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"Jamie Lee Curtis has the system down at her 1920s Spanish-style home in Santa Monica, CA, and it&amp;#039;s a real beaut. She&amp;#039;s developed housekeeping and organizing strategies that make her closets, cabinets, basement, and fridge rival anything that can be found in those glossy &amp;quot;nesting&amp;quot; catalogs. But with Jamie Lee, 51, it&amp;#039;s not all for show; she says that a neat, well-run home is &amp;quot;emotional good housekeeping&amp;quot; \u2014 it allows her to pursue her passions (her ninth book, out in September, is My Mommy Hung the Moon, and she can also be seen in You Again, a comedy about women coming face-to-face with their high school nemeses). And it allows her to live more calmly and happily.  Because it&amp;#039;s been so beneficial, Jamie Lee wants to share her methodology with GH readers. In fact, she agreed to let our team poke through all the nooks and crannies of her home. On the day our photo crew arrived, her family \u2014 her husband of 24 years, Christopher Guest; daughter Annie, 23; and son Thomas, 14 \u2014 was out, and she was baking a lemon cake in her airy, sun-washed kitchen. A rose-scented breeze drifted in through the open windows. Two dogs padded in and out. All was clean, orderly, and inviting. Clearly, this woman is on to something. After some tea and cake, the funny, frank, and always surprising star began our tour.  Watch a clip from our interview with Jamie:      GH: You created an orderly system to make space for the things that are most important to you. Tell us more about that. JLC: Modern women are just bombarded. There&amp;#039;s nothing but media telling us we&amp;#039;re all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don&amp;#039;t really have women we&amp;#039;re modeling after, so we&amp;#039;re all looking for how to do this. I&amp;#039;ve created a system that allows me the brain time to disengage from what I call the custodial part of mothering and being a wife, and focus on the intimate side [of my life]. But to learn intimacy of any sort, I have to be receptive and quiet and able to take it in. And I can&amp;#039;t do it if I&amp;#039;m trying to do backflips to get everything in order. That&amp;#039;s why I keep things in order. GH: What are some of the benefits of your system? JLC: I did not design this system so that I&amp;#039;m maniacally going in the other room to put away something that we undid in here today. I do what I do so that if you weren&amp;#039;t here, and my husband was picking up my son from rock climbing, I&amp;#039;d be sitting here, in a silent, tranquil, peaceful environment, with all of my ducks in a row, reading my book on American history.  GH: That makes perfect sense. Can we get started here in the kitchen and open this drawer? [The drawer reveals about 30 clear plastic containers, most of them labeled \u2014 &amp;quot;brown sugar,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;pancake flour,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;kosher salt,&amp;quot; etc.] JLC: Sure. Do you know about Cambro? It&amp;#039;s restaurant-supply plastic. You know how people buy the disposable stuff? This stuff, you buy it once, you will never buy it again. So I make an investment \u2014 although honestly, it&amp;#039;s not expensive. They&amp;#039;re easy-open, easy-close, and they never warp. I buy Cambro and Snapware, and between the two of them, I&amp;#039;m set.  GH: Why did you decide not to keep food in the packaging it comes in? JLC: Who really seals their cereal boxes properly? Who takes the time to roll down that inner bag, and then close the box? How often do you pull out a box of crackers that someone has opened, and they&amp;#039;re just open and stale, and then you throw away the food?  GH: Good point. I notice that some containers are labeled, and some aren&amp;#039;t. What&amp;#039;s your approach to that? JLC: I&amp;#039;m not a massive labeler. I have a friend who would label, like, [picking up a timer] &amp;quot;timer.&amp;quot; I have them when I need to know what&amp;#039;s in it. Like if it&amp;#039;s a white powder, and you can&amp;#039;t tell if it&amp;#039;s flour, baking powder, or powdered sugar. But it&amp;#039;s not like it&amp;#039;s crazy in here. I already know there&amp;#039;s pasta in this container, so I don&amp;#039;t need to label it. And everything goes in plastic containers in the freezer, too, because, as you see, I hate packaging.  GH: Tell us more: Is it just that it doesn&amp;#039;t always work as well as it should \u2014 the cereal box doesn&amp;#039;t seal properly? JLC: It&amp;#039;s more than that: I understand that for advertising, packaging is so much of what is supposed to draw you in, but I feel like packaging is bringing somebody else&amp;#039;s design into my house. And it&amp;#039;s also because I think, &amp;quot;Why not pour maple syrup into a little clear glass pitcher when you&amp;#039;re having breakfast, versus putting the big plastic tub on the table?&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;d rather put something in a little container on the table so it&amp;#039;s pleasing to the eye. So if I use a lot of something, I take it out of the packaging and put it into these squeeze bottles, which you can buy in restaurant-supply stores for very little. Like [opening the refrigerator door] these are the things I use every day: maple syrup, vinaigrette that I make, and barbecue sauce, because my son likes barbecue sauce.  GH: Nice. Do you have any other tricks like that? JLC: My other secret is my soup freezer file [opening freezer and pointing to a shelf filled with large resealable plastic bags of soup, frozen flat and arranged vertically, like files]. My friend Holly invented this \u2014 let&amp;#039;s give her credit. You freeze four cups of soup flat and then put them in a file.  GH: Were you organized as a child?  JLC: I wasn&amp;#039;t the kid who lined up her toys, although when it came to Barbies and that little traveling wardrobe with the drawers and the little shoes, my stuff was always on hangers and the shoes were always in pairs. Things had their places. I remember going away to prep school for my senior year of high school, and the rooms were very simple \u2014 wardrobe, bed, a desk, and an end table. And I remember rearranging the room almost weekly. It made me feel safe. I was very unsafe there, just in the sense of being away from home, and emotionally I was not ready for it. So I kept creating new ways to create order. I&amp;#039;m a tidy, neat person. But I&amp;#039;m not a maniac. GH: Was your mother [actress Janet Leigh] very neat? JLC: My mother was a lovely woman, but I can tell you that she would go wash this cup while we&amp;#039;re talking. Do you know what I mean? I&amp;#039;ve tried to be much more present and clear and &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m here with you now, and I&amp;#039;m not worrying about what&amp;#039;s going on in there.&amp;quot; And that&amp;#039;s different. At 51, I&amp;#039;ve developed an internal Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, but the seal of approval is my own approval. And it&amp;#039;s something I&amp;#039;ve worked very hard on for a long time. GH: When did you start getting yourself together?  JLC: When I got sober. It&amp;#039;s been 11 years, coming up on 12. That was a real moment for me of recognizing that something was askew \u2014 that all of this can be in great shape but there was a dependence on something external that was keeping me prisoner. As soon as I let go of that, I started to have balance. Because then that seal of approval became based on the self-esteem of really conquering, and working on daily, something that challenged me. That&amp;#039;s where you build self-esteem.  One more thing: It&amp;#039;s all fun and games and cute to have me with a feather duster, but don&amp;#039;t just think that you can apply the externals \u2014 it&amp;#039;s the same thing as saying, &amp;quot;Go buy this outfit and you can feel like Jamie.&amp;quot; Then you buy it and put it on and go, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t feel like her.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m more than my systems. If the external life is super-organized, but the internal life is a mess, then everything is completely out of balance, and your life just looks good.  GH: Let us ask you this about being present and clear: Can you relax if there&amp;#039;s visual clutter around you?  JLC: It&amp;#039;s about being mindful. So if I&amp;#039;m in the middle of a conversation at a dinner table, and I look over and the buffet has been gone through by my guests, and there&amp;#039;s that platter with one piece of salmon left, and the bowl with no strawberries left, the hair on my neck goes up a little, but I don&amp;#039;t get up from my conversation. As soon as I&amp;#039;ve finished my conversation, I will merely remove it. I won&amp;#039;t wash it. I find people who wash or load their dishwasher in front of their guests rude. But for me it&amp;#039;s moving it out of the way, so that then the aesthetic is pleasing. GH: Let&amp;#039;s move on to the family room. What&amp;#039;s in these black file folders?  JLC: They&amp;#039;re DVDs, arranged alphabetically in plastic sleeves. The black notebooks must have come from a day when we were looking for a movie to watch and the wrong movie was in the wrong box. We&amp;#039;ve got the player, got the box out, got the people, got the popcorn, and we can&amp;#039;t find the movie! And there was that moment of &amp;quot;there&amp;#039;s got to be a better way than this!&amp;quot; So I went to Staples and bought black notebooks, got rid of the plastic cases, and within a day I put in an entire children&amp;#039;s movie collection. GH: You said &amp;quot;within a day&amp;quot; \u2014 but don&amp;#039;t you think many people get intimidated by tackling a big project? What advice can you offer? JLC: Make a commitment to it and say, &amp;quot;I can do this on this weekend.&amp;quot; Say to your people, &amp;quot;Next Sunday from noon to five we&amp;#039;re tackling the sports closet. You guys have grown out of these gloves, these pads, these balls. You haven&amp;#039;t been on a scooter in a year. We&amp;#039;re giving them all to a church, or a rec center, or a school down the street.&amp;quot; Then, on Sunday, &amp;quot;Everybody, sports closet, let&amp;#039;s go! Bring it all out! Everything!&amp;quot; GH: Smart! So what&amp;#039;s the biggest challenge when it comes to staying organized? JLC: Here&amp;#039;s the rub: The system is only as good as the person programming it. If you don&amp;#039;t have the follow-through, your system is useless. And by the way, it&amp;#039;s that way in parenting; it&amp;#039;s that way in marriages. My biggest failing as a mother was that I wasn&amp;#039;t consistent enough. There were periods of time when I was very on it, and then my job would demand I kind of go off into another universe, and I allowed that to pull me from my primary purpose, which was my children. Children want the structure, and if they don&amp;#039;t feel the follow-through is follow-through-ing, they will abandon your plan. Now, the miracle today is that my daughter credits me a bit with systems that she has implemented in her own work.  GH: So does your family help maintain your systems?  JLC: To be perfectly honest, I don&amp;#039;t really ask them to do very much to keep it that way. Because it&amp;#039;s what I like. My daughter has carried it on a little bit at the beginning; my son has not demonstrated it at all. My husband loves me and appreciates that it works in our life. But I don&amp;#039;t expect them to be me, nor do I expect them to necessarily do it my way. There&amp;#039;s not that feeling here of &amp;quot;my way or the highway.&amp;quot; GH: We&amp;#039;ve heard that your clothes closet is in top shape, too. And that for a fund-raiser for your son&amp;#039;s school, you even auctioned yourself off to clean out someone&amp;#039;s closet. Can we see your system?  [Jamie Lee ushers us upstairs to a serene, book-lined bedroom done in cream and white, and opens her closet door to display clothes arranged in color-coded sections, mostly of navy, black, and white.]  JLC: I have a rule: Pretend you&amp;#039;re going on a trip for two weeks, and pull what you&amp;#039;d wear on that two-week trip, and get rid of everything else. Per season \u2014 like, you can do a winter trip. It&amp;#039;s like, how many peacoats or jackets do you need? I have a navy blue one and a black one \u2014 done. I wear navy blue, black, and white; I&amp;#039;m not really a clothes person, but I know what looks good on me and what doesn&amp;#039;t.  So those other things I don&amp;#039;t grab when I pull out that jacket? I give them to people all the time. I often comb through my closet, and it may be things that I spent a fortune on, but if I don&amp;#039;t wear them, boom. My girlfriends, family, my daughter, my sister...if I think something would be great for them, I put it in a box and send it. And then they call me going, &amp;quot;What are you doing? Are you kidding?&amp;quot; And I say, &amp;quot;You know what? I never wear it.&amp;quot; So pick clothes that you really love. And wear them. And don&amp;#039;t make anything &amp;quot;special.&amp;quot; If it&amp;#039;s being held for something &amp;quot;special,&amp;quot; wear it to the market. Wear it every day!  GH: So you are not one of those women who have 30 pairs of jeans.  JLC: You do not see a lot of jeans in my closet, do you? I just discovered Not Your Daughter&amp;#039;s Jeans. Fantastic. I got rid of every other pair of jeans. I had one pair of &amp;quot;boyfriend&amp;quot; jeans, which I still don&amp;#039;t understand what this is, because I don&amp;#039;t have a boyfriend. But I have one pair of his jeans, apparently, in my closet. I got them from a photo shoot. And they will go, probably today. There&amp;#039;s not a day when something doesn&amp;#039;t leave my house and get repurposed.  We all have too much. People need things. I don&amp;#039;t live a monk&amp;#039;s existence, I&amp;#039;m a consumer, but I try to do it to the level that doesn&amp;#039;t feel like there&amp;#039;s an overabundance of something. And if there is, I get rid of it. I don&amp;#039;t throw anything away \u2014 I give. There&amp;#039;s no nicer feeling, ever. We cling to things, but then it&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Why do I have this thing?! Because somebody gave it to me at my wedding? And I have to keep it? Why?&amp;quot; Isn&amp;#039;t it sentimental? My son didn&amp;#039;t make it for me \u2014 that&amp;#039;s sentimental! I&amp;#039;ve had to let go of a lot of that, because how much more can you accumulate? You can&amp;#039;t make room for the new unless you remove the old. GH: Do you mind our peeking into your bath? You found more uses for squeeze bottles, yes?  JLC: Yes, and there are dental rubber bands on the containers. I went and got dental rubber bands for braces \u2014 the squeeze bottle with the green band is for shampoo, the yellow is the combo of shampoo and conditioner, and the red is the conditioner. So as soon as you know what that is, ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing. Would you like to see the basement?  GH: Of course. JLC: This is where the archive of our life is. [The basement is lined with stacked large bins, purchased at Bed Bath &amp;amp;amp; Beyond and labeled &amp;quot;Tom toys,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Annie dolls,&amp;quot; and so forth, and neat rows of filing cabinets. She opens a file cabinet filled with work memorabilia.] If you said to me, &amp;quot;Can you pull up a 1993 magazine cover?&amp;quot;...[pulling one up]. Now this isn&amp;#039;t because I&amp;#039;m someone who looks at pictures of herself \u2014 I don&amp;#039;t. I haven&amp;#039;t looked at this in probably 10 years. But I know where it is. Look, here&amp;#039;s a picture from True Lies of me hanging off of a helicopter, boom. And it&amp;#039;s so easy to put it in order when you get a new one. You do it the first time, and then it&amp;#039;s maintenance \u2014 like a diet. If I want to find one of Annie&amp;#039;s old onesies, I can find it. It&amp;#039;s supposed to be user-friendly, not this arcane Rubik&amp;#039;s Cube.  GH: That&amp;#039;s so clever, to hang all your luggage from the ceiling. There must be two dozen pieces here. JLC: It&amp;#039;s the design of my friend Jan Cox, who&amp;#039;s like the minimalist Martha Stewart. This, I did because I couldn&amp;#039;t stand having all of this stuff on the ground. I had a high enough ceiling, so I just got bike hooks.   GH: An entire bin of Beyond Yoga pants! Is buying certain things in multiples part of the system? JLC: We&amp;#039;ve all learned our lesson: You like a Gap T-shirt, and then six months later you want the same one because the baby pukes all over you. And then they don&amp;#039;t make it anymore. So I&amp;#039;m a replicant. When I know something I like, I just want to replicate it.  Here&amp;#039;s another thing: I&amp;#039;m constantly feeding meters, so I keep hundreds of dollars of quarters for my car. Once a year I go to the bank, I take one of these baskets, give them a couple hundred dollars, and say, &amp;quot;Fill it with quarters, please.&amp;quot; Then I take five or six rolls and throw them in my glove compartment. You free your mind from worrying about it.  It&amp;#039;s the same thing with Christmas shopping. People say, &amp;quot;Wow, you got your Christmas shopping done before August?&amp;quot; I do it in the summer so that it&amp;#039;s done. Then I can concentrate on what Christmas is about at Christmastime, instead of worrying about and overspending on presents.  GH: So when your mind is freed from the small stuff, you really can open it to new things. What new challenges are you trying?  JLC: I made a commitment to being physically strong \u2014 at 51, I&amp;#039;m actually trying to play tennis competitively with my competitive girlfriends. And I made a conscious decision to make new friendships. To make new friends you have be willing to put in the time. I had the benefit of doing it this year, and it has changed my life. And I&amp;#039;ve gotten involved with my son&amp;#039;s school \u2014 I didn&amp;#039;t do it a lot with my daughter&amp;#039;s school; it felt really intimidating.  GH: You also made some new friends on the set of your new movie You Again \u2014 your costars Sigourney Weaver and Betty White. It&amp;#039;s surprising that you had never met them before, given all your years in the business.  JLC: Sigourney and I couldn&amp;#039;t be more different. I&amp;#039;m the West Coast daughter of film stars, uneducated, kind of bawdy, from a show business, kind of show-off family. And hers is this erudite background; speaks 25 languages, incredibly articulate.... And we didn&amp;#039;t know each other! So it&amp;#039;s been nice to make a friendship with Sigourney. I hadn&amp;#039;t met Betty, either. She and I bonded because we were surrounded by theater people, and all they did was talk! And Betty and I were from film and television, where you don&amp;#039;t talk about it \u2014 you show up, you do your work, and you go home. We had a good time together. GH: Thank you for allowing us into your home. Truly, this is some really Good Housekeeping.  JLC: This is my strong suit; it&amp;#039;s my best thing. My family knows it, my friends know it...and now we&amp;#039;ve let readers in on my secrets so they can seize control from chaos, too. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/inspirational-stories/interviews/a19179/jamie-lee-curtis-comes-clean/>