Eye Noise

A couple years ago, Cindi and I jumped on the Konmari bandwagon, and it stuck. We love it! The result has been that we have very little "eye noise" in our home. Our home is rather spare, but everywhere we look is something that "sparks joy" for us. We ended up getting rid of tons and tons of stuff: clothes, etectronics, books, papers, even memorabilia that meant something to us, but won't to our children. We were thankful for the memories they brought, but know we'll have those for as long as we have our mental facility. Clothes were pared down dramatically (we share a closet and we have lots of room in it). It's been amazing to me how this really allows the home to be an anchor of calm, a haven of serenity. We got rid of records and cds and the surround sound stereo (now we use a homepod with Apple's vast library available with a command). We simplified the kitchen, and as our way of eating got ever more simple, so did the kitchen cupboards. We do have some family pictures up that the kids gave us, but mostly we just load pictures onto a digital picture frame and enjoy the slide show. 

Recently the itch was upon us again, and we went through many more things (and we're still tweaking). Cindi gathered up all the old iphones; I erased them;  Dave kindly agreed to drop them off for recycling. The perfectly good laser printer on the shelf bothered me a bit. I tried to sell it, but then Bekah and Andy came by to print something. Aha! Perfect. They took that and hopefully will enjoy it. Cindi went through old music we had and purged a lotof that. She's in process of getting rid of some cookware we don't use anymore. And I'm looking forward to just revisiting some of what sparked joy in the past to see if it still does, or if it's time to let it move on.

If you've never given it a try, the Konmari method works amazingly well; provided you stick to it and do it Marie's way. It's kind of like Financial Peace University: the folks who follow Dave's counsel to a T are the ones who have no debt; the ones who modify it because they're smarter than he, end up carrying debt still. Same with Konmari. The temptation is to "tidy" the old way by room, rather than across the board by category; the temptation is to think, "but I might need this someday" rather than to ask "does this spark joy?" 

My buddy Kevin thinks my love of order borders on the neurotic. I'll plead the fifth. But if you find order to be peaceful and reductive of stress, then literally going through your stuff and soberly evaluating each piece is the key to being able to maintain a cleaned, straight and peaceful environment at home or at work. Less, in this case, really is more. The less eye noise, the more space for calm, the more space for beauty, the more space for delight and gratitude.