This is perhaps a bit embarrassing to admit, but when I get time alone in my house —which is very, very rare — my first instinct is not to pour a glass of wine and turn on Netflix. My first move is to start editing my house.
I love things and layers, but I also want to live with as little friction in my daily life as I can. For most people, a well-edited home is a luxury. For me, it is directly correlated to how well I can function in all aspects of my life. When my closet is so full that I can’t find a dress, I will definitely be late to the party. When our mudroom looks like complete chaos as I usher the boys to the car, I am much more likely to lose my cool before we even get to school.
The most organized home we ever lived in was a tiny walk-up apartment on West 11th Street. It was probably 650 square feet. We lived there before we had kids, when we were finally making enough money to buy what we needed in terms of furniture and organizing supplies. Nothing was fancy, but the Ikea wardrobes had all the pull-out shelves for shoes and jewelry organizers I could dream of.
The week we moved out, I opened our hallway closet to pull packing tape out of a perfectly sorted Container Store box and sobbed. It takes so much work to get a space dialed in like that, and I knew a new space - even a bigger one - meant starting again with new closet layouts and storage tactics, and a new system to learn. We’ve lived in our house in Connecticut for 5 years now, and I’m still honing the storage tactics in this house.
When I got some time to edit over the last couple of weeks I had to use it wisely, so I wanted to share a few tactics I use— not because I think everyone needs a perfectly sorted house, but because I think most of us underestimate how much our homes are either supporting us or working against us as we go through our daily routines.
Be absolutely ruthless with clothing. I love Nora Ephron’s line, “If only one third of your clothes are a mistake, you’re ahead of the game.” I like my closet to always feel like it is about 80% full. Think of any photo of a styled closet that makes you want to move into the magazine spread. It is never crammed full of dresses the homeowner wore once. If you can, make sure your hangers match. I like black felt hangers because the color never changes with a new dye lot.
Apply this same ruthless energy to your kitchen. Toss anything you’re not using or anything that is getting gross. New baking sheets and dish towels are underrated small joys.
Put AI to work on your junk drawers. I don’t use AI for design work or writing beyond some edits, but I found it really helpful when I needed to quickly figure out how many Container Store drawer organizers I needed, and which sizes. Take photos of your drawer and everything in it, give the drawer dimensions, and the sizes of organizers you want to buy. ChatGPT will give you a layout with notes on where you’ll put everything from the photo.
I found these swimsuit bags through This Oak House and they are a game changer for keeping swim neatly stacked rather than floating around a drawer.
While we’re on the subject of swim, I just stumbled upon these adorable wet bags from Weezie - the print is so sweet, and I always end up needing extras when summer days feel nonstop.
For a long time I threw sunglasses in a bowl in our kitchen (our mudroom is short on space) and had the extra buttons that come with clothes loose in a drawer in my closet. These felt organizers for sunglasses and jewelry trays have helped me get both sorted and put away in my closet.
Rejuvenation makes the best classic hooks. I love these and just hung some in my garage as a place for our L.L. Bean totes to land. We have one for each of the sports the boys play, so the equipment they need for the sport is always packed and ready to grab on the way to the car.
These clear plastic jars work perfectly for crayons, markers and colored pencils, and look nice displayed in a playroom.
I just bought a few of these lidded jute boxes and they are great for hiding all sorts of things on open shelves: eye masks and red light glasses on a bedside table, tampons in a bathroom, even a sound machine and charging cords.
Do a quick scan of your house for unused storage space. It sounds strange but sometimes a client who says they need more storage has an empty piece of furniture or closet that they hadn’t considered. I realized my living room secretary had empty drawers, and ordered some of my favorite drawer liners to put them to use. These handwoven baskets are another great solution - the taller rectangular styles look nice under a console table and the round versions are great for extra blankets.
Beautiful labels help everyone keep things sorted. My friend Stephanie Woodmansee designed a linen cabinet with labels like these that inspired me to order them for my linen cabinet in my laundry room.
I ordered a few of these pouches with different words embroidered on them: “First Aid” in red to keep stocked with all of the essentials in our cars, “Sunscreen,” and “Bugs” to keep in the mudroom for quick SPF application or bug spray on the way out the door.
If you only have five minutes to yourself, sweep your front step and wipe down your front door. Keeping the entry clean is very important per feng shui wisdom, and it always scratches the itch for me of feeling like I (maybe, sort of) have it together amidst the chaos.
Happy editing!
x Lilse
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