Shop Here: Muji Atrium

Editor’s note: This feature story was published in spring 2015. For up-to-date info, refer to our Muji Atrium store listing.

While there’s no logo stamped on Muji’s office, bed and bathroom accessories, the retailer’s products share a distinctive, instantly recognizable aesthetic. Usually done in all white – think Apple’s early iPods – simple housewares like toothbrush stands are elevated beyond the mundane by the power of quietly beautiful Japanese design.

Muji’s first store in Canada is a 370-square-metre shop that stocks almost 3,000 items – from alarm clocks to wake you up in the morning to bed sheets to curl up under at night. The store’s location in the Atrium mall – home to an Ontario Lotto and Gaming Corporation Prize Centre and a Red Lobster – might be puzzling, but it’s on brand. The enterprise’s preference for off-the-beaten path locations maintains its destination-worthy status. LCBO staffers below are surely pleased with the traffic diversion.

SHOP HERE FOR: Fetish-worthy household staples. For Toronto’s Muji faithful, pilgrimages to New York or London once meant an opportunity to stock up on that one perfect product they’ve come to swear by. Staffers in our office got hooked years ago. Azure editorial director Nelda Rodger seizes any chance she gets to grab the Japanese retailer’s desk organizers, while Azure editor Catherine Osborne loves the brand’s graph paper notebooks. Others wax poetic about Muji’s gel pens ($1.50 ea), hairbrushes (from $11.50) and tea lights ($4.25 for 12).

BEST BET: Get organized with Muji’s exhaustive selection of storage accessories. Storage bins (starting at $5.50), available in hard pulp, tin, acrylic, and polypropylene finishes, are the perfect place to hide receipts from your latest Muji binge.