I've been talking about a book I've been writing and I'm here to tell you all the juicy details and that you can preorder it now! In the end, I realized the world didn't need a book on how to organize your home because you have no resources to complete the tasks. Escaping Quicksand will arm you with the tools to get your home organized and move to productivity!

Thought Process and Creation

This is my sixth book. I don't tell you that to brag. I tell you that to share that I have published each book in different ways. Not sure if you have written a book but I always like to share my journey and thought process in case it's something you have been thinking about doing too.

I really struggled with feeling "set" on the book theme. I wrote two other versions of "the book" I thought I was going to publish. But one morning about 5am, it came to me. The first chapter was written in about an hour and it felt right. I finally nailed down what people needed. I wrote a book on shifting your mindset to accomplish your home organization goals! I shared the first paragraph with my team and they unanimously agreed, yes this is the book people need. I wrote it in two weeks. It was effortless and I felt passionate about what I was sharing.

And when do people need it? In June of course. I insisted on having it released on June 23rd. Why? Because that's when our year is "wrapping up." The end of June is when I have our team week. It's when school is wrapping up, we're resetting, and dreaming. And July is a great month to read a new book. This is a thinking book. Secret: When you preorder, chapters will be released early!

What's It About

You will start reading the first three pre chapters. I started by sharing my quicksand story. I realized when you have hit "rock bottom", it turns out that you just keep going, like no end to the pit. You just keep sinking until the quicksand swallows you! I want to help you before you get too deep in the quicksand. Inevitably, it seems as though we hit 40 and reevaluate life; that come to Jesus conversation we have with ourselves. We've had enough and know there has to be a solution out there somewhere.

And what about us? When do we put ourselves on the to do list? So, the next chapter is about self care. How do we care for our whole person? Our education, spiritual care, health, and all the other aspects of a whole person. The third prechapter is the fact that our household is an economic powerhouse.

And then we get into the meat of the book explaining Swiss cheese organizing, being a woman of excellence, morning and afternoon routines, letting go of housework expectations, taking "center stage" when doing housework, weekly planning, and from to do lists to productivity!

Get the Book and Join the Book Club

Who loves a book club? There are already over 1,000 people who have preordered the book and have the opportunity to join the book club. You can preorder the book through the Organize 365® website or through your favorite book retailer. Then just upload your receipt and you too can join the book club. I am planning on releasing the chapters early each week for 13 weeks. I will release videos and will be posing questions out there for all of us to discuss about the chapters and how it applies to you as a household manager. This will allow you to change your mindset in real time. It's too easy to just keep reading and not take action. This slow release will give you a week to ruminate about what you read and what the community has said.

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Ok, the line leader for executive functions is working memory. Remember? At the end of the line is the higher level executive function of planning. Planning is the ultimate self care because it ensures high priority tasks will get completed and gives you peace. I'm explaining how getting your working memory and prospective memory to play nice, will allow Planning to have a chance to play a role in your life and finally free up your full cognitive bandwidth!

TMP

Time management planning; plan for the day, prioritize, and set deadlines. You wrote your brian down on paper and you decided if it could wait. The items that could not wait need to be plugged into a time block in your week. This is Time management planning. The key to this is leaving a little white space for when life's inevitable interruptions pop up.

Contingency Planning

You uplevel your planning when you have a contingent plan. Choose which items, if need be, for tomorrow's plan can be pushed to the next day or put back in the Sunday Basket®. We all know we will be interrupted but have you made a contingency plan, a back up plan, for the day you are planning? Studies show that people who have contingency plans get more done than those who do not. Those same studies show, mind you this is in the workplace, that even with support staff and a cleaning crew, they still only complete their to-do list, 80% of the time. At least one day a week they are not completing their tasks. Now I ask you, do you think we are interrupted more at home or at work? At home we are definitely interrupted more and we are the support staff and the cleaning crew. I hope this is giving you insight as to why you are not completing your to do list. There is a lot demanding our time.

The Sunday Basket® shines at contingent planning. On Sunday when you are making the week's plan, you can think through your meals, what if there is a snow day, what if a college doesn't meet their deadline. But you must plan at the end. We realized, in looking over the 80 questions submitted for the Sunday Basket® webinar in late December, that most of you aren't getting to the planning step. You should start with sorting index cards and going through slash pockets, then you do random tasks and managerial tasks, for me it's CFO stuff.

Lastly, PLAN! I say it takes me 90 min to 3 hours because it depends on how much I do between sorting and planning. Pro tip: I plan Friday "in pencil." I take all the tasks I need to complete and fill them into time blocks based on importance of completion. I know though, that by Friday, some tasks will have overflowed to Friday. Life happened all week. Some items will have to go back to the Sunday Basket® and some items will be pushed to Friday. There has to be white space for flexibility. That's why we have to honestly answer, "Can it wait till Sunday?" This question may free up time that was already given to something you wanted to do not had to do. There just isn't enough time to get it all done but there is enough time, if you plan, to get all the important stuff done through planning.

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is the long term planning, like what we do on Planning Day, in the Productive Home Solution™. When planning, it is best to have uninterrupted time because it requires our working memory. We cannot change people so we modify the environment. We cannot eliminate distractions so we must have daily/weekly plans. Planning will never become a habit. But you can use things like the beginning of the school week to plan your weeks and the school year as a reminder to get some long term planning done. Strategic planning is how we get a grounding system in place to tackle the three types of planning; TMP, contingency, and strategic. Planning is the ultimate self care.

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Can goal attainment really be effortless? Yes! How? I'm sharing a science backed and real life proven strategy to, yes, attain your goals effortlessly with environment modification. Last week I told you to write everything down. Now what?

Your Brain On Paper

If you were a good lil student, you have started to write down all of your interruptive thoughts. Stop trying to remember everything, just write it down! Now you have all of these thoughts on paper, your brain on paper and you may be overwhelmed. The next step, is to decide can it wait till Sunday? If so, pop that baby into the Sunday Basket® for safe keeping until it can't wait. If not, add it to your to do list for the day. If you find you are always saying yes it can wait, but you don't have a lot of motivation to get it accomplished, it's ok to toss it. Our goals, energy, money, where we live, stage of family life, our house, and other factors change projects we want to do. You aren't going to get it all done because you aren't getting it all done now. Let yourself off the hook for projects you are not longer interested in finishing.

Evolution of Systems

Our families are ever changing and I was reminded of this during my grand-turnity. Abby had her baby and I am home more helping to take care of her and my grandsons. I don't cook. But I do make Thanksgiving dinner. I thought it would be nice to make until Greg pointed out that had I just asked Greg to do it, he would have. I abdicated cooking many years ago. Greg is used to cooking and didn't appreciate me taking up space in the fridge while the turkey defrosted. You see, back in the day saving money was the goal. My cooking and grocery shopping "reality" is from those days but our family has changed. I picked up a couple of turkeys while they were cheap around Thanksgiving knowing I'd be home after Abby had the baby. But I don't grocery shop or cook anymore. I could have saved a lot of my time and money had I just let Greg do it if I had just thought about today's reality of my family dynamics and roles.

Ok the next thing to consider is your environment. First, do you still need the blender on the counter? You know it's not about the actual blender, it's just an appliance or thing you may have on the counter that you are no longer using. Smoothies may have been an everyday thing that is no longer. I moved ours to the basement, sometimes I forget, I should just pop a lil note inside the cupboard to remind me. I mean, no one is looking in my cupboards. Is your environment supporting your current goals? Could you modify your environment to better support your goals?

Decluttering and Organizing Surfaces Thoughts

I realized when I wanted to start adding collagen to my coffee that my environment was not set up to support my goals. I had about 9 steps to make my coffee, I'd get to my car and realize I had forgotten the collagen. If you are trying to lose weight, remove the cookies and put fruit in that same place. You can't eat what is not in your house. And you can't rely solely on willpower. AND it signals cues to your brain about your new goals. Science shows that when your environment is modified you can attain your goals effortlessly. As you realize what you want to modify you will need to declutter and organize that space.

The Productive Home Solution may bring light to spaces you want to modify and it will walk you through the decluttering and functionality of that space. There is a caveat here. You will have more success if you have the foundation of the Sunday Basket® established because you will already be in the habit of writing down interruptive thoughts. I went through the thought process of setting up a coffee station. In moving things around, it brought to light the cup/bottle situation for my grandsons. I wrote things down and will take action on a Sunday. The time you spend modifying your spaces to match your goals will give back time to your future self. Then the systems you put in place will simply need to be maintained. The synergy between The Sunday Basket and The Productive Home Solution will have you saving time, cognitively offloading, gaining support for your goals and making better choices too!

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Ozempic is to food chatter as Index cards are to the invisible work of being a household manager. We write any thought down, cognitive offloading, and free up capacity to THINK. As household managers we aren't struggling so much with the housework, it's all of the invisible thoughts that interrupt what we were doing and now can't remember what we need to do. We are constantly volleying between working memory and prospective memory! Your working memory is your primary executive function. I want your working memory to serve its actual purpose, not just remembering to put the clothes in the dryer. What does that mean? Catch the full episode!!

New Rules

Imagine you head back to school after break and the school says that's it, no more backpacks, lockers, or computers. You must carry everything with you throughout the day. That's a lot to carry right? But we practice this everyday when we try to remember everything with no support staff, no help. And as soon as we think of something we need to do there's a "ding", a notification, a text, an interruption. So just like they gave new rules, I have a new rule for you…write everything down. It's hard to keep trying to remember everything -that's what working memory is - your brain constantly reminding you of what needs to get done.

There is science backing the idea that writing things down helps with recall. One study I shared confirmed yes it's better for recall and another study backed that hypothesis up with an MRI showing different blood flow when we hold a pen and write on paper than even a stylist to a screen. May I point out that when you are pen to paper there is no notification or anything else interrupting your thought process other than other thoughts. Which if you write each one down they won't interrupt your mindfulness. You can stay focused on your current task. I explained all of this when I gave the example of something as simple as trying to input a passcode. The amount of things that can interrupt you when you are simply "sending yourself a passcode" to then enter on an app, site, or browser that you need, is comical.

I accidentally started using this system, which has proven effective, a long time ago of just writing everything down. And in this fast paced world with notifications distracting you continuously, it's a system to record what you want to remember (Prospective Memory)…what have you got to lose? Go grab a 5 pack of index cards and let your brain's flood gates open, then start writing them down.

Got a Full Classroom?

Now imagine that you are the professor. Your working memory (the ability to hold information in your mind and manipulate it to complete work) is the classroom. It's orientation day for over 100 freshman college students. Can you hear all that chatter of the students? Can you even think? All those students are your thoughts. Now, you can clear out that classroom by writing down each thought. You write down the thought, the student leaves the classroom, and you gain back some of your working memory. That's why we write every thought down. You need to quiet your brain so you can think, not remember simple tasks like housework. Just because you are born a girl does not mean you innate know this skill.

Do the System

A system works best when you do the system. If you've heard me say it once, then you've heard me say it a thousand times, write down every thought! Pen to index card. Once you start to cognitively offload your thoughts (to move from your brain to your environment) you free up capacity allowing you to tackle much bigger tasks. Now that you have everything written down, there is no magic that all the sudden everything gets completed. Tune in next week because I am going to tell you the next step and explain why it works.

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I left you hangin' in the last episode as to what the mindset shift is that you must have so that you can be a productive person. It's Discipline. And discipline is my word for this year. "Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment" - Jim Rohn

What is the definition?

-Some of you may have a negative knee jerk reaction to the word discipline. Ready for me to reframe discipline in you mind? It is…

-The act of gaining control with obedience and order (like holding yourself accountable to picking up after yourself.)

-Having behavior in accordance with rules (like the Sunday Basket®)

-Self Control - you can struggle or you can remove items from your environment that have you have effortless self control can't eat a cookie you didn't buy and bring home.

-An activity you engage in regularly to train or inspire ones self.

-A subject taught or field of study (like the study of home management.)

-An institution

If you are listening to the podcast, odds are that you are learning discipline in the area of home management. But you do not get the results from the work you do not do. You must do the work.

What Does Discipline Look Like?

Setting and achieving goals is changing your own actions and disciplining yourself to being the person who has already achieved what you want to achieve. So I gave the example of me working out. I used to want our whole family to get healthy and work out together. Not gonna happen. So I have decided to do it for myself to achieve the goals I have for myself. And along with working out, I have changed the way I eat. My husband would prefer a meal that "makes sense and 'matches.'" A lady at work introduced us all to ingredient eating. Basically you cook the protein, pull out all kinds of things from the fridge like fruits and veggies to compliment the protein and eat what you like. This would be my preference! So I workout and eat like the person who has already accomplished my goal and support my family in other areas rather than meal preparation and working out with them.

And the more you do those things, the easier that discipline is. If you ask a productive person how they became that way, they may not be able to tell you. Because they disciplined themselves in one area till it got easier and then moved on to another area. And know, once you get a system in place, it will change. It will change with your family and phase of life you are in.

Time Blocks = Confidence

So you see why you need to be disciplined in the time blocks if you want to be a productive person. Time blocks are just these guard rails to keep you on track and systematize your time and responsibilities. Discipline yourself to do the work and it will become easier. I shared some stats to help you see this is not a "you thing." This is a field of study, a discipline, to learn how to train ourselves, bring control to, and impose order in our housework and home management. Discipline yourself to process your Sunday Basket® so that you gain confidence in this area. Discipline yourself to start watching the videos to the programs you have purchased. Do you know people who are organized are perceived as more confident? And you know what else? People feel more confident when they are organized! Dave Ramsey said "You can wander into debt but you can't wander out of it." And the same is for disorganization you can wander into but you can't wander out of it…you must discipline yourself. You must have a mindset shift.

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Who remembers defragging your computer to make it run more efficiently? I'm talking about defragging time confetti into time blocks today. "What is time confetti?" Yes, thank you for asking…it's all those little 2 or 5 minutes that are free and sprinkled throughout your day. How can you most effectively use your confetti time to conquer the never ending, always evolving list of essential time blocks that you must complete as the mom, wife, and/or household manager?

4 Essential Time Blocks

Let's start with what demands our time. We have some mandatory tasks (time blocks) that our homes and lives demand from us. After surveying 1000 people, it became very clear that Americans define housework as laundry, food, and cleaning. I explained how I like to defrag or consolidate my cleaning and laundry to the same day and time. Saturdays are great for this for me. I get my machines going and clean till about Noon. I auditioned being available for Abby and the grand kids on Saturdays. But, I have realized I like my Lisa time on Saturdays, so I'm keeping it that way to stay sane. And food, good Lord does it take a lot of time to tackle the food part of life. You gotta plan it, buy it, process it, and then prepare it! It takes time. How can you most efficiently schedule those housework tasks into time blocks? Consolidate like tasks in one time block to efficiently and productively conquer housework. And then there's a 4th essential time block that life requires out of us.

Block 4: Household Management

The 4th essential time block to this human experience is…household management. Thank God for the Sunday Basket® that's all I can say! On Sunday's I process all the administrative and actionable paperwork for the house including the mail. I look at all the communication for the kids, texts or DM and emails that are family related. Then, I decide where our money is going for the week. Instead of paying one bill here and one there and them each taking 3 minutes. I decide in one setting which ones need to be paid and when I'll do that. In the past, this has been a game changer. When we didn't have a lot of money, it really helped me to best manage our money. And then plan my week; my time blocks. I look at all the similar tasks and put them in one time block. Like an errand time block(s). The Sunday Basket® helps you to systematize your house management. The Sunday Basket™ allows delayed procrastination till Sunday and that allows you to productively cluster or consolidate like tasks into one time block. All those invisible tasks we do - we get to visualize them and then schedule them at the optimal time.

Time for Defragging All the Confetti

THIS is a skill set that is learned over time WITH a mindset shift. You must first make the mindset shift to start to practice time blocking. I hope after hearing all of this it makes sense why you would want to defrag your time to cluster like tasks into one time block. But you need time to learn how to do it right? Where will that time come from? Planned neglect and lowering your expectations of what clean and done means my friends. You are going to choose a suggestion or two that I offered to free up some precious time. Like how Saturdays used to be a free day and we ate fast food. You may want to consider outsourcing your cleaning or laundry. I know it costs money to do what you can technically do for free, but in really overwhelming seasons of life, it'll save your well being and sanity. It can also free up time for you to learn and begin to practice how to consolidate all the things and place them into time blocks. Productive people habitually think in time blocks. They have made a mindset shift and appreciate the time block "rigidity" over the chaos of time confetti and inefficiency.

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• The Sunday Basket®

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Ok, it's another peek into my brain. I'm sharing the things I want to follow me into the new year and things that I'm leaving in 2025. I thought it would be beneficial for you to hear my thoughts behind these decisions and get you thinking about how you want 2026 to look for you. Planning provides a lens of calm. Somehow when a plan is in place, even if it changes, it is not as jarring as when you have to react to change with "emergency energy."

What will be joining me

As I think about 2026 approaching, there are some significant changes happening in my life. Abby will have baby number two soon and the PhD is not consuming as much of my time. So, I am looking at the extra time. I want to be intentional with showing up for Abby, taking care of my body, and due to circumstances not yet resolved, looks like I will be doing a lot more housework.

This next 120 days I'm viewing as my "grand(ma)turnity leave." I am excited for Planning Day, where I take the time to really look at my time and plug in my priorities of being a grandma and think about how I want to use all this time I am getting back. When it comes to my housework I plan to run the vacuum robot more frequently after getting some listener feedback and tips. And I will run the dishwasher daily which is more frequent than we currently do. I am looking at the time I used to give to the PhD and filling it with my new goals. I am keeping the Tovola that is in alignment with eating healthy. But will likely add in a little meal prepping to accommodate how I want to eat and Grayson's egg allergy eating regimen. So, on Thursdays, I'll be doing mid week laundry and some housekeeping. And on Saturdays you will find me at the gym with Grayson. You will find me with Grayson a lot in the next 120 days "sucking up all my time." And I wouldn't have it any other way.

What will get left behind

Sit down. I'm leaving Culver's in 2025!! Never did I think this day would come but I want to build a healthy body, I still have 46 years to live and I'm really looking at my food right now. Doggy Daycare is closing and the house keeper won't clean with Hunter home, so no housekeeper. I will be home longer in the mornings so no more coffee and breakfast at the office. And I'm ditching ithe Oura ring. That thing was frustrating me. I disagreed with it too much. And I want to wear my nice jewlery! I'm ditching my gardening shorts and Organize 365® v-necks for clothes for workout clothes that better match how I identify; as a person who works out. Late night bedtimes are going away too because I want to have plenty of energy for the Abby, Grayson, and working out.

My Golden Window is Ending

I have been spoiled getting to take two luxurious hours each Sunday morning to process my Sunday Basket® upstairs and with little Grayson in tow pretty soon, I will not be able to. I have my Sunday Basket® upstairs and another in my kitchen which is basically Abby's Sunday Basket®. I plan to break my normal processing time into two different 1 hour chunks. I think I'll read all the things while Grayson is bathing which will account for about 1 hour or a little less. And I'm auditioning other time blocks for the remaining hour I will need for thinking, planning, and billpay. I will solidify this likely in Planning Day. Now is the time to go into your 2026 Sunday Basket® and grab all those ideas you wrote down and bring them to Planning Day. Those are the ideas and intentions you wanted to consider for the new year. Yes, this community is planning 2026 already. This community does not think you are weird. When you plan now, you get to execute on Jan 1. But if you want till the dust settles in the new year, it'll be the 5th - the 9th before you start planning let alone executing.

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• The Sunday Basket®

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Happy New Year! Which resolution did you choose; to lose weight, get outta debt, or get organized? Those are the three most common resolutions. But with any good goal you must have a way to execute an action plan otherwise you will have the same environment just different desires.

Tame the Toddler

Sometimes it feels like there is a toddler running around in our brain, right? It is constantly reminding us of future things you need to do. You are just trying to do a task like write an email but your brain is constantly bombarded with things you want to do as you look around your office or wherever you are. I got so tired of that, that I started to write everything down. Your Sunday Basket® comes with index cards for this purpose. I quiet my brain so I can be productive. As long as I follow through on Sundays, my brain will trust me that it's written down and it will get addressed. If not, it throws a tantrum and says "Since you lied, and didn't do it when you said you would, I'm going to bug you more often so you don't forget." Don't let that toddler control the narrative in your brain as you try to work through and complete tasks - just write it down.

Write It Down

I was talking to someone about mindfulness. To be clear I asked him how he defined mindfulness. It's basically being present with a person or activity. I thought, well I'm like 100% mindful. I know it sounds unrealistic but the theory goes that a person has a task thought and then makes a decision about it. But I have a thought, write it down, and carry on with what I was doing. When I get free time throughout the day, I decide if it can wait till Sunday. If it can wait it goes in the Basket for review on Sunday. And if not I place it in front of the Sunday Basket to address when I have time that day. This is where time and capacity come from! I offload my thoughts into my environment. Study after study confirms this is the most effective strategy to remember what you want to remember to do in the future - prospective memory.

If your goal is to change up the spaces in your home, you need a Sunday Basket® to hold all of the ideas you have for that project. How you intend to use the drawers, cabinets, or spaces. It's 10x's harder to try to complete that task on memory alone because your brain is trying to remember all the normal stuff and all the ideas you have for that space. I don't know about you but my brain is the worst note taker! The Sunday Basket® is a great keeper of the notes about the things I want to do, have, and be!

The Sunday Basket® is Spanx for Your Kitchen Counter Clutter

Let's talk about all the boxes or catch all containers you have in your house. At some point you got a call that company was coming to your house. In one swoop, you gathered everything from your kitchen counter, but did you go through it after your company left? This is why the Sunday Basket® is the solution for normal people trying to do #allthethings. If your goal this year is to get organized, get out of debt, or lose weight, the system, the essential "office supply" you need is the Sunday Basket®. You shove all your kitchen counter clutter in it, you feel more organized already(get your environment to match your intention), and it looks good on your kitchen counter just like Spanx for our bodies. The Sunday Basket® is an organized way and holding all of your ideas on how you want to accomplish getting organized, getting out of debt, losing weight, or any other resolution you set for yourself this year.

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