How I Use My 1Thrive Command Center

If you’ve been considering adding a 1Thrive command center system to your home, here’s a quick look at how I use mine in my kitchen entryway to keep our family organized and on the same page.

Our house has five entry doors, but we only use one of them. We enter our house through the garage, come up the garage stairs, and enter into our kitchen. So between the stairway entryway and the front corner of our kitchen, this tiny area has become the drop zone for literally everything that comes into the house. As a busy family, we needed an entryway that would hold all our stuff while still being organized enough to make our mornings fast and easy. And all that happened when I got the 1Thrive Susan.

My husband was working swing shift at that time, so sometimes he worked during the day and sometimes he worked at night, and the schedule rotated all over the place. I honestly had no idea when he was working and I’d forget all the schedules he told me because they were so scattered. Pair that with a teenager who’s, well, a teenager, and me working a day job and running the blog, and that made for a lot of confused people.

I was so excited to start using the 1Thrive system to see if it would help the three of us stay on track of all the madness that was going on. Fast forward to now, ten months later, and I left my day job to run the blog full time, my husband got promoted to a daytime only job, and my son goes to school virtually. And we have been able to navigate all these changes using our Susan. So if you’ve been considering getting a 1Thrive command center, here’s all the deets on how we use ours and my honest opinion of whether it’s worth the splurge.

Lela Burris dining room and entryway command center

1Thrive Susan Features

If you’ve done some scrolling around 1Thrive’s site, you’ve probably seen that they have a bunch of different pre-configured sets, along with a Design Your Own option to create your own combination. That option wasn’t available when I bought my Susan, but I think I still would have made the same decision even if it was.

The 1Thrive Susan comes with the wall frame, a large white calendar, a medium-sized bulletin board, a medium-sized black to-do list, a file holder with three hooks, an additional set of hooks, a small bulletin board strip, and two hanging pails.

Even though it looks like it’s a dry erase board, it’s actually not. I’m not really sure what kind of material it is, but it’s basically wood with some kind of special coating that makes it easy to write on and erase. You use chalk markers to write on the board, which work like paint pens. They dry really quickly and don’t smear when you touch them (after they’re dry) which is SO much better than dry erase markers. And to erase them, all you need is a damp paper towel.

My 1Thrive Command Center System

There are a lot of ways you can use the 1Thrive command centers, but here’s how we use ours specifically. We use the calendar to log all holidays, events, appointments, reminders, and full/new moons (because I’m really into Moonology, as Yasmin Boland calls it). On the right side of the calendar, we create a family bucket list for the month. These are things we’d like to do together before the month ends. It’s not really a to-do list, but more of a want to do list.

I have six file folders inside the file holder. They hold bills, reminders, and things to be filed. The other three folders are specific to each of us three humans that live in the house. We have our own folders and we can keep anything in there that we need to access in the near future.

We use the to-do list board to keep up with home projects we need to work on, and we use the bulletin board to hold quick-access things like business cards of contractors or paint samples we need to purchase.

We use the hooks to hold keys, masks, and my purse, and the additional bulletin board strip usually hangs onto any papers for Noah’s school that need to be signed or dealt with.

And the pails hold our 1Thrive chalk markers, ink pens, push pins, stamps, post-it notes, and tape. They’re our central location for these things that we never used to be able to find.

My Monthly 1Thrive Update Process

At the end of every month, I cycle through the same process to refresh my 1Thrive system to prepare for the next month. I follow the same order every time to make sure I don’t forget to do anything. How ironic is it that I’m a professional organizer but also the most forgetful human on planet Earth?? Anyway, here’s my step-by-step process:

Erase the calendar, bucket list, and any completed to-do items I haven’t removed yet.
Fill in the calendar with corresponding date numbers.
Add holidays, birthdays, and special events to the calendar.
Add appointments and reminders to the calendar.
Add new moons and full moons to the calendar.
Create our family bucket list for the month. (We do this together as a family)
Add renovation to-do’s to the blackboard.
Go through all folders in the file holder and file/recycle/shred anything that should be removed.
Declutter bulletin boards and pails that have accumulated anything that doesn’t need to be there.
Declutter my purse. (Since it hangs there, this process reminds me to clean out my purse monthly)

Is a 1Thrive Command Center Worth The Money?

Ok, here’s what you really want to know. Is it worth it to drop between one and two hundred dollars on a calendar? My answer is one thousand percent yes. Having this command center has changed our family’s life in the way we communicate. It’s hard to keep everyone on the same page when you’re working weird hours, have a teenager who’s into lots of different activities, and are renovating a home all at the same time.

I know any calendar would do the same thing as this one, but the combination of the file holders for all our important papers, the hooks for holding all our stuff, and the pails for quick-grab items has been a total game changer. And honestly, I think because I spent so much money on my 1Thrive Susan, I have been even more dedicated to keeping up with it.

I’ve had cheap dry erase calendars in the past and let October sit on it until well past January. Dropping $200 on my Susan has made some kind of frugal shift in my brain that reminds me “hey cheapskate, you spent more on this calendar than you did on your last piece of furniture. You better use it!”

How To Get Your Own Customized 1Thrive Command Center

Over the last few months, I have become good friends with the awesome makers at 1Thrive and I have learned a lot about what goes into their products and how they’re made. I have also watched them launch this new Design Your Own program and I am so impressed with how they really listen to what their customers want. I am beyond happy to share them with you because this is a company that I really trust and believe in.

1Thrive has offered Organized-ish readers a special discount code that works on any of their products, no matter how much or how little you spend. You can build your own system or buy a pre-configured set and save some moolah using code ORGANIZEDISH here. And don’t forget to snag a set of chalk markers. My fave is the Macaron pack, but I also love the Jewel set, too. They look extra fancy.