282 - What Is "Maintenance?"

Organize 365 Podcast

Lisa Woodruff

Lisawoodruff, Education, Self-improvement, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2019

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Most of us like to form our own opinions about what maintenance means to us. On the podcast, we talk a lot about the cycle of getting organized and increasing productivity.

But what about the maintenance stage of your organizational journey?

What does it really mean to maintain something?

According to the good old dictionary, maintenance is the process of maintaining or preserving a condition or situation or the state of being preserved.

While this gives us more clarity on the meaning of maintenance, it doesn’t dive into the details or tell us how it equates to the maintenance of our homes.

As we go through the 100 Day Home Organization Program and declutter and organize each space in our homes for the third or even fourth time, we enter a phase of maintenance which I want to unpack with you in this episode of the podcast.

What Maintenance Looks Like In The Physical Areas Of Your Home

If you asked me what stage of the organizational journey I’m currently in, I would say I’m living in maintenance. I don’t do much. Everything in my house is decluttered and organized (I am a professional organizer, after all).

But that doesn’t mean I don’t do the dishes or laundry. I still have non-organizational, cleaning related tasks to do just like anyone else. I still have to put things away at the end of the day. However, once you’ve decluttered and organized your entire house, it usually stays organized.

One reason why your house might not stay organized is because of the kids. I don’t mean just the toddlers either. No matter what age they are, kids are like little chaos creators. They tumble through the house like mini tornadoes and just have a way of messing things up.

But if your kids tend to mess up their own rooms and the joint family rooms but stay out of your storage room and master bedroom, etc., the work you’ve done to get the majority of your home organized is probably well maintained.

To me, living an organized life that’s maintained is when you reach the end of the day and you don’t have to start decluttering and organizing everything. All you have to do is pick things up and put them back to where they go. It’s simple.

In the podcast, I dive deeper into...

Maintenance In Different Seasons Of Life

Maintenance In Everyday Home Life

What Does Maintenance Mean With Your Paper?

One thing that you need to come to grips with when it comes to organizing is that your home will never be perfect. Perfect is not the end goal here. The end goal is to live a more organized and functional life and being able to maintain it as a result.

View the full post here: https://organize365.com/what-is-maintenance/

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Today's mailbag comes to us from Juliana from Facebook. I just want to say
0:06.2	Organized 365 has changed my life. I have struggled to get organized post-babies and this company and its programs have finally helped me get my home to a place where I can comfortably host playdates without feeling like I'm scrambling to get my house in order.
0:26.1	I love all their courses and programs, but if you can only afford to do one, start with
0:32.3	the Sunday basket. It is absolutely hands down the best way to stay on top
0:37.6	of all those to-do's running around in your head. I am a serious paper planner lover and yet I struggled to find a way to keep
0:46.3	track of all of the mail, actionable items, and my never ending mental to-do list.
0:53.4	No matter how many lists I made, how many brain dumps I did,
0:57.0	and how many planners I have tried, I have always felt like I was missing things.
1:02.2	Having everything go right in the Sunday basket and sitting down weekly to go through it
1:08.1	has made the biggest difference to not only my organization but also my peace of mind. Thank you Lisa and the whole
1:16.2	Organized 365 team. You are doing amazing things. Thank you, Juliana. Do you have an Organized 365 success story?
1:27.0	We would love to hear about it.
1:29.0	Please send us an email at Lisa at Organized 365.com and tell us how you have taken back your home,
1:37.0	your paper, and your life with organized 365.
1:50.0	Welcome to the Organized 365 podcast. I'm your host, professional organizer, productivity expert, and motivational speaker, Lisa Woodruff.
1:57.0	This podcast will help you embrace progress over perfection and create lasting functional organizing in your home.
2:04.7	I have so much to share with you, so let's get started.
2:10.1	Maintenance.
2:11.5	What does it mean to maintain something?
2:15.0	You know, we talk about the cycle of getting organized as being decluttering, organizing, and then increasing productivity,
2:22.0	but there is this idea that we need to do maintenance
2:25.9	or that maintenance might be the fourth step in your organizational journey. So I want to
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Lisa Woodruff, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Lisa Woodruff and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.