Are you ready for the 6 busiest weeks of the year? Let's zoom out and look at our family, our houses, and events to orchestrate a place of planning, purpose, and memory making. I wanted to share the energy I feel this time of year and how I manage my expectations of myself and others during this busy season.

Fed People are Happy People

When I think ahead and plan the food component of Thanksgiving I have much lower stress. Once you get the day before the holiday off of work/school, the day of Thanksgiving, and the next day, plus the weekend; you now need to plan food for 5-7 days. Think about your own weekend habits. You eat differently, you spend differently, and you have a different energy. In my experience when people are fed they are much happier people and then I get to enjoy the holiday too. Think ahead and plan a fun breakfast, have on hand some snacky/appetizer type treats, and what meals you'll have.

Ok now, on the big day…this is a food holiday! This is NOT the holiday to try a new recipe or a spin on a favorite dish! Talk to your family and find out what foods are important to them. Do you need a whole dessert table maybe? Make sure that "certain" dish is there for the ones you love. Now that could get pricey so here's a tip to cut the budget: Ask that guests to bring their special dish. I've noticed as my eating habits have changed so too must my plate at Thanksgiving. Now I just take a few bites of everything I like and leave it at that. No need to overstuff myself and feel miserable the rest of the day.

Family

Once all the food is in place you get to catch up with all of your family. Please people manage your expectations. Lean into gratitude for the family you do have. I have lost loved ones, so I choose to be grateful for the family in the room on Thanksgiving. You may need to change a conversation or hop in a game that people are playing to avoid certain conversations.

And permission to not kill yourself cleaning. Your family is not doing a white glove inspection and they aren't going past the common spaces and a bathroom. Speaking of the bathroom, make sure you have plenty of toilet paper! You'll need lots of that and dish cloths to ensure others can help with all the dishes and cleaning up!

Fun to include everyone

I love a game being played to infuse fun into the room and include others or people who are joining your family for the first time. You may hear of someone who will be alone on Thanksgiving because loved ones have passed, or travel isn't possible, or other reasons - invite them to join you and your family! It's that much easier to make memories when fun is in the air! Break out some fun board games and put the Thanksgiving Day Parade on followed by some football.

And then it's like you have a 3 day weekend after the big day so here's what I do. I shop the Black Friday deals on my phone. Side note: I do want to thank everyone who will be working the Holidays like our first responders and retail personnel. Heads up Organize 365® will be starting our Black Friday sale on Wednesday so no one has to break from the festivities. I'm also planning to do some holiday baking and normally this is when I decorate for my holiday of choice - Christmas. I hope this helps to reduce your stress this holiday season and let's you be more present in making holiday memories.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

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I am so excited to share with you that site wide you can grab products 20% off this Black Friday, and free shipping for orders $300 or more. This episode is a compilation of three webinars I recorded to explain all the goodies in all the bundles and products. What products have you had your eye on to help get your home organized? Now is your chance to gift or treat yourself at the best price of the year.

Don't worry, we have created a shopping catalog for you to thumb through leading up to Black Friday. The first thing I went over this episode is the Complete Home Organization Bundle. This is everything you would need for the 52 week course to get your home organized and not have to return to the Organize 365® shop. It includes the 4 essential building blocks to get organized and productive.

The first block is the Productive Home Solution™ to get a plan in place to organize your physical spaces. Then the Paper Solution® to replace those filing cabinets and manage all your paper/information. This is where you get all the binders for information management. Next is the Sunday Basket® as a weekly dumping station to then productively plan all those actionable items weekly - on Sunday. It is the number one product to start with to become a peacefully productive woman! Pay special attention to why you may want to purchase through Amazon if you plan to give the Sunday Basket® as a gift this year. And how do you ensure you will have time to implement the systems from Organize 365®? Planning Day. One Planning Day is included where you will look at how you are currently spending time and how you would like to more productively spend your time while also freeing up time as a result of planning and delayed procrastination. I went through all the pricing and what all is included so you know what to expect. You can get the bundles on sale, stand alone products on sale, even Planning Day is on sale!!

I explained the Holiday Blitz Bundle because right about now, your new part time job (planning the holidays) may make your house feel like it's going to explode. All of the sudden you are doing more shopping, mailing, planning, traveling, baking, cleaning, merriment…all the things. The Holiday Blitz Bundle will keep current priorities in front of you with a safe place for all the things that need to wait till after your holiday of choice. You get two extra Sunday Baskets® and there will be instructions for how to continue use throughout the year, not just November and December. These extra Sunday Baskets will give you back your brain, lighten your cognitive load, and reduce your stress.

And of course the already discounted Friday Workbox and Teacher Workbox products and courses are additionally discounted for Black Friday too! And while I will forever use a Friday Workbox for my businesses, I stand by my decision to put more focus on helping people to get their homes organized. You'll still get all of the products and courses, although color choices are starting to get limited on the Workboxes. You'll simply be put into legacy status as of March 2026. If you have been following Organize 365® for a while and have been wanting to implement systems for work too, now is your time!! What are you waiting for? Download the guide now and get shopping…the sale actually starts on Wednesday!!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• 2025 Black Friday Sale Catalog

• Watch The Black Friday Complete Home Organization Bundle

• Watch The Black Friday Sunday Basket®

• Watch The Black Friday Friday Workbox Farewell

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media.

All these advanced technologies are supposed to be saving us time right? I ask you "Is it saving you time?" Our devices, robots, and social media seem to be sucking up a lot of time and cognitive load. In my observation, it seems to me, I am spending more time on apps, updates, and managing robots and getting frustrated than saving time. I just wanted to have a conversation about what I am seeing and hear from you…you too?

Smart Homes

You all know the struggle I have had with our robot vacuum. I finally had waited out the lease on the last one that never seemed to connect to wifi or be charged. This new one I can get charged. I can get it to connect to the wifi. I was pumped on one of my days during the staycation when all the stars had aligned and I was ready to run her. I opened the app to start her up and got a notification that I needed to update the app…no problem. I had the day off. But now there was a wifi issue. At this point, I could have burned a few calories and had my floors vacuumed but no I was still messing around with the wifi connection. The kicker? I knew once I finally got her working, she can't even complete the first floor without recharging so I couldn't even get all the floors vacuumed. I'd have to pick 3 of the 4 zones to get cleaned. Like come on people, this is not saving me any time.

Recently we replaced our HVAC with a top of the line system. It's so good, it took 4 service calls to actually get it working correctly. The zones were set wrong so it wasn't performing correctly. This wasn't saving me any time. What good is the app at saving me time, if the system isn't set up right? And don't get me started about the washer/dryer combo unit I invested in. I'm getting notified of everything it's doing whether I care or not. It's taking my cognitive load and increasing it. Can I just get some base model machines with start and stop buttons and that's it? I don't need all this technology, frustration, and distraction.

Phones

Then I slowly started to notice my increased phone time. And my kids noticed it of themselves too. Joey in fact asked for a dumb phone. I dont' know what is it lately but I go to check email and all the sudden I'm scrolling on Instagram and forgot what I got on my phone to do in the first place. We are more entertained than ever but we are also more lonely than ever. When Greg and I went to those small towns, we didn't see people. Where were all the people? In their homes, on their phones. So I started to think, what did I used to do when I got bored? Now I scroll Instagram or play a game on my phone. BUT I used to like to scrapbook, do puzzles, listen to audio books, and organize. I want to challenge you to make a small list of things you can do off your phone when you have free time. What do you like to do? Ask yourself, Are you in control of your phone or is it in control of you? And is that how you want it to be? Turn off notifications, place your phone face down when not in use, and put your ringer on silent. Create the home environment you want.

Short Conversations

And it's great that we have so many sources for information but it's limiting our conversations. Since it would appear we all the know the same news, I am challenging myself to have deeper conversations with the people in my family and you may want to too. Here are a few questions to have more meaningful conversations.

How do you feel about that?

What do you think will happen next?

How did you find out about that?

Yeah, I did hear about that but tell me what did you hear about that?

I want to have rich relationships with the people in my house not monitoring my robots so I have more time to scroll. I want to be growing and learning in my free time. What do you want?

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!