Katherine DiGiovanni grew up in an organized household.
Her mother was a lifelong organizer, so a clean and decluttered space was the default. “Before The Container Store, before all these products were invented, there was my mom,” the Washington, D.C.-based designer said. The environment left DiGiovanni with an interest in how a home functions — and how space serves its users — that endured even as she began a career in communications and consulting.
In 2016, however, she met Nicole Anzia, founder of the home organization company Neatnik. The two had similar backgrounds — they both grew up in Wisconsin, went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Anzia had worked in politics and communications — and they hit it off. By the end of 2019, they were business partners at Neatnik, helping clients organize homes before, during and after a move. Coincidentally, that was right before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a fraught time for homeowners and homebuyers alike.
“People really needed help,” DiGiovanni said. With low interest rates and attractive mortgages on their side, Americans were moving, she explained, and trying to figure out what they needed, how to pack it and how to unpack it. And people who weren’t moving, they were buying, DiGiovanni explained, stocking up on random household items along with gear (think gloves, masks and toilet paper) that fell in and out of scarcity.
“People accumulated a lot during the pandemic,” she said. “We are still helping people dig out.”
In recent years, DiGiovanni and her family undertook a renovation project of their own, and she had the chance to turn her professional eye toward her own space, specifically her mudroom.
“Based on my experience with what I was seeing in other people’s homes … we were able to get an extremely useful, functional, nice-looking mudroom that I continue to be so pleased with,” she said. The space was “a direct reflection of what I was seeing out in the field.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You were doing something very different before this. Was there any learning curve?
I guess there was, but most of my career had been dealing with clients and client communication. I was in a different type of service industry, so I knew how to deal with clients, and I knew how to communicate with them and find out their needs and figure out how to help them. I’ve obviously learned a lot over the years, but a lot of it is just, I had an organized home, and I lived in an organized home, and I had for years — and I had children. So, a lot of what I did came pretty naturally to me.
But the thing that motivated me to go into this ... It was just that I really was able to help people, and I could see the immediate change and the immediate difference and the immediate impact on people as opposed to what I was doing. So, it was incredibly satisfying.
Are there any parts of your home that you find particularly satisfying to keep organized?
Oh, well, sure. My business partner, Nicole, and I talk about this all the time ... So, the big thing is the clear kitchen counter. I like it to be cleared off, things put away, and that's just not the natural state of the kitchen counter. People just want to put something on there and leave it there. I will sometimes let things stay there for a little while, but after, you know, a little bit, I will be putting that thing away.
That is something that will never, I don't think will ever, go away. You know, just constantly dealing with stuff like that. And that's like really the truth of having an organized home is that it is a lifestyle. It is not, "I've organized my kitchen. It's all done." To have it be decluttered and clean and clear is an ongoing project.
But if you do a little bit every day, it's not overwhelming.
You recently renovated your home, including the mudroom. What works about that space?
We have lots of space for shoes and lots of shoe shelves. Not bins for shoes, not drawers for shoes, not catchalls for shoes, but shelves for shoes.
What are some unexpected elements of disorder that people might tackle when trying to declutter a home?
Technology. Specifically, the cords. Most of us have an iPhone, AirPods, an Apple Watch, a computer, a laptop — maybe an iPhone tripod that you can plug in that helps you film for social media. You have all these different gadgets that come in, and those things just pile up and they get left all over the house. I think a lot of people wouldn't expect that's such a big issue, but that's something I see all the time.
I will help a client develop a central repository for all their technology: all of the cords and the USBs and drives. It's one thing to have your phone cords — and you might have a few of them — strategically placed around the house. But I'm talking about the "all" of it, all of the stuff. Just put it in a drawer, a bin, a shoe box so you can find it when you need it.
And, when that new thing comes in, because it will, [a central tech repository] is where you put that, because that's where you put that stuff. A huge part of staying organized is just having these decisions made so that it's done.
What hobbies do you have? How do you restore?
I read a lot. I'm super interested in history. I'm very interested in movies and, you know, design and things like that. So, yeah, I read a lot of books, watch a lot of YouTube videos, things like that.
There's always some topic that I'm learning about or interested in. I like to cook a lot. I cook a lot for my family. I've been on a sourdough kick for like the last year. I make all the bread in our house. I always like to have some kind of cooking interest, or project, or new thing that I'm trying.
What are you reading right now? Any recommendations?
I'm reading the best book. It's called “The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors” by Dan Jones.
Do you have a favorite spot in your home?
Yeah. I love my kitchen.