Organize 365 Podcast

In this episode, we are joined once again by the fabulous Rhonda H. You may remember Rhonda from last year on the podcast; she has been part of the community for a long time. Rhonda will be working with us in the fall with the Homeschool Friday Workbox®. Rhonda has every Organize 365® product you can imagine and recently she decided to do Embrace again.  The first time Rhonda did Embrace was in 20...

Don't Start Touching Things…First VIS-U-AL-IZATION  Start with the end in mind. We do this in our paid work, but now we need to do it for our meaty project. I know it's so exciting when you have all your supplies. But to be most effective, I want you to have a meaningful start. When you are done, come Labor Day, how does it look? AND how does it function? Will it effectively support you during the...

Now that you know all about Annie, it's time to learn about her Teacher Pilot. Annie was part of the Teacher Friday Workbox® Mastermind. And she had lots of ideas. So when I put feelers out to see who wanted to run a pilot, Annie raised her hand high. Annie had been using the Teacher Friday Workbox® and she wasn't shy about it. When Annie's school hosted a "choose your own adventure" personal deve...

Alright, we're at step one of the meaty project you have decided on. We're talking prep. We need to wrap our minds around what we are doing, when we are doing it, and our budget.  Declutter You may already have some stuff in mind that you have been wanting to get rid of but got held up not knowing what to do with it. I say give it away, donate to donation centers that will recycle or resale the it...

I'm so excited to share another educator that is helping other teachers learn about organization for retention and enjoyment in their educational careers. Annie discovered Organize 365® in 2019 through the podcast. Annie comes from a long line of paper pilers. She prides herself on how organized she was in college but once she got married and settled an estate, she too started paper piles everywhe...

Alright, alright…you have put all your project ideas in your Sunday Basket®. You have identified your extended Sunday Basket® areas for larger items, like a mattress for an upcoming project. And you have said yes, I enjoy completing projects here, like me working on projects on my bed. And we took a hot minute to think through our paid employment so that, as we work on this meaty project, work wil...

Anna feels so strongly that the Teacher Friday Workbox® is the solution to ease the overwhelm and increase teacher retention, she created a course in the formal setting of a university. She's here today to give a peek inside the course. She knew based on her previous life in the education world that not all courses qualify to be reimbursed. There needs to be a focus on how the student would benefi...

It's summertime! Time to put on some sunscreen, let your hair down and get relaxed, right? Wrong! People, you need to plan what you are doing in business because everyone else has that summer mentality. Let me tell you, summer will be over before you know it. But with a little planning, you will be ready for the most productive weeks that come after summer. Summer, Summer, Summertime… Why does sum...

Anna is back and we're talking all about the white paper Anna created for the Teacher Friday Workbox®. When Anna came to me with this pink sparkly box of Teacher Friday Workbox® opportunities, I wanted to talk shop. Anna was almost done with her EED and I am still very much tied up with the PhD. So it was a win-win to have Anna complete a white paper. It is so interesting that there is literature...

Ok, just one more detail we need to nail down before you start your project - identify your project space.  We all have a lot going on and I'm guessing a lot of projects. It's ok to be working on more than one thing at a time. In this episode I share some of those things that I have going on. But how do we organize the projects, have appropriate amounts of time to work on them, and a dedicated spa...

I want to introduce you to another educator that is embracing the Teacher Friday Workbox® and values the benefits teachers experience when using it. Anna found Organize 365® through podcast interviews I'd done on other shows. Anna knows the transformation that results from the physical products and the blitzes from Organize 365®.  Turns out, I could have known Anna many years ago when her mom was...

Alright, this is going to be a little bit shorter podcast. We're going to talk about the garage as an extension of the laundry room. We're in this short podcast series where I'm trying to make visible the…well, they're actually not invisible spaces. They're very, very visible…all look like hot mess spaces inside of our homes. But each hot mess has a different purpose. We have this expectation that...

This is our final episode about the Teacher Friday Worbox® Pilot with principal Jayme. We talked about how Jayme suggests getting started in your school and our hopes for all schools to be using the Teacher Friday Workbox® in the future.  What Would Jayme Suggest?  We have received a lot of feedback saying everyone is so interested, but they'd like to talk to Jayme. So what does Jayme have to say...

How does our laundry room explode? And is there any way we can have it looking like a magazine? Let's discuss. Now, you may not have a laundry room. Yours may be in the basement, so yours may not work the way my laundry room does. As I'm talking about this, it may be a different space in your house. It may be a spare bedroom. It may be a home office. Or it may be the dining room table. I'm going t...

Jayme and I were caught off guard by our nerves for this second in person workshop day. I think the reality was that we were using technology we were super familiar with running ourselves to promote more transparency and we weren't in control. Two type A's like to be in control! It was so good though and I think our biggest takeaways from this day and this pilot are: We individualize so much for o...

This month I am going to record a 4-part podcast series about how we prepare to get projects done, and then this summer I'm going to record a 7-part series about how to actually set a goal and achieve a goal that is a project inside of your home; specifically how do we start, continue, finish, and pick a new project.  You make so many mental decisions about how you want your projects and your proc...

Now I want to share a bit of a deep dive about refinement of the Teacher Friday Workbox®. I find it ironic that we basically made up IEPs for the workboxes for teachers that create IEPs for students. Each teacher used their workbox differently due to their teaching knowledge, the way they learn and work, and the work they were responsible for. Jayme decided to purchase a red slash pocket for each...

We've come to the downsizing & legacy stage of life. These are two different things, although I married them together about 6 years ago when I first wrote about this. Naturally people downsize, but I don't think they always think about the implications of legacy. Some downsizing is based on your family of origin. A lot of people never get to legacy, but legacy can happen at any time. So in this po...

I just knew in my heart of hearts that the Special Education staff was going to need support. Jayme's building has ⅓ of the student population that qualifies for special education!! How was I going to give that support? Did the staff have the time? So I called Jayme and we decided on a Zoom class and I invited them to be my guest at my upcoming paper organizing retreat. The staff was excited to le...

Sorry, I got a little long winded in that last podcast. But you know, the podcast where I talk about your 30s and 40s I can speak to you more authoritatively about because I have lived it. A lot of what I'm saying from here forward is speculation and purely observational. Some things you have to just experience to understand - like giving birth! Being in your 50s is so freeing because you realize...

This is the recap of Day 1. I was driving to Jayme to teach the first workshop for her teachers about the Teacher Friday Workbox®. I'd been having conversations with other schools about implementing the Teacher Program in their schools. I was shocked by the one thing holding them back. The honest feedback I was receiving was that they were afraid they'd be shedding light on how overworked the teac...

Well, let's dive into our 40's. What I've observed in these decades as you move through your 20's, 30's and 40's to 50's is if you can imagine driving a stick shift car where it doesn't automatically cycle to the next gear, and you're driving in second gear and you need to shift into third gear but you don't and the car is whining. That's kind of how we are at the end of every decade - we're whini...

By now I'm guessing most of you have heard the evolution of the Sunday Basket®. The Sunday Basket® organizes the invisible tasks of home life, right? And with a teaching background, I also know there is a lot of burnout. The Teacher Friday Workbox® is designed to organize the invisible tasks of teaching. So what if, just what if, an entire school would launch a pilot with Organize 365® and they co...

Welcome to our next installment of our phases of organization, our phases of life. So here we are, in our 30's. We're going to assume from this point forward that you are living independently and separate from your family home. I coined my own phase of life years ago (thanks Rhonda for the reminder!) for adulthood - accumulation. When you leave your childhood bedroom and you are living on your own...

Now that you know a little bit about Jayme and her background in educational instruction, let's move on to the responsibilities she's had in different roles. Jayme has gone from assistant principal, where she barely left the building, to being the principal, where she was off campus frequently for personal development. But she has yet to be the superintendent!  Assistant Principal First thing Jaym...