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“I would stand in the cluttered closet and my brain would get fuzzy since I didn’t know where to begin,” Ed Roth, owner of Stencil1, recalls. “The business grew but the storage didn’t.” He lists the countless supplies needed on any given work day: paints, brushes, adhesive sprays, tape, stencils of all sizes, work surfaces of all sizes. “Things accumulate, and you have to consciously have a place for all of them. The physical clutter and not being able to find things was affecting productivity, cluttering my mind.”

Ed  was having a “Calgon, take me away” moment, except there was no escape. Stencil1’s studio is also his Brooklyn apartment (his warehouse and manufacturing facility are outside this space). “I choose to live and work in the same place to be efficient, to have everything I need in one place. There is no forgetting something at the office in this set-up.”

But because his commute is to the next room, the boundaries between living and working began to be like his brain, fuzzy.

“Aesthetic is important to me,” he says. “Having nice looking items around me, as well as a clean and organized space, allows me to focus on my design work. I think I have some OCD, and I see things as right and wrong sometimes. Wrong being anything out of place or messy. I can’t move ahead easily with work if something is “wrong”.

Luckily, the Container Store swooped in like a fairy godmother to transform his office and walk-in art supply closet. They tidied the detritus, or rather offered the right storage solutions for it, and Stencil 1 got the makeover it needed.

Any kind of change is not without its growing pains. Of having the Container Store and Art Director Amelia Meena of AppleshineNYC come into his space to evaluate what stayed and what went, Ed admits, “It’s not easy. I wanted to control the situation and I wanted it done fast. But that was a great lesson learned. You have to tear it all apart and start over, and it will take longer than you think, but the results will be long-lasting and worth it. I have learned in business to trust people with what they do best and that motto rang clear here. They are experts. They listened to how my workflow happens and implemented the solutions based on that.”

Ed learned not only to open his mind to storage solutions but also to design suggestions. Art Director, Shannan Johnson introduced Ed to Poppin and it’s colorful line of office accessories. “I love the pop of navy in my otherwise neutral office. It adds a nice pop of color that I would not have thought to implement.”

So, the Container Store camped out for a week in Brooklyn, bringing with them their Elfa storage system and countless containers of all kinds to house the clutter. One main issue was filing. “I would not file things because I had an old filing cabinet and two small plastic ones,” Ed says. “Now, I have two nice new Bisley filing cabinets as well as drawers.” Another issue was that his custom desktop had no drawers. “I have a ton of photos, design clippings, and art that I am always sorting through and archiving. I am not a minimalist or essentialist. I collect art and have taken photos since I was 13.”

Ed acknowledges that he’s struggled with placing too much emotional value on objects. “I have learned to let go if it’s of no use to me. I still do this occasionally, but that doesn’t mean I have to hoard.”

Now that it’s finished, what does Ed hope this reset button will bring?

“I think some delusions of organization are complete life happiness” he jokes, “…but seriously, I want to just know where everything is. I have many new projects on the table – new textile and wallpaper developments, new stencils and tools, events, collaborations – and being organized allows me to efficiently juggle all of these projects.  Having The Container Store team do this for me is life-changing, I feel a total recharge.”

Ed will post several tips he learned on how to get and stay organized. Stay tuned for more posts to the blog, Periscope, and the Stencil1 Facebook page.

See the full Before and After blog post on The Container Store’s blog Container Stories.

This post was written by Tami Mnoian