Have any of you ever seen or heard of The Home Edit? They’re a badass team of (female-led!) organizing experts that completely transform people’s homes. My friend Justine gave me their book a while ago and while I loved reading it, my obsession with The Home Edit (THE) didn’t fully kick in until I watched their Netflix show: Get Organized with The Home Edit.
This newfound obsession was strange; I even tried watching the show a few months ago after I read their book, but I just wasn’t that into it. It didn’t help that they started with friggin’ Reese Witherspoon’s closet, which was totally un-relatable. I felt that their methods only applied to the uber-rich who can afford home organizing experts. But a week ago, I gave the first episode another shot where I watched them transform both Reese’s closet AND a normal family’s home. This time around, I was enlightened and binged all the episodes. Yes, their techniques can be achieved in any home - including normal people’s like yours and mine!
What I learned is that THE method consists of 4 steps:
- Edit
- Categorize
- Contain
- Maintain
Edit
These steps may sound extremely similar to Marie Kondo’s KonMari method. But Marie makes you do the editing on your own (only keep items that spark joy!) whereas THE does it for you. In my opinion, if you’re going to pay someone to organize your home, then it’s well worth it to have them edit for you! But if you are going to organize it yourself (like I am), then it’s helpful to follow the KonMari method when editing your own items. It empowers me to decide what to keep/donate/throw away.
Categorize
Even though Categorize sounds easy, I am often wrought with indecision on how granular my categories should be. This is so arbitrary, varying from household to household. But I generally try to follow the labeling system that THE explains in this blog post. I want my labels to be future-proof - meaning I won’t have to switch them out often - so I try to be as general as possible.
Contain
This is where the magic happens. I think we’re all instantly drawn to the beautiful acrylic containers holding rainbow-sorted items that are so well-curated on THE Instagram feed. Isn’t this what everybody wants? Well, reality hit me when I stepped into The Container Store and discovered that each acrylic box averages around $20. And if I want to makeover my entire pantry with them, I’ll need 20+ boxes! I just can’t justify spending $400 on new acrylic boxes, and that’s only for the pantry! It’ll probably cost thousands to “containerize” the rest of the house. My solution for now is to try to find comparable storage containers from the Dollar Store or Daiso that still suit my needs, but may not be clear acrylic. I think I can live without clear pantry storage and save the extra cash!
Maintain
Label EVERYTHING. This is the ONLY way to maintain your organized system. I am trying to get better at this. I know where and what everything is, but my husband doesn’t. It also doesn’t help that he blatantly ignores my fridge labels! 
I immediately bought a new label maker after seeing how all our files were unlabeled. Plus, I figured it’d come in very handy when I have to label my garage storage boxes. So now I have two label makers - an embossing one and a printing one. The printing one is what I’ll use more often on the daily, and the embossing one is for aesthetics. I do love how the embossed labels look on all my jars and canisters!
Rainbow Order
A new idea that I picked up from THE is to rainbow-ify everything that’s possible. This means, sort items by rainbow order. It makes for easy choosing and putting back, especially for kids. I brainstormed a list of possible items that I could immediately rainbow-ify in my home:
- Bags
- Board games
- Books
- Clothes
- Cups & plates
- Shoes
- Spices
Before
After
Before
After
I have yet to sort all of these categories, but I will say that putting my clothes in rainbow order has been super helpful when putting together outfits. It definitely helps cut down on time! I can’t wait to do this for the rest of my items.
How do you organize your home and life? What else can we rainbow-ify in our homes?! 
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