363 - Understanding Inventory at Home

Organize 365 Podcast

This episode, Understanding Inventory at Home, is directly related to Episodes 361 and 362 on the different kinds of work. I am sharing some of my thoughts about analyzing how we use the principles we use to run a business and relate them to how we run our households. I think this is super useful because it allows us to take the emotion out of our thinking, and to realize that there is work to be done.

Our work will never be done - at work or at home. Once we recognize that, it reduces our stress. We can then conscientiously pace ourselves to prioritize what is truly important and urgent. Because of the COVID pandemic, we are home more and we are using our homes differently than before. This means that the nature of our work and our homes is changing.

We are now keeping a larger stockpile of many home goods (toilet paper anyone?). My previous productivity advice to outsource, hire help, or automate things is not always available or economically feasible anymore.

Let’s start over and look at the home through a different lens. I want us to think about our household inventory in terms of time, money, and physical items inside our homes. In the podcast, I share with you some business terms, and then apply them to our homes and lives. Bottom line: The goal of living an organized and productive life is to achieve as many goals as possible using the least amount of time and energy. Then, you can use the remaining time, energy, and money to do what you are uniquely created to do.

Right now, I am looking at the inventory we keep in our house. Is it the right amount? Is it in the right location? And, I think the key question is: how many of those to do list items and goals are even necessary at all? Listen in and I’ll explain how our inventory continues to change (and what I predict will happen after the pandemic is finally gone). I even include some of the ways I am thinking about inventory inside my own home and family.

Vocabulary Lesson (based on The Phoenix Project - Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford):

Throughput

• Business - the rate at which the systems generate money through sales
• Household - the number of to do and goal items you can accomplish (per day)

Inventory

• Business - all the money the system has invested in things it intends to sell
• Household - all of the items the home has that it intends to turn into to do items or goals

Operational Expenses

• Business - all the money the system spends on turning inventory into throughput
• Household - all the time and energy we spend turning inventory into finished to dos or goals