prized possessions that were left in their attics, basements, and bedrooms. Throughout their lifetimes, the pendulum has swung from a focus on material accumulation to a desire to leave a legacy for a lighter, more agile generation. One which tends to be averse to accumulating stuff, no matter how nice it is. Is this book for you? Organization is more than just 20-minute daily tasks and fun ways to use cute containers. This book is designed for a woman who is ready to take back control of their home. Understanding the 4 organizational phases of life will help you to identify and solve the organizational dilemmas you face. It will also give you the perspective to see the organizational phases your parents and children are currently in, so you can help in their organizing efforts as well. How this book works. Join with me as I take you on the journey of home organization through all 4 phases of life. For each of the first 3 phases, I will share with you my own journey, some concrete action steps to get you started, and ideas for saving memories and mementos from that time of life. I have not entered the 4th phase yet, but my company, Organize 365, has helped hundreds of women downsize their homes and preserve their legacies for future generations. In this chapter, I will share with you how different generations look at stuff and how to decide what to part with. The final chapter of the book covers home organization plans and maintenance. You'll also find information on my Whole House Challenge options, which will guide you through the process of getting your whole house organized one day at a time. How do I know this will work? I was a born organized person, and for years I served my family, friends, and clients with my talents, thinking I was just born this way. And then a funny thing happened. I organized a 7-year-old's bedroom with her and her bedroom was still organized 6 months later. And I ran out of clients. Even my clients with ADHD didn't need my services anymore because their homes didn't get unorganized. The icing on the cake was when a few of my clients started their own professional organization businesses. Once I saw that my clients were maintaining their organization consistently, I knew that the skill of being organized was teachable. The Cincinnati Organized 365 team has been able to help hundreds of women get organized, and thousands more have followed along on my blog and in my podcasts to achieve order in their homes. Understanding the organizational struggles that are inherent in your phase of life is a game changer. As you follow along on my organizational journey, you will see the strategies I employed to get organized. And how I navigated the inevitable rough transitions from one phase of life to the next. Let's start at the beginning. Puzzles. The buzzer sounded and we sprang into action. My grandma flipped the box. I quickly glanced at the picture and then, as quick as I could, flipped and sorted. Edge pieces towards the bottom of the table, The rest sorted by color. Within minutes, we were snapping pieces together. My love affair with jigsaw puzzles started when I was very young. My seasonal asthma was so severe I was hospitalized 4 times in my second year of life. After multiple daily medications and many doctor's appointments, not to mention the donation of all my stuffed animals, my asthma settled into a semiannual, week-long period of bedridden illness. The illness was punctuated by a middle-of-the-night drive to the hospital for a shot of epinephrine. It was during one of these week-long illnesses that my grandmother brought me a puzzle to work on in bed. Doing a puzzle was about the only thing I could do besides read when it hurt just to breathe. Later, when I was older and my asthma was better under control, I would sometimes spend the night at Grandma's. She always had a puzzle going. Her house was so quiet. In the evening, when the grandfather clock tolled 9, I would grow quiet too. My normal chattiness vanished as I hoped I could stay up later and continue to work the puzzle with Grandma. As the clock chimed, I'd hold my breath. Yes! Another 15 minutes! I'd work feverishly to see how much more I could accomplish before the next clock chime. Now here I was, a 13-year-old girl in the gym at Ohio University, competing with hundreds of other 2-woman teams to see who could complete their puzzle the fastest. Each team had an 8-foot table covered in white paper, on which lay a brand-new, never-seen-before, 1,000-piece Springbok puzzle. I have a photographic memory, as I imagine many jigsaw puzzle lovers do. Having a brand new puzzle leveled the playing field. The winning team completed their puzzle in just under 2 hours. Grandma and I were closer to 4. I spent much of my childhood with the women in my mother's and grandmother's generation. This trip was no exception. I was by far the youngest in attendance. We met so many nice ladies on our trip. One of them had done some unofficial research and found that all jigsaw puzzle lovers also love to read, but not all readers love to do jigsaw puzzles. I would guess that many professional organizers also love jigsaw puzzles. Give me a rainy day, a new jigsaw puzzle, a great movie, a bubbly fountain Coke, and I am in heaven. I love the challenge of sorting and fitting all those random pieces into a beautiful picture. It wasn't until I was in my 40s that I realized I could be paid to do real-life jigsaw puzzles. I had just launched my professional organization business and was helping a mother organize her master closet, garage, and kitchen. We planned to complete one space per day. In my 30s, I had cleaned homes, so I knew how nice it was to take a house from dirty to clean in a matter of hours. It wasn't like my clients couldn't clean their homes, they just didn't have the time or desire to do so. In my opinion, organizing was just deeper cleaning in an area that the client couldn't get under control. I really thought it was a lack of time and ideas problem. Because organizing came so easily to me, I hadn't really thought about the fact that what I did was anything special. At the end of the first day, my client broke down in tears. I was worried she was upset with me. Oh no, had I pushed her too far? The donations were still piled in my car. We could bring them back into the house. I could actually go to work, she said. I never thought I'd be able to leave the house again, and now I think I could go back to work. All because I organized a closet? I still hadn't grasped the toll disorganization could take on a family, and especially on its women. The next day, we set out to tackle the garage. I surveyed the room and then walked to a corner and started pairing like items together. Making piles for the client to sort. A few hours later, we were side by side when she held up a pink crock and said, where is the other crock? Without looking up, I said, behind me to the left in the far corner. What?! she said. It is there! I looked up to see her dumbfounded, holding 2 pink crocks. Huh. You mean everyone doesn't take a picture of the room with their mind and sort the pieces into a finished room? By the end of the week, my client's master closet was done. Her car was in the garage for the first time since she bought the house. When we organized the kitchen, we found a tax rebate check that could not be reissued. By finding that rebate check, which had fallen out of the kitchen drawer and behind the cabinet, she actually made money by having me come organize. A few months later, she was employed and coming out the far side of a long depression. I always knew my love of jigsaw puzzles was not shared by all, but what I realized that week was that my talent for being able to envision a completed picture from a bunch of mixed-up pieces was more useful than I realized. I had unknowingly honed a skill that could dramatically change a woman's life in a matter of days. Over the next few years, I worked feverishly to organize, and streamline the houses of my clients, as well as my own home. I had an overabundance of adrenaline and ideas. At the end of a long day, I'd be physically exhausted, but my mind would be working in overdrive, looking for more items to purge, more systems to implement, and more spaces to declutter. I was afraid our house would be empty because I continued to get rid of items from our home when I returned from sessions with clients. The more houses I organized, the more I realized organization was a skill. Once my clients learned the skill, they no longer needed me. But even more surprising, they began organizing their friends' homes too. My mission became teaching others the skill of home organization and the confidence to take back their homes. As you may imagine, I have consumed most of the books available on the topics of home organization and productivity. You can find my most up-to-date home organization tips and strategies at www.organize365.com. The Four Phases of Life. This book is all about the organizational journey A woman takes from age 7 to 87. In each of the 4 stages of life, I will share with you my personal organization journey, as well as stories from my clients. As you discover the picture of how each stage of life looks when organized, you will be able to jump in and put the pieces of your daily puzzle in place. First, let's take a deeper look at all 4 phases of life. 7 to 21, childhood and adolescence. The first phase of organization is from the age of 7 to around 21. How you organize your bedroom as a child and the skills you learned during that time really do translate to how you organize your house. I teach children to view their bedroom like it's their own Mini apartment. I'm sure this is not breaking news for you, but understanding, implementing, and learning these skills at a young age will set you up for success in each subsequent phase of life. The prevailing myth is that children are either born organized or they aren't, and that just isn't true. Organization is a skill that can be learned by anyone in any phase of life. The earlier, the better. Accumulation. When puppies and babies come into the world, they can't organize themselves, that's for sure. Our little puppy has a toy bin in the family room. After I clean up all the toys, he will go over and get them out when he's bored. When you have a baby, every 2 to 3 months the baby needs a whole new wardrobe. Sometimes a whole new diet, and of course, new toys. Children start with bouncy seats, car seats, and strollers, then quickly move into Exer Saucers, swings, and high chairs. Once they're mobile, they'll get a train table, and a few years later, a Lego table. If you're in this stage of life, you're likely thinking, oh, I have all that and more! As your child goes from 0 to 3 months, 3 to 6 months, 6 to 9 months, and finally to 1 year old, they will probably have enough stuff to fill a whole condo. But you're not going to get rid of the Exersaucer, the Boppy, and the swing even though they're done with them because you're in the accumulation phase of life and you're going to likely have more kids. You may not have decided how many kids that's going to be yet, And sometimes at 40, surprise, you have one more. Having lived through this phase in its entirety, one of the clutter tips I employed was to sell things at garage sales and then buy them again later. Your energy level in the accumulation phase is a huge bonus. I know you're sleep deprived and you're thinking, you've got to be kidding me, I don't have energy. Let me just tell you, you have more energy now than you ever will again. When I wanted to redo a kid's room when I was in my 20s, it was done before the end of the day. My husband would come home from work and say, didn't that room used to be blue and now it's pink? And I'd say, yeah, it did. Because I got up at 7 that morning, put the little kids in their strollers, and pushed them off to the hardware store to get the paint. I'd come home, put them in the Exer Saucer, and then I would paint. I had so much energy and so many ideas and so much drive that I could get just so much done. Women who work outside the home in this phase of life are no exception. They too can accomplish big projects in just a few short days. 40 to 55: Survival. The woman in her 40s to early 50s usually has children in middle school, high school, and college. Often it is during this time she will return to the workforce either part-time, full-time, or from home. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, in the United States, 70% of women with children under the age of 18 are employed. They're preparing for the upcoming college tuition bills. And they want to continue to build their nest egg for retirement so that they can hopefully get back to doing something with this husband that they love. Unfortunately, this is also usually the time of life when a woman needs to start caring for her parents or taking care of a friend who has become gravely ill. She may go through a divorce. The needs of both her children and her parents on her time ushers her into the sandwich generation. When you join the sandwich generation, you really are just surviving day to day. Not that you're not enjoying your life— I would say my friends in their 40s are enjoying their life more than they did in their 20s and 30s— but it's a survival game. Even if a woman had a little bonus baby, she's not the same parent of that baby as she was of the baby that she had in her 20s. She parents differently. The new baby is raised on the soccer fields and is always in the car and on the go. If you didn't have children in your 20s and you have your first children in your late 30s, it's likely that you also won't raise your children as a 20-year-old parent would. You'll probably do it more like a 40 or 50-year-old mother would. It's not unusual for me to talk to somebody in this phase of life and say, Okay, tell me where you drive your kids. And then I say, do you realize you have a part-time or a full-time driving job? That's when it hits them like a ton of bricks. No wonder I can't get anything done at home. I'm working 40 hours a week and I'm driving 40 hours a week. It makes sense that there's no time for me to get the laundry done anymore because I'm just never physically at home to do the laundry. Often this is also the time of life where women who got divorced in their late 30s return to the workforce as a single parent. During this decade and a half, some kind of major tragedy will likely happen to you, probably multiple major tragedies, and you'll be in charge of them. It's also the time of life where your parents will likely get sick or pass away. So on top of the job of driving the kids everywhere, you're also in charge of an older family member. That's why it's called the sandwich generation. You're smushed and ringed and pressed down, and there's just no time to breathe. Even though you're getting pressed down and you have a ridiculous amount of responsibility, you're able to handle it better. I don't know how to explain it. You have a better perspective now. And you don't worry about things. When I turned 40, it was something just clicked in my brain. I remember my friend told me this would happen. You have your 40th birthday and you think, oh my gosh, I'm going to be 40. I'm a dinosaur. I should just die now. And then a couple days later, you're thinking, you know what? I don't care what anybody thinks anymore. I really don't care. I don't care that you don't want my kids in this after-school program. I'm putting them there anyway. I don't care that you don't like that I don't vaccinate my kids. I'll just decide if I do or don't vaccinate my kids. That issue in your 20s or 30s, whether or not you're going to vaccinate your children, would have caused you to write letters to congressmen and put it all over Facebook. You would have been up in arms that everybody has to vaccinate or not vaccinate their kids. By the time you're in your 40s, you think, that's great. You do whatever you want. I'm going to do whatever I want. I'm comfortable with the decision. You be comfortable with your decision. It was also liberating to me in my 40s to finally feel like I knew what the heck I was doing. I'm comfortable in the woman I am for the children that I have for For the spouse that I have and for the responsibilities that I have. I'm going to work from home, drive 30 hours a week, put my kids in a really expensive elementary school, and not put them in a traditional 4-year college. I'm fine with that. I'm over trying to get the whole world to realize that not every kid is going to go to college. I know what's good for my kids and my family. That happens in your 40s. Then sometime between your 50s and 60s— I'm 44, so I can't say exactly when it happens, but I see it with my clients— you move into this next phase that I call downsizing and legacy. 55 and up, downsizing and legacy. A woman in this phase of life is actively engaged in her children's lives. She is able to do with her grandchildren Things that she did not have the time to do when she was in the survival phase of life. When my father passed away, my sister and I had to handle the estate, which meant cleaning out and selling the family home. Once you bury a parent and you have to get your family home ready for sale, you start looking at your own house in a totally different light. At some point along the way, you You realize that all the stuff in that house doesn't go with you, and it will end up sitting there for whomever is left to take care of it. Then you start to say to yourself, I don't think that I want anybody else to have to clean this stuff up out of my house. You start to realize you keep things you don't need in case you need them someday. Crazy stuff. Here's an example. You have a party and you have an extra 10 cups that are pink, and you keep those because the next time you have a party, you don't want to have to buy those expensive pink cups again. But let me just give you a clue. The next time you have a party, even if you only invite 10 people, you're still going to buy more pink cups because you're afraid you're not going to have enough, and then there will be 40 pink cups in your basement because that is just how we are. Here's another example. I was going to can fruits and vegetables about a decade ago, so of course I have mason jars in my basement. Finally, last year I thought, okay, I'm not even going to make a craft out of them, and I for sure am not going to do canning. I donated the mason jars. When you don't clean out those projects that are never going to happen in your house, Here is what happens. Eventually, you pass away. Every single thing in your house takes on an exponential importance because you bought it and you touched it. When you are in grief and you are trying to make decisions about how to get rid of everything that's in a home that you lived in for 35 years, it's so hard to have perspective and say, photographs? We save. Those are meaningful. Mason jars that you could buy for $10 at the store, we let go. It's really, really hard to make decisions because you have grief brain. I see it in my clients all the time. In my observation, it takes 5 years to get through it. On average, pretty much to the day, it's 5 years. There's no way to speed it up, and you're not going to keep the family home for 5 years while you decide if you're going to keep mason jars or not. Having gone through that experience of helping someone clean out their family home, you think, why am I keeping 5 mattresses in my attic? Why do I need to have 4 sets of dishes? And you start to purge things. You also start to think about your legacy in this stage of life. This is often when people will hire me to make photo albums. Now that you've identified which phase of life you're in, let's talk about the 3 stages of actually getting organized. The 3 stages of organization. Just like there are 4 distinct phases of life I see a woman go through, there are 3 distinct stages of organization that any woman can land in. Stage 1, complete overwhelm. If you are in this stage of organization, you probably don't need me to expound any further. You don't know where to begin. It seems pointless to even start. The project is going to take so long you can't even imagine when it will be completed. You listen to a podcast, Read a blog post or watch a TV episode about getting organized and are super excited until you turn around and look at your own organizational challenge. Suddenly, you are frozen in place. In this stage of organization, it's helpful to only think about 2 things. Number one, what is trash? And number 2, What do you no longer want and love? What are you free to donate? Honestly, when you're in an overwhelmed state, you can go through a whole house organizational challenge just throwing away trash and stuffing bags full of items to donate. Because I hate to break it to you, but you cannot organize an overwhelming amount of clutter. Your only choice is to get rid of some things in order to get more organized calm, and a peaceful living space. Step 1, get black trash bags. Take a black trash bag and go to whatever room you're going to declutter. Your only job is to fill that black trash bag with trash. Step 2, once you have all the trash gone, then you're going to go back into the same room and donate Every single thing that you don't love or need. Then take that second black trash bag straight out to the car to be donated. You will be amazed at what progress you will make just by starting to identify what is trash and what you no longer need in your house and getting it out. Most people are able to eliminate 50% of what's in a room. If you are in the overwhelmed stage, that means every drawer is a junk drawer. Every flat surface has piles of stuff on it. Your clean laundry is either on your bed or your couch, but it's not put away. I know how you live. This is not judgment. This is reality. You are overwhelmed, and when you are overwhelmed, you have to reduce the amount you're looking at. We cannot talk about organizing your sock drawer if all of your socks are in the laundry room, right? And we can't talk about organizing your library if you have books in every single room of your house like I did. The first step is to get rid of as much as we can that we know we don't need. And that is exactly what I did when I was so overwhelmed with the disorganization in my own house. The first time I did my own whole house organizational challenge, I went into every single space and I just got rid of as much as I physically could and ended up with about 50% of our house left. When I was done, I realized that it wasn't organized, but I was ready to get organized. I'm telling you this as a professional organizer. It took me 40 days just to get rid of the stuff that I didn't need, and I barely made that timetable because it is so mentally exhausting getting rid of stuff that I didn't need. It is really hard. Stage 2: Systems and Organization. In the second stage of organization, there are still things that need to be donated, And occasionally trash in the areas that you want to organize. However, at this point, you can actually see places that need to be organized, and you're not completely overwhelmed as soon as you walk into the space. While the task may still be daunting, if you start in one corner of the room, you can work your way around to the other corner in a matter of hours, days, or at least within one week. In stage 2, the key is finding one area inside a room that you're going to tackle first. Once you have succeeded, move on to the next area. Tackling all the drawers in your kitchen is much more doable than saying you're going to organize the entire kitchen. Keep your challenges manageable. Work within the amount of time you have available to you. Keep focusing on the areas that you have already organized. Don't look at how much is left to be done. The second time I went through a whole house challenge, I was able to eliminate another 25% of what I had saved. Stage 2 is still eliminating clutter. For the first 15 minutes, you're going to say, okay, what in here don't I need? love, and want. After that, you're going to be creating systems and actually organizing. Let's take the kitchen, for example. The first time through, you're just getting rid of everything you don't use, like the waffle maker you got 18 years ago that's still in the box and the broken blender. In stage 2, you're going to go through every drawer and cabinet making more refined choices. Okay, we don't need 18 spatulas. We only need 3. We only have 1 pizza cutter, but we actually need 2, so I'm going to buy one. You make those kinds of decisions. You're going to purge, but then the organizing starts. But you're also going to add. You're going to say, I'm going to get some baskets and organize these drawers, or I'm going to redo the pantry today. I'm going to pull everything out and redo the shelves. Then I'm going to put everything back in. Stage 3, refining your systems and maintaining. I'm going to be honest here. I didn't get to this level of organization until the third time that I organized my whole house. Organization is not a destination. It is a journey. We are never going to be completely organized. But each time you do even one thing to maintain or create more organization in your life, you are moving closer to living a more organized everyday life. In this stage of organization, you may choose to invest in some cute magazine-type organizational products that are just pure fun or decorative. It's also in this stage of organization that you are able to organize the entire kitchen in a matter of hours. The storage room that used to take you a week to organize will now be able to be organized in one day. While the need to maintain your home and continue to organize it does not go away, the amount of time, effort, and resources necessary to do so diminishes greatly. In the third stage, there will be very little to donate. You will usually be able to declutter anything that needs to be decluttered in about 15 minutes per space. Then you'll be able to go through and freshen up the organization in about an hour per space. That's when you'll be able to say, Okay, I put this organizational system in place last year. I kind of like it, but I don't love it, so I'm going to tweak it. Or, this year I'm going to invest in those spinny spice rack things Lisa talked about. I've loved those for years, and I think they're a great solution for me. As you read through the following chapters, you will begin to see how you learned, or did not learn, the organizational lessons in each phase of life. Let's head back to childhood. I am so excited to share that Audible is offering the listeners of the Organize 365 podcast a free audiobook download and a free 30-day trial to give you the opportunity to check out their service. To download your free audiobook today, go to organize365.com/365podcast. /audible, which is A-U-D-I-B-L-E, for your free audiobook. And next year in 2017, I will be sharing with you some of my favorite audiobooks, a new one every month, to help you organize your home.