Currently items that are placed on our street and in our house can be customized on the fly by menus that pop up. Personally I can not tell you how many times I have flipped my house by mistake. These menus can become quite distracting at times when you are clicking with a mouse.
My suggestion is to have a customization mode, like the decorate mode in the house. It would be the same thing basically. Hitting the Customize button where the Decorate button is now would unlock all items that can be customized. The decorate mode could still be activated by this button as well.
For example, in my house I have a rug on the floor. I have some items sitting on this rug. Whenever I go to pick up these items, the menu for the rug keeps popping up in the current set up. With the method I am proposing, I would need to hit the Customize button, in the top right before I would be able to see the menu for the rug. So in game play, I would be able to click and pick up my items off of the rug without being distracted by the rug's menu popping up.
Same for items on the street. Where the Cultivate button is, again we can call it Customize and it would unlock all items with a customization menu as well as you would then see the cultivation menu below.
Thoughts? Ideas?