Podcast Episode 344: 3 Decluttering and Organization Mistakes Keeping Your Home in Chaos Transcripts
Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.
You’re storage room, it’s gonna take you two or three months. Once it’s done, it will be organized forever. You will literally move houses and it will be the first thing organized in your new house. You’ll put the bins in, boom, instantly organized. And people have done it and they’re like, my gosh, she’s right.
Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast. I’m your host, Joanne Crone, joined here by the lovely Bree Tucker. Why? Hello, hello, buddy. How are you? We’re going to talk about something that I admit I pull my hair out about in its organization. I suck at organizing. I love-
and appreciate an organized space. But doing it myself, I will put that thing off for so, long until it becomes like one of those things where I can’t even find flour in my pantry. And I’m like, I gotta get this done. I’m really good at organizing when there is a project due. So. yeah. If there’s a project due, I will do all the organizing before. Organization procrastination. Yes. I am. I’m guilty of that as well. For sure. For sure. Well.
Our podcast today, we are going to go through organizing mistakes that you actually might be making right now. And I have to tell you, I’ve been making these as well. And if you have a friend who, I hate to say it, hates organizing as much as we do, this is the episode for you because it’s going to make it totally doable for them. Share this with a friend, send it to them just in a little text, go send link.
and let them know about this. really helps the No Get Mom podcast reach more people and so we can make more women feel empowered and happier. Yes. So our guest today, it’s a two-timer now. She’s a two-timer. Her name is Lisa Woodruff. She provides motivation and practical ideas for household managers through the Organize 365 podcast, courses and physical products. She helps busy women create systems for household management tasks that reduce cognitive overwhelm and expand our capacity to be more present in each phase of life. And she is going to be featured at our upcoming 2025 Happy Mom Summit. So with that, let’s get on with the show.
INTRO MUSIC
Hey Lisa, it’s great to have you back on the podcast. Congratulations on being the two-timer now. Thank you so much. How fun. So even though you don’t like organizing, you’re letting me back. This is pretty good. Well, OK, we need all the help we can get. My goal is to make 2025 rock. So I do need help with organizing. But I got to say, going back to the two-timer thing, I really do need to get those jackets, don’t I, Joanne? I need to order them.
no, not a, no, it’s, I’m thinking like red satin jackets. Jackets, okay. Kind of like the pink ladies. I thought you were for pink ladies, yes. The two timers, like you know. Well, I have to say, even though I don’t like the physical act of organizing, I think it’s like what you described though, Lisa. I don’t like the cognitive mental load of organizing. It seems like there are so many decisions that have to be made and I already have too much on my plate.
Lisa, how, like I say organizing is this like overwhelming thing for me. How should organizing feel to most people? That’s a great question. So the cognitive load is the invisible work. We hear a lot about this invisible work, invisible labor. I mean, I’m getting a PhD right now in order to do science to show that. I mean, we all know that it’s happening, but how should organization feel? Organization should feel like, let’s take your underwear drawer. You’re going to go in your underwear drawer.
and you’re going to organize it. What do you do? You take all the underwear out, you decide if you could buy some new underwear because you know, it’s very unsightly because we put ourselves at the bottom of the list. I just bought myself all new underwear. It’s like during a Black Friday sale, I spent a total of $35 and I got 10 pairs and I feel like a million bucks. Okay, Lisa, we have an episode that is entitled, Why Do We Have Holes in Our Underwear? Okay, so you know.
So, but when you do that underwear drawer, you take everything out and you’re like, my gosh, panty hose. Like I haven’t worn panty hose in a decade. Okay, those can go. And then you fold your underwear real nice. You make them in little piles and then you push the door closed. And when you open it the next day and you pull it out, you’re like, my gosh, my underwear drawer is organized. I have what I want. I have what I need. I have what I can afford. This supports me in this phase of life. That is what organizing should feel like. It’s funny you mentioned that because like,
When I do a big organizing task like that, it is always a surprise the next day where you’re like, wait, I did this. This feels pretty good. gift. I think we said this on one episode. It’s something about giving a gift to future Joanne. Giving a gift to future you. When you do that, But women are told a lot of things that they should be doing about organizing. And that pretty much holds them back, you say. What are these things that we shouldn’t be doing that we’re told we should?
Yeah, I start with the underwear drawer. I don’t usually start with your underwear drawer, but I usually start with something personal like that, that only you will know is organized because everything that’s sold to you in organization is like, go spend all this money and have this pantry that’s going to look gorgeous and cost you hundreds of dollars, but it doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. Go spend a lot of money. Or a lot of times when we surface this invisible work, okay, there’s all this invisible work. You have so much cognitive load, you’re doing so much. So your spouse should be doing their fair share.
they should be doing half. Like, I don’t know. I just recorded a podcast about how, not in my marriage, I don’t know about your marriage, but my husband’s not listening to these podcasts. And he’s also not down for like redoing our marriage 30 years in. He’s like, I say no. I’m like, okay, well guess that didn’t work. And so then we feel like now we’re mad at our spouse because they’re not doing their half because somebody on a podcast said they should do their half. And so I think there are a lot of these external views of what organization should look like.
But really it’s an internal like, know where my stuff is. I have everything in the right kind of organization for this phase of life. It may not look pretty to you, but I feel like I know where stuff is and I have more confidence and I know where my time is going. Yeah, I get that. Although I am gonna push back on the, want my husband to do some of his fair share. Cause I’m not as made. That’s okay. No, not. mean, yeah. It’s a work in progress. And if you wait for your spouse to be that 100 % crystal perfect 50-50 partner, which I’ll be honest, I don’t know if those exist. I don’t think I’m a perfect 50-50 partner. You’ll never start, right? Because if you think that the starting point needs to be, okay, we need to start healthy habits for both at the 50-50, sometimes you just need to rip off the band-aid and just go. And nothing’s 50-50. It’s 100-100, right? And I did abdicate cooking and all grocery shopping about seven years ago and I haven’t stepped foot in a grocery store since I just have like my stuff Amazon delivered and it’s protein bars and my coffee and I really don’t care. Everybody else is like teenage and now they’re adults. like, I don’t know. You all have cars and credit cards. So you’re on your own. have abdicated grocery shopping as well. That’s how I got more to 50. But it wasn’t like a we sat down. We had a come to Jesus moment. We’re like, okay, so what are you going to do? And what am I going to do? I was like, no, I just don’t. don’t do that anymore. And he was like,
What do mean? And I was like, I don’t know what to tell you, but everybody’s on their own with food now and it’s fine. You could look at a situation, you’re like, whose problem is this? Like, is my husband feel like this is a problem in organization? Probably not. It’s me. I feel like it’s a problem. Right? But I just need an organization vet session before we get into these mistakes because like I do keep things organized. Like for instance, food in the kitchen. I cook my husband grocery shops, but
When my husband grocery shops, we all come and like put like the entire family comes out into the kitchen and we all help put away the groceries. My kids are the worst at putting away groceries. There is like an organization system in the cabinet. I have that thing labeled. I have it labeled. Did things go in there? No, like no excuses. You guys are old enough. I would say to your oldest, you just wrote a paper on like ancient Greece. I know you know where to put the salt.
I know you can read. know where to put it. Or it’s like you have things in nice stacks in the freezer and then you open the freezer after they put away boxes and they’re all like jangified and on top of each other. It’s real hard. It’s real hard to keep your sanity. I’ve just divulged a little bit of myself. No. Maybe a closeted organization freak. I would say- That’s not really an organization problem. I would think that you probably have heard that a lot. It comes down to like you-
So we’re told that there are these easy tips and tricks on how you can organize, but they’re not so easy when there’s external factors in them, right? Right. So you’re hitting on our number one, which is the order in which you are organizing is the problem that you’re coming up against. So now I have to put my prop on. I have this giant Packers cheese head on, I’m not a football fan. I love it. It’s your cheese.
JoAnn Crohn (09:45.932)
Swiss cheese work. But Lisa, you’ve given us a great teaser because we need to take an break. we’re going to get into that first mistake right after this and see what a cheesehead has to do with it. Okay. So Lisa, lead us into this first mistake that people make when organizing. Okay. So I’m going to ask you guys a question. You have a three-day weekend ahead of you and the house is just totally out of control. What is the first space that you’re going to organize? Go. Laveed room? Kitchen.
You’re both wrong. So I love playing this game because you order them with you. Okay, great. So you spend all your time organizing the kitchen and the living room. Now you’re exhausted. You’re going out to dinner, whatever. And what is going to be disorganized next weekend? The living room. The kitchen and the living room. not even next weekend. It’ll be disorganized in like five minutes. Pointless. So that’s why it’s the wrong answer. Okay. So you’re taking all of your energy to like clean up kids’ stuff. Like it won’t even last an hour.
The order in which you get organized is way more important than the amount of effort you put in. That’s why you’re never dying. So here’s how I have you start. There is an order and you never start with the children. They are like last. So you’re listening to this in February, like organize the kids in June. Like we’re not even gonna think about the kids. They’re at school most of the time. Anyway, we’re not even talking about them right now. The order we organize. So now I’m interested, like what do I start with Lisa? Okay.
the next myth that we were going to talk about or the organizing mistake that we have is that you are going into the living room and you’re picking it up. You’re tidying or you’re going into the kitchen and you’re tidying. You’re not actually organizing. You might be decluttering, but organizing is making it like you said, Joanne, you’ve got these labels inside of your kitchen and nobody is putting them in the right place. So what I would say is if your kids aren’t putting them in the right place, are they consistently putting the things in a different location? Change where the label is. That’s organizing.
Interesting. So match how the home is functioning to the family versus your ideal of what you think it should match. So they may, what I love to do when kids are school age is create a lunch packing station. So if you have a cabinet that you open it up and every single thing you need for lunch packing is in there, they don’t have to open a bunch of different cabinets. Then when you’re not doing the groceries, anything lunch packing goes in there. You really don’t even care how it is in there. It’s all in there. And that is only for packing lunches and you don’t open the cabinet if you’re not packing lunches.
So as your family changes phases, you’re going to need to change your family organizing areas. However, this gets into myth number two or problem number two, which is you don’t have good systems. Every single institution has systems. Churches have systems, schools have systems, the military has systems, government has systems, businesses have systems, and households have nothing. We have a calendar. have a dry erase calendar.
That’s about it. Yes. You have to decide what goes on the calendar every week and make yourself do it. There is no like you went to school and you knew that like you do the dry erase calendar on Sunday nights. You figure that out by listening to podcasts and then you’re like, do I do it Saturday morning or Sunday nights or Friday nights? Like, you know, like you’re creating all of your own systems. So we don’t have enough systems. And when you have systems and you know how to do things like in business, you have sales, you have marketing, you have operations, you have finance, you have HR.
You know that there are these buckets you have to do at home. have like home housework that doesn’t even have a definition. It’s undefined. So it’s never ending. So you don’t know when you’re done and you can go hang out and do something else. So we need to create systems. And the way in which I create systems is I take the whole entire house and I divide it into different categories. And then I order the order in which you organize those categories. So at the end of the year, I know you don’t want it to take a year, but also you’re still not organized yet. So just listen.
At the end of the year, it will be organized, organized, and then you just maintain until you get to the next major life event or phase of life where you need new systems. Okay. So I have a question about the system kind of not working, like how I have the pantry organized and you said like, move the spot that they’re putting it. I cannot find any rhyme or reason where they’re putting that. seems like, and I know this is an assumption in my head, it seems like they’re opening the door, seeing where there’s room and putting it there.
And I’m actually pretty sure I’ve had this conversation with my kids and that is exactly what they’re doing. Or for instance, we have a drawer under the counter that is for like food storage containers. And when my husband was putting them away, they’re all stacked nicely. He’s an engineer. He has that brain. My daughter puts them away and it’s like, she opens it up, throws it in. It’s like she’s trying to make a YouTube video where they like throw the cup behind them or the water bottle and then it lands perfectly on a table.
Like that’s what she’s trying to do. Yeah. So like, what, what if you can’t find any rhyme or reason to it? And it seems like it’s just like a quick, it is a quick, if there’s space, I put it there. Yeah. So they haven’t learned the skill of organizing because you haven’t taught it to them. You assume that you. That’s a big mic drop. You made this system work for you. You bought the things they should be able to do the puzzle, but you didn’t tell them what the, just labeled the puzzle. didn’t explain it. So the next time the girls, you come in the house.
You sit there and you say, unbag everything and put them on the counters. And then I want you to say to your kids this, they’re going to pick up like Fritos or whatever. You’re going say, great. Where do you look for Fritos when you want to eat Fritos? So now they’re going to go, well, I look for it in this pantry where you have a label. You’re like, great, let’s put it there. Okay. Now you have green beans. Where do you go look for green beans when you want to eat green beans? yeah, they’re in this and connect like where they look for things to where they’re putting away. All they’re doing is trying to get the groceries off the counter as quickly as possible to get back to their video games.
That’s what they think is a true point. Mom doesn’t want it on the counters. We have to put it away, shove it in there, move on. It’s off the counter. I’m done. Back to playing. Yeah. Okay. I like how she did that, Joanne. I’m going to say it was a little painful at first. It stung with the whole, because you haven’t taught them how to organize. However- I can take it. I can take it. I’d cop to it, I guess. was going to say, however, she makes a very, very valid point. That was a fantastic point of like, okay, so if you want chips, where would-
don’t see myself saying that to my kids, can’t you, Joanne? If you wanted chips, where would you look? Right there. Although Lisa ends it there. My next statement would be something smart-ass you to my kids. Like, okay, so then why the hell did you put it on the top shelf in the corner? Right. Next time, get out a ladder to get your chips. Yeah. But I think that’s so true. Like, we assume that if you’re a female, you should know how to run a household.
We assume that if you live in this house, you should know where I magically want you to put things. mean, some people like spouses pretend like they’ve not lived in the same house with you for 30 years and they never know how to find things are in the same place. That’s a different issue. I don’t organize spouses, but children, children are teachable. And we’re trying to teach ourselves. And the truth of the matter is the reason why you want to organize the living room in the kitchen first is because you know the organizations that you put into those spaces. But if I said, need to go do the file cabinet or the storage room, like you’re already in cold sweats, or the garage, you’re like, I don’t know how to do that space. So I’m going to go and I’m just going to keep doing the kitchen over and over and over again and make it perfect and perfect and more perfect because I don’t even know what to do in the storage room. So I’ll just pretend we don’t have one of those. So it’s the order we organize things. We really need to pay attention to that. We need to look at like our systems that we have in place and also sign it up. Well, additional note to that one.
teach our systems to our children so that they don’t put things where they shouldn’t belong. And then you have what, like a third mistake that people are making right now. What is that? Okay. The third mistake is not giving yourself enough time to get organized and the order in which you get organized. So there are four actual areas that you’re going to get organized. And I’ll start with the first one. And the first one is you. We’re going to organize you and all the spaces that are only related to you, which you never do because you’d rather
organized for the kids and they’re invisible and you’ll just get to you someday, you know, like after menopause. But now let’s do it before then. So we’re looking at your closet, your bedroom, your bathroom, your car, your backpack or purse, your calendar, everything related to you. And so every time you have this organizing energy, you want to go to the living room, you want to go to the kitchen. I want you to pivot and go in your closet and just spend 15 or 20 minutes until your closet is how you want it and your bathroom is how you want it and your
purse or backpack is how you want it. And your car is tricked out. So like when you’re hungry, there are protein bars in there and all of that. This is gonna take probably two months. And the reason why I want you to do this first is because once you get organized in these spaces, you literally will spend 50 % of your day organized. You’ll go to bed organized, you will wake up organized, and no one will undo your organization because they’re not in your closet. I mean, maybe have teenage girls, but they’re pretty much not going to mess up your organization.
So you only have you to hold you accountable to, and you’ll feel like a million bucks. You’ll start to feel much more confident. You’ll have clothes that you want to wear and look good and feel great on you. You’ll have your skincare down, your makeup, all of that. You’ll feel very put together. And then you’ll start to live and organize life 50 % of the time. I love that. Yes, I love it. The order that we do stuff in is so, so important. Right after this, we are going to get into the third mistake.
Lisa, what is the third mistake? Okay, so we’re starting to create this train of organization in your house where when we’re done with this year, you’re gonna have all these different spaces organized. So we’re going to the least used spaces first or the ones that haven’t gotten the attention first, because they will stay organized. So we’ve gotten personally organized, that took a couple of months. Now we’re gonna do storage spaces. So this is attics, basements, offsite storage, garages, any of these areas where you just basically put things you don’t know what to do with. And the best way to do this is to just go back 15 to 20 minutes every day until you have the space done. If it’s a basement, 50 % of it is broken stuff, empty boxes, or things that you should return to someone else. Just get rid of all of that stuff. And when you’re done with your storage spaces, any storage space, attic, basement, offsite storage, whatever, it should look like a prepaid store. Wow, that’s high expectations. Wait, wait, wait, wait. What’s a prepaid store? don’t… I’m so glad you asked.
A storage room is a store. It’s a prepaid store. This is why you have storage. You went to Costco, you bought extra stuff, it went into storage. You had a baby, you weren’t sure if you were going to have another baby, it went into storage. Because if you have another baby, you’re going to go to your prepaid store and you’re going to pull out what you saved because you’re going to need it again. okay. It’s kind of labeled like a store. I like that. So when was the last time you went to a store that looks like your storage room? Never. So what do need?
We need shelves and bins. I use the plastic HDX shelving. It’s very light. It can go in really hot attics, really cold attics. It can be made really tall. It can be made really short. It’s very lightweight. You can move it around at any age. And then you just need to make sure you get the bins that fit that shelving because they are kind of specific. are a couple brands, but you can’t get them too big or too small. And then you just have clear bins, two on each shelf all the way up and however many shelves you need.
And then each bin is like its own drawer or its own category. So if you have, you may have five baby bins and you have one bin that’s just for everything related to Thanksgiving. And you may have another bin that’s everything related to, I don’t know. All the things that you would, you’re saving so you don’t have to go buy it again from the store in case you need it or when you need it seasonally. And when you walk in your storage room, it’s just these shelves with these bins and that’s all that’s in there. Very cool. So pretty. It sounds pretty. Doesn’t it,
In my mind, it sounds so pretty. It’s to go do it, but you’re not saying do this all tomorrow. This is going to take the better No, it’s going to take a while, but here’s the thing. Your personal organization, you’ll have to freshen that up three times a year, and you’ll want to over a weekend. Your storage room, once it’s done, listen to me, it will be organized forever. You will literally move houses and it will be the first thing organized in your new house. You will move to the new house.
You’ll put up the shelving, you’ll put the bins in, boom, instantly organized. And people have done it and they agree. They’re like, my gosh, she’s right. It’s gonna take you two or three months, but by the time you’re done, you will never have to start over in a storage room again because now you have a prepaid store and this is how you organize that. That’s cool. that idea of not having to constantly be running around in circles. Like you had an example earlier, we were talking before we started recording about, I say a hamster on a hamster wheel?
Yeah. So we were talking about that earlier and I feel like that’s exactly how I feel with organizing. I’ll get on a hamster wheel, I’ll get a great system and then I just keep running. So imagine you’re listening to this in February. You’re like, that’s right. I’m doing my closet. So February, March, you focus on yourself. April, May, now you’re focusing on your storage room. Now the kids are getting out of school in June, but you have your personal spaces organized and your storage organized. Who cares what’s happening in the living room this entire four months, by the way, because no one will ever remember.
So now you’re going into summer and summer is when or you know, after you’ve done these two areas, the next space you do are living spaces. So these are your family and communal spaces. This is everything on the first floor of a two story home. So kitchen, laundry room, living room, dining room, family room, guest bathrooms, all of that kind of stuff. You could do kids in this. And the key for organizing living spaces, because they’re going to have to be organized every four months. Every time you change a season, you’re going to have to re go through. I mean, you’ll do them every weekend, but
you know, majorly do them is to match your phase of life. So if you have preschool kids, make sure you have gates up and just turn the living room into a bouncy house. I had an actual bouncy house in our living room when my kids were little, no furniture, just bouncy house. That’s fun thing. your kids are school age, they need to have a homework area. They need to have an art area. If they like Legos, make a whole room Legos. What do you care? When they’re teenagers, their bedrooms are their mini apartments. So really let them, you know, start to experience living kind of like in a dorm room in your house so that you could start to educate them. So make your communal spaces really match your kids’ ages and as you’re teaching them to leave the house. I like that. That is awesome. It’s a great thing to make them look. I’m getting a little overwhelmed with all this future organization that we have to be doing. I’m like hyperventilating here a little bit over here thinking about the plans for later.
Wait, but we still haven’t hit phase four or section four We haven’t hit phase Oh, I still let you notice, Brie, she, remember there’s a little green car left on my train. So Joanne, I know I want to address the fact that you’re feeling overwhelmed. You admitted a little bit earlier that maybe you were a closet organizing person, like a little over the top on some of our labeling. So have I hit on some spaces in your house that maybe aren’t organized? I mean…
No, we’re pretty good actually in our house. Storage room and everything. Yes. Having an engine. I’m totally lying at the beginning of this. Engineering husband. Engineering husband. Honestly, I don’t do it. It’s him. It’s him because like every time something’s a mess, I’m like, like, yeah, he has this thing, Lisa, where it’s like if he cannot devote a lot of time to a task, he will not do it.
So like the kitchen and stuff, like if he does not have the time to do it, what he sees as time, he will not do anything and it’ll just pile up and pile up and pile up. And so we have these innately organized spaces when he has taken the time and like our garage is immaculate because he decided to unload the entire garage this weekend and like put it back in. I dream of your garage, Joanne. have dreams of the gorgeous organization of it, but go on.
It is all him. It is not me. My brain does not work that way, but I will go and label some things because you know, classroom teacher at heart and that’s what I do. Give me my label machine. I’m so happy. Okay, so if you already have systems that are working, you don’t need to change the system to my system if you already have a system that’s working. This is for people who when you walk in the storage room, you can’t walk in the storage room.
Like I have organized hundreds of storage rooms. That would be my first floor storage closet. will post And so how are you feeling right now in this conversation? I’m feeling okay because what I’m hearing is, for me, it’s little piece by little piece. And I can handle it. So I’m the… And Joanne knows this about me.
My overthinking brain will take me like when there’s a task. I will immediately not worry about step one I’ll worry about step 20 22 27 and step 35 like I go way ahead But what I’m hearing you say is I’m not allowed to go right ahead. I can only look at Piece one and that does kind of help me like zero in and focus a little bit more Okay, and also like in our programs because everything’s 15 15 20 minutes a day
There are jigsaw puzzle pieces you can literally do any day. It doesn’t matter. As long as you do them all, you’re going to end up with an organized house. The only way that you do this wrong is that you organize kids’ toys. Ever. So you’re saying just let So you need to focus on you. Just let it go. Let it go. Let Let it go. That is very freeing. When I had kids’ toys everywhere, we just, yeah, there’s nothing you can do about them. You just have to let it go. So I like to say they get cleaned up once a week. Awesome. And then it’s like Disney World again because I like to buy toys.
And I have a three year old living with me. So that’s all the stories. I’m out of that stage. The toys now are like the fact that my kids randomly leave their backpacks everywhere, which, you know, I’m going to say my situation isn’t your normal one. This is the backpack of because I’m divorced in between two houses. They leave them by the door, the backpack that holds certain things so they don’t forget it when they’re going to their dad’s house. So that’s the only one I will let go. But man, does it not like annoy the crap out of me when that backpack starts floating around the house?
Okay, but the backpack, everybody’s annoyed by a backpack or the socks or the coat or the whatever. And so I used to be annoyed by my husband has like three items by his three items that were out of place. And so what I started doing was saying like, okay, that’s great Lisa, but you’ve got 14 projects in process in every single room of the house. So every time I was annoyed by his whatever, I would go, okay, what do I have put out? And then I would go back to what do I need to put away? What do I need to organize? What project am I working on? And then all of sudden I wasn’t mad anymore and I was focusing on my own project.
Yeah, for sure. That’s a good way to look at it, definitely. So let’s review for people out there in Podcast Land. We started this episode with the three mistakes that people are making to make sure that they’re not making these mistakes. The first one is organizing other people’s before your personal stuff. The second one is those systems. And the third one, which let’s step into it really Briefly because of course, if they want more of you, they can go listen to your podcast.
If you want more of Lisa, go listen to her podcast, go see her in the Happy Mom Summit. Do you like sign up for the Happy Mom Summit ticket right below? But Lisa, tell us that third mistake of over prioritizing something. Sometimes you will over prioritize your money over your time. there have been many seasons in our life where Greg and I did not have, we didn’t know how the budget worked. I still don’t know how it worked. I think it was just miracles. And so it makes sense.
You know, we’re not the federal government. We’re not printing money over here. Like we have a limited amount of resources and it seems like an unlimited amount of time or we just will sleep when we’re dead. But sometimes there are really inexpensive, simple things that you can buy instead of doing absolutely everything from scratch. So sometimes you just need to check in with yourself and say,
Maybe if I just went and bought the card instead of making the card that’s going to take an hour. Yes, it’s a $4 card, but it’s worth it to buy the $4 card. So it doesn’t cost me a whole hour of my time. Is my time worth more than $4 an hour or a dollar an hour or whatever it is? That I will admit has been a game changer. have like, that is one thing that the more we’ve been doing No Guilt Mom, I have learned that my time is actually worth something.
Because like you had said, we often think that we can just come up with things and we can shortcut them, make them more affordable if we just do it ourselves. But we don’t think about what our time is worth, what the fact that all that, that extramural load is gonna do to my patience and my ability to show up. I think that that’s a really, that’s a mic drop for me. That’s huge, huge thing. Yes, yes. Well, Lisa, this has been a fantastic conversation.
And we always end the episode with what is coming up for you that excites you? Well, all I can think about is this PhD that I’m now in the third year of, which is supposed to be the last year, and I’m it is the last year. So as this podcast recording is coming out, I’m doing my last three classes simultaneously. just send good thoughts. Positive eyes. That I’m still alive. hard to balance schoolwork with everything else. I see my sister trying to do it now with a six-month-old and a five-year-old, and I’m like,
And her dog just ate her lab report. For reals. No way. You’re going to need some photographic evidence to prove that one. I have it. Yeah, she has it. Well, Lisa, we look forward to seeing you at the Happy Mom Summit and we’ll talk to you soon. Thank you so much.
So it’s funny when we got on with Lisa because I did say like, I hate organizing and yet like, I am so like, I want a format. I want an organization. When she first came in on, remember I was like, so Lisa, what are we talking about? Let’s write this show right here. Cause usually we go in with questions and we didn’t have questions for this show. So, you know, behind, pull back the curtain of Podcastland, there is a Google Doc.
that I am Brie and looking at that Brie prepares beforehand, speakers submit questions, we like, it helps us craft the episode through it. And at that time, Kalisa said, I’m just gonna go for it. And I’m like, no, Lisa. And I could feel this inner like, not rage come through me, but I’m like, I think I might really like organization. I think I might need it in my life and I use it and I rely on it.
so much that it makes me upset if we don’t have a plan. I think maybe you’re a bit like me on the whole, except for my thing is that I don’t… It’s not that I want to be organized. I just don’t think I am well organized, but I have had many other people tell me that I’m very organized. I guess I just have weird standards that I myself to match the pictures in our head of what we think it means to be organized. Oh, we are actually organized. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like need to share a ton of pictures with our audience at some point of what my desk looks like and be like, to me, this is a complete slob of a mess. But it’s probably not. It’s probably not that bad, actually. But I don’t think it is that bad because I could clean this desk in two minutes. That’s it. Oh, I could clean my desk and probably …
Yeah, probably 30 seconds. But you and I are also pros at piles. We’re really good at organizing piles. Yeah. But I think also when we’re dealing with ADHD, which both you and I admittedly have, there is so much that takes our focus. For us to actually sit down and work, we have to make sure it’s in an organized state else nothing’s going to get done ever.
Because it’s literally like those videos people watch where it’s like, okay, I need to sit down and work on this task. but look at that piece of paper right there. If I just kind of move that there, well actually now that I think about it, I need to get something out of my drawer. this drawer is really disorganized. Maybe I should organize it. That is literally. That’s what happens. I will squirrel.
Lisa has another session for you at the Happy Mom Summit. So if you have not grabbed your ticket for that Happy Mom Summit yet, grab that free ticket. It is down in the show notes, or you can just go to happymomsummit.com. It’s right there waiting for you. It is our biggest virtual event of the entire year. Over 10,000 moms have attended in the past and it is so much fun. This is where a lot of our moms like find their community and their people.
and it just starts this fantastic connected life for them. So go get that Happy Mom Summit Pass. And until next time, remember the best mom is a happy mom. Take care of you. We’ll talk to you later. Thanks for stopping by.
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Brie Tucker
COO/ Podcast Producer at No Guilt Mom
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