“The house is a machine for living in.” - Le Corbusier
Hi, I’m Rebecca! I teach people how to create systems to simplify their home and life.
Lots of organizing TV shows and social media influencers cover:
How to do a weekend closet purge
How to organize your belongings by color so they photograph well
Which stuff to buy at the Container store
But very few talk about how to:
Maintain order with very little effort
Feel peaceful when you’re in your home
Get time back in your daily life
Reduce your mental load
That’s where I come in! Systems can help with all these things, but it takes practice to start thinking in systems. People dedicate their lives to studying this stuff. There’s a whole field called systems engineering and method called systems thinking.
This happens to be how my brain works so I’m here to help you apply systems thinking to your life (generally using bullet lists to save time). The right systems can change everything—I really believe that.
Join Your House Machine annually for $50/year (~$4.15/month) and receive:
All expert guidance in weekly posts and full access to archives
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If I fulfill my mission of getting you to quit buying organizing bins, this subscription will pay for itself many times over.
Free subscribers are cherished and add a lot to the community — I am grateful to each and every one of you for being here.
A little more about me: I live in the Pacific Northwest with my husband, two young kids, and dog. I used to work in product management and data science at Airbnb, where I used strategic and systems thinking to help technical teams build tools and products.
Now I’m ready to bring this thinking home to increase the effectiveness of my house. Since really, a house is a machine and we are all its engineers (per Le Corbusier quote above). I launched this newsletter in 2023 to document and share my theories of home organizing.
Here are some popular articles to get you started:
The 5S approach to organizing — an engineering concept perfectly adapted to the home
A list of quick one-offs you can use to start taming your space right now
Laura Fenton wrote a lovely overview of my home and approach to organizing if you’d like to learn more:
Why pay for writing?
The Substack platform that hosts Your House Machine has created a seamless mechanism for writers to get paid, and they’re remaking media and culture in the process. Back in the early days of blogging, writers had to gum up their blogs with ads in order to get paid — we all hated that. Then came the affiliate partnerships, which were time consuming to establish and created skewed incentives (and which the FTC later cracked down on). But on Substack, the financial arrangement is pure: readers pay for content they value. Writers don’t have to resort to selling other stuff to fund their writing.
If you’re not in a position to pay, that is completely fine.* You’ll still receive my free newsletters, along with previews of other newsletters. And if you do upgrade to a paid subscription, you’ll receive all issues plus full access to the wealth of advice in the archives.
(*If you have financial constraints that don’t make it possible to pay, just reach out and I’m happy to comp you, no questions asked.)
PTO policy: Each year, I take four weeks off. During those weeks, you may receive no new posts. The time off is important in helping me recharge and deliver quality work the rest of the year ✨
P.S. If your house is driving you mad and need relief ASAP, book a 1:1 with me. Together we’ll diagnose the situation and create a step by step guide to achieving a space that works for you.
