E d i t o r ’s N o t e
Follow me on Twitter @lyazel and Instagram
O OK , I M A K E resolutions each January—I know it’s cliché, and I just don’t care—and as usual this year’s goals are all over the map. Some are big and practical: We’ve got to renovate the kitchen, with its too-dark cabinets and refrigerator-door rubber seal that tears a bit more with each opening. Some are heartfelt: I’d like to be a better listener and offer my full focus to my husband and my daughter more often than I do now. Some are about home sanity: I want the walk-in utility closet to look like it did the day after the nice fellow from the Container Store installed the shelving system. In fact, getting organized is the top resolution readers tell us they make (and sometimes break). This month, we bring you 10 pages of room-by-room organization tips, starting on page 86. And I know what you may be thinking: “I can get my home totally organized. I just can’t keep it that way.” I hear you—that’s why we’ve included strategies to maintain that finely organized feel throughout the whole year. Some of this comes down to not taking it all on yourself: We reveal proven ways to enlist your family crew to be a part of the solution.
L
6 R E A L S I M P L E JA N UA RY 2018
Some years, resolution-making is more complicated. I’ve had times in which I felt dissatisfied and wanted to make life changes, but I wasn’t exactly sure of my goal and the steps to get there. Which is why I was drawn to what author and coach Stacy Kim calls the Lighthouse Method (page 110). The idea is to just start making small changes, which gets you in a good frame of mind for trying new things. You see your life from a different perspective as you move toward your goal (the lighthouse) in the distance. Whatever your January goals are—putting your finances in order, getting healthier, streamlining your morning routine, connecting with friends and family— I hope you’ll find inspiration in these pages. And I wish you luck with your new year’s plans. I’ll be here, praying this refrigerator door doesn’t give out on me before I get mine underway!
H O W ’ S YO U R C LO S E T ? My closet was kind of a hot mess until Alyssa Dineen, one of our experts in “A Better Way to Buy Clothes” (page 48), helped me say farewell to items I wasn’t wearing and identified pieces that made pulling together an outfit in the morning a total breeze. Example: The top Alyssa is zipping me into at the boutique Bird in Brooklyn (above) goes with 80 percent of the skirts and pants I own.
Photograph by Rob Howard
F A S H I O N S T Y L I N G B Y A LY S S A D I N E E N ; H A I R B Y M AT T H E W M O N Z O N ; M A K E U P B Y K AT I E J A N E H U G H E S . T O P R I G H T : P H O T O G R A P H B Y J E S S I C A A N T O L A ; H A I R A N D M A K E U P B Y M E L PA L D I N O W I T H N A R S F O R E N N I S I N C .
@leslieyazel
