SPEAKER_01 0:00

Okay. Welcome to the Ask for the Skini Podcast with a guest. I'm proud to present Lisa Woodrow. Lisa, welcome to the show. Please tell us more about yourself. What is your story?

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Peter, thank you so much for having me. I am a middle-aged woman from Mid-America in Ohio. I'm 54 years old. I live in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I have been studying my entire life, even since when I was a child, how we live in our households, function our households, how we're more productive in our households, how families interact in our households, what things impact our economy in our households. First, I did that through just being a child in a big family, and then babysitting. And then I got my teaching degree and I did home studies. I was a stay-at-home mom for a decade. And then I started the company Organize 365 when I turned 40, started doing in-home professional organizing. And then I moved into creating products and systems to help us run our households more productively. And most recently, I just finished a PhD in applied psychology. And next I'm going to start tackling scientific studies and publishing those in academia to really bring to light the most important aspect of our life, which is the houses and the homes that we live in throughout our lifespan.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Amazing. And I would also I have huge appreciation for that because most of us uh we take households for granted. But they they they influence our well-being, our relationships, our business also, because a lot of us uh still work from home. So um you mentioned in your story you started babysitting and stuff like that. How was household organized in your family? Because in my family, we had uh meeting or board of directors, as we would call it, and uh we would budget for uh one year in advance, um, and we had assets, liabilities, and everything was uh budgeted. We have uh profit and loss and everything, so uh we know exactly um how many calories we need to to eat, uh, how much food we are wasting, everything was on paper. My my my father was a huge Excel uh fan in the 90s, and he organized everything, and we we needed to enter everything. And my grandfather would say, you have to always calculate that the month has 36 days, so you never ran out of money, and you have always a uh a dollar to to save and stuff like that. So um, how how was your family? How was that organized in your family?

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Not that way at all. Okay, first of all, are other people like you? Like, obviously, your family is are other people in your in Slovenia like this? Are other people your friends like this? Okay, because I've never heard of this before. Like, Peter, this is like I'm like, wow, you should become you should start my company. No, I was not like that at all. Um, you know, I was Radies in a very traditional family. Uh, my mom and dad met in high school, got married after my mom graduated from college, had me one year later, and my sister a few years after that. They were from really big families. Um, family members, um, most that ended up getting married had children. And if they didn't get married, they didn't have children. Um, so my lens until really until my daughter had her child was like, you get up, you get married, you have kids. And like all households are comprised of people who have kids. And now I realize, like, no, that's like 40% of households, and there are so many households that are single people or married without kids or widowed, or you know, my understanding of what's in a household has changed a lot. So I have a very traditional upbringing, and getting my PhD has really helped me to um broaden my understanding of the lived experience in households throughout different seasons of life and in different countries. That's why I was asking if this is like, wow, everybody should move to Slovenia, then you guys will get you know really be productive over there. Um, also reminds me my grandmother was German. And so that, you know, that German is much more of an engineering type mindset and more spreadsheet focused. Uh, we're from an Irish Catholic family. We tell really big tales. So, like the stories are great. There's not a lot of data going on inside of our families. And I do think there is some cultural background to how we run our households as well. I'm just starting to explore that. I've mostly, in my lived experience and even in my research, been studying females as the head of household. Uh, and a big limitation I have is male single-led households or male-dominated households where the man ends up being uh the stay-at-home house husband or you know, is a single parent or just single in general. We don't have as much research on that.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Okay. Uh, for another thing that is important in my family is for ladies to go to the finishing school. Is there something like finishing school in the US? Because my grandmother, for example, because uh when I was young, she she had time to talk with me and and she explained uh because uh Slovenia is was part of the of the Austria in the past of the Austrian Empire, and uh she went to Vienna to to study. Um, how to also it was a finishing school, how to organize um uh let's say a big family house, uh, how to prepare uh food and how to store food for uh to last uh over the winter, how to uh um calculate how much food you need, for example, for eight person living in in the book, uh uh sorry, in the uh in this area. Is there something like finishing school? I I know they're still there in Switzerland, but I love it. Okay, so that's now there any finishing schools in the US that would help uh young ladies and men, of course, understand how to run our household because we have here the finishing schools have thousands of years into of tradition in in Europe, but yeah, because of the liberal movement, they said no, nobody needs that, and that is uh that is conservative and stuff like that. Uh, and yes, some parts of that are conservative, but um uh some of them they they have uh real uh practical value, and our households uh we we we knew because that that was like hundred years uh ago because my grandmother would be probably 120 now, but um they knew exactly how many uh chickens they need to have, uh they need uh to have fresh eggs, and uh they they they understood how to store eggs because uh in the winter there's less eggs, but there are certain celebrations that demand eggs, and then they knew exactly how how many pigs they need to raise uh because there was uh need for fat, because not so much oil was used uh in in the past, so everything was um well planned for uh they they knew they they need for uh family, they needed for uh holidays, they they would also organize uh we would call it event now, but celebrations for holidays, and they needed uh they they knew exactly for the whole year in advance how um how things need to be organized, and of course, uh fruits uh need to be uh stored at the end of the summer and stuff like that. Is there anything uh similar in the US?

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Is the is that something similar that you're doing now? How how do you see it?

SPEAKER_00 8:14

So that is so interesting. I think that is equivalent to what we call home economics. So home economics started in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and it was actually the first college degree that women could get in the United States. And it was considered a science. And it was this food science that you talk about. When you mentioned finishing school, I could talk about that too. That's a whole different, like more like a societal thing. But um, home economics was actually a science degree, and that was the degree that my great-grandmother received. She went to school and she uh my grandmother got a home economics degree. My great-grandmother went to school and got a teaching degree because that was all that was offered at her school. So those were the two degrees that you could get prior to like the 1960s in the United States. You could get a teaching degree or a home economics degree, a science degree or a teaching degree. And my great-grandmother and my grandmother both went to college and received those degrees. And there is some discussion about how the fact that we did have these home economic schools, like these finishing schools you're talking about, was part of why the United States was so successful in World War I and World War II, because they understood how to preserve and food and get food to the troops who were fighting overseas. And so that knowledge. Now, um, obviously there are more degrees open to women that are not home economics. There is home economics that used to be taught in high schools, it's not anymore. My degree, I can teach children uh birth through eighth grade. I got it in 1995, was actually in the family and consumer sciences branch of my school, Miami University in Ohio. And that actually is the new name for home economics. There are very few schools that are still offering it, but it is still there. But to your point, Peter, we have been living in houses since we moved out of caves. So as soon as they moved out of a cave and they created a house, we had housework. And we had to figure out how to feed all of the family members, and we needed to learn how to do all those things. And a lot of that is passed down, you know, as you've mentioned, your grandmother, your father, like you've been very influenced by your family. This is really how we learn these things. Mostly it's through our families or through our communities. And yes, there was formal education. Sounds like there still is some formal education, some places where you can learn to do these things, but most people are not signing up for that. So my big question is how are people learning this anymore? And we're not necessarily asking our parents or learning from our grandparents or living in community like we used to. And so a lot of that information isn't available when we need it. So we go to the internet. Now we ask AI. I don't know if I'd be asking AI things about this, but and that's kind of where Organize 365 came from. Like I started the company because I wanted to organize people and get myself organized. And I love organization, but over the last 15 years, I've learned that a lot of people did not come from organized families and/or they've tried one or two organizing systems that didn't work for them. So they figure they're not organized. They don't realize as a teacher, I know I could teach you many different ways. Um, and there are no systems, there are no schools for us to sign up for. So basically, Organized 365 is an online school that teaches you all of these things that you used to go to finishing school for. Amazing. Um not the pigs and the eggs, though. I don't get too much into food.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

I was gonna ask you.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

No, don't talk to me anymore about these pigs and these eggs. I don't know. I just go to the grocery store.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Because uh the food is so important for us, especially for our health, and we consume too much sugar and saturated fats and stuff like that. And uh with the planning well in advance, we could avoid most of it. Uh yeah, but um can we that I I will require you to to um estimate it's not uh how important you mentioned already that um that home economics basically helped US survive first world war and second world war because everyone was uh accountant, or most of the people uh knew how to plan and uh store data in order to last uh let's call it the rainy days. So, how important is today? Because our economics is uh officially booming, but uh only the big guys profit. And uh for us, um or for an average person, uh there is a huge challenge in uh planning things. And um, in the past we knew that there are uh better seasons, or when we were farming, of course, uh better seasons and worse seasons coming, and that we have to persevere. In Slovenia, a good farmer has to persevere seven uh years of drought and no crop. So you have to have uh storage for seven consecutive years to persevere, because we say that there are seven good years and seven bad years, and you have to be ready for the bad years. So um for for um, but today's uh economy uh everyone is living on a credit card debt. And it it's a completely different mindset that was like eight years ago, or after the second world war, where we wanted to generate or generate or procure as storage or we uh in farmers we we we call it fat, we want to have a lot of fat for the days that we don't have food so that we can live off it. How how important is that in in the US today that uh we start storing or um that we don't leave um basic basically paycheck to paycheck, and that we are not 100% dependent on our Walmart or other shops? Yeah, um you know how how to turn that around because we are all in debt and we have credit card debts, we have uh car payments, we have uh we have um mortgage payments. How to get out of that, how to organize better.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

So, well, geez, I mean, if we knew the answer to this question, we wouldn't be on a podcast, we'd be on the World Forum, right? Like if I get it in that's pretty loaded question, Peter. Um I think again, I'm gonna remind everyone, I'm 54 and I live in Ohio. It's like the middle towards the middle of the United States. I think it really matters your age, your um location. Like if I lived on one of the coasts, like Florida or New England or California, if I was younger, if I was older, my answer might be different. But we live in our households our entire lives. And I'm so grateful that I did not grow up with Amazon and a cell phone because I would be broke as a joke. Like, in order to, like, we have a mortgage and we've paid off some of our cars, but we didn't have the opportunity to spend things so quickly that you do today. And, you know, my husband and I are pretty old-fashioned in our mindset. You know, he goes to work and I stayed with the kids for a decade. You know, we we have a kind of old-fashioned type marriage. Now I'm a CEO and I run a house and a company now. So um I have entered into the workforce. But when it comes down to it, you know, we bought a house, we've lived in it for 30 years, some was paid off, that kind of thing. That mindset isn't really in this generation that is younger right now. And also, frankly, I have two kids in their mid-20s. There's just not enough money. I don't care what kind of job you have in your 20s. There isn't enough money right now to have a car and a mortgage and food and, you know, just those three things. Um, so money is different today than it used to be. I can't fix that. I don't really know what to say about that. I do think that we are much more impulse purchase driven because we don't even have to go to the store and it'll literally be at our doorstep in five hours. Like I can like have things in my house like way too fast. Um, I think we have valued recently, more recently, items versus experiences, even though I know millennials are very into experiences. Uh, just as a society, I I'll speak for the United States. We're very materialistic. We have we are very marketed too, like everybody sells to Americans, and we're like, yeah, we'll buy it. Um and when I think about this, here are some bigger questions. I'll just open some loops in people's minds. You know, you mentioned earlier like our health and our wellness and our food and how important that is. It is very frustrating to me as an American that American food companies create food and sell it to us in Americans, and then the Europeans have better standards of what food they will accept for their people. And then the American companies will make the food better for Europeans and still sell the crap in the United States. Like that makes me mad. Uh, if you know how to make it better and you're sending it somewhere else, why not just make it better for everyone? You know what I mean? Like, so I feel like we are so marketed to and we will buy so many things for convenience that we're taking advantage of in many ways. Um, but we're resilient. Americans are very resilient. We have a lot of opportunities, I think, that maybe other countries don't have because you know, you you can literally move anywhere you want in the United States. And it's not like if you were moving in Europe, you'd have to change like visas and all those things. Like we have we have a lot of freedom of movement, um, a lot of freedom, uh, our tax system is different, things like that. So I think you kind of have to think about your generation, your mindset, your revenue sources, your the longevity that you expect. I hope to live into my 90s or 100s, so I'm planning for that. Um you know, there's just a lot of variables that you have to take into account.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Uh, my my question, because uh is there a problem that we live more dirt day to day and we don't understand the seasons anymore, we don't understand the future because uh you said okay, the food is different in in the US, but also the prices are are uh different. So the food in Europe might be much more expensive uh in percentage of the income. Uh but there's always a trade-off. Okay, you eat healthy now and you don't pay for uh for health later on. And is there a problem? Because um, for example, when when two or three generations uh live together in one home, you could see what happened to your grandparents. Um if they did something stupid like drinking too much or smoking too much or uh overeating and stuff like that. You you could see firsthand, but now uh you move away to college at 16, you you just meet everyone on on um let's say Christmas or uh you know uh birthday parties, uh and then later on on uh funerals and stuff like that. But the the idea is um are we so dissociated from ourselves and our families that we don't see in the future because for for me it was uh easy because um uh our family was quite close, and I understood okay, you you get older, uh you you have to work less, um, and that is why you have to have your uh pension taken care of much before. And um, if you don't like the state pension, you have to uh make some money on the side so you can uh spend a little more and stuff like that. So everything was clear to me because I even is as a kid, I was living uh with my my grandparents also, and um, or at least engage with them uh uh oftenly, so I I could understand, but the the this generation they engage more with social media, stuff like that, and they don't uh they don't see in and another thing, there's no tradition because um in the older days, but that's more than 100 years before. Uh, you know, okay, my my dad is a carpenter, I'm gonna be a carpenter, and now I don't know, my dad is uh working in the IT, but the technology he's working on will be obsolete in four years. Luckily, he'll go in retirement, and I work on a completely different project, and it's not it used to be called IT, now it's called programming, now it's called AIs, and everything is moving, you know. And I and I don't see the the tradition or how do you see let me rephrase that. How do you see tradition with with marketing trends? Because I I see this is a huge problem. We don't follow our tradition anymore. We follow market trends. Okay, now it's fashionable. Everyone needs to have a microwave. Of course, that was 60 years ago, but now everyone needs to have this and that, and uh, we need to travel to Hawaii and we need to go to Bali and stuff like that. Everything is um I say so uh external driven. It's it's not it's it's not from these are societal goals and not just uh regarding things we need to purchase and regarding um experiences you mentioned, that more and more people are going towards experiences.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yeah, I love how much of a critical thinker you are and how you keep going all the way back to a hundred years. Ago, you keep going back to your grandparents, great-grandparents, like pictures in your mind. I do the same thing. Uh, my daughter and grandchildren live with my husband and I, so we're in a multi-generational family. Um, the team here at Organize 365. We have uh two or three other families that are also living in multi-generational families. Two of them were purposeful when they went to move to a new location. They sold two houses and bought one. Um, and so I see more multi-generational family living in the United States than I have before. Maybe it's always been there, maybe not, I don't know. Um, but that is is newer. And I do see how, you know, my daughter raising two little kids, I'm brought back to, oh yeah, I'll tell her, oh, this is what I did when you were little, or I was raising you and your brother. And she has me right in the house to ask those questions. And then to your other point, I'm starting to look ahead at, you know, my mother, mother-in-law, father-in-law, they're in their 70s, 80s, completely 100% independent. You know, my grandmother and my great-grandmother both lived in the early 90s. They were completely independent until their last six months, each of them. So I don't have a big um picture of people who need to live like for multiple years or a decade with a family because they can't take care of their own living needs. However, I have thought of recently, you know, I think, you know, a lot of the women in my family live into their 90s. And so I'll live into my 90s or be 100. And I realized the other day, I was like, yeah, but your dad's mother and your mom's father both died very young. And you have those genes too. Like we tend to think only about the people that we see, to your point, or the people that we know about that have lived a long time or have done something really fantastic. And so then we think our whole entire family does all of those things, and that's not necessarily true. Also, it was in my 40s that I realized a lot of my understanding of my family of origin on both sides, my mom and dad's side, was from holidays or, you know, once in a while sleepovers or things like that, or hanging out in the summertime. And that in general, we as humans don't really have that lived experience of what it's like to do to have a day-to-day experience in another household. As a babysitter, I did. Um, and being the youngest or the oldest grandchild on both sides of the family, I was almost like another sibling when I was really younger. So I saw how those families functioned when my grandmother was still parenting her children, which is really cool. But that is very rare. And so that's a unique, you know, catalog that I get to go back in my head and think about too. Like you're thinking about your grandmother. But we are so busy and distracted. I don't know how busy we actually are, but we're definitely distracted. Like every minute of our day is filled with whatever we want it to be filled with. And um what uh I can't remember what the movie is. He says, Get me so-and-so on the phone and get me somebody while I'm waiting. I think it's Chevy Chase's Christmas vacation. The big boss has to be so important. He has to have somebody while the secretary is getting him who he actually wants to talk to. And we're able to do that to ourselves. Like, well, while I'm making dinner, I'm also gonna want to watch a show while I'm running the bath, I'm also gonna scroll Instagram, you know, so we don't have a lot of sitting, thinking, and reflecting time. And so we aren't thinking about these questions, and we aren't using our own lived experience and memories in our brain to inform what we're doing going forward. Like right now, I've been thinking a lot about retiring. I'm 54, I'm not retiring. I want to work till I'm 80. But my husband is 59 and he keeps telling me at 59 and a half, he would like to retire. And I'm like, what? Like, I am not ready for this. And so now I'm starting to do research. I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't know. I don't know anything about all of these things that would be related to retirement, other than you have a desire to do it. And we've, you know, saved quite a bit in a 401k. So financially it makes sense. And the things that I'm reading are, yeah, you should retire sooner rather than later so that you are healthy enough to travel. Hadn't even thought of that. Hadn't even thought of that. All I thought about was have enough money to live, have enough money for healthcare. I'm like, oh yeah, good point. Like, we are healthy and well now. Will we be in our 70s? I don't know. So maybe we should take opportunities to do this in our 60s. So I have been thinking in my car on the way home and on the way to work. Okay, thinking about grandma and grandpa, when were they when they got the RV and travel? Thinking about my mom and dad. When did they start traveling? Looking at Greg's parents, when did they travel? You know, and starting to go back through the catalog of my brain through different family members and thinking about like when were how old were they when they moved into the retirement home? You know, even though they lived independently, my grandmother moved into the retirement home at 70. And now I look at my family members that are 70 and in their 80s that are resisting it. And I'm thinking, well, why would you resist it? I mean, you don't have to do the lawn, you don't like like you're living on your own in your own apartment, um, but there's like an expense to it. So to your point, sometimes we just have to get a little bit older to even have those things on our radar. We we've just opened up a whole bunch of extra questions and things for people to think about, Peter. I don't know if we've solved anything.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Yeah, no need. Uh sometimes we just need to debate. Uh, before we wrap up, I would like uh to pick your brain a bit more.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

So what's your number one advice on how to organize a household? Because you're an expert in this. What would be your number one advice for our listeners?

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Yes, I think that we do not have a desire to get organized problem or an effort problem. We have an order of operations problem in getting our houses organized. And by that I mean that we want to get our living spaces looking the best first. But the problem is they're living spaces and so people live in them. So they're constantly undone. So that work is never done. So if you only focus on the living spaces, you're just like a hamster on a wheel. So what I actually want you to do is go to your personal spaces and your storage spaces and let the living spaces be kind of cluttered for a while. Because when you get your personal spaces, your bedroom, bathroom, closet, home office organized, you will feel so much better and so much more supported and you will live a more organized life. When you have your storage spaces organized, you will declutter the things that are no longer serving you and set up really well-maintained systems for the prepaid store that a storage is. A storage room is a store. It's a prepaid store. It's not what yours looks like. It's not what mine looked like either until I put in shelves and bins. Like it should literally look like a store. When you think about it that way, and everything in there is something that you will use in the future. Or to your point, I'm sure the farmers for the seven years had that prepaid store and they knew when to rotate things in and out. Like this is a very old concept. Um, but we're going to do it for like expired electronics and seasonal decor and outgrown kids' clothes. Um, your household functions better. Then put all of your effort into the living spaces because you'll get the whole house organized that way.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Amazing. And before we finish, please let our uh listeners know where they can get in touch with you.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

Yeah, so the website is organize365.com. That's where you can find all the products in my online store. It's like an office supply store. And then my podcast is called Organize 365. And I'm most active on Instagram under Organize365.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Lisa, thank you for all these insights. It was great talking to you. I really like it. So I hope it was pleasant for you so that we didn't ask you anything unpleasant. And uh thank you for being my guest tonight.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

This was so great, Peter. Thank you so much.