Required Reading: Living Life Beautifully

Christina Strutt, co-founder of the English housewares and fashion line Cabbages and Roses, is an advocate for beauty, simplicity, timelessness, integrity, and sustainability. Her just-published book Living Life Beautifully presents a collection of friends’ houses that are all about creating harmonious spaces where life and work mingle. A common theme of aesthetic utility runs throughout the pages, feeding our own fantasies of a life filled with well-organized closets and freshly laundered (and folded) linens. “All I ever really wanted was to create something built not just around an idea, but a real life,” Strutt says. Have a look at some examples from the book in which order and clean laundry coincide.

Photography by Simon Brown, unless otherwise noted.

Above: Hooks on a wall and open shelves mean a corner of any room can be turned into a linen cupboard or closet. A wooden clothes drying rack can also be used as a casual clothing rack. See 10 Easy Pieces: Freestanding Wooden Clothing Racks for 10 of our favorites.

Above: At Brook Cottage, Strutt’s country home near Bath, a treehouse that was built for her children 20 years ago, became a place of work for her (and received a coat of white paint). It’s currently used as a place of repose and a small shelf with hooks holds the necessities for the occasional cup of tea.

Above: In the her Wiltshire cottage, Maureen Doherty–founder of Egg in Knightsbridge, one of our favorite places to browse and shop in London–hangs her laundry to dry in her favorite room, the one where her grandsons stay when they come to visit.

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Above: Strutt turns the concept of a linen closet into a vehicle for display in her Cabbages and Roses shop in Chelsea.

Above: Hooks transform stairs into a place for easy and accessible storage.

Above: Strutt’s design assistant, Violet Buchanan, moved vintage shelves from the Cabbages and Roses shop into her own home, giving them a new function as a shoe rack.

Above: Living Life Beautifully by Christina Strutt, photographed by Simon Brown, is published by Ryland Peters and Small; $40. The book is available in the UK through Amazon; £25. Photograph by Christine Chang Hanway. 

Longing for an orderly laundry setup? Have a look at Julie’s lineup of Laundry Room Essentials. And on Gardenista, a DIY Instant Tool Shed can help you organize your outdoor life. Go to Required Reading for more of our favorite books–and don’t miss Remodelista: A Manual for the Considered Home!