Is your child’s bedroom a perpetual whirlwind of toys, clothes, and clutter, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and clueless about where to begin? If you’re nodding in agreement, you’re not alone.
Many moms find themselves standing at the threshold of a chaotic and disorganized kid’s bedroom, wondering how to transform it into a tidy, manageable space.
The good news is that there’s a golden window, a magical moment of opportunity, when it comes to decluttering and organizing your kid’s bedroom.
This window is the key to not only getting started but also maintaining a clean and organized space for the long term.
Say goodbye to chaos and hello to a beautifully organized kid’s bedroom.
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About Lisa
Lisa Woodruff is the founder & CEO of Organize 365. Lisa and 87% of Americans believe organization is a learnable skill. Yet less than 18% of those same Americans feel they are organized.
As the host of the top-rated Organize 365 Podcast, with 21 million downloads & counting, Lisa shares strategies for reducing the overwhelm, clearing the mental clutter, and living a productive and organized life.
Connect with Lisa
- Website: http://organize365.com/
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/organize365
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisawoodruff/
Links Mentioned in This Episode
- Website: http://organize365.com/
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/organize365
- Podcast
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Transcript of This Episode
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Hi, Ray, welcome to the podcast. Lisa, I’m excited to talk to you today,
Lisa Woodruff
Tony, and thank you so much for having me.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Yes, you have been on my dream list that people to talk to you. So when they reached out back and said, Yes, Lisa would love to be on your podcast. I was like, wait. I was super excited to see, I had the opportunity to talk to you one because I look up to you so much because of all of your wonderful organization skills. And then too, because of everything that you’ve been doing, you’ve been doing a lot. And so I really admire you. And I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today.
Lisa Woodruff
Oh, my goodness, thank you. And it’s it’s so funny to be on the receiving end of that because I have the same thoughts being on your podcast and, and being on other podcasts. I think that we tend to put people up on pedestals or we tend to think that once people do something, if you do anything for a long period of time, you are going to have success like following one course until success as John Lee Dumas says is like when you focus on something, you become an expert in that and you end up having success. But I think that having conversations with people is my favorite thing to do. I love to talk to people. And I think most people feel that way. So thank you.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Yes, definitely, definitely. No, I know, there’s probably people who have never heard of Lisa Woodruff. So I just wanted you to share a little bit about you what you do and who you serve.
Lisa Woodruff
Yes, well, I’m old. I just start with that now that I’m 51. I’m like, oh, yeah, once you’re over 50 year old, but I plan to live to 100. So really, I’m only like half my age. So my name is Lisa Woodruff. I’ve always lived in the state of Ohio. Born in the Cleveland area raised in Akron, I live in Cincinnati, now. Went to college got an early childhood and elementary education degree. I was a teacher, we adopted our two kids, I’ve raised them well, in air quotes. They’re 22 and 23. Right now, our 22 year old has a two year old baby and they live with us. So I’m a grandma, I was a stay at home mom. And I was in direct sales, lots of direct sales companies, leaders and lots of direct sales companies. And the year when I turned 40, my kids were in middle school. And I just I was at the bottom of the pit of despair. I was overweight, on antidepressants in debt. I mean, I was just my parents had gotten divorced, my father had passed away, like it just was the lowest low I’d ever been in. And I realized that if I did not make any changes, personally, myself, that was going to be my story for the rest of my life. And the women in my family live into their 90s. And I was like, No way. I’m living this way for 50 years. So I quit my teaching job because my kids needed me back at home, even though they were in middle school. And I decided that I would start my own career. I’m the daughter of four generations of females who have owned their own companies and men who have done the same. So I just I always knew I’d have a my own business. And I thought, what would that one be like if if I was going to do it, if I was going to believe in myself and do it, what would it be? And I looked back on everything I’ve done in the first 40 years of my life all the way back to my teenage years. And everything was successful because I either organized someone or I was organized. So I started a blog called organized 365 had no idea how I would monetize that. But I knew it’d be good for SEO. And I just got started. And here we are almost 12 years later, I’ve been in a service in home service, professional organization, company. Blog turned into a podcast. Now we have physical products courses. And like I said in the introduction, when you do the same thing for 12 years, it grows, it develops and you become an expert in that field. It’s just the tenacity of not having switched fields is part of why I’ve been successful in helping people get their homes and small businesses organized.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Yes. And one of the things that I really wanted to kind of highlight here is the first part of your journey. I know that you had spent time helping people organize their homes, which I thought was really, really cool. And I listened to an podcast episode with you talking about just how you got started. And you’re saying like, yeah, you’re in people’s homes, and you just loved it. And I’m sure there were, I guess some common themes or certain things that you were seeing with some of the home owners as well as some of the women in particular, especially as we’re speaking to busy working moms. So I’m just wondering, what were some of the struggles that you were seeing with people who were like, I just can’t get organized. I don’t even know where to start that kind of situation.
Lisa Woodruff
Yes, I love this question, because let’s just start if you don’t know me, I am not your Pinterest organizer. Like my house is not perfect. It’s pretty good because you know, I’ve been organizing it for so long, but I’m just not I’m not a perfectionist, and I’m not going to sell you a done picture. I’m a teacher. So I lead the process of doing. So when I think back to the in home organizing that I did, that’s why I have a podcast. Because what I realized was a, it’s extremely expensive to have an in home Professional Organizer. But be, it doesn’t actually solve the problem long term, if you can pay to have your problem solved, that’s great. But you’re going to need to pay to have your problem solved again, because you didn’t learn the skill. And along the way, with my clients who had less dollars, but they were more consistent with hire me, like once a month or once a quarter, over the course of a few years, they became organized people. And the first time I realized that organization was a learnable skill with my clients, was when I had two of them back to back, call me and cancel our organizing session that month. And they said that they were done being organized. And I was like, What do you mean, you’re done being organized? Like your hot mess? You need me? And they said, no, no, we’ve been listening to the questions that you asked us. One was a couple and they said my husband, I just started asking each other those questions. And we finished. And the other person said the same thing. They’d been writing down the questions that I asked. And they realized that they weren’t finished. And I was like, at first I was petrified because I was like, This is my business. And secondly, I was like, Wait, if you learn the right questions to ask yourself, if you learn the way that I see your house, and you understand it, then anyone can learn the skill of organizing. And as a teacher, I want to teach the skill of organizing. So instead of starting a YouTube channel, I started a podcast one, because I’m 50. I don’t want to do my hair and makeup all the time. And that seems like a lot of time. But to when you’re listening to a podcast, and I’m sharing a life experience, or I’m asking you questions, you’re thinking about your space, you’re not thinking about what my speak space looks like and what I have or don’t have compared to what you have or don’t have, you’re only thinking about the act of organizing. That was the first thing. I have another one. But did you want me to stop there?
Toni-Ann Mayembe
No, no, no, this is good. This is good.
Lisa Woodruff
Okay, so the second thing that I noticed and you know, most people who will hire someone to organize their home have some kind of discretionary income. And what I noticed from these women who did have discretionary income that were either in the workforce, or they had been in the workforce was that their homes were almost like pages for them. And inside of their homes, they felt like they were not as successful as they were in the workplace. They were, they had a lot of negative self talk both for themselves. And sometimes their spouses or their in laws would also feed into that, not enoughness. And they would feel like they didn’t have permission to do anything other than work if they were even still working and doing their housework until they got an A plus of their work. And we’re never done because you’re never going to be done. It’s an impossible task. Even once you hire me, as soon as I leave, like you’re not done again. And so I was like, you know, I don’t feel like men are holding women back as much as our house are holding us back and our and our expectation of what we think our houses should look like and function like and be before we’re allowed to do what we allow for our spouses, and then our children and our friends, like we want all of them to do be and have anything they want to and spend their leisure time pursuing their unique giftings. But once you become a homeowner, as a woman, and especially if you have children, the standard to which you hold yourself accountable becomes so high that you can never reach it, that you never are allowed to give yourself that permission to have just fluff leisure just to have it.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Nice. Now this is all really good. And I’m wondering, going back to the first part where you’re talking about the couple was saying they learn the questions that you’re asking, and they were able to solve the problem. And so what are some of those questions that help them to get out of that unorganized state and get into the organized state?
Lisa Woodruff
Yeah, I know people always ask me that. And like turn, I don’t know what the questions are. They are different depending on what space that you’re in. But generally, it’s the cycle of organizing that I teach. So there is a three part cycle to organizing decluttering organizing and increasing productivity. And most of the tools and podcasts and YouTubes and everything that you see either focus on the decluttering getting rid of what you don’t need, or the increasing productivity which is making things digital making them repetitive outsourcing them whatever. Very few focus on this in ternal part which is organizing. And organizing always happens in analog. Organizing always happens in analog. Now that makes sense when you’re cleaning out a refrigerator obviously all the items are 3d, you can’t possibly organize those digitally. But I say that because the questions that you ask apply to your email inbox, and they applied to your calendar, and they apply to how you spend your time and how you organize your workweek. And those are all things that are not 3d. But when you put them on index cards, they become tangible. And you can reorganize them in the tactile world, and then you can increase productivity. So I like to say that the first questions are in decluttering, you’ve probably heard all of these before. Do you want it? Do you need it? Do you love it? You know, all of those questions, we get very good at that. When you get into organizing the questions are, do you have enough of what you need? And so for me, are you still there?
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Yes, I’m still here. Sorry. Okay, my screen. I just like too many noises in the background. So I have no, no,
Lisa Woodruff
my screen went blank as like, oh my gosh, okay, sorry. Sorry, I’ll have to have it. So what I noticed in the organizing, especially for me that year, I turned 40, I organized my house for myself, as I was organizing houses for other people. And as I was learning how to do for others, what I knew how to do for myself, but it took me a full year to get my house all the way organized, because it had become so disorganized. I mean, I, I looked in closets, and I was like, I don’t even recognize any of this stuff. And how did it get here, and I definitely am the one that bought it and put it there, like, but I just, I had had seven years of trauma. And I just didn’t even remember living through those years, let alone all the things that I had purchased. But when I started organizing my house, and I don’t think enough people talk about this is usually when you have had it, and you are going to get organized. It’s not because you just won the lottery and you want to go to The Container Store. It is because you are where I was when I was 40. And your life has fallen apart to the point where you’re like, well, everything’s a mess. So how much worse could it get if I actually organized my closet, you know, and I didn’t have any money, I had no money i negative my I gave up my job and and we needed the money. We were already in debt, but I need my time, more like everything was lack. And when I went to organize my closet, nothing fit because of the size of my body. And the clothes that were nice, had been bought for me 10 years ago. So to get rid of everything that didn’t fit was I was down to three outfits and those looked pitiful. So sometimes when you’re ready to get organized, the decluttering part is not necessarily a help, because it shows how much you actually don’t have. And the second part of organizing is sometimes you need more. So in the case of the closet, I needed more, but also my kids were middle school going into high school, and so they were in our kitchen. So I needed more than one ice cream scoop, I needed more than two spatulas because I would cook and then they would cook, but we only ran the dishwasher every other day. So we’d run out of things. And but the dishwasher wouldn’t be full enough to run. So some things I needed to duplicate or triplicate inside of the kitchen because we were all becoming adults living in this house together. It wasn’t me taking care of little kids anymore. So that organizing part often happens when you are transitioning from one stage of life to another or in some big life transition like having a baby or moving or getting a promotion or your youngest child enters high school or college or something like that. And you realize that a lot of what you have served in the last phase of life you were in. So yes, it needs to be decluttered. But also you need to add in things for this new phase of life that you’re going into. And just to not leave you hanging. What I did with my closet was I did declutter some of the things that were still nice that didn’t fit me anymore. And I sold them at a resale shop. And then I use the money that I earned at the resale shop in the resale shop to buy myself new clothes. And I actually ended up getting a very nice new to me wardrobe and found that I liked White House Black Market and some other key retailers that I would have never gone into those stores through that resale shop. And by the end of the second year, I had a really nice secondhand wardrobe that was new to me. And I looked great all the time, but I did it all through retail arbitrage.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Now I really like all of what you’re sharing in particular, I like the part where you’re talking about decluttering in organization, because that’s one thing that I haven’t had guests really talk a lot about. So I know the decluttering part, like you said, you know, do you want it? Do you need it? Do you love it? All that kind of those good questions. But just to unpack a little bit more about transitioning, when it comes to that being an indicator that it’s time to start organizing. I know with certain seasons too as well, that can bring up the need to organize things as well. So I was wondering if you’ve ever found that different seasons have been one of those indicators too as well like it’s Time to reorganize things for you.
Lisa Woodruff
Yes, so I call these golden windows, and we have three natural ones every single year. So the end of the calendar year into the new year is a golden window everyone wants to get organized then. And then the other two, vary a little bit depending on where you live in the United States or in the world. But here in Ohio, it would definitely be Memorial Day and Labor Day, because that’s when the pool opens. And that’s when the poll closes. But if you’re in like the south and may more be, you know, earlier in May, or the beginning of October, it’s kind of when the seasons change, and you’re going to change over your wardrobe. Whenever you notice that there’s a change in the air temperature, you also change the foods, you eat the clothes, you wear a lot of those things. So that is a natural jumping off point of like, Oh, I’m going to clean out my closet, or I’m going to reorganize my closet. And then you can take that energy and you can move it into the kitchen, and you can move it into the living spaces. And the more you grab onto that energy, the longer it can last. So the longest lasting energy is actually the August into September energy. And the shortest energy is the start of the summer energy.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
I like oh, this this is really good. I like these go to Windows. Now. When this episode actually airs, it will be kind of going into one of these golden windows as far as some of the change in seasons in the air temperature changes. So I’m just wondering for the mom, that is just like, I don’t even know where to start. Where would you have that moms start first when it comes to organizing?
Lisa Woodruff
Yeah, and this is going to be like the November December timeframe? Yes. Okay. So I’m thinking specifically of moms of kids, school aged kids. So we’re thinking, you know, like 13. And under is that fair? That sounds good. Okay, so the energy that you’re going into is, I have just spent every single nickel I have on stuff that you are going to open sometime later in December. And yet I can’t even walk through this house because there are so many toys everywhere. So you have the energy of like, we have to declutter everything because you know what is coming, but the kids don’t know what is coming. So they’re holding on to everything for dear life. So what I would say to you on that is decluttering day is December 26. Now, if you can have a decluttering day like the 15th through the 22nd, whatever the first day of winter break is for your kids, when they’re getting out of school, they will usually give up a certain portion of their toys, to great time to clean their room, hey, you know The holidays are coming. So we need to clean our rooms, kids will usually get rid of maybe 20 25% of what they should get rid of at that point. That is a good first step. Plus it keeps them busy. Then on December 26, or whatever day after whatever holiday you have that week, that last week of the year after the holidays, and before they start school again, that’s when you say okay, we’re going to do a second cleaning of your room. Now that you’ve seen the new things, what do you want to get rid of and they will get rid of a lot more. One of the things I wanted to say earlier about decluttering and organizing is if you are used to and I just told you to decluttering things if you’re used to decluttering in order to feel like you’re back in control of your life, you will tend to over declutter in order to feel like you’re in control and actually get rid of things that you still need. So that is when you then have decluttering regret is because you didn’t actually do organizing. So step two is if you have the financial resources, or if you can plan for it now, getting a bookshelf getting a cube unit from like Ikea or Target or Walmart. Do not get the closet made cubes, they’re nine inch by nine inch, get whatever brand has 13 inch by 13 inch, its threshold at Target, it’s Better Homes and Gardens at Walmart. It’s the IKEA collax system that has a big enough cube, buy a cube system for every single child that you have in their room. And then start to use those as many containers so maybe they have four cubes for Legos and one cube for Polly Pockets or I don’t even know the games anymore. And stuff and art cube a homework cube because kids bedrooms are mini apartments. And when you start thinking about your child’s bedroom as a mini apartment, you’ll realize that they have in their bedroom representation of almost everything you have in your entire house. They have little storage areas, they have little like snack areas, they have a work area, they have a clothing area, they have a hobby area, and these cubes create like a bunch of little rooms inside of your child’s bedroom. So that is a great thing. You could buy it you know and and put it in the week before you celebrate the holidays. You could do it over Thanksgiving weekend and like organize their bedrooms then. And then if you’re listening to this later and you’re like oh great. We’re going into summer. I’m going to do at least a set and I’m going to declare Are all of my kids toys, do not do that. Do not do that. You want to keep every single thing possible in May and June because your kids get bored in the summer, in even if they’ll only play with it once was like another 20 minutes that you didn’t have to entertain them or shell out dollars for something new. So you want to declutter toys heavily in September and December, but not in May. So in those golden windows, there’s a different thing each time that you should be focusing on.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
This is so so good. Oh, my goodness. Where do I want to start? Okay, you gave us some really good stuff for decluttering. And well, yeah. decluttering. As far as like timelines for that, because I know that that has always been my struggle, because I have had the declutter, regret. I went in the kitchen, and I like just started decluttering like crazy. And I ended up throwing away. What was it the spatula is that I wanted? Oh, my God, like, I made a spatula away. I didn’t throw that away. And it was because I was like, Yeah, I don’t need all of these. And actually, I did. So I’m glad you brought up declutter regret, because I think that’s something that we don’t talk about often. And and it’s a very real thing, especially if you’re, you’re trying to get back control of things, and you just feel like you just have too much stuff. But I wanted you to talk to us a little bit more about the sorry, I’m looking at my notes, I wrote a lot of stuff while you’re talking about, okay, the kids bedroom and how you’re saying that their bedrooms are a mini apartment, I can definitely see that. And I was just wondering if there is another room in the home that you have found that can be like that, where it’s one room, but it functions in many different ways. And that’s one room that we need to pay a little bit more attention to as well.
Lisa Woodruff
Yes, okay, I want to finish up on another thought. So that putting the cube system in the kids room, that is the organizing piece. And that organizer will then create the limit for how many new things come in, because you only have so many cubes, when you’re talking about the kitchen, because the same thing, you’re going to want to declutter your kitchen, towards the end of the year, you will have just had Thanksgiving and whatever December holidays that you celebrate, and so likely very few people make turkeys in January. So when you get that decluttering energy in your kitchen, and you want to for the new year, focus on whatever your health and wellness goals are going to be and you don’t want all the cookie baking supplies in your kitchen anymore. That’s fine. Just get a plastic tub with a lid or two and put everything baking related everything Turkey related everything, you know, November December baking and cooking related in these bins and label them in a storage area. And then that way, it’s out of your kitchen for 10 months of the year. But you haven’t actually gotten rid of it yet. This is another thing about organizing like you want to have what you need where you need it. But you don’t have to have everything in that location, it’s okay to have offsite storage for your kitchen. So when you pull out everything for the holidays, you would pull out these kitchen bins as well. Alright, so on to the mini apartment. There is not any other space in your house that is as equally complex as a child’s bedroom. Maybe the family room, maybe the storage room, but not really. By the way the storage room is your internal prepaid for store, we could talk about that later if you want. I have created all of these acronyms and mental pictures of these spaces, because our homes, our homes are where we spend our entire lives. And you will be born in a home you will pass away and like you will spend your entire lifetime in a home and over the type of that time of that lifetime the home will function very differently for you. So a child’s bedroom is a mini apartment and usually by the age of seven. And any kids who listen to the organized 365 podcast, they know that they have a bedroom. That is a mini apartment by the way, the parents have a condo anyways. I love it. I love the idea of apart an apartment because an apartment is always rented. So you don’t own it, you have to ask the landlord if you want to make any improvements. The other thing is when you talk about an apartment, it does a couple of things. The parents then realize the complexity of the organization that organizing your bedroom actually is and for the child and as they become a young adult at home, they do get more ownership and more responsibility and more say over what they do in that space. And they can start to think about it as their launching pad to their dorm room or their future apartment or condo whatever that is going to be. And over time they will take more and more responsibility of all the functions that happen inside of that mini apartment. So in the kids program that I have, I teach kids how to decide what clothes they’re going to have how many clothes how to be respectful to your parents about why you like certain clothes over other clothes because As most children don’t know, until they’ve gone through the videos, and I articulate the different things they may or may not like, how to organize the different spaces in your room and how the different spaces in your room evolve. And then if you think about if you’re going to go to an A real apartment or, or a dorm room, you will take your childhood bedroom into those spaces, and it will be just a little bit bigger space. And then a condo is a little bit bigger space, and then you get a house. And so when you think about it as a mini apartment, and as the proper size container of living for a child, and then a young adult, that will move into another space. The systems and habits that you should have in running your home, translate down to the child’s bedroom as well. So on Saturdays, everyone gets up, does the dishes, runs the laundry, you clean your house, kids, they go in their mini apartment, and they clean their mini apartment, they put their laundry out, they take their trash out, they clean their bedroom, they clean it up, I always had to have my room cleaned on Saturday before we were allowed to go out and play on Sunday. And this is the habit that productive people have is they have a Sunday planning time in organized 365. We call this the Sunday basket. And this is where we defer all of the mental and cognitive and to do related tasks of running a household until Sunday. And then we go through them all at once in one big batch. And we plan out our week. Well, children should be doing this too. And they have a Sunday planning time as well. And in the program, they have a whole checklist as well. So their Sunday basket is their school backpack, and they cleaned it all the way out. And they make sure all their assignments are done. And they make sure they have everything they need for their extracurriculars for the week, and that they’ve given their parents any notes that they need to give them and they have, you know, purchase what they need for lunches or they bulk do their lunches. And they really plan out their week too. And so when you think about a mini apartment, and you think about children training to be adults, there is a lot of learning and system creation that happens naturally in a mini version of what’s happening in the larger house.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Nice. Yes, yes, I am like really like in all of this because I have not ever heard it broken down like this. And I have a seven and 10 year old, I had to think about it for a second, a seven and a 10 year old. And this definitely applies to them. And I’m trying to while you’re talking, I was trying to visualize certain things that you were saying as far as getting things organized in their mini apartments. And I’m starting to get a little bit clearer, I’m feeling better. And I know there’s other moms that are listening that are probably feeling the same way too. Because I will be honest, it’s now that you’re talking about it, the biggest pain point that I have is the rooms. Like I just can’t it just seems like once I get it under control, then something else happens. And it gets out of control again. So I’m glad that you brought all of this up and as far as how we can look at it. And then also when we can go in and start decluttering and organizing things as far as timelines because like I said, I don’t want to have that declutter, regret again. That was not fun.
Lisa Woodruff
Can I say something to that? Yeah. Okay, so I love this. So the productive home solution is how I teach adults to organize the entire home, it has every single space in the home to organize. And then the kids program focuses on those Saturday, Sunday routines and actually getting their space all the way organized. The reason why most people do not feel they are as organized at home as they want to be is the order in which you’re trying to get your house done, not what you’re doing. You’re doing the right actions, you’re just not doing them in the right order. So what I like to say I call this swiss cheese organizing, I have a whole hat I wear and everything. It’s a big Swiss cheese hat. So as a mom, because I’ve done this so many times, this is how I know. So I remember when our kids were like, I think they were like four and five years old. And family was coming in from out of town. And my husband said I’m gonna help you get the house organized. I was like great are straightened and picked up, you know? So he started in the family room, and I said don’t start there. We start in our bedroom. And he’s like, why no one’s coming in our bedroom. I said because we’re cleaning the whole house. We start in a bedroom. So you continue to pick things up in the field. I was like do whatever you want. You’re gonna do that again and he’s like, No, I’m not. So you picked up the family room. I went up in our bedroom, I strip the sheets I started the laundry, I cleaned the upstairs, I did all that I came downstairs. I did the living room dining room kept moving the laundry, you know how you do this. We’re like four hours in of course the family room was trashed again. I go in I clean the kitchen. I clean everything in the kitchen and we’re standing in the family room. He goes his trash. I said of course because I kept pushing the children down to the family room. Now when we clean the family room, the whole house is done. Like that’s how you clean the whole house. You probably all have already figured that out. Think about that on on the organization level of your entire house. Give yourself a year. You have to give yourself a year. If you want to get your house all the way organized because you’ve never thought about organizing your house away. I’ve thought about organizing your house. Because if you had you’d be done. So you start in your personal spaces, your closet, your bathroom, your bedroom, your spaces that nobody is going to mess up. And you’re going to need to do them seasonally. So you’re going to need to do them a couple of times. Next, you move on to organizing your storage room, which is your prepaid for store. And there’s a specific way I have you organize it with shelves, because it’s a store. So you should be able to get things off of shelves and bins. Once you organize your storage room, the way I teach you to organize your storage room, you will never I repeat, never have to organize it again, you can move houses, it’ll be the first thing organized in the new house, it will never need to be reorganized. Again, once you do the storage room, then we move on to the family spaces, which is anything on the first floor of a two story home, filled room, living room, dining room, you know, kitchen all of those spaces. And then we end with paper and information management. And so often will be like, Oh, I don’t have that much paper, I’ll put that off. And at some of these things at once you take the time and you get your storage room really functioning as a prepaid store. When you get all the paper in your house organized and you only keep the 15% you need. And you can access it at a moment’s notice. You will notice that you don’t have to redo your paper or your storage room again. Now, when you have a long weekend, of course, you can organize the communal spaces. And of course you can tackle your kids bedrooms. But what we do is we have a long weekend, we start with the kids bedroom, are you kidding me? That has to be done every single week. It’s like laundry and dishes that’s never going to last more than seven days. But we put all of our effort towards that organization instead of like storage or paper organization, because we’ve never done it. We’ve never been successful, it’s going to take a couple months, forget that I’m going to focus on the kids rooms.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Yes, yes, because that is definitely me. I’m always in my kids rooms. And then like you said, next week is right back to work. And like I didn’t go in there. Now I wanted to switch gears just a little bit, because you shared a lot of really great ways for us to get started with organizing. But I know with the holidays coming up, moms are getting ready to start putting up Christmas trees and whatnot. And sometimes this can be a very, very stressful and overwhelming time, because there is a lot going on with all of the holidays and events. So I wanted you to help us with planning for the holidays, in particular decorating for the holidays, so that it is not stressing us out is not taking forever. And we can get it done in record time.
Lisa Woodruff
I’m so glad you asked this question. I used to love the holidays. Sorry, if you guys had coffee in your mouth, and now you spit it out everywhere. I think um, you know, we are where the magic comes from. Right. And so the expectation, again, back to what I said earlier about the expectation that our houses will be perfect before we’re allowed to leave and go do what we’re uniquely created to do. We have that every single year, the holidays, it’s almost like alright, the holidays are coming again, let’s see how you can top you from last year. And a lot of what we do. I mean our family notices, and they acknowledge it and they like it. But they don’t necessarily remember everything. So I my kids were probably about your kids ages, maybe a little bit older was about when my kids when I was turning 40. And I was like exhausted. And I remember back to when my mom would decorate the house. And we had this thing called the Christmas parade. And we would go down in the storage room and we were all grabbed bins and until every single bin was upstairs. That was the Christmas parade. Well, my family was not in on the Christmas parade. No one helped me parade the boxes up from the basement which made me angry to start with as an I’m automatically in a bad mood, right. And then I go to put the Christmas tree up and and we have to have a fake tree because I’m allergic to Christmas trees. So I had the tree where you have to put the branches in and then you have to put the lights on the tree. So you’re like four hours in and all you have is the tree with lights on it. No ornaments yet. Then I’m hanging all the ornaments. And for me, I mentioned that my parents had gotten divorced and my my father had passed away in my 30s Every ornament on my tree has been given to me since the time I was born until now. And so every single ornament reminded me of past Christmases that I would never have again. So now I’m depressed and I’m exhausted and I’m hot and nobody’s helping me. And now I’m mad. And this is exactly how you want to be at the holidays. Right? Like, yeah, you want to be mad at your family because they’re not helping you decorate the tree. And I was like, Well, Lisa, you’re the one doing all of this. Obviously we’re going to need a tree. But do you need to have this tree do you need to have these ornaments like what can you do? And so we got a different we got a pre lit tree. That was great. That saved me a lot of time and I was Oregon icing someone’s house. And she was she had a whole Santa Claus tree. And she said, You can have all these ornaments. And I was like, great. And for four years, we had somebody else’s used ornaments on her tree instead of my ornaments. And my husband was like, I really liked the other ornaments. I was like, Great anytime you want to put them up there feel free. But he didn’t. And so I thought about what, especially at the holidays, I don’t know why we do this. We take our to do list from last year. And then we add to it. Like we never declutter that list. And I thought, does anybody even care about any of this stuff that I’m doing? Like, nobody’s helping me? Do they even care? So the next year, in October, I interviewed my family. I said, Okay, you know, the holidays are coming. What do you want to eat for Thanksgiving? What do you want to eat for Christmas. And that’s when I realized they don’t even care about the meal they did. But what they really wanted was fun foods for the last six weeks of the year. Appetizers, desserts, hors d’oeuvres, sodas, fun things in the you know, like fun drinks, ice cream, I was like, I wasn’t even on my list. I asked about decorate what to remember of our holiday decorations, I wrote down what they remembered and got rid of everything they didn’t remember, never asked for it. Again, if you do this in October, or November, or if you go out to dinner and you’re not in your house and you ask these questions, you will get different answers. And then that is what you actually end up doing. So I found my kids really liked decorating cookies, but they didn’t like making cookies. I don’t know if you know this. But you can either get slice and bake cookies, you can decorate circles just fine. Or you can get cut out cookies in the refrigerator section and just cook them like you don’t even have to make it and roll it out. Like they didn’t care about the making of the cookies, all they want to do is decorate them. That was much easier than what I used to do for cookies. And so after thinking about this way too much, I created a free Holiday Blitz. So if you go to organize 360 five.com/blitz, you can tell unload this all these interview questions for all these different areas. And then if this comes out soon enough, then we do have a paid mini planning day that you can do that we’ll take it a step further. But the free printables are amazing. And I go through all the holidays. And we also talked about doing the kids bedrooms and doing home improvement projects the end of the year. Like if you think about it, now, you can have Home Improvement things in your house, because no one wants to go in the store on December 27. But you do want to fix up your house on December 27 and 20. It’s just the natural energy you’re going to have.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
So I will definitely have that link for the Blitz. Because that definitely sounds like a lot of fun. And I’m sure anyone who’s listening is probably doing laundry driving and doing something else. And probably can’t get to it just right at the second. So I’ll make sure to have that link in the show notes. And I love everything that you shared there because I am definitely one of those moms who are making it way too complicated for myself for the holidays. And you have given me not that I needed permission. Did you give me the permission to make it simple? And ask my family those simple questions so that I can eliminate some of those things. So I’m not overwhelmed myself. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that.
Lisa Woodruff
Yes. And actually, my kids said some things that I didn’t even have on my list. I was like, things that I did that I didn’t even realize I did. And I didn’t always do them consistently that were their favorites that I was not planning on doing. So it really is helpful to ask the audience you’re trying to serve?
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Yes, you are very, very right about that one. Now, I think I’ve gotten all of my questions that I wanted to ask you about today. So if there was anything that came to mind that we didn’t get to touch on as far as organizing or getting prepared for the holidays that you wanted to share really quick before we wrap things up.
Lisa Woodruff
Yeah, two things I usually say especially to audiences of parents. The first one is if you have any child under the age of five, then what I want you to do is take a nap, I would prefer you take a nap over any organizing activity, because they’re not going to remember any of this anyway, and you’re going to be a happier, better person rested than if you did some organizing activity that they likely are going to undo. And then the second thing is I’m not a perfectionist. And I want to say that again because I feel like we are so hard on ourselves especially as women that we just have these unrealistic expectations of what we think our house should look like what we think we should be doing social media doesn’t help. So organized 365 is here to help you learn the skill of organizing so that you have more time to do what you are uniquely created to do and that is my biggest goal and desire is to free up women’s time. Time for them to do what they’re uniquely created to do, as opposed to trying to get an A plus on a housework list that is never going to be done.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Nice and I was not prepared for that first one about taking
Lisa Woodruff
yours a seven, but I’m still gonna let you have a nap.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Now, you mentioned organize 365. And some things that we can look into that will be great resources to get us on track with organizing. But if there’s someone that’s listening and wants to learn more about you get their hands on some of the things that were mentioned, where is the best place to find you online.
Lisa Woodruff
So we have a website organized 360 five.com the only social media I’m active on his Instagram. I love Instagram, and I’m also a fellow podcaster. So the organized 365 podcast.
Toni-Ann Mayembe
Awesome, awesome, and I will be sure to have all those links in the show notes. Oh, Lisa, thank you. Thank you so much again for coming on and sharing all of this. This has been really really good.
Lisa Woodruff
Thank you so much for having me.
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