048. Not Getting Everything Done? Here's How an Organizing System Will Help You

If your to-do list is growing faster than you can check things off, you’re not alone. Today, we’re diving into why it feels like there’s never enough time, and how the right organizing system can help you treat your energy as a sustainable resource to take control of your schedule and your home.

In this episode, I’ll share three must-have organizing systems that every working mom needs to stay on top of tasks without burnout. You’ll learn: 

• Why decision fatigue, mental overload, and overcommitment are keeping you stuck
• How to set up a Weekly Planning System to reduce stress and make your week run smoothly
• The 5-Second Rule for breaking procrastination and getting things done fast
• A simple Nightly Wind-Down System to wake up to a calm and organized home
  
  

If you’re ready to stop feeling overwhelmed and start feeling accomplished, this episode is for you!

The video clip where Mel Robbins talks about the 5-Second Rule

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You can find me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fireflybridgeorganizing
Here's my website: https://fireflybridge.com

Call or text me: 305-563-2292

Email me: zeenat@fireflybridge.com

Transcript

Today, we’re looking into a topic I know so many of you struggle with… feeling like you’re not getting everything done. If your to-do list is growing faster than you can check things off, you’re not alone. But, the right organizing system can help you finally take control of your time, your home, and your peace of mind. So let’s get into it!

Hey, welcome to Organizing for Beautiful Living, the podcast for working moms and entrepreneur moms that provides sustainable organizing tips for your home, work and life.

I’m Zee Siman, Professional Organizer and Productivity Consultant, and I’m here to share simple ideas that don’t take a lot of time so you can love your home, excel at work, and have the time to enjoy both without stress or overwhelm. 

Ready to get beautifully organized? Let’s make it happen!

On the last episode, I spoke with interior designed Amy Barrickman about her formula for living room design. It’s a system she follows when she’s working with clients, and now she’s written a book for all of us, it’s called called The Living Room Design Formula, in which she explains how this formula works. 

Now, she and I were excited to see that we both love systems. Super nerdy, I know. 

Her design process, and my organizing process, follow a system, right? Different systems for each, but we’ve developed a system that we follow ourselves, and that we teach you to follow too.

And I wanted to bring this up today because Amy asked me a question after we had finished recording. She asked me what was a recurring organizing challenge that I see my clients facing?

Well, among the stack of challenges I know we face as working moms, is the lack of time, right? There’s so much happening on a given day that we need to be watchful about where we spend our time. And one of the best ways to do this is to have systems in place.

Let’s just lay out why we don’t get everything done, because we’ve planned out our day, right? We have a task list, we have a to-do list.

You wake up in the morning with the best intentions—get the kids to school, knock out that work project, throw in a load of laundry, cook a healthy meal, and just maybe have a little bit of time to sit down with a cup of tea with your partner before going to bed. On days like this, you feel accomplished! You did the right things that moved your family forward, that moved your career forward, or that moved your relationships forward. You know those days, right? When you’re pretty relaxed by the time you’re going to bed.
And then, there are the other days. Yeah. Those are the days when the mornings are rough, when the work day doesn’t go as planned and you’re reacting to a bunch of things. Emails pile up, someone spills juice all over the kitchen floor, you forget an important deadline, and then suddenly it’s 9 p.m., and your to-do list is still staring you in the face, unfinished.
Yeah! And then when bedtime comes, what happens? Well your mind is spinning. 

So what’s happening here? Why does it feel like there’s never enough time?

Well maybe it’s:

Decision Fatigue – You're constantly making choices throughout the day: What to wear, what to cook, which tasks to prioritize. The more choices you have, the more exhausted your brain becomes.

Or maybe it’s lack of clear systems – Without a structured system, you’re constantly reinventing the wheel, you’re wasting time figuring out what to do next.

It could also be The Mental Load of 'Invisible To-Dos' – These are the things like remembering to schedule a dentist appointment or knowing you need to buy a birthday gift. These things take up mental space—especially if they’re not written down.

Or it might be Overcommitment. Now sometimes, the problem isn’t productivity—it’s saying yes to way too much.

Well, having the right organizing systems in place reduces these struggles and helps you get control back over your time and your energy.

I often talk about sustainable organizing, right? Well, we need to be sustainable with our energy, too! And having an Organizing System in place helps you to use both your mental and physical energy in a more sustainable way.

OK, so what is an Organizing System?

A lot of people think organizing is just about decluttering or putting things into labeled bins. Now, I know you don’t think that because you listen to this podcast! 

So yeah, organizing is also about creating systems that make your daily life easier.

An organizing system is simply a repeatable process that helps you to do something efficiently. Think of it like a recipe for how you handle everyday tasks. When you have a system, you don't have to think about what to do next—it’s automatic! It’s there. It’s in front of you

The Key Traits of a Good Organizing System are that:
- It eliminates unnecessary effort,
- It uses your mental energy wisely,
- It saves you time,
- It’s easy to set up, follow and maintain,
- And it works for you and your family.

So let’s talk about some real-life organizing systems that can change the way that you use your time and energy so you can get things done, and feel accomplished by the time you go to bed.

Here are three organizing systems that I think will help you to finally feel like you're getting things done without burnout. And I believe that these are the 3 systems that every working mom needs to have at minimum.

1. The first is a weekly planning system.

My weekly planning system takes place every Friday afternoon for 30 minutes, and it consists of these things:

reviewing what I did during the week, and see if there are any follow-ups that I wrote from that, or if I didn’t accomplish my priorities, then I KNOW that I’ll attack those things first on Monday, or over the weekend, you know, if it’s really important that I finish them.
I also create my meal plan during 
I schedule my grocery shopping trip, or trips, if I know I’ll need to go again mid-week for fruit and veggies. I actually schedule it, I put it on my calendar.
And I create my calendar for the next week, including sliding my task list on there, that I can move that around to the other days of the week as I complete my priorities

I have a specific, simple method for doing each of these things so that it only takes me 30 minutes overall to complete, and the result of having a weekly planning system put into place is that you remove decision fatigue thinking about what you should be doing, and it reduces your mental overload from day to day during the week because you’ve created your calendar in a way that can be flexible, that has your absolute non-negotiables on it, meaning, the things that you WILL NOT miss this week, like the honor roll assembly at school, or not forgetting to pick up your child from early dismissal, which I have done before! But a weekly planning system will help you to avoid that!

We want this system to be simple. It only takes 30 minutes, remember? 

We already have a lot going on in our lives, and having systems will reduce the mental overload from day to day, but the systems themselves have to be easy!


2. The second system is the “5-Second Rule” for stopping procrastination. So more of a method here than a system.

And you’ve probably heard of the 5-second rule before. In fact, I’m going to put the link in the shownotes to a short video where Mel Robbins talks about it. 

The gist of it is that our brains want to keep us safe and comfortable. And because of this, we’ll put of doing things that are hard, or that we don’t WANT to do! So what you do is as soon as you have the thought that you SHOULD do something, immediately start doing it - for 5 seconds. And if you put 5 seconds towards doing that thing, you’re more likely to continue. Now, I’ve read 2 minutes, 5-minutes, so you try it out and see if you can push yourself to doing that thing for 2 minutes that you don’t really WANT to do. And more often than not, what happens is that you’ll continue doing it, even while you’re feeling uncomfortable. And yes, I know it’s hard, but as Mel says in the video, if you allow your brain those 5 seconds to rationalize why you shouldn’t be doing those things, you’re going to talk yourself out of it. That’s because, like I said, our brains are wired to keep us safe and comfortable.

So some simple examples: Hang up your clothes in the evening instead of putting them on a chair. Reply to that email that you really don’t want to, but you know you need to. Or put a dish in the dishwasher instead of in the sink.

And the result of the 5-Second Rule? Well it means that you’ll have fewer small tasks that are going to be piling up into a big mess, and less procrastination on the hard stuff or the stuff you just don’t want to do.

3. And the third system is a Nightly Wind-Down System for keeping your home in order without being overwhelmed, and essentially it’s ending your day on a calm note.

So you pick what time you’re going to do this. When my kids were little, and when my husband was at home to help with bathtime, I would take 10 minutes during bathtime to do this nightly wind-down.

Now, I wasn’t organizing and cleaning my whole house every night! What you’re doing is setting up a system to just do a quick tidy, a quick reset, so that the next morning runs smoothly.

Choose your priority areas. For me, it’s the kitchen, my home office, and the entryway every day. When the kids were too young to help pick up their toys, it included the toys. And then one final picking up the straggling items as I’m walking from the kitchen to my bedroom at bedtime.

And in each of those rooms or areas, I have a system for what needs to be done: for example, in the kitchen, it’s run the dishwasher if it’s full, wipe down the countertops, and to make sure the lunchboxes are in their drawer so packing lunches is quick in the morning. That takes maybe 2 minutes. 

Then in the entryway, it’s making sure all the backpacks are there, in the mudroom, and straightening up the shoes if I need to. 

And in my home office, it’s clearing off my desk. I have a mini-system for this too! Because I wanted a way to make sure that my desk could be completely clear every night! It feels so much better walking into a cleared-off office for me than into an office where there are papers, books, and sticky notes and office supplies just all over the desk.

Lastly, as I walk from the kitchen to my bedroom each night, I pick up any stray items that don’t belong in the room I’m passing through, and then drop it off in the rooms that they belong in, or as close as I can get to that room without taking too much time.

The result of the Nightly Wind-Down system is that the morning starts off calm and efficient, and even if someone spills the orange juice, or the dog gets sick, I know lunches and backpacks and shoes are ready to go!

Now, I’m sure that I’ve mentioned to you before that I am a lazy organizer! If something is too hard or complex, I won’t keep doing it.

We value simplicity around here, so to make systems work for you, well, they have to save you time and physical and mental energy, yes. And they can’t be difficult to set up in the first place.

And if you want to put these systems into place, you don’t have to do them all at once, right?

To get started, pick one system that resonates with you.

Try it for a week, see how it fits into your lifestyle.
Tweak it, adjust it as you go during the week.
 
Your system should work for you and your family. You shouldn’t be working to keep up with your system. OK?

Remember that small changes add up. So even one of these systems added to your daily or weekly routine is going to make a huge difference in how productive and in control you feel.

So if you’re tired of feeling like you’re constantly playing catch-up, try implementing one of these organizing systems this week. I promise, even small changes will help you get more done without feeling exhausted.

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to hit the Follow button and leave a star rating. It helps more moms like you find the podcast! 

And if you try one of these systems, let me know how it works for you. Send me a DM on Instagram at fireflybridgeorganizing, or tag me in a post. I would love to see  your organizing wins!

Have a great week, and I’ll see you on the next episode!