Netflix helps you scratch your decluttering itch, Kondo-style, with a bougie but buoyant reality series.
Home organization: to some, it’s a daunting task, bringing up emotions and anxiety when deciding what to toss out to make a space functional. For others, there’s no high like purging unnecessary items and putting a space back together. A 2018 survey concluded that two-thirds of Americans feel they need more home organization products in their homes.
Regardless of how you might feel about home organization, chances are you feel like you should be more organized. In this billion-dollar market, where should we turn to declutter our spaces?
Enter Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin, professional organizers and creators of The Home Edit, a popular lifestyle brand centered on home organization. This energetic duo built their brand on Instagram, garnering the attention of A-listers, publishing a popular book, and launching a product line at The Container Store. Their next step to brand domination is their new Netflix show Get Organized with The Home Edit. In this series they visit celebrities and everyday clients to help edit, categorize, and contain their spaces, offering tips and tricks along the way.
The Home Edit team offers a more methodical approach than other Netflix series star Marie Kondo. Instead of touching each item and seeing if it sparks joy, they use their “edit/categorize/contain” system. They go through the space and edit, which essentially can mean purge, trash, or “archive” if you’re Rachel Zoe and you have an abundance of designer shoes and each pair means the world to you.
After editing, they move on to categorizing. If you’re Reese Witherspoon (who’s also a producer of the show), it’s creating sections in your memorabilia closet based on films! If you’re a non-celeb, it’s putting all of your long-hanging items in the same part of the closet! Taking it up a notch, they group each section by color aka ROY G BIV. Then it’s onto the final step: containing, where they put all the items back in place, often in a new system consisting of cutesy containers, fancy hangers, and archival boxes – all complete with customized labels.
Clea and Joanna are great on-camera. They’re confident with all the clients, ready to tackle daunting tasks. Their excitement at digging into unorganized spaces is infectious. I’m already thinking about going through my apartment again to edit/categorize/contain. They truly love getting into every nook and cranny to find the best configuration.
Whether they’re dealing with Oscar winners or everyday folks, they treat everyone and their belongings with the same level of care. In one episode they move Witherspoon’s Oscar dress like it’s made of glass, slowly transferring it to a hanger. In another episode, they help a divorced and recently out-of-the-closet mom with displaying a skirt that holds just as much sentimental value as Reese’s designer gown. They excel at connecting with their clients, understanding each one’s needs and wants to create a space that’s both functional and eye-catching.
Whether they’re dealing with Oscar winners or everyday folks, they treat everyone and their belongings with the same level of care.
The show itself could benefit from their edit/categorize/contain method. While I appreciate they take time to help two clients per episode, this format feels a bit like an overstuffed closet, straining to contain 42 minutes of organizational projects. They open each episode with one client, usually the celeb, and then halfway through the episode they start again with a new client, often ending with the non-celeb.
Honestly, for the first few episodes, once they finished with the first client, I forgot they still had another project to do. I think editing each episode, perhaps categorizing “celeb” and “everyday client,” and then containing these projects into individual episodes would have been a more on-brand choice for the series.
I understand the appeal of the celebrity segments. Who wouldn’t want to see stars and their messy home spaces? However, I suspect most of them had their assistants do some pre-emptive cleaning because most of their spaces are nowhere near hoarder-level chaos.
And most of their organization issues are champagne problems at best. They help Khloe Kardashian organize her garage, and create a parking lot for all of her daughter’s high-end toy cars. They organize a closet for Witherspoon to hold some of her iconic costumes and Hollywood memorabilia. They re-organize Rachel Zoe’s closet, which contains a rack of clothing designated only for Paris and Capri. While these segments offer an extraordinary peek inside the life of the rich and famous, they offer little practical advice for us non-celeb folks.
I found myself enjoying their projects with everyday folks more than the celeb projects. I loved the family in California from episode two who needed help organizing their garage. I understood their hoarding of VHS tapes with the idea that they would someday transfer to a digital format.
Show me the New Yorker’s kitchen and I am in the zone, wondering if I too should utilize lazy susans to store my overflowing shelf of spices. And with the non-celebs, Clea and Joanna find some fun surprises, like pregnancy tests and dead pets’ ashes! Practical advice and unexpected finds?! Sign. Me. Up!
Whether celeb or non-celeb, I can’t deny the satisfaction of seeing their completed projects. There’s something calming about seeing the transformation of a messy space into a clean room. As their client Retta explains, seeing an organized space is like “ASMR.” Perhaps that’s the real goal of their project. Sure they have great tips, but tips can’t soothe us with clean lines of acrylic storage, the whimsical convenience of a lazy susan, and the color-coding of items. If we can’t escape our houses, then we can turn our homes into an escape with Get Organized with The Home Edit.
Get Organized with The Home Edit color-codes your Netflix diet September 9th.