I've Been Lost in a Kanban Board

Last year was a weird one. It’s hard to say exactly why without a lot of vulnerability, so to make that easier, I will share about it in increments.

Today, I will tell you about climbing out of a hole I dug myself into called Trello.

I was introduced to Trello (an app that helps you organize projects, etc) in 2019 by a home organization client who is still my client, and friend, to this day. (Note: I’m a professional home organizer. My business’s name is The Empathetic Organizer).

Trello changed my life for the better in 2019. I was able to corral all of my thoughts, ideas, notes to myself scattered through notebooks, on scraps of paper and post-its. I have always been an analog girl, not a digital girl, but I took to Trello well and loved that I could make different boards (Personal Tasks, Work Tasks, Art Ideas), and in those boards create sub-categories (Daily Tasks, Monthly Tasks, Fun activities), and move items around, add details, checklists and images to them, and delete or archive them when I had completed them.

It was years later (2025 ha) that I learned that Trello is a Kanban board, which I just learned today is defined as stated below:

Kanban (often pronounced "con-bon") is a Japanese term for "signboard" or "billboard" representing a visual workflow management method developed by Toyota for just-in-time manufacturing. It increases efficiency and visibility by using cards to track production, commonly organized into "to-do," "doing," and "done" stages. (Wikipedia)

Japan?!

Toyota!?

I miss my 2002 Toyota Forerunner.

I want to visit Japan.

I should add these thoughts to my Trello board now…

Just kidding. However, this is an example of how the past seven years have gone. Every thought that has popped into my pretty little head has gone into one of my Trello boards.

My goal is to keep my blog posts short, so fast-forward to last year (2025) when many things in my life ground to a halt. All of the ways I was trying to be productive and plan my days, weeks, months, year stopped working. I was pinned and drowning somewhere under

Trello Board: Quarterly Planning > 7th Column: Philanthropic Organizations > Card 17: Partner with Safe Crossing to help animals cross roads and highways to prevent road kill

Pinned. Debilitated. Rendered useless.

When I work with clients to organize their homes, one of the first things I communicate is that I believe in waiting to purchase any new bins or baskets or install any closet systems until after we have sorted and purged items. We have the tendency to see our clutter, diagnose our issue as not having the right basket from Target or binder from Office Depot, and write ourselves a prescription to go shopping! But instead of solving our clutter issue, this just adds to it.

It’s the equivalent of treating stress with heavy pours of boxed wine and binging Parks & Rec. It’s not going to solve our stress problem. How do I know? Because I have experienced the office supply and wine & TV binge high, the sad coming down from them, and the chronic issue of repeating these unhealthy patterns for an unhealthy amount of time.

So in my home organization metaphor, Trello became the beautiful useless binder to my mountain of thoughts and ideas.

It has felt sooo silly to have had this problem of drowning in ideas, but I “faced the dragon” as Cal Newport says, and started sorting through, finding better systems and homes, and eliminating these notes from Trello last year. Thousands and thousands and thousands of ideas.

It was extremely overwhelming and presently, in March 2026, still is a process.

It’s not a secret that I started taking medication for ADHD last year, and in 2024, I began taking an antidepressent for the first time. Not to hit and run with this information- I’d like to share more about that- but I mention it briefly just to say that I saw the weight of the issue and asked for help, as well as met with a therapist 1-2 times a month over the past two years.

I hope you can see why my Home Organization business is called The Empathetic Organizer. While I can organize physical objects like a champion, that was not always the case. Organizing my thoughts, ideas, goals, dreams, projects? I am still learning, but something that excites me as I figure out my Kanban problem is that once I find clarity with it, I’ll be able to share my findings and solutions with clients. That is exciting, as so much of our issues with clutter and stuff is schedule and time-based. I am also excited for myself personally, as I will be a well-oiled unstoppable productivity machine! (cue Looney Tunes witch laugh)

For now I’ll stick to organizing wooden spoons, books, clothes, stuff. (I know I have mixed metaphors here of being lost, digging myself into a hole, drowning in a Kanban Board, but!) I am happy to report that I believe my head and arms are above water. I’m in the emergency flotation device and am enjoying the problem-solving of getting to dry land. I am able to do things in my life I have NEVER been able to do, like keep up with my dishes, cook a ton from recipes, sit and read fun articles, magazines and books, and write this very post on a whim, all while “getting my (internal) house in order.”

Thanks be to modern medication, therapy, and my body and mind’s fortitude. Amen!