96 | Why the Professional Organizing Industry Exists with Dr. Carrie Lane

Nov 27

96 | Why the Professional Organizing Industry Exists with Dr. Carrie Lane

In our latest episode, we are thrilled to host Dr. Carrie Lane, a leading expert in American Studies, as she unveils the intriguing world of professional organizing. Her latest book, More Than Pretty Boxes: How the Rise of Professional Organizing Shows Us the Way We Work Isn't Working explores how this booming industry reflects the challenges of our current work culture.

We also discuss the two parts of her book, the first which explores the history of professional organizing and the motivations behind those who choose this path, and the second on how the industry addresses the challenges faced by clients overwhelmed by both work and home responsibilities. Lane's research highlights the essential role of organizers in helping individuals navigate the complexities of modern life, emphasizing the importance of empathy, non-judgment, and realistic expectations.

This episode offers a fresh perspective on the transformative power of organizing in our lives. Tune in to learn more about Dr. Lane's findings and how they resonate with the everyday struggles of managing work, home, and personal well-being.

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Intro: Welcome to A Pleasant Solution, Embracing An Organized Life. I'm your host, certified life coach, professional organizer, and home life expert, Amelia Pleasant Kennedy and I help folks permanently eliminate clutter in their homes and lives. On this podcast will go beyond the basics of home organization to talk about why a clutter-free mindset is essential to an aligned and sustainable lifestyle. If you're someone with a to-do list, if you're managing a household and if you're caring for others, this podcast is for you. Let's dive in.

Amelia: Welcome to Episode 96, “Why the Professional Organizing Industry Exists with Dr. Carrie Lane.”

Dr. Carrie Lane is Professor and Chair of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton, where she teaches about work, gender, and community. Her new book, More Than Pretty Boxes: How the Rise of Professional Organizing Shows Us the Way We Work Isn't Working, explores the growing demand for organizing services and what draws so many people, especially women, to become organizers. She also uses organizing’s rise as a lens for thinking through the nature of overwork and overwhelm in the United States today. Carrie earned her PhD in American Studies from Yale University and her BA in anthropology and women’s studies from Princeton University. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Amelia: So welcome to the podcast, Carrie.

Dr. Carrie Lane: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here today.

Amelia: Yes, so you and I, we met at this year's annual summit of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals, where you were there to reconnect with many of the organizers that you'd worked with alongside of, and spoken to for your new book, which is called "More Than Pretty Boxes."

And you and I chatted for a little bit about the Fair Play Method and your deep fascination with work, workers, and the cultural shift towards overwork. So I'd love for you to just tell folks a little bit about yourself and how you came to this work.

Carrie: Sure. So I am a cultural anthropologist with a PhD in American Studies, which is an interdisciplinary field that in my case combines cultural anthropology, with American history and studying popular culture. So it's sort of a mix there. And I have, for more than 20 years, I have studied the changing nature of work in contemporary America. And so previous projects were more focused on unemployment and changing ideas around job insecurity.

And then around 2012, I got really interested in the sort of cultural ethos around organizing, right? And anywhere I looked, I felt like I was seeing professional organizing. And I myself, I didn't necessarily grow up organized, but I'm a pretty organized person now. And I had this moment where I was decluttering my own home. And after I did it, I felt so much lighter. I felt so much better. And, you know, as a cultural critic, like I am immediately, I have to interrogate that feeling.

Cause like, decluttering a couple mugs and bringing them to Goodwill. What does it have to do with, like, “Am I a happy person? Do I have a good life?” And yet in my body there was this definite positive reaction to doing that. And so I started looking into the cultural history of clutter and ideas about decluttering and professional organizing started out as like one corner of a research project. But then as soon as I interviewed a couple professional organizers, I was in and I wanted to do more. And so the whole project became about professional organizing, the history of the field, what draws people to this work, and why, I ultimately argue, this is really important work for thinking through not just consumerism and clutter, but like human connection and ideas around overwork and overwhelm in American society.

Amelia: And I knew right away that I wanted to talk to you because of all that you just said there that also kind of fascinates me and I'm curious about similar things. Before we dive into your book and what you've been working on in particular, I'd love to take a step back because you mentioned you weren't maybe so organized when you were younger. What did organization look like or not look like for you during your childhood?

Carrie: Great question. I wish my mom were here to like to co-answer this question. But I was like a teeny tiny tornado as a child. just constant energy, never stopped moving, never stopped talking, which I think people who know me today would say that's pretty consistent. But interestingly, I was always, I was never attached to stuff.

I was never a person who had a strong emotional connection to physical belongings. And so I remember really clearly my mom telling me to clean my room and I cleaned my room and put a lot of stuff in the garbage can. And then my mom, who is a keeper and I am a non-keeper, my mom went through my garbage and was like, “What are you doing? Of course you want to keep this. This is a memento of this or that or so and so gave you that present, you know?” And just to be clear, now, 50 years later, that tension continues between my mom and I, you know, cushioned with love, but that tension between me wanting to get rid of things. So I think for me, organization, even when I was a kid, I wouldn't have known it then, but it really looks like I have a really low clutter threshold. And so, it looks like clearing out the space so I can breathe and I can think. And I think that started really young for me.

Amelia: Thank you so much for sharing that because I've interviewed a number of guests and I've never had someone explain the tension dynamic going that way from parent to child. Oftentimes listeners may resonate with what you're sharing because we often hear the reverse, right? The parent saying, “Get rid of it, get rid of it.” And the child saying, “No. I want to hold onto it because it's sentimental.” But I love that you notice that dynamic or can reflect on that dynamic now and kind of be at peace with your level or low threshold tolerance for the visual clutter in your space, which it makes sense that you would be fascinated by our profession.

And I just want to share that on an earlier episode of this podcast, I actually shared my journey from being at home for a dozen years into the organizing profession. So prior to having children, I was an academic, I studied art, and was pursuing a PhD in art history. And for me, that through line from all that I learned from being at home, caring for others, navigating endless logistics, kind of planning meals and the use of space into professional organizing made sense for me. But I'm curious how you came to study professional organizers. How did you first encounter our work, those initial conversations, and dive into what fascinated you about our work?

Carrie: Hmm. Gosh. Okay. So I think the first time I started thinking at all about organizing, and it wasn't organizing at the time, but my first book, "A Company of One," is about unemployment and high tech. And I was in Dallas, Texas, and I was interviewing all these different unemployed high tech workers. And one of the women who had lost her job in high tech mentioned to me that instead of seeking a job in high tech, she was going to start her own business and she wanted to be a housewife to working women.

She wanted to do all of the tasks that they needed to get done for the household and family while they were at work. So it was like running the dog to the groomer and picking up groceries and dry cleaning and whatever those tasks might be. And so I think that just in the back of my mind peaked an interest in women who were seeking jobs that fit their lifestyles better that were also like helping other women who were facing similar challenges, right? So she wasn't looking to become an organizer, but you can see where that connects, right?

And then when, gosh, I think I first thought a lot about professional organizing when, and I don't want to throw my whole family under the bus here, but many years ago, my older sister was living in Palo Alto and just sort of feeling overwhelmed by stuff in her house. And so I reached out to a professional organizer about getting her a gift certificate for organizing. And I still remember, I'm still in contact with that organizer actually. They were one of the people I interviewed for the project years later. But I remember the organizer telling me, “I don't do gift certificates because the person on the other end needs to be interested in getting organized.” And I thought, that's so smart. And luckily my sister was interested and I don't remember, I don't think she ended up using an organizer, but you know, it just sort of...

Amelia: Love it.

Carrie: It was another small step into the field. So then years later, when I knew I wanted to study the rise of popularity around organizing, I already knew about organizers. And so I just sort of accidentally picked a couple organizers. I work in Orange County and I live in Los Angeles in California. And so I just Googled a bunch of folks and picked a couple that looked especially interesting. Interviewed two organizers and I was sort of deciding, “Do I think this is a project I'm going to pursue?” And two interviews with professional organizers and everything else in the project fell away. And that's what I wanted to focus on. And so from there on out, it was all about the organizers for me.

Amelia: That's brilliant. And I love how you put all of the pieces together because just on the other hand, right, and talking about your sister, right, it takes time for people to become comfortable with the idea of opening their door to help and assistance around the home. And just describing how you arrived at exploring this sounds kind of like the client's journey to having an organizer come into the home. And this particular example, whether that high tech individual was a personal assistant or however she would have described herself, it intersects a lot with what I think about. I love this idea of talking about the unpaid work of care, the unpaid work of the home, and that she found an avenue that just blows my mind and excites me.

And I would just like, I want you to hold up because I don't yet have a copy of your book. Let's take a look. It's called More Than Pretty Boxes: How the RIse of Professional Organizing Shows Us the Way We Work Isn't Working.

So I'm curious if there's elements here in the book both about professional organizing and the industry as well as more and more women are participating in the workforce, yet they feel responsible for the majority of home tasks. So where does the book take us?

Carrie: Yep. So the book is actually organized into two parts, both of which tackle the questions you're talking about or the topics you're talking about from different angles. So the first half is really a history of professional organizing. And where did this occupation come from? Who were the first professional organizers in the United States? It was a fascinating historical journey looking through American newspapers and magazines for the very first mentions of professional organizing, which were in the 1970s. And at first they weren't even calling it that, but it was people who later came to identify themselves as professional organizers. So it's sort of like, the first half of the book is what is drawing people, especially women, since we know it's an overwhelmingly female-dominated occupation, what's drawing women to become professional organizers?

And part of that story is about the failures of standard employment. Most of the early organizers, many of the founders of NAPO, talk about how when they were growing up in the 40s, 50s, 60s, there weren't a lot of jobs available to women. So the ones open to them, either they did them for a long time and then stopped, or they didn't fit them in particular. So they ended up creating a job that worked better for them. And that was organizing.

And I had the wonderful privilege of interviewing four of NAPO's five founders. And so that was just incredible, the insights they could provide on the early industry. But then interestingly, these women are talking about how, well, pre-second wave feminism or early on in that, there weren't a lot of jobs open to women. And so if we wanted something that was flexible and meaningful and allowed us some control over our work, we had to start our own thing.

And yet, even if you fast forward, 20 plus years to organizers, I guess 40 plus years to organizers today, a lot of the women who are moving into organizing are doing it for the exact same reasons. Even though we now have so many more professional options available to us as women, they're still saying, I wanted something more meaningful, more flexible, and that allowed me some control over my life when I take vacations, if I take vacations, how I approach the work that I do. And so even though so much has changed around gender and work, we have certain sticking points. And I mean, you know this so well with your work around Fair Play.

One of those failures is the way that standard employment has just failed to change along with women's movement since World War II, moving more and more into paid employment outside the home. And the fact that so many American households are either headed by one worker or have two incomes and need two incomes to get by. So standard employment hasn't changed, even though the people doing the work have changed dramatically. And so for that reason, even today, we see a lot of women opting out of standard employment because self-employment works better for them. And I think I'd add on there that as those so-called permanent secure jobs become less and less secure anyway, the risk around starting your own business has actually decreased. And so if secure work isn't that secure anyway, why not do your own thing?

Amelia: That.

Carrie: So that's like part of this, that's the first half, right? And then the second half is really more about what organizers actually do. And so that's less about how work isn't working for the people who become organizers than how work isn't working for the people who hire organizers. Because, yeah.

Amelia: And I wanna pause here for a moment just to talk about the first part of the book because that makes total sense to me, right? The draw of entrepreneurship, the flexible work schedule depending on if you have children and the age of children and the ability to care for them, the control of your income on a monthly basis.

Carrie: Okay. Yeah.

Amelia: And when you're talking about standard employment, it just makes sense that there's a rise of this profession as well as consumerism and clutter, right? There's an accompanying issue at hand. But I know so many of my colleagues love not just the control of owning their own business, but the human connection that comes along with working with clients, that very intimate conversation and interaction that takes place within the home, which probably leads to the second half of the book and the way that you witnessed going alongside professional organizers into folks' homes. So yes, please continue.

Carrie: Yeah, well first I'll just say absolutely. I mean, the research on gender and work shows that women, far more than men, want work that feels meaningful, that has human connection, and that are helping professions. And of course, that's a broad category. Lots of professions involve helping in different ways. And organizing is one of them.

And so people who are feeling like their work doesn't allow them to be the kind of human that they are or allow them to have those human connections that matter so much to them. They're seeking out work that provides that, right? And organizing is one. That was one of the things that when I went on these, I call them "work along’s," when I went along and worked as an unpaid assistant to organizers, that was one of the things that really surprised me. I mean, you guys told me, you organizers told me again and again, “It's not about the stuff. It's not about the stuff.” That was actually my working title of the book for a long time was not about the stuff, right? It's about the emotions around this stuff. So, dealing with stuff is really dealing with humans and their emotions and that's really at the core of organizing. I mean, that was one of the most important things I think I learned from spending time with organizers.

Amelia: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I think that's very valuable for listeners to hear. It's not about the stuff, right? Because there's always some hesitation between before making that connection, finding the right organizer, finding the right fit, and just knowing that we are not judging. And as a coach, right, I'm talking a lot with folks around that emotional side, that emotional connection to belongings, to their schedule, to their work. So it makes total sense to me that you would go in witness. I'm sure there are plenty of stories that you tell being alongside of organizers. Yeah, are there any examples that you like to share on the podcast today?

Carrie: Yeah, well, one of my favorite things about the book, actually, is that sandwiched in between each chapter are what I call organizing stories, and they're short vignettes from actual organizing jobs that I worked on. With the clients and the organizers, details are changed, so their privacy is protected. But I talk about some of the organizing jobs that I worked on. And then, of course, the stories themselves connect to arguments I'm making in other chapters about this kind of…

And so for instance, I open the book with a story about a client that I worked with an organizer on for multiple days. And it was that the client was a woman who was looking to start a business from her home and there was no room for a home office in her office. The office was full of other kinds of stuff. And in clearing that, first of all, we found there was a window in the office. We didn't even know it was there, right? Because it was so piled high with boxes.

And there were a few different lessons that that job taught me. One of them was that, you know, I'm an organized person, but I don't know that I could be a great organizer, because as great organizers know, you actually have to have a lot of tolerance for clutter and other people's decision making processes, right? It's not about making anyone get rid of anything, which TV shows would lead us to believe otherwise, but real life organizers know it's not.

And I remember walking into that apartment and the kitchen, the tiny little kitchenette, it was full of stuff, mostly stuff not related at all to food or eating. It was shopping bags and picture frames and all sorts of stuff. And for me, right, my heart rate kind of goes up as I walk in and I see this kitchen and I'm like, okay, we're gonna get this kitchen cleaned up. No, the client was fine with the kitchen. She had no concerns about the kitchen. It's not what hurts, right? It's not what was hurting for her. We didn't touch the kitchen.

We spent the entire time working in the office because that's what mattered to her. She was living just fine with the kitchen as it was. And so that was one really important lesson for me and really echoed what organizers have told me that sometimes the most organized people are just not cut out to be organizers.

Right. And then the second thing was that this client was exceptional at getting rid of stuff. She went through paperwork. It was one of the early jobs I did, so I didn't really know at the time what a big deal this was. She was so fast with paperwork, and the organizer, who was a long-time organizer, very experienced, said, look, you've got a great filing system. It's just that life accumulated. The client had had a number of challenges and transitions. Life accumulated and things got out of hand, but your system works. Let's just catch up on all your stuff.

And she was just like a ninja - recycling paperwork and getting it organized. And then we got to picture frames. And there were like 50 empty picture frames around the house, still in shopping bags, still with tags on them, all this kind of thing. So the organizer said, “Well, let's gather them all together.” And that was my job as the little, you know, just untrained organizing assistant. just running around grabbing frames. And I bring all the frames into the room and I'm feeling awkward about doing it. Cause they're like 50 full, you know, empty frames.

Amelia: Second set of hands.

Carrie: And the walls were already covered with beautiful artwork and photography. There was no room for these things to hang on the walls. And so we asked the client, “OK, can you get rid of some frames?” And this client who had just been so fast and decisive about getting rid of certain kinds of clutter, the frames, they found, think they chose two frames out of the dozens that were broken and said, “OK, we can get rid of those and the rest I want to keep.” And so the organizer kind of pushed a little bit and said, “Well, what are you going to use them for?”

What if, if you have, know what, you know what, sorry, that's my dog. This is Sparky. This is the source of disorganization and emotional clutter in my own life.

So if you know what you're going to have go on in each frame, just put a label on each one. And then we can say, OK, those are spoken for. And she said, “Well, no, I haven't created the art yet that's going to go in these frames.” And we said, “OK, well, when you create the art, we'll think about where you're going to hang them.” She said, “No, no, most of them are going to be gifts for friends.” And we said, “Great, you can label them one for each friend you want to give it to.” And she said, “No, no, no, these are for friends I haven't met yet.”

Right. And so it was so clear that unlike all the other stuff, there was a lot of emotion wrapped up around these frames and what they represented in terms of reconnecting to the artistic part of herself, in terms of the human connections she was seeking and imagining for herself in the future. I mean, it was so complex. And that was really a key moment for me.

Amelia: Yes.

Carrie: And I think that's why I choose to open the book with that story. It was such an emotional moment in unexpected ways.

Amelia: And it's an example of how deep this work can go, right? What you offered was a few things, right? The kitchen was not a pain point. And I think it's important for listeners to hear, right? We all have certain areas of our home that function well and are not pain points. And then there might be particular areas that do. And for her, that was the office.

And going through the paperwork, I often say on my podcast that folks are more organized than they think. And that paperwork, that was an example. She was like, this is straightforward. And there's always, for all of us, kind of one or more areas that can feel tender, sticky. We have a story, a layer underneath. And I can really see how again, as an anthropologist, as someone who studies kind of what makes us human and how these patterns change over time, right? Getting in there, that particular story shows you the nature behind the closed door, I think.

Carrie: Yeah, and it really, mean, and so that second half of the book, one thing I really want to do is to convey what organizing actually involves, because I think there are lot of misperceptions out there, especially based on pop culture and the way organizers are represented as sort of these stern taskmasters, or we're going to make a game of you having to give up one of your prized possessions or these sorts of things. But I also really think, you know, it's an easy thing to say people hire organizers because they have too much stuff.

Right. And in that second half of the book, I also really work to point out that changes around how we work and what we as humans today are responsible for, especially people who are managing homes while also working for pay. Right. But either one in and of itself can be overwhelming, let alone when you put them together. Right. So I really put that in the book. I refer to organizers as "therapists of capitalism."

And I know that organizers often say, like, “I'm not a therapist, I'm not a trained therapist,” and they were very clear to distinguish that. But one of the things I really find is that I think organizers are helping clients figure out more humane ways to operate under consumer capitalism, right? They're encouraging them to be gentler to themselves. They're encouraging them to think about what matters to them, to seek out more human connections instead of living through the stuff. mean, all that that has to do with...

We are overworked, we are overwhelmed, we are responsible for managing more than we ever have been in the past, right? And organizers are a small solution to these really big cultural problems around how overwhelmed we all are.

Amelia: And that's where I wanna kind of conclude our conversation because I see it over and over in my coaching business. I think folks really struggle now with attention, competing priorities, time and task management, and deeply held beliefs, pressure around the urge to always be productive. I assume that this notion of overwork comes into play in the book. Can you just talk about that for a minute or two?

Carrie: Right. I mean, I think part of it is that more of us are working, right? There used to be - in some households that had the financial ability, right - there was like a designated person for the home. And sometimes that person was the unpaid woman of the household. And sometimes it was a paid worker, right? Whether it was a maid or a domestic worker or a housekeeper or whatever kind of role it was, depending on when you look in American history. And we don't have that as much in most households. So there's that.

And then there's the fact that what you're expected to manage in a household. And I really sat down and I made tons of lists that are too long to share on one podcast or even in the book. What we have to do is more than folks used to have to do. And I don't mean that parenting is hard or, you know, it's not that kind of comparison, but just the concrete tasks.

So one of the things I did while I was working on the book is I asked my mom, "What did you have to do to enroll me in kindergarten?" Because over the course of doing this research, I like, I moved, I had a baby, he's now 10, you know, this kind of thing. So I said, what did you do when you enrolled me in kindergarten? And of course that was, you know, 45-ish years ago.

But she said, "I think I had to show my driver's license and I had that little yellow book that was your vaccine card." Right? Like that I had chicken pox and all this stuff. And then I listed what I had to do to enroll my son in school, which involved multiple websites, three different apps, and a ton of forms, three different medical forms, one for sunscreen, one for EpiPen, one for Benadryl, because he has a peanut allergy. And before his school had even started for kindergarten, I counted, I had received 45 emails from his school or the district adjacent, right? And that is overwhelming. That is overwhelming. And it's one kid in a privileged household where, you know, I have internet access, I'm pretty fluent in tech stuff, right?

Amelia: Right.

Carrie: I mean, it's just more stuff. And then you add to that, we're managing our own retirement accounts, or we don't have any retirement accounts. There's that layer of anxiety. We don't know what the future holds. Our jobs aren't secure. We can't carry benefits easily from one job to another. We don't know if the job's gonna come with benefits. How are we gonna find them? Is our doctor covered by this coverage? Are they covered tomorrow? And they were covered yesterday, right? All of these different things. And I know that every person listening is like, lady, I can come up with 50 more examples that are even better than those, right?

Amelia: Yeah, you can see me shaking my head, nodding along. I think listeners, like their blood pressure, is rising just a little bit by listening to you because it's so familiar, right? There's just more.

Carrie: Hahaha. Yeah, there's just more and more that's harder to manage, right? This is complex stuff being asked to people who aren't necessarily specialists in that particular category of thing, right? And so, I think one of the things that I saw organizers do that felt really important to me was there's this kind of narrative around organizing that the few academics who even talk about it, they talk about organizers as an example of like, neoliberal agents of conformity. They're trying to make us all like Real Simple or The Container Store. They're trying to make us all perfectly organized with these minimalist homes and they're ratcheting up expectations for what our homes are supposed to look like. And they get it 100 % wrong, right?

Because I saw organizers doing the exact opposite, which was telling people there is no moral failure here. You are not a bad person or a bad woman or a bad mom or dad or homemaker or worker because you can't do this or you struggle to do this, right? It's just a pile of mail that hasn't been opened. Like, let's take the stakes down and be gentle to ourselves, right? So there's that piece, that non-judgment, that connection and affirmation and empathy, right? And then organizers said, let's just figure out what are some small things we can do to make your life a little easier going forward. And maybe that's letting go of things that you think you should want to do, right?

Or maybe it's putting in place some automated systems or organizational systems that are gonna just calm you down. And then also, it's disabusing clients of those unrealistic expectations they have for themselves. I love that one organizer told me she always tells clients like, "I can give you that Pinterest pantry. Like I can give it to you. If that is the most important thing to you and you want that pantry, we can make it happen and you can do the labor of maintaining that for the rest of your life."

"However, she said, those pictures you're seeing, the people who have those pantries have full-time staff to manage things like that. If it's your priority, yes, we can do it. But maybe you should rethink whether that's actually your priority or whether your priority is that you can easily see what you're running out of so that you know what to have on the grocery list. Let's put less pressure on ourselves and figure out small fixes that work."

Amelia: Hmm...

Carrie: And I think that's really important for people to realize about organizers. They're not the ones telling you that you need to be perfect. They're the ones telling you, you don't need to be perfect. I'm not perfect, you're not perfect. I love that some of the organizers I talk to, especially some of the old school ones, give tours of their homes to potential clients and say, "Let me show you the stuff I do that really works, but let me also show you, I've got my problem spots too. When I'm busy and working all the time, my desk gets cluttered too. Like I'm just a human and so are you."

Amelia: So good, so good. What a great way to conclude the conversation because y'all, I am so excited. I've pre-ordered my copy of this book. It should be arriving soon. It's just, everything you've done, Carrie, sounds so fascinating. And I really cannot wait to dive in to all of the stories, all of the elements, because I'm sure I will walk away feeling just nourished by the light that you've shone on our industry, as well as helping regular folks, of which one I consider myself one of, see that it is possible with those small steps and standards that work for your individual home and your individual family and work situation. So yeah, yeah, absolutely. You have done the decade of work, so we are grateful to you.

Carrie: Thank you so much. Well, I have to say, I mean, there are a lot of different folks I'd love to have read the book, but the audiences that I think I'm probably most excited about are, I want to hear what organizers and organizing clients think of the book. Because, you know, you guys are even closer to this than I am. I've had the luxury of talking to so many organizers across so many years, but I'm just really excited for folks to pick it up and tell me what they think about it.

Amelia: Yes, yes, and we'll share your information here in a moment. What is one way, maybe a creative way that you employ organization, whatever that means to you now, as an adult?

Carrie: So this is a recent shift for me, but I was recently promoted to department chair. And so after 20 years of being a faculty member, my job is now really different. I'm not teaching anymore. I've got a lot more email, a lot more meetings, a lot more administrative tasks than I have had previously. And I was finding myself really emotionally overwhelmed because I love a clean inbox, not empty, let's not be unreasonable, but like a manageable inbox. And that's just not really in the cards for me for the next few years, as long as I'm department chair. It's not gonna happen.

So one of the things I started doing was using my calendar to try to help make my life a little better integrated. In terms of my work, my family, my friendships, my health and wellness, right? So I actually put, so tomorrow's Friday when we're recording this, every Friday I have coffee with friends on my calendar. I don't know yet which of my friends are going to be at that coffee, but it's important to me, even if a friend isn't there, I'll be my own friend. I'm going to a nice coffee shop, I'm having an overpriced latte, and I'm going to take that hour to myself. So I put it on the calendar instead of letting my self-care, my leisure, my connections with the people I love, instead of that being like what I do after my calendar stuff is done, I build it right into the calendar.

I will make time to go paddle boarding this weekend. I will make time to see my friends tomorrow, right? And that's been one small way that I have tried to organize my time and my commitments in a way that aligns better with my values because I don't think that my work is the most important thing in my life. But if you looked at my calendar in the past, you'd think it was. And so I'm trying to use that in that way.

Amelia: That is so good and such a valuable tip because as we move into the holiday season and the new year, it's really actionable and something that I advise folks to do, which is to put those elements, essential time with friends, movement, et cetera, on the calendar first almost and then blocking in and filling in the work responsibilities, the home responsibilities, because if you don't put it on there, it's so easy for it to slip away. So I love that it's working for you. And yeah, I'm sure a few friends will show up for coffee tomorrow and you'll have a great time. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me, Carrie. I would love to share… I would love for you to share how folks can get a hold of your new book, More Than Pretty Boxes: How the Rise of Professional Organizing Shows Us the Way We Work Isn't Working, and to, as you mentioned, join the conversation.

Carrie: Absolutely. So there are a few different ways for you - the book is published by Chicago, University of Chicago Press and coming out late November. And you can go to the University of Chicago Press's website to purchase it. You can also purchase it on Amazon. So easy to find "More Than Pretty Boxes," Carrie Lane. And then you could also visit my website. It's Carrie Lane.com. So it's C-A-R-R-I-E-L-A-N-E dot com. You can sign up for my newsletter to know about upcoming events and publications and you can fill out the contact form if you want to reach out and I would love to hear what you thought about the book or your own experiences around organizing and overwhelm and all these different related topics.

Amelia: Thanks so much, Carrie.

Carrie: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Outro: Hey y'all, let's connect and chat on socials. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook @apleasantsolution. I'm also on LinkedIn at Amelia Pleasant Kennedy. Feel free to send me a quick note and let me know what you'd like to hear more about, or what home life organizational challenges are top of mind for you. Talk to y'all soon.