The Home Edit Reorganizes a House on Fire
Last year, Netflix introduced many viewers to the big business of decluttering with their hit series “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo.” Kondo’s trademarked KonMari method encouraged people with messy homes to throw out anything in their house that did not “spark joy.” These days joy is hard to come by, but the streaming giant is back with a new home improvement series designed to solve that very problem.
Netflix recently premiered “Get Organized With The Home Edit.” Produced by Reese Witherspoon, the show follows Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin, founders of an Instagram-based home organization brand called “The Home Edit,” as they color code and label containers to help their customers find inner peace.
The show is part of a resurgence of interest in home organization, spurred on by the pandemic and widespread stay-at-home orders. With so many people working and taking classes from home, interiors have taken on greater significance. The New York Times reported that in June of 2020, contractors advertising their services on the home renovation website Houzz saw a 58 percent increase in orders from the previous year.
Gretchen Rubin, author of Outer Order, Inner Calm: Declutter and Organize to Make More Room for Happiness, spoke with The Washington Post about the trend, explaining: “Some people feel like nesting and just want to paint everything. Others feel claustrophobic. Many have figured out they need more elbow room.”
“Get Organized With the Home Edit” seems primed to take advantage of these new consumers while satisfying the public’s fascination with celebrity homes. In each episode Shearer and Teplin help a famous person (from Reese Witherspoon to Khloé Kardashian) and a civilian get their sh*t together. In one episode, they assist Witherspoon in organizing her red-carpet dresses by color; in another, they help actor Retta convert her garage into a “leisure lounge.”
Writing about the latter episode in The Guardian, critic Stuart Heritage said, “Astonishingly, Joanna and Clea’s solution to this problem didn’t involve torching her house and writing ‘EAT THE RICH’ in the ashes, which seems like something of a missed opportunity.”
Indeed, what the home organizing trend reveals is just how differently people have experienced the pandemic. While some are looking to maximize their closet space or make their home office more inviting, a survey from the site Apartment List revealed that a third of respondents failed to make a full mortgage or rent payment in August. It makes you wonder if the real reason decluttering relieves stress is because it is a reminder that you have a roof over your head in the first place.
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