Organize 365 Traits: Golden Windows and Your Uniqueness

Anna, welcome back to another Connections podcast. What are we going to be talking about this week?

Thanks, Lisa. I'm excited to be here. We are talking all about golden windows and your uniqueness, these terms that you have come up with and coined as part of your Lisa Glossary. So all of us who've been listening to the podcast for a long time have probably heard some of the Lisa Glossary episodes before where you talk through some of these words, but In this episode, I'm going to get to ask you some specific questions about these 2 terms that you have come up with. So before we get started, when did you start coining this concept of a Lisa glossary? How long do you think you have been using this language?

You know what is so weird? It is so weird to be working on and building and growing something and then stopping and looking back and reflecting. I don't tend to stop and look back and reflect very much, and you make me do that, and I really I would say you and I are both teachers, and when you are teaching something, like if you're teaching something in school, you get a textbook to teach from. There's usually a teacher manual that has some extra experiments you can do or, or ways you can extrapolate out. And I find that when you are really, really good and seasoned teacher, you don't even need that textbook anymore because like the content is just part of you. But also the way that you teach those things inside of classes and the experiments that you do aren't written in textbooks because you've taught it so many times. Like, to teach it the way it would be taught at an introductory level is kind of boring for you. And teachers are lifelong learners, so we take it further and further and further. And so our kids, of course, get the basics being in our class. But if you have a really seasoned teacher that loves what they're doing, it's almost like the student has gone on the journey with the teacher and they now embody the information. So before I explain my glossary, I was thinking about this and I was like, okay, why do I do what I do? And how does that look like not in teaching? Like, let's say you're not a teacher and you haven't had that experience, or you haven't had a teacher like that before. So I want to draw 3 more parallels and then I'll get back to your original question. So the first one is, have you ever been to like a professional speaker? Like a professional speaker is talking about something and they are the expert in this and, and they explain it in a way that you've never heard it before, or they're just so polished in their presentation, you're like, Wow, I was just at like a masterclass. I was just at like an awesome experience. Or my husband loves comedians, so we listen to lots and lots and lots of comedians. And good comedians just have excellent comedic timing. It's not even what they say, it's how they say it. And the more observant the comedian is— like Jerry Seinfeld is such a great example of just like everyday things. Like he'll talk about, You have a reservation and then you get to the reservation desk and they don't have the car. And he's like, the most important part of the reservation is to have the car. I'm obviously not a comedian. I can't tell a joke. But when comedians can take like an everyday event that you've been through and they say it in a way in which you see that event differently and you can laugh about not having the car when you've landed in a different city or something like that, it's a really great comedian. And then the other example, and, and so I'm a Christian, so I go to church, a non-denominational church, grew up Catholic. Catholic, then I was Presbyterian, now I'm non-denominational. Like, I move around a lot, so I've heard a lot of different priests and pastors. Um, been to a Jewish ceremony. Like, I just love ecumenicalism. Like, I love all the different ways in which people worship. And so I've heard a lot of different people share religion. And as a Christian, I've been to a lot of different, uh, you know, different kinds of churches and different ways in which pastors or preachers will give their story. If you're a Christian, they're all teaching from the same Bible. Like, all the stories are coming out of the same exact book. But there are a couple of, uh, preachers that I would listen to them talk about anything, and the way in which they can relate things out of the Bible, I've never heard it. I'm like, oh my gosh, I've read that book 5 times, I've gone to church a bazillion million times, like, but I have never heard that story told that way, or I've never thought about it in that perspective. So all that to say, when you study something, anything, and you do it long enough that you go beyond the basics and into like a deeper level of understanding, you then need to move back to where the people you're talking to are. Like, you can't just go deeper and deeper, deeper into your nerdiness and not go back into bringing your audience along with you. So because I am a teacher and I love to teach, and I've gone so deep into organizing for productivity and functionalism, and the fact that our households really are the largest economic unit in the world and we don't think of it that way, I've had to pull languaging from all the other ways in which we experience life into our household. So I pull language from being a teacher, I pull language from having been in direct sales, I pull it from government, from military, from Corporate, you know, as I would organize people's houses and I would be in their house and they would be, let's say, a corporate professional, and I would need to explain why I'm putting this system in place, I would have to think about it from their point of view. Like, okay, this is a corporate professional that goes to work and travels and has an expense account. Okay, this is how this transfers into a household. Or in another household, it may be a household of 2 entrepreneurs that are homeschooling their kids and no one in their family's ever had a paid job ever. And they don't understand this, like people work 9 to 5, like they work sunup to sundown. And even when they're dreaming, they have ideas. I'm like, okay, for you, this is how we're going to organize. And I realized that because our household— well, everybody lives in a household, they have different language from their lived experience. How do I pull those different things together? And as I pulled those different things together, I was able to make some universal terms that would apply to everyone that weren't in any of these things that then I had to explain. Like, so for example, A note card. No one, no one but me. I think maybe 3 other people that I don't know, but I'm like the only person that says to carry around a pack of index cards. And the reason why I use index cards is because it was always a school supply on the kids' school supply list until it wasn't. And you know, they're like 20 cents a pack at back to school time. So I was always buying tons of them and all of a sudden the kids didn't need them at school anymore. And I had like 20 packs of note cards and I was like, well, what am I going to do with these? And that's when I started learning to write individual items on note cards and put them in the Sunday basket, which was just a basket I had in my house. Like it wasn't a universal thing I was selling yet. And I had slash pockets, which are binder inserts. And people who aren't teachers don't know what a slash pocket is cuz they're not obsessed with office supplies like I'm obsessed with office supplies. So every single time I would say, okay, I'm writing an idea on a note card and I'm putting it in a basket and it's going in a slash pocket, people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I thought we didn't have paper. What are these note cards? And where do I get a slash pocket? And what do they look like? And what size is the basket? And so I would have to really explain how I was operationally operationalizing my house in every single piece. So eventually I just started being my own office supply. I was like, forget it, I'll just make the slash pockets and you'll know exactly what they are, and I'll make them in the colors that I want, and then you'll buy them and then you'll have the right office supplies. But I still needed a lot more glossary terms like Proactive procrastination, or, you know, when we purposely delay things. Now, you know, it's so exciting. Now that we're getting ready for my dissertation, hopefully, I think it's going to be— our theory is going to be prospective memory. I cannot believe I didn't know that this was a thing. Basically everything I've done is how do you capture future ideas that don't need to be done now, or tasks or to-dos that don't need to be done now, And then remember to do them when they need to be done. That's all prospective memory. I've created all these different ways to capture and serve up at a timely manner the ideas that your brain comes up with. So anyway, we used to publish the Glossary Podcast in January. So I started the podcast 10 and a half years ago. First year, all I did was teach you how to organize your house. Those episodes are now in The Productive Home Solution. They are, are not on the free podcast anymore. Then I moved into like these other things, like I told my depression story. I just told all these different situations that I ran into as an in-home professional organizer that would be helpful if you were going through these situations. Then I started to realize that there was more of a theme, like that I've kind of created a textbook for organizing in the first 4 years of organizing, uh, first 4 years of the podcast. Then in year 5 is when I started interviewing those of you on the Wednesday podcast. And then this year we've dropped down to just 2 Wednesday podcasts per month, and we've added in these Connections podcasts on Mondays. So interestingly, when you see that, you know, this is episode 650, there have been 650 Friday podcasts. We don't number the Wednesday ones, the bonus ones, like the Coffee Chats number. None of those are numbered. However, when we started these Monday Connections podcasts, I knew people would wanna go back and find those, and the easiest way to find them is to have a number. So in the beginning of this year, we started numbering the Monday and the Friday podcast, which is why we get to 650. Now, we aren't actually at 650 Friday podcasts. We're probably at like 632 or something like that of the Friday podcasts. So what happened around year 7, 6, 6 or 7 of the podcast, I think I had been podcasting so long. And I am not your professional speaker, like a good professional speaker or like some of the best professional speakers. If you go and you hear them speak and then you go and you hear them speak a year later, you're pretty much going to get 80% of the same content because they're just really, really good at delivering this speech and they do it just in so many different environments. I love to do unique things. I love to have a unique take. I don't like to do the same thing twice. So none of my Friday podcasts are repeats. None of them.

None of them.

And none in the future will be repeats either. So what we realized was about 6 years into the podcast, if you didn't want to go back and listen to 5 years worth of podcasts, then you didn't know what the heck I was talking about. So I recorded, I think it was 6 podcasts the first time that would catch you up in the first 6 years, that if you just listen to these 6 podcasts, You would know all these terms I created. Then every year I added on a couple of more. So then the next January it was 8, and then it was 10, and then it was 12. It's been a couple of years. I probably need to go back. And so what we would do is every year I would look back on what I had recorded the year or 2 years before, and anything that was like totally made up in my head, I then turned that into a glossary podcast and we would group them together like all these things are productivity terms or all these things are you know, information management terms. And so you would hear all about the binders in one podcast. But then we stopped doing that as our January because I don't know. I don't know why we stopped. Maybe we should bring it back. You're not gonna get a short answer from me.

And I think that— I think we don't have it this year because you just had so many other things that you wanted to talk about. You were like, yeah, you had one series that you're gonna do. And then you're like, no, this other series. And it's like, oh, this other series is more pressing. So like, you just have so much to say that you can't Keep sharing the glossary. I get it. But that's why I'm asking these questions now. So golden windows. This is our first thing we're gonna talk about. This is something that you really talk a lot about in planning days and something that we think about, you know, as we're forward thinking to our future. So can you please define the phrase golden windows? Yes.

So again, it's all, you know, everything comes from my lived Being a household manager. And then how do I— like, I'm always thinking, okay, back to that pastor scenario. Like, if you've read the Bible, you've read the Bible. But a pastor, like, you go to church every Sunday, so they've got to come up with a new story, um, or a new take on something that you already know. So I think about that a lot when I'm talking about home organization. You've lived in your home a long, long time. And how do I get you out of day-to-day thinking? Because at households we're like, what do I have to do today? Great, I'm gonna go play. You know, kind of like we're all a 14-year-old kid in our head. So how do I, as I was recognizing when people would call me for in-home professional organization, or I would see in family and friends when they had a unique opportunity of time where they literally either had some additional financial resources, time resources, cognitive resources, emotional resources, like I could see coming up, like you're gonna have this amazing time. And you need to capture this and get— move forward faster. Sometimes things happen really slowly, and sometimes it just, it just happens really fast. And that's what I call a golden window. Golden windows can be positive or negative, but there are some anticipatory positive golden windows that we can all anticipate will happen in our lifetime. And these are periods where you'll just have an unusual amount of time and energy and opportunity. And the first one I noticed personally Was when I was organizing people whose last child had gone to school. Maybe they hired me when their youngest child was in 2nd grade. Maybe their child was just moving into all-day kindergarten. But I noticed that those households— organizing households where the youngest child was no longer at home during the day during the school year— was completely different than organizing a household that had even like one little bonus baby. Like the, the baby and everything that goes with the child 5 and under.

Mm-hmm.

Really dictates how a house is organized, babyproofing and all that. And once that child is off into full-time school, even if it's homeschool, the household just functions very differently. And I had a couple of friends who did have bonus babies, and they had their youngest child going off to first grade next year, and they were looking at what they were gonna do going back to work. They had been stay-at-home mothers. And I said, if you can afford it, stay home one more year and I'll help you. Transition this house into your next phase of life. And we did that. And it was, you know, it set them up for success for the next decade because they really did move everything into that new phase of life. So these golden windows are these times where a couple of things line up all at once that allow you to really move the organization of your home into a new phase or into a new, a new paradigm quickly.

Thank you. I love that. So how can someone know if they are in a golden window or they're quickly approaching a golden window? Is there a way to know that that will be coming up and how they can take advantage of it?

Yeah, there's definitely like, like for me, I will say I'm in a golden window right now that I've never identified before, and it's that transition from the PhD into what is next. And you just have this energy inside of your body that's just like rumbling. I don't know how to explain it. It's like this rumbling, like this won't be quieted, like, hey, what are we gonna do next? What are we gonna do next? What are we gonna do next? I'm like, I don't know, we haven't even started the dissertation, can you stop? It's like, no, because that's gonna be over soon and I wanna know what we're, what we're doing next. What are you doing next? And it's like this anticipatory, like, hey, I've been through a really hard, long season where, um, a lot of my time was already allocated on a decision I made. And these decisions you make, maybe buying a house, getting married, having children, living in a certain city, deciding to do a PhD. These investments of your time and energy that then are coming to an end, and it's what is next. When you're younger, what is next is sometimes already predicted for you. Like a child is going to go into all-day school, so what is next is you're gonna be in your school years, and then you're gonna be in middle school years, and then you're gonna be in high school years 'cause you're a parent and it's kind of laid out. Once you're through those parenting golden windows though, um, I mean, I'm only 53. And I wanna be 100. I'm like, holy cow, I could do literally whatever I want to do. So by the time you guys are listening to this, you'll find out. Last week I was like, I'm exhausted. I just, I'm tired and it's cold here and rainy in Ohio. Like, I really wanna go to Florida. Greg wants to go to Florida. And so I called him, I said, let's go to Florida. He goes, when? I said, next weekend. He's like, are you crazy? I'm like, no, pretty sure we're gonna go to, we're gonna go to Florida next weekend. He's like, okay. And I was like, oh my gosh, no one's gonna stop me. I literally bought tickets, got the hotel, and we, and we went for 4 days. and 3 nights. We just went to Florida and we came back. Our daughter watched the dog. And I was like, wow, I can do anything I want to do. Like, obviously you have to be able to afford it, but I'm like, wow. Like, people are joking, are you just going to get another PhD? I'm like, I thought about it. I literally thought about it. And so once you realize that if there aren't predictive things happening, you almost have to make your future. And if you don't make your future, then you're just going to Have the same experience like Groundhog Day over and over and over again. And it's fine to have seasons where there aren't big things that you're doing, but I love to have big things I'm doing. You're listening to my podcast, so I'm pretty sure you're kind of like me. I just love having big things on the horizon. My husband's not the same way. And so this is a golden window of what am I going to do next in my career and in my family? And once you decide what you're going to do and you start to take action on it, you kind of limit. what you can do in that time until the next golden window. So these golden windows have a lot of time and energy and dreaming in them. But also, once you commit, like I committed to the PhD for 2 solid years, I pretty much had to say no to everything else. And so it's important to really think about and anticipate and pick what you want to do in a golden window.

So those are all really big golden windows. Are there also like smaller, like seasonal golden windows that help us prepare for the next Season or year or things like that?

Yes. So there are 3 seasonal golden windows, and those are the end of December, beginning of January, the month of May, and the month of August. And at least in the United States, they may be different, like in Australia where you have different school years and different seasonality. But in the United States, we are conditioned as children that you start school in August or September. And so there is back to school in July, beginning of August, you get new underwear, you get new school supplies, you get new shoes, you get all of these things, you get ready and you're gonna start the new school year. Well, as an adult, we have that same energy. Like we, we had it for 18 years, so we have it as an adult. Even if you don't have children, if you do, it's just amplified. But if you don't, all of us wanna get ready for the fall. New scissors, you guys. I always say get new scissors as adults. My pet peeve is scissors that don't cut.

I don't like it.

So new scissors. And I tell adults, when was the last time you guys bought yourself new underwear? And they're like, oh, it's been a while. Like buy yourself new underwear, all of those things. Because at least in the United States, September to December are the most productive weeks of the year, specifically the beginning of January all the way through the middle of November. Like, you could get more done in those 10 weeks than you got done in 10 months. It's just, um, the weather is cooler, people are ready to purchase things, you're getting ready for the holidays. The last 6 weeks of the year when we do the holiday blitz all the way to the end are for memories and enjoying your family and really culminating the year. And then you end at the end of December. You're really in a planning and preparation for the new year. So you start in, what are my New Year's resolutions gonna be? What am I going to do in the new year? That planning energy is super, super high, almost higher than it is in August. But the productivity that follows that energy is very, very low. It's really weird. Like, when you plan in August, you have a, a 10-week productivity period and then a 6-week reflection, and then you plan in January. But by the time you get to the— or end of December, by the time you get to the second week in January, you're like, yeah, I'm done with this plan. I don't know if I like this plan because you're in a hibernating period. It's a great time to organize and declutter and all of those kinds of things, but you won't really, like, organize your entire house from January to April. If you do, you're superhuman. Usually what you'll do is, I'm going to organize my closet, and then you'll take a couple weeks off. I'm going to organize my office, you take a couple weeks off. Like, the energy is spits and spurts. And then you get to April, spring cleaning will give you a nice big boost, and you get to May. And what happens in May is you have Maycember, is what we call it. It's kind of like December, all those holidays and all that stuff, especially if you have kids, weddings planning. And then there's that anticipation of the summer. So again, even if you're a corporate professional and you work 52 weeks a year and you don't even take vacation, summer is different. Like, the energy from Memorial Day to Labor Day is different. Uh, you may Take a walk at lunch. You may, you know, the days are longer, the sun is longer, you wear different clothes. There's a slower energy. So Memorial Day to Labor Day is really more of a, it's more of a communal energy. For teachers, I mean, they bang out their house in the summer because they ignore their family and their household for the entire school year. And then they're like, oh wow, I live with people. Oh hey. Oh, you need new everything. So they redo everything in like 4 to 6 weeks and then they go back. And July is just like— You should just put a big X on the month of July. Nothing happens in July. Like, it is the Bermuda Triangle of months. Everybody's like, I'm gonna get so much done in July, and then all of a sudden it's August and you're like, what just happened? Like, the month just gets erased from your calendar. So I have studied this like a comedian, uh, studies, um, comedic timing. I have studied how we use our households throughout the year, and there is literally a different energy for every single week of the year. And these energies have these little pockets of golden windows. And if you know what your goals are in your house, you can pull on these energies. So this is why if you're like, I know I wanna clean out the garage, you get that burst of a nice spring day. You just bang out that garage in one day because you're like, I know I wanna do this. Oh, I've got the good day. I do it all at once. But in order to really get fully organized, functionally organized in your household, the order in which you get organized is more important than what you do.

Mm-hmm.

So you can get a garage organized in a weekend. Does it stay organized? It just depends on if you've done these things in the right order. So if you know that these different energies are coming and you anticipate it and you do the right things with these energies, that will get you ultimately organized versus how we normally do as Americans, which is like, oh, it's a nice weekend. I have a lot of energy. I'm just gonna run around and organize as much as possible and then not do anything for like 6 weeks and then do it again. And we just do this over and over and over again without ever getting to the—

Finish line.

finished, functionally organized house.

I'm sure everyone listening is like, Lisa, are you watching me? How do you know this?

Because that is so true.

Like, I have to say, like, I never really thought about trimesters until I started planning with you. And it is so eye-opening to see that, to see those energy patterns, because I had those energy patterns for sure. And I think that my other one, my 4th energy or like golden window, is like the holiday blitz. Like, that is my favorite time of the year. So I get so much energy and like get so pumped about the Holiday Blitz, which is my first, my first entrance into Organize 365 personally.

Yeah.

So that kind of leads me to know, like, how can people use the Organize 365 systems to help capitalize on these golden windows and take advantage of that, that energy that you're talking about?

So I think like if you think back to school, there's some subjects that you loved and some subjects you're like, well, I guess I got to get the degree to move on to the next class. I've got to do that class. And so I think when we organize in our houses, what I have observed people do is there are some things you naturally love to do. Like, let's say some people love to declutter. So I like to talk about this because I don't talk about decluttering very much. Decluttering is obviously necessary and it is hugely popular everywhere. Like, get a black trash bag and fill it type thing. To me, decluttering is It's a simple, quick solution for a long systemic problem. And so decluttering does work in the moment. And if you want to live a minimalist lifestyle, then you just keep decluttering and only have a minimal amount of things. And there's just not a lot of things to organize. I'm not a minimalist. So, I mean, there are some really great minimalists you can follow, but I'm not a minimalist. I have a lot of stuff. I love a lot of stuff. I love a lot of crafts. So just decluttering is not a good enough strategy for me. And what I found with my clients, particularly who were hesitant to declutter, it's because they had over-decluttered in the past. So I want to really address this because over-decluttering is a thing. If the only tool in your toolbox is to get rid of stuff, then when you're overwhelmed, you'll just go through and get rid of more stuff. But sometimes when that happens, you don't actually need to get rid of stuff. You need to actually organize. And when you get rid of stuff that you aren't really sure you want to get rid of, then you have regret and then you stop doing anything because you regret what you've gotten rid of. And now you're worse off than if you had not over-decluttered before. So what I always say is don't over-declutter. Like, get rid of things that are obviously broken. You don't need them, obviously. But if you're not sure if you should get rid of it, and I've been saying this my entire career, don't. Like, even when I professionally organize people, I'd be like, great, we're not going to get rid of this. And when you don't get rid of things that you maybe should get rid of, eventually you will go into that space and see that this thing is still here, and it will annoy you that you haven't gotten rid of it yet. And then you will get rid of it out of annoyance that you kept it versus trying to just get rid of as many things as possible. So when you are— when you have these golden windows, which we are all going to have, and you only go towards the tools in the toolbox that you already know, that you've gleaned from the internet, Or maybe you've seen your parents or your friends do. Unfortunately, we don't have a good textbook for how to have a functionally organized home. There isn't one. Like every job you've ever gone to, there's a job description. Here's how much you're going to get paid. Here are your responsibilities. Here are the people you're going to work with. Not in your home. Like, great, qualified for the mortgage. Here's your house. Congratulations. Like, and now run it with no operational systems and nothing. So what Organize 365 has done is they said, I've said, okay, when I would go in, in Cincinnati and organize your entire house, this is how I would do it. Here's how I'd organize your paper. Here's how I'd organize your house. Here's how I'd organize your kids. Here's how I'd organize your photos. Like, I literally have organized every single thing in multiple houses, and I know exactly how to do it because I had to. I was being paid, and so I had to come up with a solution. No one has that comprehensive of a, of a dictionary of how to organize every single thing in your house. You're probably really good at your closet, your kitchen, maybe your garage. And your kids' toys. But storage rooms, nobody has a good solution for storage rooms. Paper, nobody has a good solution for paper. So we would always organize paper and storage rooms. I became expert, an expert at organizing paper and storage rooms. That's usually what professional organizers are hired to do. So when you buy an Organize 365 course, you're buying a school course from a teacher that's going to teach you how to organize it. So when we talk about organizing your storage room, which is part of the Productive Home Solution, I create for you a prepaid store. So your storage room is going to have shelves and it's going to have bins. It's going to look like a store. So when you're wondering if you have something, you're going to go down into your prepaid store and find out you do or you don't. And if you don't, then you're going to go to the actual store. I don't know anybody else is talking about a storage room as a prepaid store. When you change— again, that's another one of my glossary terms— this storage room means store, prepaid store. Once you think of your storage room that way, you can't not think of a storage room that way. Every single storage room you see right now will be like, that's not a good store. Like, I can't find anything in that store. So these golden windows of energy are going to come, and you are going to declutter and organize to the best of your ability. But you can only declutter and organize the best of what you have been taught or what you have seen. And what is shown online is not organizing. What is shown online is checklists that you can download and do, which— how do they know what's in your space? They don't. And aesthetics and organizing, aesthetics and decorating. Most, not all, but most organizers or decluttering or minimalist experts are selling you an aesthetic. If you're in my courses, you know I don't label stuff and it doesn't look pretty when it's done. I mean, it's extremely functionally organized. I just recorded a video that's going to be in the Productive Home Solution of my laundry room in 2025 and how I now have it like perfectly organized. And I was done. I looked at the video. I'm like, oh my God. None of the containers match. Nothing is labeled. But man, that is functionally— like, there's literally nothing else I could do to that room to make it more functionally organized. But you would never see it on a TV show, in a magazine, on a YouTube channel. They'd be like, this laundry room doesn't even look that good because when you open the cabinet, even though it's organized, all the containers are mismatched. They aren't labeled. And so we have been sold that you need to have an aesthetic for organization, which is not true. The skill of organizing is functional in nature, not aesthetic in nature. So how does Organize 365 support you? Every single one of our courses are independent. You can literally get any of the courses, do that course, and you will get organized in that area. And you can, like for the Productive Home Solution, it's 52 weeks. You can pick any week you want. So every section inside of the course and every single course stands alone on its own. So you can buy them individually and keep going. But they all work together. So the more courses you have and the more memberships you have, they all kind of dovetail together. And like in the Productive Home Solution, for example, it's a 52-week curriculum. You could stay on week with us, which perfectly matches the energy of the year, because I don't know, I'm obsessed about this stuff. And you're like, oh my gosh, I was just wanting to organize my garage. And here we are in organizing our garage week. How did you know? Because this— I have studied you. For forever. But also, you can be like, I'm, you know, my parents are moving and I need to do their garage. And so I'm gonna do it in a February, and it still will work at the same time. It just won't perfectly match your energy. It's also like, if you ever shopped at Gymboree clothes, oh my goodness, I love Gymboree clothes because they all matched and the color dye was the same. So like the red from the fall would be the same red from February, so you could mix and match the clothes. Same in the Organized 365 products. So if you're using blue slash pockets in your Sunday basket for people, and then you get a Friday work box, blue is gonna be the color of team, which is also people. So all you have to remember is also the blue binder, which is household operations, is about how you run all of the things for the people in your household, the holidays, cleaning, vacations, pets, all that. So once you know that blue is people, blue is people in every single product that we have. Once you know that, you know, pink is you, it's, it's you in every single product that we have. So you literally— it's a school. You're, you're buying the different pieces of the school, but they all mix and match.

I love that. Thank you. And I just have a funny anecdote to share is that I'm working on making the Productive Home Solution checklist for the next 120 days. And I sent Lisa a Voxer saying, oh my gosh, Lisa, it is so crazy. Everything lines up perfect with the calendar you've already made for this year. It's just because she's following that same planning energy that she has built into the Productive Home Solution. So like the week that we talk about organizing paper is the same week that Organize 365 will be having paper organizing retreats. So it is so cool how that is, how you've identified these seasons and then like ingrained them into all of the courses and all of the systems. So it's super fun.

So, and to that point, because once you look at it, it's kind of Like the comedian who says something that you've been so frustrated about, and then they say it in a way you're like, oh yeah, that is hilarious.

Same thing.

Like, this is exactly how we live our lives. Like, if someone was going to create a curriculum for household managers, if someone was going to create an operational system for how we run a household, this is what they, they would create because I have created it over time.

It's so fun. Okay, let's move on to uniqueness. So you often say that the Organized 365 products free up someone's time so that they can focus more on what they are uniquely gifted and created to do. What exactly does that mean when you talk about someone's personal uniqueness, and how can people, especially women, know what their personal uniqueness is?

So I, I love this so much. I am obviously a very creative entrepreneurial type kid, and I like to create and do, and I like to make things that are new that have never been made before. My mom also was an entrepreneur, my grandmother and my great-grandmother, all entrepreneurs. And so when I was in second grade, my mom started a company in our house. She literally took her credit card. I mean, I know these stories now. I didn't know when I was, you know, 8, this is what she did. But she went to New York City with a credit card and she bought clothing and had it shipped to the house. So she came back and then all of a sudden all these packages started coming to the house. And she had worked for a woman who sold dresses and, you know, nice outfits through, um, direct sell— well, it's kind of like direct selling, but it used to be these cases like Doncaster in the '70s was a big kind of like a direct selling. You would sell these clothes in your house, but you would just have these clothes in your house for a week or 2, and then the case of clothes would move on to the next person in line. So one case of clothing could do 3 or 4 different households, and the woman would have like a store in her house 2 or 3 times a year, and all her friends would come shop and place orders, and then you would fulfill the orders. So there was this woman up the street that my mom worked for that had these cases of dresses and skirts and blouses that would go to all these women. And back at this time, this would have been like 1978, women in that day would wear a slip under their skirts, and you would want your slip to match the length of your skirt. So you would have a 17-inch, 19-inch, 21-inch, 23-inch skirt, a slip. And then you would also have that in white, ecru, and black because you wanted it to match. Like, these were proper English ladies, and they wanted to have, like, all these slips. Well, at that time in the late '70s, department stores started reducing the number, quality, and quantity of the slips that they offered. They weren't the same quality. They weren't the same length. They would drop different sizes and be like, oh, just wear one that's a little bit shorter, a little bit longer. Well, my mom has a fashion degree. Like, that was not good enough for my mom. And my mom has always looked— she's always been dressed to the nines. She used to sew and make her own clothes in high school. Like, she's just phenomenal. She's just a little fashion plate. She was like, not acceptable. So she went to New York and she started buying all these slips and everything direct from the manufacturers, and she created her own clothing line that then would follow up this other lady's clothing line. So if they would have her cases, my mom would send hers also, or you could do it a different week. And she called hers The Fine Line. So from 2nd grade, that's when she started this company, and she sold it when I was in 8th grade. So for fun, And also, we kind of lived out in the country. There weren't any kids where we were. So for fun, we would work in mom's store, like, or we would sort the checks, or we would write up the UPS book. Like, we would do all these things and earn money. So for me, one of my fun things was to work. Like, I just love work. So my mom said in 8th grade I could do anything I wanted to do. And because I watched her start and then sell her business, I knew that was true. Like, I literally knew it was true that I could do whatever I wanted to do because I had watched my mother literally do whatever she wanted to do. She, she did other things in the community as well. She was part of the Junior League, and in Akron, Ohio, she started a group called Junior Leadership Akron, which still goes on today, which takes 3 junior boys or girls from each of the high schools and puts them in this like civic group. And every month we would go meet someone in the Akron community, which would broaden our experience. But also it was designed to keep people in Akron, like so that you would understand how Akron works and you would stay in Akron. So we would go and we meet the Supreme Court Justice. We would go and we would, you know, meet the congressman. We, we would meet all of these people and understand how the city of Akron worked. She created that whole program that still is in existence today because I was a freshman when she created it and she wanted me and my sister to be in it, which we were. My sister still lives in Akron, so it worked with Emily. Didn't work with me. I ended up moving away. So this idea that you could literally do whatever you want is just kind of ingrained in me. And so I have been allowed to follow my uniqueness because I've always been looking for it. Like, I've always thought like, oh, I want to do this. And my parents are like, okay. So I tell the story about, you know, I was accepted into Miami University in the education department, but what I really wanted to do was be an entrepreneur and a stay-at-home mom. And I was like, you know, if I had a corporate daycare center, then I could bring the kid to work with me, yada yada. And my dad literally said to me, it's gonna cost X amount of money to send you to Miami University. I'll give you all that money. You could just start a corporate daycare center. And I believed him. So I went home and I was like, Mom, Dad said blah, blah, blah. She was like, absolutely not. You are going to college. 'Cause my dad didn't go to college, but my mom did it. My grandmother did, my great-grandmother did it. And my mom said she is going to be a 4th generation female college graduate, and then she could do whatever she wants, but she's going to get this thing checked off the box. Um, and so literally, like, I was not raised normal. I literally, I literally thought I could do whatever I wanted. And my parents were like, okay, well then we'll just move this money to this thing and then let's figure out how you can do that. And so that is, I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. I did that. And then as the kids were getting older, I was like, okay, well, what do I want now? I don't know about you, Anna, but I always thought like life ended at 40. You're not even 40 yet. You don't know. Do you think life ends at 40? Because you're not even 40 yet. No.

Okay.

Well, I, I mean, even though my grandmothers and great-grandmothers lived into their, like, 90s and 100s, I just always thought, like, once you hit 40, like, that's it. You're done. I didn't have a plan for myself after 40. And 40 is when I started Organized 365. And so I had to really wrestle with, like, okay, well, I've checked everything off of my to-do list. Like, I got married. I had kids. They're in school. Like, now what? Like, I didn't even know. Like, now what do I want to do? Okay, I guess I'm going to start a business. Well, what's the business going to be? And then once I started Organize 365, I started doing in-home organizing. I was like, okay, it's kind of like the challenge after 3 years was gone. Like, okay, you could drop me in any house. I literally can organize it. Now what's the challenge? Okay, how do I teach people who I can't even see? Or may never know. How do I teach them how to organize their house for free through a podcast? Game on. Challenge accepted. Okay, so then I did that. Well, then people are like, that's great. We've never met you. However, we don't get what the basket is or the slash bucket. Okay, I'll manufacture the things to support you. So I'm in this continual journey of like, okay, so my uniqueness is being able to explain how to organize your house when I'm not with you. However, you now need office supplies. Okay, you need office supplies. Well, now I realize that there are different pots of money and different conversations being had, but if I don't have a PhD, I can't get in those rooms. And I could make more impact, let's say, in the military with our PCS planning course of people who have never met me before if I have the authority of a PhD. Okay, I'll go get a PhD. And so that chasing that, my uniqueness of creating operational systems in the house, and then what I have to do to level up in order to meet more and more and more people in order to do that is my uniqueness. But I am just— first of all, I'm just wired that way. But second of all, I finally have realized very few people will tell you no, but no one will tell you yes. Very few people will tell you no, but no one will tell you yes. Like, you have to just try it. You just have to do it. You have to go for it. Like when I said to my husband, let's go to Florida, and he was like, I don't know. It's like, well, I already found the hotel and the flights and all this. He's like, okay, next thing you know, we're in Florida. He would have never said, you know what, why don't you book us a trip to Florida next weekend? It's just not in his nature. He's not going to do it. So I'm like, oh, but he's not going to say no. So, so I could plan a whole bunch more trips and next time I'll give him more notice. And from now on, quarter 1, we're always going to go somewhere warm because we always want to, but we haven't planned it. So I'll just plan it better. So the uniqueness part is Really, what do you want? And you get to keep picking. So you could say, what do you want? Okay, I want to get a PhD. I'm, I'm getting to the end of the PhD. What do I want next? And I'm in that part where I'm like, what do I want next? Oh my gosh, everything, nothing, all at once. And then you pick and you go after that and you pick and you go after that.

It's so fun. I love that. So, okay, you already talked about your personal uniquenesses, but do you have any other that you want to share with us? Things that you've figured out along the way are some of your uniquenesses?

I would say the underlying uniqueness of all of my uniquenesses is the ability to observe many different environments and then pull it all together. So I recorded a podcast a little bit ago. I have this idea that we are the largest economic unit in the world, the American household, and I recorded those economic podcasts at the end of December because I knew I was going into a PhD term. And then they came out in February. Thank goodness they were pretty accurate. I'm always holding my breath because, you know, the, the economic environment can always change. Well, after they were done, I recorded a bonus one, 2025, which is like 10 weeks later because of everything that's happening in Washington, D.C. and globally. And by the time this airs, who knows what will have happened with tariffs and all of those things. But I do have a lot of knowledge. Like, I understand things as a business owner. I understand things as a household manager. I understand things as a teacher. I understand things, you know, because I do know people in government, in military. And so I will talk to them and I will ask them. And also, I read so many books and listen to so many different podcasts of people that have a different orientation than I do that I have a really good pulse on what's going on and how it impacts different types of households. These are all different types of households. And so how would a government employee household respond to this versus a teacher household versus a corporate Fortune 50 household? You know, and I could think about all these households I've organized or people that I know personally. And then I literally run through them like a Rolodex, really old 1980s term. And I think about like, okay, how does this impact this person, this person, this person, this person, this person? I just do it intuitively. And that's when I recorded that bonus podcast and I was like, okay, well, if you're not a business owner, this is what a tariff is. If you're not someone in government, this is what a tax is. If you, you know, and I kind of pulled all that together. I get the nicest compliment from someone who works with a lot of businesses and she's like, for someone whose employer said she wasn't a very good teacher, I don't know how you taught all of that in one podcast episode. Like you have such a good sense of what is going on in the world, in business and economics, like in that one podcast. And it's just because I'm very, inquisitive. I've always been that kid that asks the questions that no one wants to ask or is afraid to ask. I will always ask that question. And then once I have that knowledge, I, I'm really good at plugging it in somewhere else. And so that's just a uniqueness that I have that keeps the company going. If I was just a home organizing company, I would have been done by now, or I'd be recycling a lot of content. But I'm not.

I am a household management company.

How do we run our, our households as the economic entity that they are? Organization and productivity are the operating system you put into that system, but the household is dynamic and ever-changing.

Thank you. I love that. So how have you found to help women think about their own uniqueness? How can Organize 365 help people In determining what their uniqueness is. So if they're here, they've got their house organized, what do they do next?

So I remember it's probably a couple of years into the podcast, maybe 3 or 4 years into the podcast, I had a course finally. It was called the 100-Day Home Organization Program. It's now the Productive Home Solution. And when it was 100 days, we would just run it 100 days and then 100 days, and we'd do it 3 times a year. And I didn't get you through all the spaces I do now. I just got you through some of the main spaces in your house. But what I said was, once you did that 3 times, uh, you would be more organized than you'd ever been before, and it, you would unlock a lot of time. Well, it happened. And a couple people actually got through it and they were like, darn you. Like, I don't have anything left to do in my house. And I was like, what do you mean? They're like, well, I mean, other than dishes, laundry, and cleaning, like. There are no more projects. They're not like— I'm all the way organized. There's nothing left to do here. And now I don't know what to do because I don't know what I'm uniquely gifted and created to do. And every spare minute of my life for decades has been getting this house in order, and now it's in order. And I was like, yes, a new problem to solve! Like, I was just so excited because for me, I'm like, great, what's my next project going to be? But for most people, their next project is going to be another space in their house. And when all of the spaces in your house are done, then you have to struggle with what are you uniquely gifted and created to do? And there are lots of options. It could be that you want to learn a foreign language, you want to travel, you want to learn to play the piano, you want to do something personally for you. Or it could be that you want to do something in your community. You want to give back, you want to volunteer, you want to create something like my mom created the Junior Leadership Akron type thing. Or it could be that you want to economically provide for your household or earn money just because you want to earn money. And you're like, okay, well, I'm going to go back into paid work. Or it could be that you want to start a business, or it could be that you want to go get a PhD, or it could be like the possibilities are endless. But especially for women, once you get stuck in doing all the housework and trying to get your household organized, And it's never done, you feel like this is just going to be the rest of your life. So you stop thinking about what you're going to do when this is done. And then when it's done, you're so surprised because you stopped dreaming. Like, you stopped dreaming. Like, a 14-year-old girl, a 14-year-old boy, they have a million dreams about what they're going to be when they become an adult. And then when we become an adult, we get so bogged down with the administration of being an adult that often we never dream about what we want to do now that we are an adult. So how do I help people do this? Well, first you go through the courses and then you get organized and then you have the time and then you have to struggle with it and then you're like, darn it. Also, I think I share a lot about all the random things I do, so I think I'm an example of someone that could do things. People have told me I need to stop saying how easy it is to get my PhD because getting a PhD is not easy. And it's not easy. It wasn't easy, but it is doable. So I agree that you shouldn't think it's easy because I did it. But also, I think it's a great example of you can get a PhD. I mean, I got a PhD because I watched someone my age 10 years ago get her law degree in 3 years, and she's now a sitting judge. And I was like, holy cow, I didn't know we were allowed to do that. But I watched her do it just through Facebook or whatever. And then all of a sudden she's on the ballot and she won for the judge. I'm like, well, if she could do it, I could do it. I could get a PhD and a Law degree. Law degree is probably harder because you have to memorize and take all those tests. So if she could do it, I could do it. So I think part of it is just being an example. And then the last thing is the Embrace Experience. So the Embrace Experience is usually live because I'm getting a PhD. This is the last year we're going to have it on replay. You actually buy the replay of before I started the PhD. And it's a 2-day Uh, recorded experience. You get the workbook, you get all the videos, you get the little gift, you're in the, uh, Embrace group. And in there, I kind of walk you through choreographed speeches and songs and activities and speeches and songs and activities through, like, understanding your role as the household manager, what it has been historically, what it may be like for you now, and how do you move back into that 14-year-old girl who's dreaming? About possibilities. And, you know, are people really going to say no? Probably not. But they're also not just going to come out and give you permission. And then if you've done the Embrace Experience before, we also have this add-on where we add on some new things. This year, the add-on is going to be a video that Heather, one of our audience members who's a mental health professional, has created. It's like we're sending you the watercolors and you're going to do watercolors, and she has a 2-hour workshop that you do with her. We have a couple other fun things that we're mailing out, and then we have a 2-hour event at the end of June where I'm on live and you guys just get to come on live and talk about, like, what are your hopes and your dreams and what do you get out of the Embrace experience? So that's the add-on. You can get Embrace or you can get the add-on, or you can get the Embrace and add-on together. And that really is your personal adult retreat. Like, you know, when you're a kid and you go on a field trip or you have a teacher that's like, who do you wanna be? And you have that dreaming experience in school. That's kind of what I've created for adults.

And it is so fun. It's so fun to go through the Embrace experience. I just— I didn't understand what it was before I actually did it. So yes, it's exciting. And the add-on is really fun, too, because my son and I did some of it last weekend with the watercolors, and we had a really good time.

So yes.

Alright, Lisa. Well, it's been fun picking your brain about these things. Do you have anything else that you wanna Last minute, I don't know, anything you wanna add on about Golden Windows and your uniqueness?

Well, first of all, just thank you for listening. I think that when you create something from nothing, which is basically what I've done with the entire Organized 365 company, you want people to experience it and enjoy it and get value from it. And then when they do, it is so humbling, like, to literally have created something from nothing. And continue to add on to it. And the fact that the community is so positive and so supportive of each other and the products are so well received is just— it's just amazing. And when I really think about it, I really truly believe that men are not holding women back. Our houses are holding us back. And when you can get your household under control and you can feel like you're on top of what's going on at home and it's organized to the level that you want it to be organized, You will end up with more time than you know what to do with. And I'm so excited for that because that is the gift of Organize 365. It's not really the organizing. Yes, that's what we offer. Yes, that is the transformation that you get from Organize 365. But that's not my mission. My mission is that you would get organized so that you go out and do what you're uniquely gifted and, and created to do. And that is what the world needs. It needs whatever you are uniquely gifted and created to do. That may just be for yourself personally. It may be for your family. It may be for your community, or it may be as big as what Organized 365 is doing and continually pressing into that. Okay, well, what's my unique spin on this? How can I share that with people through the podcast? How can I draw in people in the Organized 365 team that want to partner with me bringing these products out to you, and then for you to share the podcast and, and share the transformation that you've been through? And also prepare you for what's coming next. You know, we talked about the positive golden windows, but there are also golden windows that are negative. So there, there are times where you will be sick or family members will be sick, or you will be put in a place of a power of healthcare, a power of attorney, or have to settle an estate. And those are also golden windows that we talk about in the podcast. Well, they're not like, yay, I get to settle an estate. It is an opportunity. To end a person's life well, take what is left from that life and move it into the family. And so all of these things are natural and will happen within households. And supporting each other through the positive and negative is, it's just very unique. The, the community that we've created is really, really unique. And it, I just love it. I just love it so much.

It is. And it is so fun to see people sharing these stories inside of our community app or inside our@ live events when you can really connect with each other and hear people's stories and how, how they're being impacted. Yeah, it's pretty cool. All right, Lisa. Well, thank you for sharing your wisdom today and for answering all my questions.

Thanks, Anna. We'll be back with another Connections podcast in a couple of weeks.

Sounds good. Bye.