I binged The Home Edit on Netflix and I can’t stop thinking about it. My first reaction was that I wished I could run out and spend $$$$ on acrylic boxes at The Container Store. Then I thought, no, maybe the show is bugging me because every other organization expert says buying storage is the last step, not the first. That’s not why I can’t get it out of my mind.
The Home Edit method seems to be predicated on the idea that whatever stuff you have in your [pantry, kids’ playroom, storage garage] at the moment the hosts walk in the door is perfectly representative of everything you’ll ever have in there. And once they get it organized for you everything will stay organized because your life will never change. Dad will always take the same supplements, your daughter will always want her doll closet just so. She will always want a doll closet at all. It’s the illusion of permanence.
I don’t know about you but my life doesn’t work like that.
But wouldn’t it be nice if it could? Wouldn’t it be nice if all of the instability, all of the confusion, all of the pain could be permanently overruled by the power of cute things in see-through acrylic boxes?
That’s what I can’t stop thinking about. The impossible possibility that all of the world’s problems can be solved if I put my tortilla chips in airtight containers rather than keeping them in the bag. Or that I can feel like they are.
Liz Welsh 