Photos: Courtesy of The Container Store, The Home Edit

What today?s idealized closets and pantries say about our inner lives I?ve never met a bin, basket, or box (or a store that sells these items) that I didn?t want. The desire to organize?closets, kitchen cupboards, office supplies, the laundry nook?has been fierce for as long as I can remember. Certainly ever since I first walked into the Container Store, which opened just a few years after I was born. By the time I got my first apartment, with a real closet and my own kitchen counters, I couldn?t wait to load a cart with drawer dividers and sweater boxes and over-the-door hooks and soap caddies.
I?m hardly alone in this yearning to get all my duck boots in a row. (I?d prefer they be lined up on a special boot tray outside the door.) We?re living in what some may call the golden age of home organization, thanks to American homes that have grown an average of 1,000 square feet in the last few decades. All that space needs to be organized: in closets arranged by color and full of uniform hangers; in pantries where dry goods can live their best lives decanted into clear jars and labeled with care; in bathrooms with two-tiered carousels of cleaning supplies beneath the sink and pyramids of toilet paper in the closet. As of the first quarter of the fiscal year, sales at the Container Store were up 7 percent from last year. The National Association of Professional Organizers, founded in 1985, had about 400 members in...