The Home Edit: A Guide to Organizing and Realizing Your House Goals + Win a copy!

March 24, 2019

Penguin Random House sent me The Home Edit in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I was trying to remember the last time our house felt organized, and I think we reached peak domestic efficiency just before baby. A rainbow of impossibly tiny outfits ordered by size and colour hung in the closet. Neat rows of diapers stood at attention in a cloth-lined wicker basket on the change table. Receiving blankets went in another basket; lotions and potions huddled together on a tray. There was a place for everything and everything in its place. It was a thing of beauty.

But in the 12 years since we lost our way. Those time-saving systems that helped us survive the first couple of months of parenthood (and just made me happy to look at) went by the wayside. Way, WAY by the wayside. But I have hope that we can get back there. And I have help: The Home Edit: A Guide to Organizing and Realizing Your House Goals came out earlier this week and it’s like a recipe book for reclaiming your sanity. The authors and organizers-to-the-stars Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin (who’ve transformed spaces for Gwyneth Paltrow, Mandy Moore, Christina Applegate, blogger Elsie Larson from A Beautiful Mess and many others) show how a systematic approach to organizing can make everything from the tiniest of drawers to the largest of walk-in closets both functional and beautiful.

Clea and Joanna freely admit that organizing can be a tough, time-consuming and emotional process, but it’s totally do-able and definitely rewarding. Especially if (like them) you embrace the low-bar lifestyle where shopping for containers is cardio and leggings are pants *and* start with small spaces where you can celebrate small wins.

“Rome was not built in a day, and it wasn’t organized in a day, either. The purpose of showing you a range of spaces, with different aesthetics, at varying degrees of difficulty, is to help you pull together inspiration for your own home when you’re ready to embark on the the challenge. And if you need to stick to the bunny slope for a while, you can organize every drawer in the house until you’re ready to tackle a larger space and still find great peace of mind.” — Clea Shearer & Joanna Teplin

A well-organized fridge saves time and money and cuts down food on food waste, plus it looks good. Bonus: Clea and Joanna included a sheet of fridge labels at the back of the book.

Stacked acrylic containers work well for organizing this homeowner’s makeup.

This closet is just like ours (only much more organized). Here lesser-used shoes go on the upper shelf; handbags hang on a hook on the door; jeans are stored in modular drawers; and frequently used footwear is stacked on the floor in shoe boxes.

This school and sports closet accounts for school-aged kids’ myriad activities. (It also uses one of Clea and Joanna’s favourite storage tools, the over-the-door unit. “It always feels like a magic trick because you get to store more things without them taking up additional space,” they write.)

I’m itching to organize my first drawer The Home Edit way and see how things go from there. We may have a small space, but we have A LOT of room to improve. 😄

GIVEAWAY!

Thanks to Penguin Random House, I have a copy of The Home Edit for one of you! To enter to win it, tell me what space in your home needs the most organizing in the comments below. (This entry is mandatory.)

For another entry, follow try small things on Facebook, share this post (you’ll see the share buttons below) and tell me your Facebook name in the comments below.

And feel free to tweet the following once per day and leave the url for your tweet in the comments below (one entry per tweet). Make sure you’re following try small things for your entry to count.

Turn chaos into calm: #Win “The Home Edit: A Guide to Organizing and Realizing Your House Goals” from @trysmallthings http://bit.ly/winthehomeedit CAN 4/12 #thehomeedit

The contest is open to Canadian residents 18+ and ends at 11:59 p.m. EST on April 12, 2019. The potential winner (chosen at random) must respond to prize notification within 48 hours and provide the correct answer to a skill-testing question, otherwise another winner will be selected.

Update April 15, 2019: Congratulations Erica M!