It’s August 2015 and two moms, new to Nashville, get set up for a “blind date” because a mutual friend thought they had a lot in common. “Husbands both in the music industry, kids of the same age, wanted to start an organizing business,” is how Clea Shearer ticks off some of her and Joanna Teplin’s similarities. “That same night, we came up with our company name, designed our logo, bought our domain and registered our LLC.”
“Organizers are nothing if not efficient,” she adds wryly.
Networking played a key role in their early success as well: They reached out to high-profile friends, who introduced them to their friends, and so on. “We offered a free project in exchange for a social media post and it snowballed from there. Word of mouth, especially through social media, really propelled us,” Teplin says.
It helps when your friends of friends have names like Christina Applegate and Khloé Kardashian. But The Home Edit’s services—and now products—have an appeal that transcends celebrity endorsement. “When you create functional systems that also look beautiful, it gives you a chance to feel more in control,” Shearer says. “Which is what we are all looking for.”
The Home Office
The new “corner office” may well be that: a corner. And that’s OK when the stuff you need is organized. The partners have a penchant for using ROYGBIV, an acronym for the colors in a rainbow, as an organizational tool. The happy hues help corral the practical stuff that’s best left visible—pens, paper goods and the like—stored in The Home Edit’s containers. Their product line offers solutions for everything else, from documents to the detritus that you don’t want to look at but need to know where to find.
In their own WFH setups “we live and breathe by the systems we have in place, especially now that we share our office space with our kids for virtual learning,” Teplin says, adding that “rolling carts have proven to be a helpful solution. Each kid has their own and we store their supplies on it.”
The Closet
In August 2020, exactly five years after they met, the partners posted some big news to their website: “OUR NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES, GET ORGANIZED WITH THE HOME EDIT, WILL BE RELEASED ON SEPTEMBER 9TH… AND WE LITERALLY CAN’T STOP SCREAMING!!!”
The announcement was worth its all-caps-and-triple-exclamation-point billing. The first of The Home Edit’s eight episodes would film the process of organizing a capacious closet in actress Reese Witherspoon’s Nashville home, one devoted to gala gowns and movie costumes (Witherspoon is also an executive producer of the show). While your closet may not be room size, The Home Edit’s principles will still apply.
- The first step is “editing,” which often means purging, or in the show’s parlance, choosing between the item and the space.
- Next is “categorizing” the stuff into zones, based on how, and how often, you use the items.
- Then comes “containing,” often in clear bins affixed with preprinted labels written in Shearer’s own script.
- The hardest part: maintaining, which is another way of saying staving off regressions into our messy old ways.
7 Useful Products for Easy Home Organization
If you’re new to The Home Edit’s method for decluttering your spaces, here’s a list of products to help you get and stay organized.
Start with The Home Edit Life (Clarkson Potter, $28.50), Shearer and Teplin’s second book, published in September 2020. It is both inspirational and instructional, helping stuck-at-home readers win the war against their stuff—purging some of it, organizing what’s left and making sure the new order is maintained.
Office
For home offices, the cart multiplies storage space and accommodates bins of your choosing. It doubles as a snack and drink cart ($99.99, bins sold separately).
Although designed to un-jumble cosmetics and tools in bathroom drawers, this organizer
works well for desktop items as well ($19.99).
Closet
This stackable product lets you add the convenience of drawers to your open shelving.
It comes with a removable clear plastic divider ($29.99).
S-Hook
Designed for handbags, these versatile hooks are also perfect for hanging pots and pans ($5.99 each).
Pantry
Violet Bin Organizer Kit
This violet-hued beauty is part of a kit that includes a large, stackable all-purpose bin
and four inserts ($36.95 for 5-piece kit).
Pantry Canisters
The range of stackable, air-tight canisters comes in sizes designed to store pasta, cereal and staples like sugar, nuts and more (from $8.99).
For more content from The Home Edit, check out Netflix’s “Get Organized with The Home Edit,” as well as the company’s swoon-worthy Instagram feed, @thehomeedit.
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