September 17, 2025 • 25 mins
Productivity expert Chelsi Jo shares how to systematize your life
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
(00:23):
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am delighted to welcome Chelsea Joe to the show. Chelsea
is the host of the Systemaize Your Life podcast. So, Chelsea,
welcome to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Thanks for having me. It's going to be a great
conversation absolutely.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
So why don't you tell our listeners a little bit
about yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, I'm a wife and a mom. I've got two
girls that are thirteen and about well just actually eight.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
It's a birthday today, so happy birthday. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I am the CEO of Chelsea Joe dot Co. I've
been running this company for the past six years. I
retired myself out of my profession, which was I was
a side language interpreter for many years and I also
ran an event based business for quite some time with
my mom, and so this is my full time work now.
My husband was a firefighter for many years and so
(01:16):
we juggled a really crazy, hectic schedule and we now
are using systems on a regular basis for me to
be able to juggle all of the demands that we
have on a regular basis.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Yeah, well, what got you interested in the productivity world?
I mean, was this always something that you were interested
in then just decided to transition into it or anything?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
What happened?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I mean, essentially, I was when I first got married.
I had a two year old daughter that I brought
with me to that marriage, and so we had a family. Immediately,
my husband was trying to get on with a better
fire department than the one he was in. He went
through a couple of fire academies. I was running that
event base business this, and doing sign language. And then
(02:02):
we had another baby while I was interpreting, and I
was doing that for about twenty hours a week, and
then we had another baby, and things just got really chaotic,
and so I just knew that I didn't want to
live that way, and I knew by looking around that
other people were accomplishing a lot of things, and so
I essentially gravitate towards doing things the way that other
(02:26):
people are doing them, that are doing the things that
I want to be doing, and so it's just more
so I think the way that I wanted to live,
and so I started testing things, found something that really worked,
started sharing with my friends, started a blog, started a podcast,
and the rest as you do.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
As you do. Yeah, because both of you were working
then and jobs that are not really known for being
nine to five sort of jobs, right, I mean between
the you know, firefighting and event planning. I mean, things
are happening at all different times, right, it seems like
that might be challenging to build systems into there.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, And that was really I think that's the one
kickback that I get from everybody is, oh, my life
is too chaotic to have a system like I can't
do the same thing every day. And that is literally
why I built them in order to be able to
still be highly productive and not have that chaos during
all of the highs and lows. Because for sign language interpreting,
(03:24):
I was an independent contractor, so I would just wait
anytime we got an email, anybody that was licensed and
felt qualified could pick up the job. So like at
any moment I would have to say yes, I could
do that gig, and then I'm scrambling for sitters and okay,
what's for dinner, and my husband not to take over,
but if he wasn't available because he was at the
fire department, then we'd have to hand over to the sitters.
(03:46):
Like it was just so many pieces. And then obviously
for him he would works. He's had a lot of
crazy schedules, but the one that we lived with the
most was he would work two days, then off four
and then work two days and then off four, which
is only six out of seven days. So there was
always a rotation, so like he would work Saturday Sunday,
then Friday, Saturday, then Thursday Friday, and it just kept
going around the week like that. So I could never
(04:09):
have consistent babysitters, or there's no consistency. And that's why
I created these systems, because any given day I could
actually have a rhythm based on the things that I
knew needed to be in a certain order in order
for us to.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Get to school on time. And you know, then we
homeschooled for one of.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
The kids still is and there's just a lot of
moving pieces in all of that, and the systems allowed
me to not be overwhelmed and not run around like
a crazy person with it like a chicken with its
head cut off, is what I say all the time.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Absolutely, So then you know, would you plan in weeks
or planned by day or sort of look ahead for
you know, how was the timeline then of figuring out
how systems might work?
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yeah, yea.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
My method is based on a seven day or a
week long home management system, and so I have all
seven days mapped out, and depending on what the week
looks like, right, we have some days that have lots
of extracurriculars, we have some days that don't. We have
(05:20):
some days where there's a lot of variables. But you
can essentially look through all of those things that are
happening in your week and you can really decide just
by seeing everything at a glance, how you can group
things together so you're not constantly multitasking all day long.
So I really ended up just building my whole life,
(05:44):
is what I call it. Basically, it was a week
of time, right, and I chunked that down and every
seven days we repeat it. So on Sundays, we have
a very specific event on the calendar that says Sunday Reset,
and we sit down and we reset all of our systems,
that need to be reset, and they're pretty much all automated.
We just make sure that we update them. Like today's
(06:05):
Bailey's birthday, so it's not a normal Tuesday night, right,
We're doing something very different this Tuesday night, So we
just update and tweak those small pieces.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, and so I mean when people are feeling like
their life is chaotic and they are feeling overwhelmed, I mean,
what do you think they're generally getting wrong? Like what
leads to that sense of overwhelming chaos?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, the biggest part is just using too rigid of
a schedule or having like one hundred percent fly by
the seat of your pants. So I try and bring
people to the middle of that pendulum. There's a really
good mix in between those two that I have dialed
in and live in on a regular basis. A lot
(06:52):
of people would plague or peg me as a type
a personality, but you know, I mean, I guess by
different definitions, somebody will be that if they wanted to.
But I hate being told what to do. I don't
like doing the same thing over and over again. I
hated working a nine to five. I want to do
my own thing and having the framework and like an
(07:13):
actual home management system did allow me to have that
freedom to be able to do that.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Excellent.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
All right, Well, We're going to take a quick ad
break and then I'll be back with more from Chelsea Joe. Well,
I am back talking with Chelsea Joe, who is the
host of the Systemize Your Life podcast for talking about
ways to systemize your life. So Chelsea, let's talk about
some of those systems, Like what are some of your
(07:42):
favorite Like if somebody is living in chaos and the
Chelsea comes to them and the first thing she has
them to, what's one of the easy systems that somebody
could start putting into place.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Well, I think the easiest and most impactful to start with.
This wouldn't necessarily be where I would have you start foundationally,
but still part of my huge system is my meal
planning system. Like the home management that whole thing definitely
is the meal planning system. That's super straightforward. I teach
(08:20):
that in depth on my blog and on the podcast
all the time. It is part of the program as well.
But essentially it's just a really straightforward, old fashioned way
of making sure that you're not skimming through Pinterest meals
all the time and that you use your family's favorites
as a bank that you can repeat over and over
(08:42):
and over again. And you create a menu board for
your family so they can always see what's on the
menu every week. And from there you get into a
really great rhythm of just making sure that your meal
planning every single weekend, and then you no longer have
to hear what's for dinner. You're not going through drive
through multiple time times a week, you're not over buying
at the grocery store and not utilizing the food and
(09:05):
throwing out a ton, so you end up saving a
ton of money doing that. It's probably one of the
first systems that I ever set up, truly, because I
remember very vividly in my mind when I like threw
my hands up in there and I was like, I'm
done with this. And I had been on Pinteres for
like two hours trying to figure out what to make
for food that week, and I was still trying to
(09:27):
wildly impress my husband with these you know, over the
top meals, and I was like, this is I'm done
with this, because I had two hours by the time
the baby woke up from the nap, and like I
was like, this is ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
I can't do this.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
So I ended up setting up this system and we
literally still use it like nine years later.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
So how many crowd placing meals should I have like
in my in my docket that I can then pull
up for my weekly plan?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Listen, I tell families with the pickiest eaters to start
with five, and you're gonna want to ask your family.
I think we have ten that we rotate still to
this day, and then they switch because you know, kids
get tired of it, We get tired of it, We
find a new one, an old one phases out, and
we have like a huge stack at this point that
we've you know, been building. We don't use all of those,
but it's fun to go back and look and be like, oh, yeah,
(10:18):
I remember that season when we had like chicken legs,
corn on the cob and watermelon like every week over
the summer. You know.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
That's awesome. Yeah, we have. We have a couple of
true crowd placers in my family too. So around here,
Monday is always pasta night because Monday is like the
day when I least want to think about what it's
for dinner. So that's something that's wound up working for us.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah, I love that. I have had a lot of
families that will.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
End up making like like theme nights, like Monday's always
pasta and Tuesday's always tacos of some sword and like,
or they'll they'll put like a specific culture it's like Mexican, Italian,
American traditional and whatever. You know, and how you want
to go about creating a system for yourself is always
a good place to start.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, Well, what's the other major housework thing that or
house management thing that tends to get people feeling like
they're behind? I mean, I don't know. Is it cleaning,
is it laundry, is it you know, administration or bill
paying or what is it that's sort of next, you know,
contributing to the chaos.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, I think for me, it's the biggest thing for
me is time management. And people have never been taught
how to manage their time. And even if we were
taught by our parents, what they had to juggle in
a daily basis is nothing in comparison to what we
are juggling now our kids. The pressure for our kids
to be in a thousand things and just like everybody
is running at the speed of light, and so time
(11:42):
management is really important, and so I have a very
specific method that's hybrid between a paper planner and a
Google calendar of putting in a lot of automation in there.
So it takes the bandwidth and like the complexity of
managing a schedule out of it. But then we also
use five specific core time blocks to get your entire
(12:02):
life from being scattered all over the place into really
digestible groups of time. After we get your time management
down path, than everything else literally that's driving people crazy
is keeping up with the cooking, cleaning, dishes, laundry. It's
the dishes, toilets, laundry, you know, et cetera, those things.
Keeping up with housework is really complex for a lot
(12:25):
of people because they never set time aside to do it,
and when they do, they're like, that sounds really boring.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I would rather it.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Well, it is, I mean, but it's true that tasks
take time, and I think people have in their mind
that they don't I mean, I don't know where that
comes from, but yes, of course, like if you are
the one cleaning your house, you're gonna have to devote
time in your schedule to cleaning your house.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yeah, for sure, And even whenever they do devote time,
They have no idea how long it actually takes what
they're going to do with that time. They just look
around and see a messy house and think, I need
to get the house cleaned, and so they wait for
it to build up and build up and build up
and build up. And it's pretty basically the same thing
with all home management, and so they push everything off
(13:14):
to the back burner and they don't prioritize it. And
these are foundational parts of living also our health, and
moms are notorious for this right of not taking care
of himself and putting themselves on the back burner. The
food that we eat, how often we work out, are
we caring for ourselves and were getting to bed on time?
That is a very big holistic approach to managing your life,
(13:36):
but essentially to managing the home. And my husband's very
involved in the home management, but it's still like my
brain and my baby behind this machine that I've built,
and then he just helps execute all of it. He's
got great, great feedback at times too. And I always
encourage the families that I work with to make sure
that it is involving and we're soliciting information back from
(13:58):
the other people that we live with to help us
build a really sustainable home management system.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Well, I'm curious what those five times of the day are.
Now I'm pondering, what are my five blocks of the day.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, so most people that here time blocking, they've had
some experience with it, and I don't do it anything
like anybody else that you will find on the internet.
So essentially, there's three major things that we have to
tackle in a day. There's three major groups. The first
one is ourselves. We have to give time to ourself.
We have to get ready, we have to work out,
(14:31):
we need to feed ourselves whether or not. You know,
I'm a very faith based person, so having time to
read and do Bible studies or whatever that practice is
for you is really important. And no one ever really
takes the time to do that. And no matter what
season of life you're in, Like I nursed my babies
around the clock, Like I get it, I've been been
(14:52):
in that season completely, But there's still an opportunity for
at least fifteen minutes for yourself.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
The other big group or category that we have to
tackle into vote a lot of time too, is everything
else in the home. So taking care of the kids,
taking care of the home itself, and the marriage. Right,
that's a huge consumption of our life. And then the
third one is our work. If you're whether or not
(15:21):
you're working to earn money or you're giving of your
time and your gifts to the PTO or to your
local whatever. Right, it's very rare that a woman is
not doing something outside of being a wife and a mom,
and so there needs to be time for that. And
so those three things. When I sat down, I was like,
this is super easy. We don't have to mix this
(15:43):
all up. We're just going to do these three things right.
But essentially, you can't just pour into the kids once
a day. You've got to touch it before and after work.
It has to be touched, right. So this is where
my five time blocks come in place. So the very first,
first first part of the day is your morning routine block.
You focus on yourself. Then you bump into your am block,
(16:03):
you focus on the home, the kids, marriage, whatever needs
to be done there. Then you focus on your work,
and then you do it backwards. You go back to
focusing on your home, your kids, your marriage, all the things.
And then you have that little and that's your PM block,
and then you have your little little block at the
end of the day, your book nds of your day
is your nighttime routine block. And for me, like a
(16:23):
couple of nights a week that consists one night a
week that consists of a date night with my husband,
and then the rest of the nights of the week,
maybe once or twice I'm watching something on YouTube, a
podcast or something of some sort. And then the other
nights it's just me. I'm in a bath, I'm unwinding,
I'm reading, I'm journaling or whatever. And so those are
the five time blocks, and the goal is to get
(16:45):
your entire life out of every single nook and cranny
and get them put into these very specific time blocks.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I like that and just giving people the idea that yes,
you are a time block right like that. There doesn't
have to because I like, I think a lot of
people feel that, you know, all I'm ever doing is house, kids, work.
You know, it's there's there's no time for me. But
even if it's just a sliver at the beginning and
at the end, yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
It could be fifteen minutes, it doesn't have to be
two hours, which there, but it's still there. It's still
there and it's something to look forward to.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yeah, well, I'm curious, I mean, Telsey, because obviously this
is a show called Before Breakfast, so we're big on
morning routines here. What is your morning routine?
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Well, oddly enough, mine just changed drastically. Okay, my morning
routine for a real long time. For like the last
several years, we my husband and I spend a lot
of time separated in the morning. We read and I
kind of get ready for the day. I do check
(17:45):
in with my team. I do a quick power like
fifteen thirty minutes to address because I'm on the Pacific
time zone and everybody else is basically East. So by
the time I get to work, they're all like checking
out for the day. So I have to like plug
in with them early in the morning, and then I
would kind of open up the house. A lot of
people say that they wake up their house and put
(18:07):
their house to bed, you know, but I really, I
really do enjoy that. And then getting ready for the day.
That's what I was doing for a really long time.
Obviously making the bed there's little nuances within that. But
now I am the five am workout warrior, and that's
where we're at right now. So I'm up at four
forty five, We're at the gym at like five point fifteen,
(18:27):
and I get back home and we eat immediately and
get the kids to school. And my husband and I
are rotating every other day, so the days that I
take the kids and go straight to work, I get
to take a shower while the kids are getting ready
and then we flip flop that.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
And that's been working out really well.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
All right, well, we're going to take a quick ad
break and I'll be back with more from Chelsea jo Well,
I'm back talking with Chelsea Joe, who is the host
of the Systemize Your Life podcast. So I'm very curious
what inspired the you know, shift to being a five
point fifteen workout warrior person. Like what what I mean?
(19:13):
I am not I you know, despite hosting a show
called Before Breakfast, I am not a hardcore morning person.
So I'm always curious what makes that happen.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, Well, we were trying to work out in any
other time of the day and it was essentially taking
two hours. It literally will take two hours of my
day to go get there, warm up, and then my
four days so like warming up is like a thing
that has to be done at this point.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Can't just like dive in like I used to.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I just used to like show up to class and
like just hammer out a hardcore workout and be fine.
That Now like everything hurts and you know whatever. But
it just was eating up into work essentially, because we
really want to be available for our kids when they
get off of school. Woll and my husband recently retired
(20:03):
from the fire department, and we just had to make
a hard decision of like, can we get this done
in the morning so that we can still both run
our businesses and both for the most part be off
work by three thirty or four thirty every single day.
And I he and I both are really wonderful morning people,
(20:25):
but we also really like to stay up after the
kids go to.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Bed too, So we're like, what is this sleep thing?
Why do we have to do it so much?
Speaker 1 (20:32):
So your your two ends of the day are starting
to spread bigger, they're starting to get the bigger the
two time blacks at the end, well, because what time
do you need to go to bed then to wake.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Up that early? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (20:43):
We really want to be like in bed with lights
out at nine o'clock.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah, yeah, and that's hard.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
That's hard, especially if your kids are not going to
bed until probably well then no.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Now we have my kids. I sleep trained my second
one because my first one I did not, and I
thought every woman that sleep trained her child was a
terrible mother. And then I learned that there was very
great idea to sleep train your children. So with my
second when, we definitely did that. And she has gone
to bed like clockwork by like seven seven point thirty
(21:15):
and just as of late it's been eight o'clock. She
just went into third grade. But her older sister is
a huge influence on that because she's thirteen now and
all she wants to do from nine o'clock on is
talk for hours on end the teenage life, and so
we are trying to navigate that and it has looked
a little bit different for the thirteen year old. You know,
she now has her own nighttime routine that she navigates
(21:39):
independently after.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
We put her to bed.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Put her to bed because we're tired.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
We're like, we gotta go to bed. I can't stay
up late every night.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yeah, I'm a I have started to be among the
earlier people in my household going to bed so yeah,
it's one of those things. So, Telsey, I always ask
people on the show, what is something you've done recently
to take a day from great to.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
That's a really great question, to take a day from
great to awesome? Well, work out that takes my day
from great to awesome every single time without a shadow
of a doubt. But I think the second thing is,
and the thing that I've been focused on the most lately,
is definitely the way that we speak to ourselves and
(22:26):
just constantly. I call it flipping the script. So there's
a lot of people in my family that cycle really
negative thoughts often or they maybe they aren't even negative,
but they're definitely not encouraging or positive. And what we
think shapes the way that we make decisions. And my
(22:51):
husband's grandfather always said, where our thoughts go, our feet go.
And so when we're trying to take a day from
great to awesome, it's really important to care about the
kinds of thoughts and words that speak to ourselves.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
So using positive thoughts and in our minds to direct
where we're going. So, Chelsea, what are you looking forward
to right now?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
I'm looking forward to San Diego this weekend. We're taking
the kids to a really lovely, kind of last minute
summer wrap up trip to the beach in San Diego.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Oh that sounds fun.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
San Diego's gorgeous. So yeah, I assume you've been there before, right.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I grew up in a neighboring state
in Arizona, so we went a lot as a kid,
and it's going to be a great time. My youngest
one's never been to the beach. My oldest one has
only been like once when she was I don't know,
like five or six.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
So they're both going to have the time of their life.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
That's great. What a great hurrah before the end of
the summer. Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, well, if you love listening to podcasts, you can
come over. I've had a podcast for the last six years.
We've got over five hundred episodes that you can binge.
It's called Systemize your Life. Or you can have a
head over to the website Chelsea Joe dot Co. And
you'll find free resources there, a time blocking workbook, the
meal planning system. There's a quiz there that will tell
(24:20):
you what system you need to start with first.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
All of that's totally free and ready for you guys,
so head over.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah awesome, well please do head over there. And Chelsea,
thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to
everyone for listening. If you have feedback about this or
any other episode, you can always reach me at Laura
at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime, this is Laura,
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
(24:54):
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(25:16):
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
(00:23):
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am delighted to welcome Chelsea Joe to the show. Chelsea
is the host of the Systemaize Your Life podcast. So, Chelsea,
welcome to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Thanks for having me. It's going to be a great
conversation absolutely.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
So why don't you tell our listeners a little bit
about yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, I'm a wife and a mom. I've got two
girls that are thirteen and about well just actually eight.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
It's a birthday today, so happy birthday. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I am the CEO of Chelsea Joe dot Co. I've
been running this company for the past six years. I
retired myself out of my profession, which was I was
a side language interpreter for many years and I also
ran an event based business for quite some time with
my mom, and so this is my full time work now.
My husband was a firefighter for many years and so
(01:16):
we juggled a really crazy, hectic schedule and we now
are using systems on a regular basis for me to
be able to juggle all of the demands that we
have on a regular basis.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Yeah, well, what got you interested in the productivity world?
I mean, was this always something that you were interested
in then just decided to transition into it or anything?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
What happened?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I mean, essentially, I was when I first got married.
I had a two year old daughter that I brought
with me to that marriage, and so we had a family. Immediately,
my husband was trying to get on with a better
fire department than the one he was in. He went
through a couple of fire academies. I was running that
event base business this, and doing sign language. And then
(02:02):
we had another baby while I was interpreting, and I
was doing that for about twenty hours a week, and
then we had another baby, and things just got really chaotic,
and so I just knew that I didn't want to
live that way, and I knew by looking around that
other people were accomplishing a lot of things, and so
I essentially gravitate towards doing things the way that other
(02:26):
people are doing them, that are doing the things that
I want to be doing, and so it's just more
so I think the way that I wanted to live,
and so I started testing things, found something that really worked,
started sharing with my friends, started a blog, started a podcast,
and the rest as you do.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
As you do. Yeah, because both of you were working
then and jobs that are not really known for being
nine to five sort of jobs, right, I mean between
the you know, firefighting and event planning. I mean, things
are happening at all different times, right, it seems like
that might be challenging to build systems into there.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, And that was really I think that's the one
kickback that I get from everybody is, oh, my life
is too chaotic to have a system like I can't
do the same thing every day. And that is literally
why I built them in order to be able to
still be highly productive and not have that chaos during
all of the highs and lows. Because for sign language interpreting,
(03:24):
I was an independent contractor, so I would just wait
anytime we got an email, anybody that was licensed and
felt qualified could pick up the job. So like at
any moment I would have to say yes, I could
do that gig, and then I'm scrambling for sitters and okay,
what's for dinner, and my husband not to take over,
but if he wasn't available because he was at the
fire department, then we'd have to hand over to the sitters.
(03:46):
Like it was just so many pieces. And then obviously
for him he would works. He's had a lot of
crazy schedules, but the one that we lived with the
most was he would work two days, then off four
and then work two days and then off four, which
is only six out of seven days. So there was
always a rotation, so like he would work Saturday Sunday,
then Friday, Saturday, then Thursday Friday, and it just kept
going around the week like that. So I could never
(04:09):
have consistent babysitters, or there's no consistency. And that's why
I created these systems, because any given day I could
actually have a rhythm based on the things that I
knew needed to be in a certain order in order
for us to.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Get to school on time. And you know, then we
homeschooled for one of.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
The kids still is and there's just a lot of
moving pieces in all of that, and the systems allowed
me to not be overwhelmed and not run around like
a crazy person with it like a chicken with its
head cut off, is what I say all the time.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Absolutely, So then you know, would you plan in weeks
or planned by day or sort of look ahead for
you know, how was the timeline then of figuring out
how systems might work?
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yeah, yea.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
My method is based on a seven day or a
week long home management system, and so I have all
seven days mapped out, and depending on what the week
looks like, right, we have some days that have lots
of extracurriculars, we have some days that don't. We have
(05:20):
some days where there's a lot of variables. But you
can essentially look through all of those things that are
happening in your week and you can really decide just
by seeing everything at a glance, how you can group
things together so you're not constantly multitasking all day long.
So I really ended up just building my whole life,
(05:44):
is what I call it. Basically, it was a week
of time, right, and I chunked that down and every
seven days we repeat it. So on Sundays, we have
a very specific event on the calendar that says Sunday Reset,
and we sit down and we reset all of our systems,
that need to be reset, and they're pretty much all automated.
We just make sure that we update them. Like today's
(06:05):
Bailey's birthday, so it's not a normal Tuesday night, right,
We're doing something very different this Tuesday night, So we
just update and tweak those small pieces.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, and so I mean when people are feeling like
their life is chaotic and they are feeling overwhelmed, I mean,
what do you think they're generally getting wrong? Like what
leads to that sense of overwhelming chaos?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, the biggest part is just using too rigid of
a schedule or having like one hundred percent fly by
the seat of your pants. So I try and bring
people to the middle of that pendulum. There's a really
good mix in between those two that I have dialed
in and live in on a regular basis. A lot
(06:52):
of people would plague or peg me as a type
a personality, but you know, I mean, I guess by
different definitions, somebody will be that if they wanted to.
But I hate being told what to do. I don't
like doing the same thing over and over again. I
hated working a nine to five. I want to do
my own thing and having the framework and like an
(07:13):
actual home management system did allow me to have that
freedom to be able to do that.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Excellent.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
All right, Well, We're going to take a quick ad
break and then I'll be back with more from Chelsea Joe. Well,
I am back talking with Chelsea Joe, who is the
host of the Systemize Your Life podcast for talking about
ways to systemize your life. So Chelsea, let's talk about
some of those systems, Like what are some of your
(07:42):
favorite Like if somebody is living in chaos and the
Chelsea comes to them and the first thing she has
them to, what's one of the easy systems that somebody
could start putting into place.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Well, I think the easiest and most impactful to start with.
This wouldn't necessarily be where I would have you start foundationally,
but still part of my huge system is my meal
planning system. Like the home management that whole thing definitely
is the meal planning system. That's super straightforward. I teach
(08:20):
that in depth on my blog and on the podcast
all the time. It is part of the program as well.
But essentially it's just a really straightforward, old fashioned way
of making sure that you're not skimming through Pinterest meals
all the time and that you use your family's favorites
as a bank that you can repeat over and over
(08:42):
and over again. And you create a menu board for
your family so they can always see what's on the
menu every week. And from there you get into a
really great rhythm of just making sure that your meal
planning every single weekend, and then you no longer have
to hear what's for dinner. You're not going through drive
through multiple time times a week, you're not over buying
at the grocery store and not utilizing the food and
(09:05):
throwing out a ton, so you end up saving a
ton of money doing that. It's probably one of the
first systems that I ever set up, truly, because I
remember very vividly in my mind when I like threw
my hands up in there and I was like, I'm
done with this. And I had been on Pinteres for
like two hours trying to figure out what to make
for food that week, and I was still trying to
(09:27):
wildly impress my husband with these you know, over the
top meals, and I was like, this is I'm done
with this, because I had two hours by the time
the baby woke up from the nap, and like I
was like, this is ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
I can't do this.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
So I ended up setting up this system and we
literally still use it like nine years later.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
So how many crowd placing meals should I have like
in my in my docket that I can then pull
up for my weekly plan?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Listen, I tell families with the pickiest eaters to start
with five, and you're gonna want to ask your family.
I think we have ten that we rotate still to
this day, and then they switch because you know, kids
get tired of it, We get tired of it, We
find a new one, an old one phases out, and
we have like a huge stack at this point that
we've you know, been building. We don't use all of those,
but it's fun to go back and look and be like, oh, yeah,
(10:18):
I remember that season when we had like chicken legs,
corn on the cob and watermelon like every week over
the summer. You know.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
That's awesome. Yeah, we have. We have a couple of
true crowd placers in my family too. So around here,
Monday is always pasta night because Monday is like the
day when I least want to think about what it's
for dinner. So that's something that's wound up working for us.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah, I love that. I have had a lot of
families that will.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
End up making like like theme nights, like Monday's always
pasta and Tuesday's always tacos of some sword and like,
or they'll they'll put like a specific culture it's like Mexican, Italian,
American traditional and whatever. You know, and how you want
to go about creating a system for yourself is always
a good place to start.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, Well, what's the other major housework thing that or
house management thing that tends to get people feeling like
they're behind? I mean, I don't know. Is it cleaning,
is it laundry, is it you know, administration or bill
paying or what is it that's sort of next, you know,
contributing to the chaos.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, I think for me, it's the biggest thing for
me is time management. And people have never been taught
how to manage their time. And even if we were
taught by our parents, what they had to juggle in
a daily basis is nothing in comparison to what we
are juggling now our kids. The pressure for our kids
to be in a thousand things and just like everybody
is running at the speed of light, and so time
(11:42):
management is really important, and so I have a very
specific method that's hybrid between a paper planner and a
Google calendar of putting in a lot of automation in there.
So it takes the bandwidth and like the complexity of
managing a schedule out of it. But then we also
use five specific core time blocks to get your entire
(12:02):
life from being scattered all over the place into really
digestible groups of time. After we get your time management
down path, than everything else literally that's driving people crazy
is keeping up with the cooking, cleaning, dishes, laundry. It's
the dishes, toilets, laundry, you know, et cetera, those things.
Keeping up with housework is really complex for a lot
(12:25):
of people because they never set time aside to do it,
and when they do, they're like, that sounds really boring.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I would rather it.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Well, it is, I mean, but it's true that tasks
take time, and I think people have in their mind
that they don't I mean, I don't know where that
comes from, but yes, of course, like if you are
the one cleaning your house, you're gonna have to devote
time in your schedule to cleaning your house.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yeah, for sure, And even whenever they do devote time,
They have no idea how long it actually takes what
they're going to do with that time. They just look
around and see a messy house and think, I need
to get the house cleaned, and so they wait for
it to build up and build up and build up
and build up. And it's pretty basically the same thing
with all home management, and so they push everything off
(13:14):
to the back burner and they don't prioritize it. And
these are foundational parts of living also our health, and
moms are notorious for this right of not taking care
of himself and putting themselves on the back burner. The
food that we eat, how often we work out, are
we caring for ourselves and were getting to bed on time?
That is a very big holistic approach to managing your life,
(13:36):
but essentially to managing the home. And my husband's very
involved in the home management, but it's still like my
brain and my baby behind this machine that I've built,
and then he just helps execute all of it. He's
got great, great feedback at times too. And I always
encourage the families that I work with to make sure
that it is involving and we're soliciting information back from
(13:58):
the other people that we live with to help us
build a really sustainable home management system.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Well, I'm curious what those five times of the day are.
Now I'm pondering, what are my five blocks of the day.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, so most people that here time blocking, they've had
some experience with it, and I don't do it anything
like anybody else that you will find on the internet.
So essentially, there's three major things that we have to
tackle in a day. There's three major groups. The first
one is ourselves. We have to give time to ourself.
We have to get ready, we have to work out,
(14:31):
we need to feed ourselves whether or not. You know,
I'm a very faith based person, so having time to
read and do Bible studies or whatever that practice is
for you is really important. And no one ever really
takes the time to do that. And no matter what
season of life you're in, Like I nursed my babies
around the clock, Like I get it, I've been been
(14:52):
in that season completely, But there's still an opportunity for
at least fifteen minutes for yourself.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
The other big group or category that we have to
tackle into vote a lot of time too, is everything
else in the home. So taking care of the kids,
taking care of the home itself, and the marriage. Right,
that's a huge consumption of our life. And then the
third one is our work. If you're whether or not
(15:21):
you're working to earn money or you're giving of your
time and your gifts to the PTO or to your
local whatever. Right, it's very rare that a woman is
not doing something outside of being a wife and a mom,
and so there needs to be time for that. And
so those three things. When I sat down, I was like,
this is super easy. We don't have to mix this
(15:43):
all up. We're just going to do these three things right.
But essentially, you can't just pour into the kids once
a day. You've got to touch it before and after work.
It has to be touched, right. So this is where
my five time blocks come in place. So the very first,
first first part of the day is your morning routine block.
You focus on yourself. Then you bump into your am block,
(16:03):
you focus on the home, the kids, marriage, whatever needs
to be done there. Then you focus on your work,
and then you do it backwards. You go back to
focusing on your home, your kids, your marriage, all the things.
And then you have that little and that's your PM block,
and then you have your little little block at the
end of the day, your book nds of your day
is your nighttime routine block. And for me, like a
(16:23):
couple of nights a week that consists one night a
week that consists of a date night with my husband,
and then the rest of the nights of the week,
maybe once or twice I'm watching something on YouTube, a
podcast or something of some sort. And then the other
nights it's just me. I'm in a bath, I'm unwinding,
I'm reading, I'm journaling or whatever. And so those are
the five time blocks, and the goal is to get
(16:45):
your entire life out of every single nook and cranny
and get them put into these very specific time blocks.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I like that and just giving people the idea that yes,
you are a time block right like that. There doesn't
have to because I like, I think a lot of
people feel that, you know, all I'm ever doing is house, kids, work.
You know, it's there's there's no time for me. But
even if it's just a sliver at the beginning and
at the end, yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
It could be fifteen minutes, it doesn't have to be
two hours, which there, but it's still there. It's still
there and it's something to look forward to.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yeah, well, I'm curious, I mean, Telsey, because obviously this
is a show called Before Breakfast, so we're big on
morning routines here. What is your morning routine?
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Well, oddly enough, mine just changed drastically. Okay, my morning
routine for a real long time. For like the last
several years, we my husband and I spend a lot
of time separated in the morning. We read and I
kind of get ready for the day. I do check
(17:45):
in with my team. I do a quick power like
fifteen thirty minutes to address because I'm on the Pacific
time zone and everybody else is basically East. So by
the time I get to work, they're all like checking
out for the day. So I have to like plug
in with them early in the morning, and then I
would kind of open up the house. A lot of
people say that they wake up their house and put
(18:07):
their house to bed, you know, but I really, I
really do enjoy that. And then getting ready for the day.
That's what I was doing for a really long time.
Obviously making the bed there's little nuances within that. But
now I am the five am workout warrior, and that's
where we're at right now. So I'm up at four
forty five, We're at the gym at like five point fifteen,
(18:27):
and I get back home and we eat immediately and
get the kids to school. And my husband and I
are rotating every other day, so the days that I
take the kids and go straight to work, I get
to take a shower while the kids are getting ready
and then we flip flop that.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
And that's been working out really well.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
All right, well, we're going to take a quick ad
break and I'll be back with more from Chelsea jo Well,
I'm back talking with Chelsea Joe, who is the host
of the Systemize Your Life podcast. So I'm very curious
what inspired the you know, shift to being a five
point fifteen workout warrior person. Like what what I mean?
(19:13):
I am not I you know, despite hosting a show
called Before Breakfast, I am not a hardcore morning person.
So I'm always curious what makes that happen.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, Well, we were trying to work out in any
other time of the day and it was essentially taking
two hours. It literally will take two hours of my
day to go get there, warm up, and then my
four days so like warming up is like a thing
that has to be done at this point.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Can't just like dive in like I used to.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I just used to like show up to class and
like just hammer out a hardcore workout and be fine.
That Now like everything hurts and you know whatever. But
it just was eating up into work essentially, because we
really want to be available for our kids when they
get off of school. Woll and my husband recently retired
(20:03):
from the fire department, and we just had to make
a hard decision of like, can we get this done
in the morning so that we can still both run
our businesses and both for the most part be off
work by three thirty or four thirty every single day.
And I he and I both are really wonderful morning people,
(20:25):
but we also really like to stay up after the
kids go to.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Bed too, So we're like, what is this sleep thing?
Why do we have to do it so much?
Speaker 1 (20:32):
So your your two ends of the day are starting
to spread bigger, they're starting to get the bigger the
two time blacks at the end, well, because what time
do you need to go to bed then to wake.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Up that early? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (20:43):
We really want to be like in bed with lights
out at nine o'clock.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah, yeah, and that's hard.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
That's hard, especially if your kids are not going to
bed until probably well then no.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Now we have my kids. I sleep trained my second
one because my first one I did not, and I
thought every woman that sleep trained her child was a
terrible mother. And then I learned that there was very
great idea to sleep train your children. So with my
second when, we definitely did that. And she has gone
to bed like clockwork by like seven seven point thirty
(21:15):
and just as of late it's been eight o'clock. She
just went into third grade. But her older sister is
a huge influence on that because she's thirteen now and
all she wants to do from nine o'clock on is
talk for hours on end the teenage life, and so
we are trying to navigate that and it has looked
a little bit different for the thirteen year old. You know,
she now has her own nighttime routine that she navigates
(21:39):
independently after.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
We put her to bed.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Put her to bed because we're tired.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
We're like, we gotta go to bed. I can't stay
up late every night.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yeah, I'm a I have started to be among the
earlier people in my household going to bed so yeah,
it's one of those things. So, Telsey, I always ask
people on the show, what is something you've done recently
to take a day from great to.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
That's a really great question, to take a day from
great to awesome? Well, work out that takes my day
from great to awesome every single time without a shadow
of a doubt. But I think the second thing is,
and the thing that I've been focused on the most lately,
is definitely the way that we speak to ourselves and
(22:26):
just constantly. I call it flipping the script. So there's
a lot of people in my family that cycle really
negative thoughts often or they maybe they aren't even negative,
but they're definitely not encouraging or positive. And what we
think shapes the way that we make decisions. And my
(22:51):
husband's grandfather always said, where our thoughts go, our feet go.
And so when we're trying to take a day from
great to awesome, it's really important to care about the
kinds of thoughts and words that speak to ourselves.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
So using positive thoughts and in our minds to direct
where we're going. So, Chelsea, what are you looking forward
to right now?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
I'm looking forward to San Diego this weekend. We're taking
the kids to a really lovely, kind of last minute
summer wrap up trip to the beach in San Diego.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Oh that sounds fun.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
San Diego's gorgeous. So yeah, I assume you've been there before, right.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I grew up in a neighboring state
in Arizona, so we went a lot as a kid,
and it's going to be a great time. My youngest
one's never been to the beach. My oldest one has
only been like once when she was I don't know,
like five or six.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
So they're both going to have the time of their life.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
That's great. What a great hurrah before the end of
the summer. Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, well, if you love listening to podcasts, you can
come over. I've had a podcast for the last six years.
We've got over five hundred episodes that you can binge.
It's called Systemize your Life. Or you can have a
head over to the website Chelsea Joe dot Co. And
you'll find free resources there, a time blocking workbook, the
meal planning system. There's a quiz there that will tell
(24:20):
you what system you need to start with first.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
All of that's totally free and ready for you guys,
so head over.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah awesome, well please do head over there. And Chelsea,
thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to
everyone for listening. If you have feedback about this or
any other episode, you can always reach me at Laura
at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime, this is Laura,
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
(24:54):
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(25:16):
your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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