Four Inane Questions with professional organizer Eliza Cantlay
Eliza Cantlay. // Courtesy photo
If every closet in your house is full to the brim, Eliza Cantlay feels your pain. Is stuff stacked to the ceiling in your basement? Got a garage filled with junk? Again, Cantlay can empathize.
For the last 10+ years, Cantlay has become KC’s go-to professional organizer in town. As the owner of Simplicana, she’s inspired countless people to live a simpler, clutter-free life at home. (And, trust us, she has seen some shit—figuratively and literally.)
When she’s not tackling hoarding hellscapes, the former self-proclaimed Jersey girl is also an avid birdwatcher. In fact, she leads Kansas City’s Bird by Birds group. She’s also involved in KC’s burgeoning theater scene and has a passion for travel “that likely involves SCUBA diving,” she says.
The perpetually busy Cantlay tells us if your New Year’s resolution is to get organized (or finally declutter that pesky guest bedroom), you’d better get on her calendar now.
We caught up with the organizational maven in between assignments to inundate her with our insipid questionnaire. Always the multi-tasker, she rearranged two of our kitchen cupboards while doing so. Bless.
The Pitch: What’s your weirdest/oddest superstition?
Eliza Cantlay: I’m not generally superstitious, but I was a theater kid—and still do it occasionally for fun as an adult—so I still won’t say “Macbeth” any time I’m in a theater.
What’s the most common thing you make your clients relentlessly purge?
Expired food. If it expired only within the last year, I take it to the little food pantry on the corner of Holmes and East 90th. (It’s like a little lending library—but with food!)
Forty percent of food in America goes to waste. I’m hoping that by organizing pantries in a better way, I can help my clients be more mindful when shopping. People over-buy when they don’t have a good system at home.
Which movie/film have you repeatedly watched the most times?
My three brothers and I can have full conversations in movie quotes, so we tend to watch our own brand of family classics over and over.
Some of our favorites? Wanderlust, Wet Hot American Summer, Love Actually, and Best In Show. Quotable comedies have the most repetition appeal!
Describe the perfect salsa in explicit and excruciating detail.
Red, just-picked August tomatoes—preferably grown by my friend James Worley, KC’s tomato whisperer and owner of Yum Yards. Red onion. A little jalapeño or habanero. Cilantro. Sea salt. And. So. Much. Lime. Juice.
Bonus 5th Question: What board game/card game would you absolutely crush your competition with?
Codenames is my all-time favorite game, though I’m quite the escape room enthusiast these days. I’ve done 138 escape rooms. (And you know I keep a detailed spreadsheet.)
In fact, I’ve been on four escape room tours around the country with Room Escape Artist. (I just got back from one in Orlando.)
