Amanda Wiss owns a home-organization business in New York City based on one simple premise.
"I find the process of parting with things that aren't supporting you anymore really empowering and really good," Wiss told Homes.com. "And I think there are a lot of people who don't — and find that stressful."
A New Jersey native, Wiss founded Urban Clarity in Brooklyn in 2007. Wiss and her staff visit homes of all sizes across New York City and help residents create storage systems and tweak their daily behavior so that their homes have more open space. Organizing is a skill Wiss has been honing since before she was legally able to drive.
"I had always by default organized people," Wiss said. "In high school, a friend would have a super messy room, and I would come over — and while we're hanging out — I would redo their stuff."
To be clear, home organizing was not Wiss' first career choice. Her original plan was to attend law school. During that journey, she landed internships in Washington, D.C. — including at the U.S. Department of Justice and with AmeriCorps — that led her to believe "being an actual lawyer felt combative."
"I didn't feel like that would be the best use of my skillset," she said.
Wiss said she read Julie Morgenstern's 1999 book "Organizing From the Inside Out," and the rest is history. These days, Wiss spends her workdays deploying staff to different assignments while also running her company's home staging firm.
At its core, home organizing is about making sure every item in a house has a place where it's stored and making sure everyone who lives there returns items to their proper place after every use, Wiss said.
"Your home is the foundation of where you live and where you start your day and where you launch your family," she said. "It really needs to function well for you."
Wiss shared tips with Homes.com on how to free up space.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What advice do you have for someone who must organize a very small living space?
Start wherever; it's such a small place it doesn't matter. Anything you can get rid of that you're not using is helpful because it creates more space and possibility. The idea is to purge as much as you can first before you move things around.
If you truly don't have space, then you have to dig deeper into your closets. Usually when I look at a closet, there's lots of dead space. Can you put things in a container [and] then stack stuff if you're keeping it? Get it off the floor so the floor is accessible. Maximizing a closet is the way to make a home feel better generally.
What tips do you have for organizing bathrooms?
There's a lot of empty space in bathrooms that people don't utilize very well: the space above the toilet, the space below the sink or you have towel bars when you could use a hook and have more towels hanging down.
Try to go vertical as much as possible. Underneath a bathroom sink, there's a lot of dead space. Outfit it with drawers on either side of the pipe. One says makeup on it. You pull out a drawer, the size of a shoebox, and it has all your things.
How do you combat the guilt that comes with throwing things away that have memories tied to them?
I ask myself, "Would I buy this again?" And if the answer is no, I let myself feel more comfortable getting rid of it.
Some people use bins for storage while others use shelves. What's the best use for reach?
Bins are great for something that you're going to rotate out. You're going to go set up Christmas and then you're going to put it back. Those things don't necessarily need to be on shelves because you're not taking it in and out regularly. Shelving is the most functional way to store something, but sometimes things don't need to be maximized. Think about frequency of use and order of use when you store stuff.
