Episode Transcript
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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. It's part
of my interview series where I talk with fascinating people
about how they take their days from great to awesome
(00:25):
and they share tips that will hopefully help the rest
of us have better days as well. So today I
am excited to welcome Lisa Woodruft to the show. Lisa
is the owner of Organized three sixty five, a company
that teaches people how to make their lives better. She
is the creator of the famous Sunday Basket method of
life organization, which we will talk about, and she also
(00:48):
has all sorts of great other projects going on in
her life. So Lisa, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Laura, I'm excited that you are here. Maybe you could
tell our listeners a little bit about you and how
you wound up in this line of work.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Well, part of it was reading your books. They really
helped me conceptualize time differently. I've always been a person
that has wanted to squeeze every second out of every day,
very creative, and when I turned forty, I decided to
start my own company that someday would hopefully employ people.
So I've been doing this thirteen years, podcasting for ten
and I've really dove about as deep as you can
(01:27):
get into as to how do we manage our households?
How do we look at that both from a business
lens and as a home owner or somebody who lives
in a household, but also from an academic lens, and
how can we create operational systems that make it easier
for everyone instead of everyone having to reinvent the wheel
and create their own systems inside of households.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, and to that end, you actually went back to
school to research organization from sort of like a psychological
you know, organization management persons. Maybe you can talk a
little bit about that. What led to that.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, So in twenty twenty one I hired someone who
had a PhD. And we did academic level research in
order to figure out how much housework are we doing
or what is housework? And I didn't know much about academia,
and as we were doing our study, we stumbled upon
the fact that there is no definition of housework anywhere,
not in academia or anywhere, and After we did our study,
(02:25):
we found some significant results, and I realized that if
I wanted to keep researching this, I wanted to be
the researcher who did it. So at the age of
fifty one, I went back to school and I'm getting
my PhD. I'm at the end of my second year
and getting ready to start my dissertation. And I'm so
glad I did because there's so much amazing, awesome research
and literature out there already. But we have not truly
(02:46):
defined a lot of our household management roles or operational definitions,
and so the studies are not really comparable. And the
studies talk a lot about the problem, but we aren't
doing a lot of applying where we're applying a solution
and then seeing if that solution is significant, And that's
what I really want to do.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Well, that's really exciting. Yeah, I mean it makes sense.
It's an area that just people have not done a
whole lot of research into. I mean, obviously there's a
lot of sort of feminist writings back in the day
of housework being something that people spent time doing, but
I doubt it has been approached from a very systematic
(03:26):
perspective in that I always love studying time use and
so just even seeing how people spend their time in
their homes. It's just this area that everyone does, and
yet it wasn't deemed worthy of study. I mean probably
because it was mostly women doing it. I mean, I
guess that would be one of the reasons.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, And to your point, there are so many studies
and instead of looking at how we utilize households when
we move from our childhood home to our own home,
like from eighteen to eighty years old, all of the
studies strip away people who are single parents, strip away
people who are not married, and they narrow all of
their studies to married couples with children. Because you're right,
(04:10):
it's all rooted in feminist literature coming out of the
late seventies and early eighties, and so we have a
lot of theories about why women do more in married couples.
Do you realize that only forty percent of the United
States is married, and less than that even have children.
So there's sixty percent of the adult population that really
has not been studied at all.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah. No, fascinating, And I know you're going to come
up with some great stuff on that, but let's talk
a little bit about how Lisa organizes her days. So
tell us a little bit about your morning routine.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Oh, it's so simple, and I like that it's so simple,
and I talk about that all the time because I
think often we can think that our morning routines have
to be really elaborate. It's very simple. I take a shower.
I either curl my hair or I don't curl my hair.
That's a twenty minute decision right there. I wear the
same makeup every day, seven days a week. I'm one
of those always has makeup on. I grab my protein
(05:04):
bar and coffee and I'm out the door.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Awesome. And then what do you do once you get
to work?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
So this is what I realized. I have a morning, afternoon,
and evening routine at home, and I have a start
of the day, mid day and end of day routine
at work. And those six routines really create a scaffolding
for me. So when I get to work, I like
to say that I'm going to jump right into work,
but I never do. I always make a coffee, I
walk around and I talk with the other team members
(05:30):
that are here. I check Instagram too many times, I
check my email, I get everything situated and it's usually
about thirty minutes before I actually hop into my first
meeting or whatever I'm going to work on for the day.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah, so tell me a little bit about Organized three
sixty five of the business, because you said, you know,
one of your goals starting it, you wanted to employ people,
and obviously you have a team. Now what exactly does
the business do and what does that team look like?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah? So I was a school teacher and a former
stay at home mom, so I do not have any
business training whatsoever. So when everybody said like, oh, you
could have products, I was like, Okay, you can create courses, Okay,
you can have a podcast. I'm always like yes. I
said yes and to everything. So we do a lot
of things here at Organize three sixty five. We have trademarks,
patent patents, copyrights, but basically we're an adult school. So
(06:17):
if you want to learn the skill of organizing as
an educator, I've created wrap around services. So you mentioned
the Sunday Basket, which we'll talk about. Every single product
that we have has a physical component like you're getting
your school supplies or your office supplies. It has an
online teaching component where I have courses and lessons that
go along with the physical product. And then we have
a community aspect, so there are co working times for
(06:40):
all the different products, so you can get online every
week and literally do that activity with someone live.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
And many of those activities are about organizing the household,
organizing paper, things like that. Yep.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
So we have weekly for the Sunday Basket, which is
planning your week. We have weekly for the Workbox, which
is planning your work. We have weekly for our Productive Solution,
which is organizing your home. And then we don't have
weekly for the paper. We usually do those in weekend
retreats or we have certified organizers. So we'll walk you
through taking your file cabinet and turning it into binders.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Awesome. Well, We're going to take a quick ad break
and then I'm going to be back with Lisa talking
a little bit more about how you might organize yourself
with some of her tips. Well, we are back for
those just joining us. This is before Breakfast, but this
is a longer version of the show. Once a week
(07:34):
or so, I am interviewing interesting people about how they
take their lives from great to awesome and the tips
they have to help us as well. So one of
Lisa's great products over at Organized three sixty five is
called the Sunday basket, And obviously you can get an
actual basket, but it's also a method of organizing your life.
(07:54):
So tell us what the Sunday basket is and why
people find this useful.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
So, as I mentioned in our last part of the episode,
you know, one of the things that I've realized inside
of households is that there are no operational systems. Like
you move into a household, you literally have no furniture,
you have nothing like you have to build everything from scratch,
and that includes your operational systems. So the Sunday basket
is a kindergarten simple easy way to take all of
(08:21):
the decisions that come at you during the week, save
them for Sunday, and make all of your decisions at
one time and plan out your week. Many productive people
already have a similar situation or process that they do
that they have created on their own. The difference to
the Sunday basket is that you literally could just buy
it and it comes to you in the mail, and
I walk you through how to do this in a
very simple, easy way, and it's basic point it's just
(08:45):
taking your mail, your decisions, going through your text messages,
your email on Sunday, making all your decisions and planning
your week. However, the longer you use the system, the
more you realize that you can organize all the things
we do as household managers. Like if you do have kids,
their school things can be in there. We have slash
podcasts for any ongoing household projects that you have going
(09:06):
on in there, anything for yourself personally, because often our
projects at home can't be done in one week. If
you're going to do remodeling, you're going to have to
save money for that for years and then it's going
to take months to do it. Where do you put
all that stuff while you're doing it or while you're waiting?
And that's the problem that the Sunday basket solves.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
So it's a physical spot where you corral all the
things that you need to deal with. So you know,
as an example, I spend time signing children's permission slips.
Presumably those would go in the basket and then I
sign them. But you say corraling like your text messages,
what does that even look? I mean, because we have
a basket, my text messages are on my phone. I
(09:46):
assume most peoples are there. How does the basket interact
with the text messages on your phone? Yeah, so this.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Is you know, and I am going to be doing
my dissertation on the Sunday Basket. I believe that it
improves your working memory and reduces task switching and opens
up your capacity during the week and reduces your cognitive load.
And it does that by not having to remember everything
in your head. So part of the Sunday Basket process
is you literally go through your text messages over the
(10:13):
last week and make sure you reply to everything. You
go through your email, or you get to the point
where you're used to going through your email and realize, oh,
this is something I could do on Sunday. You literally
print it out and then most of my Sunday basket
is notes to myself. Like if we were on video,
you would see tons of notes around me. I've written
six to myself this morning of things I need to
remember to do but don't have to be done immediately.
(10:35):
It's kind of like a to do list, but they're
all on individual pieces of paper. That way, you can
write notes anywhere, and you can also toss them when
you're done with them.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, so you're actually if you think, at some point
during the week, you know, I should reach out to
Bob to see you know about the neighborhood association thing
for X, Like you write that on a piece of paper,
you stick the paper in the Sunday basket, and then
on Sunday when you pull that out, you call Bob.
Exactly how that works.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yes, And that's what we all do, except for we
write it down on a piece of paper or we
text ourselves a message, but we don't trust that we're.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Actually going to do that.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
So then our brain is like, call Bob, Call Bob.
You're like, forget it. I'll just stop everything I'm doing
right now and call Bob. So I don't forget to
call Bob. And so once you create a better system
for having thoughts or getting requests at any time and
delaying those decisions to Sunday and knowing you'll actually do it,
that's where the increased mental capacity comes during the week.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Excellent. Yeah, I talk about this some with One of
my favorite tips for people is to batch the little things.
And I tend to create what I call a Friday
punch list for me Friday is when I process a
lot of these things. It's just a time that works
for me, but I can see that Sunday would work
for other folks. And I create a list of all
(11:51):
the little things that are non urgent but I need
to get to And the idea, which I think is
what you're getting at as well with Sunday basket, is
then I don't have to devote mental space to calling
Bob the rest of the week because Bob is on
the list for Friday, and I have a time when
I know I will attack everything on the list that
(12:14):
I have, you know, delegated the little things I'm batching
for Friday. So is that the same mental process there?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yes, definitely. And you're a very productive person and you're
so far down on your productivity journey. How you got
to the point where you knew to do that and
then had a cadence for that? The Sunday basket is
the kindergarten version, like, how do you get from having
all these thoughts and being so overwhelmed and so far
behind you don't know what to do to you know,
living an ultra productive organized life like Laura, how do
(12:41):
you even learn that? So it also teaches that skill.
You can do the Sunday basket any day of the week.
We don't choose Friday because we do all that for
our work stuff on Friday, So we do the exact
same thing for the Sunday basket on Friday with a
Friday work box.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
So Sunday the Sunday basket, I mean, at least in
the way you're teaching it to people. It's more for
household management, right, So that's not where you're processing the
work stuff necessarily. So for people who are maintaining that
strict separation between work stuff and personal stuff, the ideas
you do Sunday basket for personal but then you also
have a Friday idea for your work stuff. Right.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yes, again this is kind of based on an idea
out of your book one hundred and sixty eight hours.
You have more time than you think. When you said
that if you start at eight am Monday until eight
pm Thursday is half of your week, and then eight
pm Thursday until eight am Monday, I was like mind blown,
like are you kidding me? Like that's really half? And
I was like, you're right, it is half. And so
(13:39):
while I still work on Friday, Friday is definitely my
flex day where my housework and my work come together.
But Monday morning until Thursday night, like I am strictly
work work even in the evenings, Like I don't do
housework Monday through Thursday evenings because I know that if
I really focus on my work Monday through Thursday and
Friday's kind of flex, then I tend to focus more
(14:01):
on my family and my house Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and
so I actually have a better work life balance when
I actually divide things out this way, Laura, I've taken
it so far that we send out our weekly newsletter
at seven o'clock on Thursdays, because that's when I want
people to start transitioning into thinking about your household management
role because it is a full time role. Like you've
got a work role, household management role, I of course
(14:22):
also have a full time student role. So I have
so many hats that I'm wearing that I'm very very
strict with these times, and these boxes allow me to
have all the thoughts I have. So Friday, before I
leave work, I touch everything and make sure that I've
got it so that I can fully transotion over into
my household management role, run my household management role on Sunday,
make sure I get all that done fully transition back
(14:44):
over into work.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah, I mean, it definitely seems you'd get organized and
you know what's coming in and not feel like things
are slipping through the cracks. I wonder when people first
hear this of the like, this sounds like, you know,
I could spend my entire Sunday dealing with the stuff
that's in the Sunday basket. What your promise is that
it does eventually save you time, correct.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
So I mean kind of, So the Sunday basket is
going to take you ninety minutes on Sunday, but you
also spend that time during the week. I'm just changing
when you do it, and it actually is faster than
doing it during the week because you don't have the
task switching. But what I've realized is, you know, every
four to six weeks, I'll spend three hours on the
Sunday basket. I know you guys have all just tuned out.
(15:26):
Don't tune out. Here's the thing. We have a lot
of CFO management that we do in our households that
can't be done Monday through Friday, and five minutes stretches
of time, and even when you're processing the regular weekly
stuff on Sunday, you're going to need another ninety minutes
to actually call the IRS and do whatever that is.
Or our insurance guy retired, I had to get a
(15:48):
new insurance guy.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Like when do you.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Do all that? Where do you schedule all that? It
just takes a little bit longer time. So doing those
CFO tasks take ninety minutes about every four to six weeks.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
In addition, yeah, well that's one of the reasons I
do a lot of my organization on Friday is because
then I can make those calls on Friday, because you know,
presumably the prospective insurance people are at their desk on Friday,
whereas they may not be on Sunday, which would make sense,
but you have to assign a time for things that
come out of something like the Sunday basket.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Then yeah, and I mean, I work full time, so
I can't do it on Friday, So I do it
on Sunday. And then I do absolutely everything I can
do on Sunday, and then the few things that you
can't do on Sunday, I then schedule on my calendar
to do, you know, first thing on a Monday, Tuesday
or Wednesday or in a lunch hour or something like that.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Awesome. So, Lisa, I mean you're obviously a very organized person.
What is your biggest time management challenge right now? The PhD?
The PhD well that little thing.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
So I schedule twenty five hours a week for my
PhD because I mean, that clock is sticking and those
assignments are due. I'm better at some things than other things.
You know, going back to school in your fifties, it
was a little rusty the first couple of terms. Last term,
I took an extra class, which was great because I
have less classes to do, but I really it was
(17:12):
too much and I was really out of balance and
it was the family that suffered during that term. So
I have it all blocked out. I actually work Monday
through Saturday. I work a six hour day on Saturday
and two nights during the week. I don't do household
related things that I work on the PhD. But being
scheduled and knowing it was going to take twenty five
hours a week and blocking out that time half day Thursday,
(17:34):
half day Monday, all day Thursday, six hours Saturday, I've
been able to do it and still travel and all
the things they said I wouldn't be able to do
while I got a PhD. I'm still doing all those things.
But you have to be like so organized and when
it's time to do the PhD, like I can't do
some random organizing project instead, I have to like start reading,
start writing, don't mess around.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Absolutely carving out the time for it. For sure. We're
going to take one more quick ad break and then
I will be back with more from Lisa Woodroff. Well,
we are back. I am interviewing Lisa Woodruff, who is
the owner of Organized three sixty five, a company that
(18:17):
will teach you how to organize your life. She studies
household systems of how people organize all the work that
goes into maintaining a household. So, Lisa, I wonder if
you could share just a quick tip or two something
that you use in your life that has made you
more efficient or helped you save time.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah, it's very simple, and you're going to say, oh,
can't make that big of a difference, so you're going
to resist doing it, But I say, just try it
for a week and see what happens. So my first
one is to literally write down everything you think or
you want to do on individual index cards, so just
grab a back of index cards or you know, a
small notepad. Don't use sticky notes. That doesn't work as well.
(18:58):
But literally I have to get in so I want
to get my haircut. I want to start a five
to ozho one C three. It doesn't matter how big
or how small it is. Every single thing goes on
an individual card. And the reason why is number one.
You'll just record a lot more if you have to
record it on a list. See my big Which list
does it go on? Which order? Am I going to
do it? Just the individual cards? If it can wait
till Sunday, it goes in the Sunday basket. You process
(19:20):
it on Sunday. And I found this writing one thing
down on one card very freeing because I just write
everything down and then also you may find they're done.
You can just toss them and then you can also
group like items together and they become a project. So
stop trying to use your brain to remember things and
just allow it to process things. That would be my
first one.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
I love it one in the second.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
One is very Laura vanderkam Esk, which is like record
everything on your calendar so the thing that you might
be missing on your calendar, which people in my audience
usually say once they start doing it, they can't believe
it is your drive time, like how much time you
spend driving. I have multiple calendars. I have a forward
facing corporate calendar. I have a corporate calendar where I
(20:06):
schedule out all the work that I'm going to do
that is not meeting work so that people can still
schedule meetings with me. And then I have a personal calendar.
And more than that, those are the only ones we'll
talk about now. So every single day, all day long,
I am recording how I use my time, like I
have a perpetual time diary that goes back like five
years in Google calendar, because I want to know how
(20:27):
much time I'm spending on everything. And with the PhD,
I've been really, really purposeful and making sure I spend
time with my husband, time with my daughter and my
grandson who live with us, so that I'm still making
sure that I hit those family components. They think they're
not getting enough time, I can tell you exactly how
much time they're getting. They're getting ridiculous amount of time.
So everybody's getting time, and I know where my time
is going, so write it down. If you're not good
(20:50):
at scheduling in advance, sometimes it's helpful to schedule after
you've done things, so you can see where your time went,
and then you can start making modifications to how you're
spending your time after you see where it's going.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
I love it well. I'm a big fan of time diaries.
Longtime listeners know that I've been tracking my time for
about nine and a half years now, so it's good
to see where it all goes. And again, yes, I
can show how much time I've been spending with everyone,
and they may have their own impressions of it. But
we can't claim zero because that is not true. Of course,
(21:22):
we can't claim other things that might be over the top,
because I do not spend my entire life emptying the dishwasher,
much as I sometimes think I do. My time logs
will show otherwise, even if that is the story I
am telling myself. So, Lisa, I wonder if you can
share something you've done recently to take a day from
great to awesome. I mean, maybe this is something you've
(21:42):
done with your family, with your grandson or something like that.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Kin you know, as we were talking about tracking our
time and making sure that our family gets enough of
our time. I would say that now that I'm in
my fifties and I embarked on this PhD, my family
was not like, yay, my mom, that's gonna go do it.
And I was like, yeah, that's great. I'm doing it anyway,
and I'm doing more of that. I'm doing it anyway.
(22:07):
Like I now do jigsaw puzzling, even with a PhD.
I'm doing jigsaw puzzling from like seven to nine pm
after I take my long bath, and I have nights
where I don't do the PhD at all, and also
I don't put my grandson to bed, and I don't
empty the dishwasher or do the dishes. Like I literally
am putting myself on my schedule. And my kids are grown,
so they're older. But I think that we all should
(22:29):
be able to you know, I school Instagram for half
an hour and I don't care, and I put it
on my calendar. It's okay, Like we are worthy of
being put on the calendar just for something we want
to do that doesn't have to have a financial or
a productivity value to it.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Absolutely, though, I love the idea of actually putting thirty
minutes of Instagram on the calendar because then it's chosen.
It has a start time and an end time, and
you know how it will fit with your day, as
opposed to randomly picking up the phone to look at
Instagram and then you know, yes, a similar time could
go or more, but you feel bad about it because
(23:06):
there were other things you felt you should be doing
as opposed to it being what you have chosen for
that time.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Yeah, I allow myself now to just have fun time.
Another thing I do is I play this silly little
game on my phone when I'm sitting around with the
family and we're just kind of talking instead just you know,
eyeballs on everybody, I just get out the phone. I'm
like playing this mindless game while we're chatting and the
grandson's running around. Like the kids play on their phone
all the time. Why can't I play on my phone
every once in a while. So a couple of days
(23:32):
a week, you'll just see me like for thirty minutes
playing this game until it tells me how to pay
them two dollars and ninety nine cents. I'm like, oh,
I guess I'm done for the day.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Now, done for the day. Now, that's the dividing line
once they start charging you exactly. Lisa, what are you
looking forward to right now?
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I'm really looking forward to the research I'm going to
be able to do and to be able to create
more systems like the Sunday Basket, and also to make
them more generalizable and more accessible to everyone. So I
am looking on starting a five oh one C three.
That is one of my little index cards because I
am starting to realize how everyone needs operational systems at home.
(24:09):
I'm talking to people in Habitat for Humanity here in Cincinnati, Ohio.
I'm talking to the Free Store Food Bank. I'm talking
to a group that moves people from homelessness into households,
and I'm really saying that once we move people into households,
or once they graduate from high school and they're on
the Free Store Food Bank, like how are they going
to run their household? There are some management things that
(24:29):
everyone needs that are not being taught, and I feel
that's part of how people fall back into homelessness or
are not able to be self sufficient, especially if you're
young and you are a single mother, which when my
daughter gave birth, forty percent of women in twenty twenty one,
we're single women giving birth and so you know you
(24:50):
don't have that marriage structure, that cohabitating partner with you
to help you in the household. There are a lot
of needs out there that are not being addressed because
they're not being.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Looked absolutely well. I know you will add to the
discussion a lot on that. So, Lisa, can you please
let our listeners know where they can find you?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Sure? The company is called Organized three sixty five. I
have a podcast that's been running for ten years and
I'm most active on Instagram under Organized three sixty five.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Awesome, Well, Lisa, thank you so much for joining us,
and thanks to my Before Breakfast listeners for sticking around
for these longer episodes. I hope you are enjoying them.
Feel free to send me feedback at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. And 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
(25:48):
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
(26:10):
your favorite shows.