Your perfect edit
Organisational guru, Anna Newton, shows us how to find the ideal edit for your home, whatever end of the minimalist spectrum you find yourself on
Thanks to Marie Kondo, we’re all a lot happier saying goodbye to the things in our homes that don’t spark joy. Organisation and minimalism has never been so hot. However if you’re a naturalborn hoarder, extreme minimalism can cause more anxiety than it cures. One person who has managed to find her own happy medium is Anna Newton, founder of blog, theannaedit.com and co-host of popular podcast At Home With... Newton recently published her first book, An Edited Life: Simple Steps to Streamlining Your Life at Work and at Home (kilkennyshop.com, €19.95), a manual that offers practical advice on how to curate your home into something that is beautiful, manageable and personal.
Newton began her own “personal editing journey” when she and her now husband Mark moved into a one-bedroom flat the size of a postage stamp after university.
“We devised our own little space-saving hacks like hiding the ironing board behind the sofa but after years of a consumer-heavy lifestyle, my new purchases soon began to creep into every empty crevice. Opening the wardrobe door had become a task that should have its own health-and-safety warning. Nothing was ever messy but there was just an overwhelming amount of stuff.”
When the couple decided to move, Newton realised when she was hauling a box out of the flat, marked OLD MAKEUP – BOX 3 and opening up boxes of useless stuff that had made its way to their new home, that it was time to edit. After reading Marie Kondo’s The Life
Changing Magic of Tidying, five bin bags and a couple of days later, Newton felt a subtle shift towards a more minimal mindset. “In the months that followed, not only did our home feel more functional, my brain took a long exhale for the first time in months, and I found myself feeling more productive in work and more efficient with my time.”
However, being an all-or-nothing type of person, Newton found this feeling addictive to the point where her husband Mark was convinced he’d come home to find the remote control in the bin because it didn’t spark joy. She even bullied her mum into downsizing
her beloved vase collection. “I’d become the complete opposite of a hoarder and instead became a binbag tyrant, to the point that I was parting with things I actually needed. I realised there had to be a more comfortable middle ground.”
Newton began to devise editing methods that still sat within the minimalist framework but didn’t act as a strict rulebook like all the books she’d read on the subject. Newton says that minimalism covers a whole spectrum of living-with-less beliefs; the strictest being able to fit all your possessions into a suitcase, and what she’s come to see as the middle ground, is actually to aim instead for a more edited life.
The importance of editing rather than discarding everything came to Newton after she went through her extreme minimalist phase. Quite simply, her home felt empty. “My wardrobe was empty. The drawers were empty. And you know what? I felt empty too. I’d put so much energy and focus into removing as many material things from my life as physically possible, that I’d completely disregarded the ‘but maybe I need that?’ niggle that’s sometimes right and sometimes wrong. I didn’t even have enough clothes to get through the week without having to do two laundry loads, and our home was devoid of any personality.”
She acknowledges that there is another end to that scale, referring to her mother and her vase collection.
“If you love stuff and your surrounding clutter brings you happiness, then good for you. But if you’re feeling stifled and experiencing the negative effects that an overwhelming amount of things can bring then it’s time to declutter.” Newton defines decluttering as: “curating a space that serves you best, filling it with things that make you happy, no matter the amount and getting rid of the rest that don’t.” With this in mind she devised the very simple F.U.L.L. method, so that everyone can find the ideal edit for their own life. Here’s how to apply it. If your answer is yes to just one of these questions, then you keep it. The functional part means that you won’t end up tossing away anything which could be useful.
The question of when you last used it means that you won’t end up hanging on to things that you haven’t touched in years.
By asking yourself if it’s an item that you love, you’re saving yourself the heartache of giving away anything that’s sentimental or means a lot to you.
Then, finally, sometimes you just have things that you like the look of and it’s often these odd bits and trinkets that make your house feel like a home.” Turn over to read how best to display the things you love and the things you like the look of.
Take your time
Newton believes that when we move into a space, we can put ourselves under unnecessary pressure to fill it and have it Instagram-ready immediately – but that doesn’t mean you’ll be surrounded by things that will make you happy. “We were in a furnished flat before, so when we moved to a slightly bigger unfurnished flat we had nothing, not even a bed. When you’re trying to buy big ticket items like a sofa and a bed, and you end up buying art for the walls or pieces thinking, ‘That’s the right size, that’ll do!’ Now we’re there four years later, looking at each other, saying ‘What were we thinking?’ Newton says that a lot of people put up shelves and have just a cactus and a candle sitting on top because that’s what they see online, but she says that doesn’t tell the story of you. ‘You could just go in and buy those bits in Tiger. One thing I like to do when we go to a new place is buy a piece of art, like a print, that we can hang on the wall. I went to Ibiza and bought a ceramic bowl. It’s a really nice way of collecting these goods, in a way that has meaning. Equally, it’s nice to save up to buy a piece by an artist that you love which you will really value.”
Conceal or reveal
Now that you have edited your possessions, the question remains: what should you store away and what should you put on display? “This technically falls into the last two part of my F.U.L.L method – the things you ‘like the look of’ and things that you ‘love’. Extreme minimalist methods lack in terms of the sentimental things and things that are aesthetically pleasing to us. When I got rid of everything, it didn’t look like my home; it looked like a show home. So now I’m all about having these sentimental items out and enjoying them.” Newton’s top tip is to incorporate open and closed storage into your home. “We have one piece of furniture that has both open and closed storage sections. In the open storage sections we’ve got sentimental things we’ve been given. For instance, my husband has a grandfather clock from his dad, and I like to display all of our books. Though people think I’m crazy because I have them all colour coordinated. But we’ve also got board games and paperwork that aren’t as nice to look at, but we can put in the concealed bit, so they are still to hand.
Change it up
Newton says that changing up a room can be as simple as changing the books you have on display to make a place feel like new without having to spend anything. You’ve already got everything you need or love, but maybe you’d like it to feel fresh. She likens it to having a seasonal wardrobe – putting away your winter clothing to rediscover the summer pieces you love. “That is what I do with my wardrobe, so you could do it with interiors – a capsule homeware collection that you rotate. All things you like and love but maybe you don’t need them out on display at the one time. You’re never going to fall out of love with something that has sentimental value, like my husband’s grandfather clock, but it can become invisible. However, if you put it away for a while you can fall back in love with it all over again. It also gives you that spark of thinking you’ve done something new with your home.”
Store it wisely
Anyone who watched Friends will remember neat freak Monica’s secret wardrobe of junk. Newton confesses she is a bit of a Monica, but tries her best to keep hers in check with clever storage. “If you have that loft or closet where everything gets dumped then it’s going to take time to sort it out. But it’s worth it. This cupboard can stress you out, because every time you need to get something out – walking boots or ski gear – you can’t find it and it just gets messier and messier. ” She reveals the only way to do this is to actually schedule time in your diary for organising. “It’s so boring and it’s grim but if it’s going to take two weekends then that’s what it’s going to take. It can be a big job, but the only way to declutter the Monica cupboard is one hour at a time. Once this is done the next step is to find storage solutions so you can organise it to work for you, then it’s easier to keep in check and it gives things a home which speeds up tidying. I love Muji’s acrylic drawers for this.” If you’re struggling to keep things tidy, Newton says that the minute you get something new, you should designate it a home or else it is always going to be clutter to you.”