The Less is More® Origin Story

This blog post is going to be a bit different.

I want to get personal. Over the years, subscriptions to this blog have grown steadily (meaning: beyond my family members and former clients), and so I thought it would be appropriate to delve a bit into the backstory of Less is More®.

New Horizons

For 15 years I was a museum curator and art historian. It was a career that I loved but once I became a mom I surprised myself and realized that I was a bit burned out, and wanted the flexibility to be more actively involved in family life.

While I was taking some time off to figure out my next move, a very good friend of mine mentioned to me that her laundry room was such a mess that she had hired someone to help her organize it. I did not know this type of service existed (this was, of course, 10 years before Hoarders, Marie Kondo and The Home Edit brought the profession to the forefront of popular culture), but I had always loved to organize, and the idea of starting my own company seemed like an interesting challenge.

I am a big believer in How-To books, so I spent a few months reading books, taking classes through the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (yup, an organization for organizers!) and training myself on the process of organizing for others. I honed my skills, got some hands-on experience, and built my confidence by helping friends tackle their messes. Organizing is very intuitive, and being able to work in the field allowed me to translate tips from books into real-world practice. It also confirmed that I had the chops to pull off this whole career switch.

Less is More

But I was still not sure I was on the right path. I had wanted to be museum curator since I was in high school. I have both an undergraduate degree as well as a master’s in art history. Everything I had ever worked towards was focused on art. My identity was very much still wrapped up in being an art historian. Could I ever really be anything else?

And then I started thinking about the phrase “less is more.” The term had been popularized by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a 20th-century architect whose designs and approach to organizing spaces I had long admired. I was also a huge fan of the artistic movement known as Minimalism, from the glorious bronze statues of Constantin Brancusi to Donald Judd’s industrial steel plates. Being forced to focus on a few select elements means each element becomes supremely important. It’s the less that gives an artwork more.

Of course, the term is also a perfect way to describe an approach to organizing, simplifying, and decluttering! Naming my company Less is More would allow me to grow and develop an exciting new venture in a way that simultaneously honored a very rewarding part of my past. Figuring out this bit of word play, as well as the realization that I could always visit art museums and galleries, emboldened me to move forward. (I continue to be delighted by how three words about simplicity can hold such a depth of meaning.)

The Mom Factor

I ultimately launched in Chicago in January 2010. At the time, I had been spending most of my days running after my 2.5-year-old son and trying to wrap my head around how I was going to comfortably fit baby #2 (and related gear) in our already small 2-bedroom condo.  In these early days of the business, I found myself encountering the same two pieces of advice over and over again: a well-chosen niche is a great way to market a business, and start with what you know. Since I simply did not have time to learn about the most highly sought after niches, like downsizing empty nesters or moving and relocation services, I chose to focus on organizing busy families. My logic was I would get my feet wet with parents like me, and then would move on to a more lucrative specialty.

Turns out that my “busy mom” status was one of the secrets of my success. Clients contacted me because they knew I’d “get it”: I understood why a mom wanted to hang onto outgrown baby clothes, that every toy storage system needed room to grow, and why getting out the door could be challenging.

I figured I would give myself a year and see how it went. I haven’t looked back.

Images l to r: Mies van der Rohe, Crown Hall, 1956; Brancusi, Golden Bird, 1919-20, © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris; Judd, untitled (for Leo Castelli), 1977, © Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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