How it started. How its going.

Ever since we were little, Casey and I have had an obsession with order and design. Playing House was our favorite and luckily for us the home we grew up in had an old garden shed that worked perfectly for our playhouse. We didn't care about who was the Mom or who was the Baby in our House, we could care less what dialogue or conflict our make-believe Family was having. (For the record, I was always the Mom and Casey was always the Baby, just so we are all clear who is really in charge!) There really wasn't any game at all, we only cared about how the playhouse looked, what scarf would make the best curtain and if our mom would notice that we stole the bath mat as our new area rug.

We loved repainting discarded furniture to add to our garden-shed-turned-dream-home. Once we even “borrowed” our dads paraphernalia case to use as our fridge and painted it black and red … I don’t remember him being stoked on that one. We would spend hours, whole days, making mud pies then washing the dishes with the hose in a bucket sink so we could reorganize them back into the kitchen over and over again. That shitty little garden shed became a whole world for us, our literal dream home. We didn’t see rickety wood panel walls, we saw ship lap. We didn’t see pallet floor boards, we saw beautiful hardwood polished to perfection. How dare you think it was just a fiberglass roof, it was of course Spanish tile, duh, don’t you see it! That was no longer a scarf hanging over the opening in the panel wall, it was an elegant window treatment and yes our mom did notice the bath mat was missing but she let it slide…this time.

Casey and I shared a room into our teenage years and even that was constantly being re-done. We may have outgrown playing House but the obsession for order and design only grew stronger. We would reorganize our drawers, repaint our dressers and rearrange our furniture just for fun. We took turns with who slept on the top bunk, which normally coincided with getting a new duvet cover and throw pillows. Our parents divorced when we were teenagers and sold the house with the garden shed but on the bright side (I always find a bright side, its actually a problem) we finally did get our own rooms! Still helping each other pick out paint color for the wall, Casey chose lime green, I chose butter yellow. We did fight over who got which book shelf for a minute but ultimately I helped Casey paint her wall shelf hot pink (her room looked like you just stepped into a watermelon) then she helped me decorate my book cases. So, even though The Efficiency Project is only three years old, as sisters we have worked together for a lifetime!

I guess looking back we should have always known we would end up here, in these careers, its always been our passion and our calling. When the grown-ups asked what we wanted to be when we grew up we should have known, but we’d answer with things like “movie star” and “rock star.” Even as young adults after high school it still hadn’t occurred to either of us that this obsession of ours could be or would be our career. Casey got a degree from San Diego State in communications, which is a fancy way of saying “I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up,” and somehow she landed in wine sales. I had always been the Mom, remember, so of course I just assumed I’d be some sort of teacher and have a ton of babies. I made that self-fulfilled prophecy a reality and studied early childhood education at Santa Barbara City college, became a preschool teacher, got married and had my first baby at 24…so there.

Later, as adults, we started to head towards our calling, by chance really Casey became an assistant to an interior designer who is a family friend and I joined my childhood best friend in event planning (Lindsey was always there in the garden shed playing House with us too.) Overtime and with a lot of work we both honed our skills, our childhood obsession with order and design lead us to our separate careers, yet we always played with the idea of somehow, someday having a business together. As sisters with similar interest and personalities, both detail oriented with a good eye for design it was only natural that our friends would want to pick our brain. We constantly found ourselves doing organizing and interior design-like favors for friends...helping them picking out their curtains, choosing a floor tile, purging their closet and advising on furniture layout. One day while helping a friend with a home project we just looked at each other at the same time and said, "Why the fuck are we doing this for free?!"

That was three years ago and how our little side hustle of interior styling and organizing began. We didn’t know what to call it, it seemed all the clever business names were taken, so naturally like all good millennial’s we took to social media and asked our friends for help naming this start up of ours. There were some funny responses but nothing felt right, we kept brainstorming and the word “efficiency” popped up several times. I finally said, “how about The Efficiency Project!” It sounded great saying it out loud, we were so happy to have finally picked a name, our childhood wish to work together felt like it was coming true! I wrote it down on a piece of paper…I spelled “efficiency” wrong, oops, I have always been a good writer but a horrible speller, oh well we still liked the name and decided to stick with it! Guess what?! NOBODY knows how to spell “efficiency” right the first time! We really are an EFFICIENT company but the name is anything but!

So that’s how it started and this is how its going…we are still each others sounding boards for our own home projects and we love helping our friends and now our clients create their dream homes. For The Efficiency Project, our mission has always been to create efficient spaces for real life with style. The relationship between organization and design for us goes hand in hand. If its pretty but doesn't work its out and if its necessary but not nice to look at we will come up with a creative solution to make whatever it is work in the space. We are most proud of the results we achieve for our clients lifestyle, yes we leave them with a more beautiful space but teaching them new efficient lifestyle habits and leaving them with manageable organization systems is life changing! Trust us we have had a life time obsession with order and design and have created dream homes together our whole lives! Literally!