The Home Edit: A Guide to Organizing and Realizing Your House Goals - Softcover

Shearer, Clea; Teplin, Joanna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0525572643 ISBN 13: 9780525572640

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, 2019

Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER · There’s decorating, and then there’s organizing. From the Instagram-sensation home experts (with a serious fan club that includes Reese Witherspoon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Mindy Kaling), here is an accessible, room-by-room guide to establishing new order in your home.

Believe this: every single space in your house has the potential to function efficiently and look great. The mishmash of summer and winter clothes in the closet? Yep. Even the dreaded junk drawer? Consider it done. And the best news: it’s not hard to do—in fact, it's a lot of fun.

From the home organizers who made their orderly eye candy the method that everyone swears by comes Joanna and Clea’s signature approach to decluttering. The Home Edit walks you through paring down your belongings in every room, arranging them in a stunning and easy-to-find way (hello, labels!), and maintaining the system so you don't need another do-over in six months. When you're done, you'll not only know exactly where to find things, but you'll also love the way it looks.

A masterclass and look book in one, The Home Edit is filled with bright photographs and detailed tips, from placing plastic dishware in a drawer where little hands can reach to categorizing pantry items by color (there's nothing like a little ROYGBIV to soothe the soul). Above all, it's like having your best friends at your side to help you turn the chaos into calm.

PLEASE NOTE: The paperback includes a starter set of labels for your refrigerator; the ebook and audiobook include a link to download and print the labels from a computer (you will need 8-1/2 x 11-inch clear repositionable sticker project paper, such as Avery 4397).

Featured in Glamour's 10 Books to Help You Live Your Best Life

About this title

About the Author

Stars of Hello Sunshine and Critical Content's TV show Master the Mess CLEA SHEARER and JOANNA TEPLIN founded The Home Edit with the goal of merging conventional organization and interior design. With clients all over the country, they offer both full and virtual services through their website. They have also been featured in People, House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, and on Goop, among other places and live with their families in Nashville, Tennessee.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction
If you’re feeling even a little bit overwhelmed at the thought of organizing your home, you should immediately breathe a sigh of relief. Because truthfully, we at The Home Edit are barely capable of simple tasks like ironing or cooking rice (Do you leave it covered? Uncovered? Do you need to stir? Why is it so complicated??). But what we are good at is walking into a room, seeing past the mess, and coming up with a methodical plan of attack. So if we can somehow create sense out of chaos, we bet you can, too. 

When we first launched The Home Edit (or THE, as we are often called), we had a very clear objective: Transform the way people think about organization. Now . . . we understand we’re not performing brain surgery or curing cancer. BUT we’ve seen firsthand how powerful it can be to create a clutter-free space and make it exceptionally functional—whether it’s the kids being able to help themselves to a cereal station in the pantry (we’ll do anything to get thirty more minutes of sleep) or finally being able to see your clothes in the closet after clearing away twenty years’ worth of nostalgia (no, your daughter will not want that shirt one day). 

We weren’t satisfied with being just another couple of organizers who could sort things into bins and use a label maker. We wanted our spaces to function and look beautiful. So we figured out a unique system that adds a layer of visual aesthetic alongside the practical one—much in the same way a designer approaches a space. 

We didn’t do this because it looked amazing on Instagram or because we really (really) like when things are organized in rainbow order—we did it because we believe that organizing spaces shouldn’t just be about putting things in their place. Nor should it just be about the way the room looks. We wanted to showcase the magical sweet spot that exists where function meets form—when spaces are efficient, user-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing all at once. It not only makes sections of your home more enjoyable to look at, but we’ve also found that sprinkling this extra layer of pixie dust inspires people to maintain their organized spaces. Which is the whole point! If, as our client, you’re not able to maintain the systems we put in place, then we didn’t do our jobs effectively. 

If we were to go back to your home a year later, we’d want to see that The Home Edit is still working for you. Literally the first thing we do when revisiting a client’s home is to check to see if that vanity drawer or linen closet looks like we organized it last week; if so, we give ourselves a shiny gold star. And guess what? We have a sticker chart FULL of gold stars because the systems we create really do work. (Obviously we keep track of these things because we love accomplishments almost as much as we love sticker charts.) 

It wasn’t long before we started to feel like something bigger was happening. Clients all over the country, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Molly Sims, Rachel Zoe, Tiffani Thiessen, and Mindy Kaling, were requesting our services. And then we started to see our work splashed across Domino, Architectural Digest, the Today show, and even the Target website (which was probably the most exciting thing to ever happen to us—no offense to our children). The more exposure we received, the more people asked us, “How on earth can I do that in my home? Surely whipping my house into perfect Gwyneth-worthy synchronization is expensive, time-consuming, and requires a team of people.” Honestly, that’s not true. We’re not gonna lie, organizing can be hard—it requires work, time, and thoughtfulness, and it can be more emotional than people expect. But if you have a system in place and rules to follow—and you don’t bite off more than you can chew—you can get there. And you can trust us on this, because if we can do it, pretty much anyone can do it!

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarkson Potter
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0525572643
• ISBN 13: 9780525572640
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256