It’s finally warm again in NYC so I have a newfound desire to clean out my apartment, swap winter for summer clothes and get rid of all sorts of stuff I don’t need anymore. I’m taking this as an opportunity to properly organize my closet after we moved into our apartment a year ago, but I need some home organization items to fully maximize my space. Where to get them?!
I’m going to keep it simple this week – try waiting. Obviously, if you truly need an item right away don’t use it for this exercise. But if there’s some new need that’s arisen and you’re thinking “omg, I have to deal with this right away and buy a solution” then try waiting.
My own example of this – now that it’s warmer, I wanted to get new athletic shorts to wear around the house and while running errands. I thought I only had one pair left and they were itchy, which I couldn’t deal with. Normally I would just go to Old Navy or something similar to stock up, but I decided to wait before panic purchasing. As it turned out, there was another perfectly comfy pair in my closet. Had I bought immediately, I probably would have ended up with more shorts than I really needed and spent money that I didn’t have to. I am going to wait until I organize my closet and take full inventory of what I have before I buy anything new for summer. Because I waited, I also thought through my local thrifting options instead of falling back into my pattern of behavior of buying from where I always do.
So, try waiting! Good luck ☺️
Local, Direct, and Non-Shopping Choices: Definitely shop local if you can for organizational items – I think it’s rarer to have a full-on version of the Container Store locally, but a lot of smaller home goods stores can carry useful things. I got a beautiful little crate from the local home goods & gifts store near me and I go there first for smaller items.
Buying Direct: This is a great way to use Amazon as a shopping directory. It’s much harder to find smaller companies by searching “home organization” or other generic terms on a search engine. If you need something specific try looking at Amazon first, finding your brand and then checking if they have a direct website you can order from.
Free/No Purchase: Go to your local Buy Nothing group for this one! People always have organization items on there from moving or re-organizing their space and it’s super handy (and free!).
Shopping Options: I looked at the major players, but I’m sure there are plenty of smaller companies I unintentionally left out. If you have any to recommend, leave a comment!
A smaller, independent company:
HoneyCanDo.com: Home organization goods company owned by the founder, Steve Greenspon and based out of the Chicago-area. Their products are sold at major retailers, but you can also order directly on their website. I can’t find anything controversial about them, but my minor gripe is that they have a lot of products on their website that are listed as sold-out. Definitely a good option if they have what you’re looking for. UPDATE: As of June 2025, the HoneyCanDo.com site seems to be down, I’m not sure why. Hoping it will come back online soon!
Interesting (but limited) option:
Daiso: Japanese dollar-store type shop (in-store only) that has lots of odds and ends including organizational items at cheap prices. They have stores across the US, mostly concentrated on the West Coast and in the Southwest. I recently visited one in NYC and it was great, though the size of the store can limit the options they have. I don’t think you could get everything home organization-wise here, but if you have one nearby check them out!
Larger corporations that aren’t terrible (but not great either):
Container Store: Exited bankruptcy in January 2025 and is now a private company owned by its lenders, Golub Capital, LCM Asset Management and Glendon Capital Management. They still support DEI based on this blog post (although don’t call it out specifically), and I can’t find any mention of them pulling back on it since the bankruptcy or beforehand. They have had no major political contributions since 2006.
I don’t love that they’re owned by their lenders now, as I’m worried they will put pressure on leadership to make more money that ends up negatively affecting consumers through rising prices, worse inventory, less well-trained staff in stores or other strategies. However, coming out of bankruptcy they might have good deals and if you’re looking for something specific there are worse places to shop.
TJX Companies (HomeGoods, HomeSense, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Sierra): Publicly traded company with institutional investors as the largest stockholders. TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Sierra all have online shopping options but HomeGoods and HomeSense are in-store only. TJX Companies remains committed to DEI, and their board is relatively diverse. They also did not spend money in 2023 and 2024 on lobbying. However, buyer beware: in 2022 they were fined $13 million for selling recalled products and in 2024 were accused of selling fast-fashion items that had “shockingly high levels of lead,” though they were not the only company accused. If you’re willing to take the risk, this is a decent larger-corporation option. I personally love TJ Maxx and Marshalls and I am glad they’re not crazy awful, though they should have a much stronger inventory vetting process.
Bad Bad Companies: This category ended up being a doozy.
Bed Bath & Beyond/Overstock: Beyond, Inc owns Bed Bath & Beyond, BuyBuyBaby, and Overstock.com. They also owned Zulily but was sold on March 17th 2025 to Proozy.com. Beyond, Inc is publicly traded and it’s largest shareholders are institutional investors. They did not spend any money on lobbying in 2024 or 2023. They do have inclusive practices, however these seem pretty generic.
But….their former CEO Patrick Byrnes (left in 2019) was part of the Dominion voting systems defamation suit because he kept pushing conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was rigged, and continues to give money to right-wing groups. Beyond, Inc’s current leadership is in a bit of a flux, and their CFO said one of her near-term priorities is “extracting value from blockchain technology investments.” That frankly sounds like bullsh*t to me for a company that mostly sells physical goods. They also launched a strategic partnership with Twitter (I’m not calling it what Musk wants us to) in 2024! Why would any company work with them post-Musk’s takeover is beyond me (pun intended). Their current Executive Chairman, Marcus Lemonis, hosted CNBC’s “The Profit” for several years, which many small business owners claimed that Lemonis and the show’s practices were predatory, including a $30 million fraud claim among other lawsuits. This company seems diseased, stay away!
Wayfair: Traded publicly and its largest investors are institutional holders. They remain committed to DEI as far as I can tell, but Wayfair has had its share of controversies. Back in 2019, employees walked out to protest the selling of furniture to a migrant detention center in Texas, and the company refused to back down. They also faced a boycott in December 2023 for their CEO Niraj Shah’s memo encouraging employees that “Working long hours, being responsive, blending work and life, is not anything to shy away from.” Having worked long hours at many companies that didn’t “blend” my work and life but just made my life only work, I think it’s incredibly asinine for CEOs to blame employees for not working hard enough when ultimately it is their strategy, policies, and decisions that guide the company. I spent a lot of money here in 2024 after moving across states, but no more. So long, Wayfair.
IKEA: Their ownership structure is incredibly complicated, see diagram below. The reason for this is tax avoidance – the founder, Ingvar Kamprad, hated paying taxes in Sweden or it seems anywhere, and created a byzantine ownership structure of for-profit and non-profit entities to avoid them to the tune of $1.1 billion as of 2016. They have a laundry list of problems, including but likely not limited to:
Using wood from illegal logging, spying on their French employees, being sued 5 times for age discrimination in 2019 in the US (and then in 2024 IKEA was hit with a $566K fine for destroying evidence related to the lawsuits), using Belarussian prison labor, using East German prison labor during the cold war, killing children from falling furniture, and their founder Kamprad having Nazi ties.
I knew IKEA had some controversies but damn, this is bad. I especially get pissed off at rich people who try to avoid taxes and prison labor. I won’t be shopping here again.
What I did:
Right now I’m still evaluating what I need, and once I figure it out I’m going to see how much of it I can source from my local Buy Nothing group. If I do need to buy anything, I’ll try HoneyCanDo or use Amazon as a shopping directory to find more specific items if they don’t have them.
Was this helpful for you? Let me know in the comments and what you’d like me to tackle next. Follow me on TikTok for recap videos, and subscribe to see more category deep dives with behavior exercises every Friday. Thanks for reading <3
