The Home Edit Life

Starred review from August 3, 2020
Shearer and Teplin (The Home Edit) present being well-organized as a “lifestyle and mindset that anyone can adopt” in their excellent guide. Cannily making their advice as achievable as possible, Shearer and Teplin counsel starting with small spaces then building up to bigger ones. As long as everything is sorted and placed in intuitive and reachable locations, they write, it won’t be necessary to more aggressively purge and declutter one’s possessions. Shearer and Teplin advise always placing like with like, and in clearly dedicated areas, while never using the space available in one’s home to the maximum capacity (“reserve at least 20 percent for breathing room”). They also warn against conflating organization (their focus) with minimalism, and present a partial list of those knickknacks present in most homes which can always be safely tossed, including souvenirs from one’s travels (“that’s what photos are for—your old soda cup is not a memory”). Plenty of the pair’s celebrity clients are name-checked (fashionistas will drool over Mandy Moore’s “handbag heaven” of a closet), but the authors leaven any sense of bragging with good-humored self-deprecation, as when they express incredulity that some people took their first book on vacation. Big photos of gorgeously organized spaces provide plenty of eye candy. This irresistible primer will delight and inspire the neat and messy alike.