User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
I put this book on hold because I love organizing books. I didn't know about the author's previous book or the Netflix show until the book came in. I didn't feel like there was much organizing info or help at all in the book - just a lot of beautiful, perfect, rainbow color-coordinated pictures. And most of the pictures were of HUGE spaces that the average person is not going to have in their house. I would LOVE to have a huge closet for all my stockpiled lotion, shampoo, laundry detergent, etc. but I don't so I have to work with what I have - this book didn't help in that way at all. While it's pretty to look at it wasn't very helpful in any real-life way. A lot of the reviews talked about how they liked the book better after watching the show, so I may check the show out just to see. Even if it is huge celebrity houses, I love a good "before and after" show.
Rating: really liked it
Admittedly I had never heard about The Home Edit, but then Netflix suggested I watch their recently released show, and as someone who loves minimalism and organizing, I did. And the show was hilarious, if not particularly helpful in terms of organizing. (But it has made me start referring to extras of things as "backstock,"which might be my new favorite absurd word of the moment, so yay for that.)
So then I decided to read their newest book, and while it is in keeping with their TV show, without their funny personalities, the book falls flat. Or perhaps let me say it this way: if you are looking for a book to actually help you edit your belongings, or organize things, or declutter, and you are a normal-ish person, well, this isn't the book for you. If you live in a gigantic mansion and have an entire closet devoted to outfits for your dog, or if you are a YouTube star or something like that, and want to have you millions of lipsticks organized, than maybe read this. Or if you just want to look at photos of the homes of the rich and famous, then yes, this book could be a useful one for you.
But that's really what it is: a book that tells people it is not only okay to own stuff, but praises the owning of LOTS OF STUFF, and also advocates for buying a lot of plastic bins to organize said stuff. The environment is crying over there in the corner, but never mind the sniffling you hear, just buy more stuff, okay? Or at least, that's sort of the vibe I get from the book. I read it and suddenly felt bad, for about a split second, that I wasn't the sort of adult who owned all.the.things. And then I felt sort of sickened by the consumerism of it all.
Rating: really liked it
Like a lot of you, I suspect, I enjoy looking at photos of neatly organized items, and thinking to myself, "Someday . . ." BUT, as much as I love the authors' anti-Marie KondÅ sentiment -
keep as much stuff as you want; just keep it organized - DANG! I have some issues with this book.
This one was donated for our library's book sale, so I took it home for a gander before returning it. I have never heard of the authors, seen their previous book, or watched their Netflix show. Having gotten that all out in the open, my first thought was this book is one giant ad for
The Container Store.
That's right, Gomer - SURPRISE! The authors have their own line of storage products featured at
that very store, making this book, which sells for a whopping $28.50, essentially an ad for their goodies.
Even if you can put that aside, Clea and Joanna have chirpy personalities that quickly become grating. Their constant name-dropping
(Oooo! They've touched Khloe Kardashian's things!), and ultra-blatant product placement (all the fancy, schmancy product was turned label out) also ruined this one for me.
But . . . the pictures sure are pretty.
So . . . if you're the type of person who likes having your books arranged rainbowly instead of alphabetically, and don't mind paying almost thirty bucks for a
255 page ad, you'll probably like this one W-A-Y more than I.
Who knows . . . it may even spark joy.
Rating: really liked it
For those of you interested in reading this book, let me save you some time by summarizing it for you here. Here is how to organize your home the way these two ladies do it:
1. Start with a gigantic, clean, white house with the largest pantry on earth, floor-to-ceiling cabinets throughout every room, an endless budget for supplies, and at least 25 large drawers in both the kitchen and the bathroom. Even better if you use a celebrity house. You get bonus points for name dropping.
2. Take everything out of the space.
3. Put everything into clear bins -- the ones the authors sell through The Container Store of course.
4. The only acceptable way to order the items is rainbow color order. Good luck with that.
5. Place bins back onto shelves or into drawers.
Voila!
There. I have saved you several hours and about $25. Are you impressed? Neither was I. I think the only people who would be impressed by this are people that have never actually organized anything so much as a junk drawer in their lives. This is organizing for newbies, for sure.
What I do like about their method (which is a generous term for what they do):
1. They get a full 10 points on aesthetics. There's no arguing the rooms they make are gorgeous and enviable and would probably impress all your friends. And I love the rainbow order -- if it works for how you use the space. (I have organized my hanging clothes in rainbow order for years because it does work for me.) It is very pretty. And I love me some minimalism. So full credit where it is due.
2. They are very open to helping you manage your hoarding of candy/makeup/books/crayons/whatever it is you can't stop buying. So you don't have to feel like you have to go on a "stuff diet" or throw away half of what you own like Marie Kondo makes you feel. (More on Kondo in a minute.)
3. Clear plastic bins are pretty awesome, I have to admit.
4. I liked their idea for how to sort apps on your phone. Rainbow order actually really works for this. This was probably the only really lightbulb moment I had while reading this book. Full disclosure: I did not read every word in this book because it's difficult to read when rolling your eyes.
What drives me bananas and ultimately why this book made me angry:
1. They are a one trick pony. They do the SAME THING in every space. This should have been a blog post, not a whole book -- wait, make that 2 books, a product line, and a Netflix show (which is even worse than this book, so don't feel like you're missing anything by not watching it). These women are really good at duping people....maybe I am a hater? Probably. Who knew you could get paid a bajillion bucks for putting things into rainbow order and using nothing other than clear plastic bins. This is the pet rock of the 2020s.
2. Their way of doing things is not very adaptable or customizable. What if plastic bins or peg boards don't work for you? What if rainbow order just doesn't work for the way that space functions? They seem to provide few options or customization, which makes me feel bad for their clients, who I am sure are paying through the nose for their services. Where's the tailored, individualized solution? What if you want to be different? What if rainbow order and clear plastic bins is not your style?
3. I never really saw them solve any complicated or unusual storage problems. Of course that pantry looks beautiful. You can park a 747 in it. You have plenty of room to do whatever you want in there!
4. They are annoyingly self-absorbed. Why are they including summaries of their personalities? Why should I care about how they like to self-care? This is not why I picked up this book. Stop making it all about you, authors. Otherwise, put the word "autobiography" on the cover and get out of the home organization section, please.
5. Ok, I will admit this point is probably only here because I am a librarian, but the way they organized a home library of books was atrocious! As anyone who actually uses books for reading (as opposed to using them as decorative objects) knows, you cannot organize books by the color of the cover. That is absurd. Even worse, the books which didn't fall into the rainbow scheme were -- *shudder* -- shelved spine-in so you can't even tell what book it is. Moments like this make it difficult for me to like and appreciate designers (which is really what these women are, because there are not really any organizing skillz going on here, let's be honest).
6. I have a very difficult time relating to any organizing book that goes into detail about how they organized a napkin closet for a client. Yes, you read that correctly. A NAPKIN CLOSET. Just a whole closet. For napkins. Floor to ceiling. Thanks for helping me out, girls. I have been struggling with my napkin closet for years. Now I know what to do. Full disclosure: I stopped reading after the napkin closet. That was the last straw.
I will be looking elsewhere to figure out how to organize my beauty products in a way that doesn't slowly accumulate dust, maximize the space in my teeny tiny triangular (yes, triangular) pantry, tame my exploding bookshelves, clean out my husband's floor-to-ceiling-closet-o-baseball-cards (oh how I wish I were exaggerating), and figure out my kitchen (which has about 4 fewer drawers and 6 fewer cabinets than I really would like). Because these are the kinds of organizing problems you have if you are not a celebrity and live in the real world. Paging Marie Kondo*!
*Marie Kondo is an amazing, wonderful, and talented genius. Her KonMari methods are empowering, based in reality, and encourage you to be honest with yourself. They also do not require you to purchase special containers in order to create order in your home -- unless you want to. Plus, she is a super sweet and humble lady. Every KonMari thing I have done to my house, I have kept up for years now because it works and it's easy. If you haven't discovered her yet, you are missing out. And her show and books will actually help you feel more joy in your own surroundings, not leave you more envious of celebrity walk-in closets than you already are.
Rating: really liked it
I started watching
The Home Edit on Netflix the other night. When I heard the hosts Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin just released their second book, I was on it.
The Home Edit Life is really similar to the show. Honestly, I don’t know that either one is super practical per se—unless you have gigantic closets and lots of money for clear plastic containers from The Container Store… But the show is still fun to watch, and the book is fun to page through. It’s basically organization porn at its finest: lots of sparsely filled shelves with color-coded knick knacks they couldn’t possibly stay that way if you’re actually living in the space. The fact that there is so much celebrity name-dropping in the book is annoying, but it makes sense. Celebrities are the people who most benefit from having a pretty way to display all the stuff they won’t ever use.
Ultimately, this book is fine for what it is, but I think I’m a bigger fan of the more calm and sustainable approach of Marie Kondo. In contrast,
The Home Edit Life (and the show) feel like one last hurrah of excess and consumption before we all get down to the messy but crucial task of living sustainably and, you know, saving our planet.
Rating: really liked it
The Home Edit Life: The Complete Guide to Organizing Absolutely Everything at Work, at Home, and on the Go brings more aesthetically pleasing images, organization ideas, and signature humor from The Home Edit (THE) founders, Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin. I’ve been a fan of THE for years and loved watching their Netflix series this year.
While their first book,
The Home Edit: A Guide to Realizing and Organizing Your House Goals focuses on the house and various aspects of a home,
THE Life drills into specific areas: work, kids, pets, celebrations, etc — Not all sections will be applicable to everyone. The general message is, it’s ok to own stuff, and even encouraged, but all things should be organized in a way that works
for you. I skimmed some parts but I did enjoy the bright, clean photos throughout the book.
Rating: really liked it
I was utterly euphoric when I started this book. This was because I was mid Home Edit series on Netflix and anything else Home Edit I could get my hands on? Count me in. So I ordered both books on impulse and finished the show in two days. The euphoria began to fade a few pages in when I realized that this book was not geared toward the common middle class lifestyle nor was it what I expected from a book claiming to help me with organization.
The colourful pictures and pages were brilliant and beautiful, but had those been removed and the text left over, the book would be close to useless I hate to say. All there was to offer was a few words on the space and a step or two on how to achieve said-space (and I won’t be achieving said-space because I barely have enough space in my dresser drawers). There were also very little tips and tricks I could take away from the book to implement into my own small living space.
This book dives into the individual projects Clea and Joanna have tackled in their careers (mostly celebs homes and spaces). So while it is interesting to look at, when I’m looking at a photo with an entire closet space dedicated to 27 handbags (yes I counted. The space belonged to Mandy Moore of course), I found it hard not to be disappointed in the excessive consumerism. Hey, to each is own, but I’m impartial to the greed and overconsumption Canada and the US take part in more and more with each passing year. Not to mention all the plastic promotion in the book, while our world is trying to move away from plastic use.
Unfortunately this book did not do it for me. I absolutely adore Clea and Joanna and they are so lovable on the show. They are experts at what they do, and they work exceptionally hard. The book overall was not meaty enough in terms of applicable content. There was a lot of fluff.
Hopefully the first book will be more in depth, as I’m still excited to read it!
Rating: really liked it
This book had more concrete ideas on how to actually use the organizing principles of The Home Edit in various situations. It really took the principles of their whole system and gave some more examples. I would have loved before pictures in addition to the after photos. I would also have liked to see a bit more variety where not everyone is in modern homes with pure white shelving. Overall, there is a lot of practical that can be taken out of this book.
Rating: really liked it
This book doesn’t have nearly enough organizing details. It also bases much of its color-coordinated organizing around the ROY G BIV rainbow order; pretty idea but not practical for many people. The book practically advertised how the authors organized the rooms of some celebrities. That’s nice but again, that’s fluff, not substance.
Pretty book but too much useless eye candy for me.
Rating: really liked it
You've read The Home Edit.
You have Edited.
What next?
Try The Home Edit Life. Take on all those small organization projects now that you've got the big things done. Pets. Hobbies. Electronics. Travel.
Rating: really liked it
I Everything Home edit!
Rating: really liked it
I love planning and organising and I believe I do a pretty good job organising my life, tasks and all the associated admin that comes along with it. Why then, is my office a mess? I think it's because I have too much 'stuff' and unfortunately the Marie Kondo approach of 'sparking joy' didn't work for me.
Introducing organising duo Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin. With a successful Instagram following in excess of 4 million, this power couple has been organising celebrity spaces and sharing their drool-worthy results on social media. The success of
The Home Edit has led to a popular show on Netflix and they've become household names.
The Home Edit Life - The Complete Guide to Organizing Absolutely Everything at Work, at Home and On The Go by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin is their second book and it was an absolute joy to read.
Colourful and presented in a beautiful hardcover, the authors combine a self-help approach with snippets of their own organising preferences and business experiences. Unfortunately this includes quite a bit of name dropping and being Australian many of the celebrity names were unknown to me, but I'm generally not interested in that kind of stuff anyway.
As you might gather from the cover, the authors advocate organising by colour and using colour to organise. They use the acronym ROYGBIV to indicate the order the colours should go in: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Even the book is organised according to colour!
For those new to their approach, the process begins with editing your stuff, then organising your stuff, and lastly sorting it into groups that suit your needs. This often results in storage in a variety of containers and displays in order to make items easy to see and access.
The end of one year and the beginning of a new one is the perfect time to read a self help book and a time when my thoughts turn to planning for the year ahead, setting up my bullet journal and thinking about any goals I might want to accomplish.
According to Shearer and Teplin, you can either have the thing or you can have the space, and I think that's what I need to focus on when it comes to my bookshelves. When they're double stacked and books are shoved in any which way, I don't end up enjoying them as much as I should. To enjoy my favourites, I need to cull. Then come the excuses: but the free little library downstairs is full, I'll save some for friends when I see them, what if someone wants to borrow a particular book, and surely it'll pain me too much to box them up and just give them to the op shop in one big hit?...Eeek!
Reading
The Home Edit Life did make me want to edit my bookshelves and arrange them to their best advantage. However, I decided to start with something smaller to begin with and the bathroom cupboard under the sink is looking amazing, IMHO!
The Home Edit Life by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin is recommended for readers needing a little - or a lot - more organisation in their lives, those who enjoy looking at photos of artfully organised and aesthetically pleasing cupboards, drawers and shelves and of course, fans of the Netflix show.
* Copy courtesy of Hachette Australia *
Rating: really liked it
Watching their Netflix show for five minutes gives me a headache. Some people love Joanna and Clea but I find them super annoying.
So why did I bother with their books? Because despite how I feel about them, I do think they do good work and their use of containers and organizational products is solid. I am a visual person and the photographs in their books help me. I get very overwhelmed stepping into The Container Store, so seeing products in action is useful.
However. This book is a lot of fluff. There’s a lot of self-indulgent stuff that I guess they feel appeals to their fan base. (Do I care that one of them is deathly afraid of battery acid? Do I care that they like to keep low carb tortillas in their purses?)
There’s a lot of annoying celebrity name dropping. I would have much preferred a book that showcased everyday client work because that is more practical and applicable to 99% of those reading this book. I don’t want to waste my time looking at Dwayne Wade’s shoe closet or how they organized multiple celebrity tour trailers, or how they set up a whole wall of pet costumes for a client.
If you really just want examples of how to work on your pantry or home office or junk drawer, don’t bother with this book. It’s kind of ridiculous.
Rating: really liked it
The tagline to this book should be 'If You're Bored and Rich'. Why WHY would I ever need advice on how to organize my tour bus? I'm guessing this more goes along with what's done on the Netflix series than giving actual advice. I should have known I wasn't going to like it when the first 3 pages talk about their first book. I don't care about the first book, that's not the one I'm reading. This was basically an instagram feed, all fluff and no substance.
Rating: really liked it
Keep what you love, put everything in rainbow order.
Why I started this book: Colors and home decorating... my favorites!
Why I finished it: Pretty pictures, but I didn't connect with the organization or ideas. So I will donate this to the library and clean my closet by myself.
