Author: Donna Joy

Unfinished Business

Donna Joy


We tucked a craft area into our unfinished basement with a door-turned-craft-table on top of a hand-me-down dresser, with some Buy Nothing stools, all tucked in between a work out space, our laundry area, a bonus freezer and some storage.

I love the space. We’ve added a pegboard wall and a maximalist vibe including the first cross stitch I ever made, and pieces from other artists I love. It has fun lighting we made out cassette tapes, my childhood bedroom lamp and brightly colored scarves and pompoms. Its joyful and a little chaotic and very me.

Oh, and it has storage and tools for my craft interests:

Drawers of fabric. Shelves with sewing and cricut machines. A suitcase full of things to repurpose.

Some minimalists love to talk about how many items they have purged down to. I probably have more items in this 5×7 space than they do in their entire homes. 

(I’m not a minimalist)

That big door-turned-craft-table is a wonderful flat surface for measuring fabric or laying out large sections of vinyl. 

But “flat surface” is a warning bell in the decluttering world for a reason.

Flat surfaces attract clutter like a moth to a flame. 

And this space is no different.

The cooler we had out at our last party. A shirt that needs a little stain treatment before going into the wash. The bedspread I’m thinking about cutting down to tablecloth size. The tools from my last cricut project. The gift bags from a birthday celebration a month ago. 

Almost all of it had one thing in common:
It was almost-finished clutter.

Things that made it 90% of the way to their final destination before stopping here. A purgatory of items awaiting their final resting place. 

Math was never my strong suit, but I know with 10% of every project piling up around my craft area, I’m 100% not excited to sit down and do a craft there.  And it 200% means that clutter will start creeping into other places. 

Maybe this recurring clutter means I need to look at my processes and systems – if a system has too many steps to completion I am NOT going to consistently use it. Sometimes it just feels easier to drop the item here because folding the gift bags, unzipping the gift wrap storage bag and tucking them away feels like waaay to much work.

Maybe it means I need check in here more often. Set aside time in my weekly maintenance to clear off anything that is piling up in this space. 

Maybe both? I have no neat answers (haha, see what I did there?)

This week I cleaned up the piles. Mostly. And each time I do it gets a little bit better. A little closer to manageable, a little longer between turning into doom piles of purgatory.

Seasonal Inventory

Donna Joy

I’ve drastically cut back on decorating for the seasons. I used to spend entire days swapping out seasonal bins. Now our clothes mostly stay where they are year round. Beach towels still go from bins to prime real estate come Memorial Day. And I still have a shelf of bins for our Christmas tree, ornaments and other decorations. But come September, I’m not shuttling bins of winter/summer clothes between the basement, laundry and bedrooms. 

There was a time when seasonal decorating brought me so much joy. I had a part-time job and an unfinished basement, and I dedicated a fairly obscene amount of time and space to setting up (and storing) garlands, wreaths, dishes, pillows, and pumpkins ranging in size from beach balls to Barbie. It felt fun. And festive. It felt like me. 

But right now, just the thought of setting all that up, living in a space filled with it, and packing it away again gives me hives.

I love how Dawn from The Minimal Mom talks about “inventory.” I’m a sentimental person and it’s natural for me to assign emotional connection and weight to my stuff. But when I think of belongings as inventory – things I need to manage – it helps me reframe how I live with my stuff.

In this season of life I have less capacity to manage decorative seasonal inventory. 

And that’s ok.

We’re allowed to shift.

We’re allowed to have less (or different) stuff than we used to.

We’re allowed to need to manage less.

Needing to declutter again, or more, doesn’t mean failure. It means flexibility, and reality.

Decluttering isn’t an “after.” Well, at least not a permanent “after.” It’s a step. It’s a “for now.”

Maybe it’s time to do a check-in to see what capacity I have, and what inventory makes sense for this season.

Independence Day

Donna Joy

It is Independence Day.

I had a blog post half-written for this week. Something about the Kawa Model, about rivers and rocks and writing declarations of independence from all the things that dam up our lives.

But I’m tired.

And the world is big. and heavy. and loud.

So instead, I’m finding a couple people who make my heart feel lighter. I’m inviting them to a party. I told them the theme is “unkempt.”

No pressure. No carefully crafted anything. Just being.

Call it a Declaration of Independence from expectations (mostly the ones I put on myself).

Label it freedom.

Love is my resistance.
Joy is my rebellion.

And this weekend, we will party.

More Museums. Less Malls.

Donna Joy

We just got back from a few days of vacation in Colorado. It was AMAZING. The mountains were like nothing I’ve ever experienced and the elevation literally took my breath away. We did a little hiking in the park, checked out artist shops in some small local towns, ate in the city, and toured mountains and mines. 

I wanted to take it all in and take it all home.

At some point, I think while I was checking out the merch table at a concert, a thought popped into my head like a mantra:

“More Museums. Less Malls.”

I wanted to buy something at the merch table, not because I needed anything. But because I wanted to take the feeling of the place home with me. I wanted to own a little piece of it.

When I visit a mall, the goal is acquisition.
I desire, assess, compare, and maybe even envy. I try to buy my way into what I think I need to become.
I want to own the beauty, not just experience it.

When I visit a museum, I show up differently.
I slow down. I look closely. I observe, appreciate, and reflect.
I take in the colors, the light, the texture.
I recognize the items are representations, not just stuff.
I let what I see challenge and change me,  but I don’t expect to physically bring it home.

That’s what I decided I want from our travels: to let the places shape and inspire me, without needing to possess them. More museum. Less mall. 

I still came back with a few purchased treasures: a couple small pins and stickers – our usual mementos from the places we visit, a sweatshirt that will replace one I don’t like the feel of, and a puzzle of the National Park we visited, continuing a tradition of reliving memories while putting the puzzle together, then passing it on to other puzzle-loving family. 

Oh, and I ended up with a concert tee anyway, as the girls next to me spent more time drinking than listening to the concert and when they left partway through, they left their concert tee behind in the piles of booze cans they had strewn about, including the can they had accidentally dumped all over my shoes and bag, so I figured the t-shirt (in my size) was an apology gift. 

I still love bringing small mementos home and letting them spark my memories when I see them.

But I’m learning to let presence be the point.

To interact with the world maybe more like a museum.

Not something to own, but something to be changed and inspired by.

More museums. Less malls.

Containing Time

Donna Joy

Have you heard of the “Container Concept” (by Dana K. White)?
The idea is super basic: every space is a container. The point is to contain, so once it’s full, it’s full. If you have a shelf full of mugs and get a new mug, you either need to get rid of some mugs or give up a different shelf to make space for mugs because the container needs to contain the mugs. (whew. that was a really long sentence to explain a basic concept.)

It’s not about finding more or better storage spaces.
It’s about recognizing limits.

Recently, I started thinking about time as a container as well.

I’ve always understood a broad version of this, like: “there are only 24 hours in a day.” But I’m learning to see time as a series of small vessels. And some things, no matter how good or beautiful, just don’t fit in my vessels.

Last year, I timed how long it takes me to make my bed: 1 minute, 30 seconds.
Once I knew I could play Dolly Parton’s classic “9-5” and be done before the second chorus started, I was much more likely to make the bed in the mornings.

But here’s the part that surprised me: that 90 seconds became a kind of vessel, too.

When I changed to my summer bedding recently, I added a few pillows from other rooms. Almost immediately, I stopped making the bed. It vaguely felt like too much – even though the new layout probably only added a few seconds. I hadn’t re-timed it. And in the absence of knowing, my brain defaulted to “not enough time.”

So I went back. Simplified. Re-timed it, and fit the routine back into its original 90 second container.

Inspired, I started noticing other time-containers.

I have a lot of plants. Like… a llllooootttt. And I recently inherited even more.
I knew I spent time on Saturdays taking care of them, but had never grouped the whole routine together or timed it.

So I did. I decided ahead that I was willing to give one hour per weekend to plant care. I set a timer and (mostly) focused on the plants.

After an hour, I still had several left unwatered.

But an hour was my vessel. Even if every plant had a home (okay, most of them), I wasn’t willing to cut other things from my life to give more time to their care.

So at a recent party, I gathered a few plants I was ready to part with and offered them as “party favors.”

Seeing time as a container has helped me see how I use my time more clearly and set limits more effectively. It’s not always about cutting back – knowing I set aside an hour to take a bath allows my brain to settle in, linger and relax.

Sometimes it’s about measuring what actually fits – and noticing when something has outgrown its container. There’s still only 24 hours in my day. But seeing the little containers within those hours helps me be more mindful of what I’m filling them with.

The Raccoon Rule

Donna Joy

I was reminded of why I declutter through an unexpected visitor this week.

A very unexpected visitor.

Early one morning, I woke to some commotion in the kitchen. Assuming it was a child, I went to check it out  but instead of a child, I  found our living room window screen pushed in and several items from the counter between the kitchen and living room scattered across the floor.

After catching my breath and calling my husband out, we discovered the cutest little bandit I’ve ever seen had broken in, stolen a scone off the counter, and was now sitting on the deck, happily unwrapping and eating her bounty.

Meet Buttercup:
(Bonus points if you know the reference to the Queen of Refuse, the Queen of Garbage.)

Our Raccoon Bandit

Once we made sure there were no more critters hiding in the house and re-secured the window, I looked at the chaos Buttercup had left behind. I was grateful the mess wasn’t worse. Keeping my house from getting out of control definitely helps make unexpected situations like these easier to deal with!

But there was still a mess to deal with. A tray she knocked to the floor had held our HomePod speaker and a few sentimental keepsakes: a set of ceramic ducks from my grandmother, who passed away last year, and George, a clay monkey my daughter made in school years ago.

Two of the three ducks were shattered. George had lost multiple limbs.

As I stood there with broken pieces in my hands, I paused. 

You may have heard of the “poop rule” when it comes to decluttering:
“Do you like this item enough that you’d clean poop off of it to keep it?”

Well, I now had a new version: The Raccoon Rule.
Would I clean, fix, and keep something a raccoon got her paws on?

It was tempting to toss them out. They were damaged. The mess was inconvenient. But these weren’t just random knick knacks – they were items I had chosen to keep.

And that’s the heart of decluttering for me.

My decluttering isn’t really about getting rid of stuff.
It’s not about what I’m losing.
It’s about what I’m keeping.
And what I’m gaining, including the joy from seeing our memories displayed around us. 

I had kept those items because they are filled with happy memories — sweet treasures that make me smile when I see them.

So I picked up the pieces, sanitized them, and plan to glue them back together.

Decluttering, to me, has never been about living with nothing.
It’s about living with intention.
It’s about creating a space that is manageable, and it is also about creating space for what matters – and having room to appreciate the joy in what stays: 

Like a one-armed clay monkey named George, who now has a few scars and a great story to tell.

This Week I’m Trying: The Purse Box

Donna Joy

Like most of my possessions, I have curated my purses down from what I unconsciously collected over the years, to an amount somewhere between a maximalist’s dream and an amount that would still suffocate a minimalist.

In my bag collection, there’s:
– my lunch bag that doubles as my work purse
– a vintage airline bag that fits my iPad and flute (for when I’m singing/playing)
– four other purses I use throughout the year
– and a few specialty bags that I don’t use regularly, but still made the cut: a book bag, some evening clutches, etc.

Listen, I never said I was a minimalist. 🙂 

Some bags are always ready to go. My singing bag and my lunch bag stay stocked because I use them for the same activities over and over. A long time ago, I created a little system for the less-used bags: I tucked them away with a single makeup bag filled with odds and ends I might want to toss in – like that super-slim hand sanitizer from a conference that perfectly fits into an evening clutch.

 I once decided I could streamline getting ready and cut down on decision making by keeping my other purses stocked like my singing and lunch bags.  I lined up my 4 everyday handbags and stocked each one with duplicates of my go-to items: tissues, chapstick, hand sanitizer, etc. I figured this way I could just grab and go.

But… not so much.

Every time I grabbed a bag, I ended up rechecking it anyway – wondering if I’d borrowed something from it or deciding in the moment I wanted a different flavor of lip balm (maybe a tinted one, because I’m fancy today). I always reshuffled. I spent more time getting ready than I would’ve if I hadn’t pre-stocked at all.

Then I saw someone online talk about their “purse box” – a small box in their closet where they dump everything out of their purse when they get home. The next time they go out, they take whatever purse they want,  and re-pack from the box.

It hit me like a stroke of genius…even though I’d basically already been doing this with my evening bags for years.

What I realized is that this system fits how my ADD  brain works:  stockedish. readyish.

It’s the same reason I don’t usually prep whole freezer meals. Instead, I double up on cooked meat or roasted veggies, freeze the extras, and figure out later what I’ll use them for. I like being flexibly prepared. I want ease, but I need options.

Here’s why I think the purse box could work for me:

  1. It lets me choose in the moment. The elements are ready, but I still get that spark of decision: which bag works with my day? Am I going to need to reapply sunscreen?
  2. It keeps me connected to my stuff. For some people, re-touching every item might feel tedious. But for a brain like mine that struggles with object permanence, physically putting each thing into my purse helps assure me that I have it.

So this week, I’m trying the purse box.

Not because it’s the “right” system. Not because it’s aesthetic or efficient or something a professional organizer would recommend.

But because it makes sense to me.

It’s one more reminder that the best systems aren’t the ones that work in theory – they’re the ones that actually work for me, in real life, with my actual brain.

Even when it means creating a glorified junk drawer, because it’s not about doing what’s supposed to work. It’s about utilizing what’s really helpful.

Don’t Crowd the Mushrooms

Donna Joy

The only line I remember from the movie “Julie and Julia” is

“Don’t crowd the mushrooms”

In case you haven’t seen the movie, or heard this culinary wisdom, here’s the gist:

Mushrooms are full of water

When you heat them up, their water is released as steam.

If you pack too many mushrooms in a pan, their collective steam has nowhere to go, creating a hot tub that steams mushrooms into mushy little blobs.

But if you give them room, the air can flow, the steam can dissipate, the mushrooms can brown and they caramelize into yummy goodness.

Good gravy, I love a good metaphor:

When we crowd our physical spaces, our things can literally change, too. 

It’s harder to dust and to clean, and the clutter can invite must, mildew, or other nastiness.

But even if we’re able to keep our stuff clean, overcrowding doesn’t allow space to breathe and shine.

Listen.

Design-wise, I’m a maximalist.

I love a collection. A gallery wall.  Why have one plant when you can host a party of plants?

Abundance is definitely one of my joy languages. But when my “collections” get overcrowded, they stop shining. They blur. And like steamy mushrooms, my display can turn into a mushy gray blob.

Don’t crowd the mushrooms.

Leave (or make) a little room to breathe, to let off some steam, and let the goodness develop.

Whew, I love a metaphor with layers:

When we overcrowd our lives, the same process happens. We can go through actual physical changes. It’s harder to breath, to think, and to process, and the lack of space can breed all sorts of nastiness (nasty health, nasty attitudes, etc.)

We need a little margin in our life, places (as Seth Godin says) to “put our tired.” 

Space to let off our steam so we don’t turn into mushy gray blobs.

What can you pull out of your space, your calendar, or your mental/emotional load today to make some room to breathe and let goodness develop?

Don’t Crowd the Mushrooms!

Inviting my ADD to the Process

Donna Joy

I’ve been a fan of Dana K. White’s decluttering strategies for years. She speaks to my ADD brain in a language it can actually hear and process. One of the main parts of her strategy involves asking yourself 2 decluttering questions as you hold each item you pick up:

  1. If I needed this item, where is the first place I would look for it?
    1. Go put it there now
  2. If I needed this item, would it occur to me that I already own it?
    1. (If not, donate it now)

I’ve recently added a question of my own to this list:

If I didn’t have this item what could I do?

Some things – like keys – are easy to answer. I legitimately need these items and they need to have a place in my home. If I didn’t have them I would need to replace them. Some things are not so obvious -like a scrap of fabric.

I’m a creative person and my creativity runs overtime when I am decluttering. I can look at a scrap of fabric and imagine 47 projects I would definitely need that.exact.piece of fabric to complete. I couldn’t possibly get rid of it. I might even know the answer to Dana’s decluttering question 1:  in the drawer of my craft dresser with the 389 other pieces of fabric. 

Often when I’ve decluttered in the past, I’ve tried to turn off that creative feature in my brain. I tell it to stop imagining possibilities because I thought that’s what I needed to do in order to work the decluttering process.

Creatives tend to feel a lot of pushback on being creative.

{People with ADD are way more likely to receive negative feedback and more prone to store it longer in their brain and bodies.}

I have been mocked for my creativity. 

And I have done a LOT of work to get to the point where I can say:

“I Like my creative brain. I LOVE my creative brain.” 

When I approach the decluttering questions with the mindset that I need to shut down my creative brain, my inner ADD bristles and balks and remembers every time someone treated me like crap for being creative and suddenly I am working overtime on creating 47 projects I would definitely need that exact piece of fabric to complete.

Instead, 

What if honoring my creativity is exactly what I need to help me declutter? What if I shift the question a bit?

I love repurposing items. I once created a business selling upcycled items.

I’ve made lamps out of flutes, flowers out of playbills, and I can make a planter out of almost anything. 

I’ve typically used that creativity to look at an item and say, “What could I use this item for?”

Which leads to me keeping piles of suitcases filled with random “potential.”

Now I’ve started asking, “If I didn’t have this item, what could I do/use?”
For example:

If I was picking up an empty planter I could ask: If I didn’t have this planter, and I needed to plant a new plant, what could I use?

I’m very confident that my amazing creative brain could find something to turn into a planter and I probably don’t need this planter. And if not, I could likely find one in minutes by asking a neighbor or my Buy Nothing group on Facebook. (I also DEFINITELY do not need another plant to put in a planter, but that’s a post for a different day.)

When I clean out my kitchen cabinets, I used to say, “I need this serving tray because this is what I use for…..”

Now I ask,  “If I didn’t have this, what would I use?”

Maybe I would pull the wood tray that’s under my coffee pot out for serving that dish, then put it back when I’m done.

Instead of telling my creative brain to sit down and shut up,

I’m inviting it to the process.

Honoring it.

Recognizing how important and amazing it is. 

My ADD brain has been told to sit down and be quiet often enough. I’m excited to show I love it more.

Side Quests and Signal Flares

Donna Joy

When I feel stressed I like to reorganize my closets.

Especially my master bedroom closet.

Weird? Maybe. Pointless? definitely not.

It can be a helpful process.

I can feel accomplished at the end. Like a good painting project, I can look at my room at the end and say, “I did that.”

But in order to say “I did that” – it needs to actually get done. 

I have a tendency to embark on projects with uncontained enthusiasm. I start strong, either motivated by a goal (“Today’s the day I get this basement ‘organized’”) or motivated by an emotion (any stress or rage cleaners out here?)

Orrrr

I start on a project because in the moment it seems like an absolutely necessary side quest from the path I’m on. Like, I’m getting dressed but can only find one of this earring set? Why wouldn’t I dump out every piece of jewelry I own and start reorganizing the whole system until I am sitting on the floor half dressed, surrounded by 30 carefully sorted piles of jewelry, completely out of energy, and 17 searches deep on the Best Jewelry Storage Systems on TikTok and Amazon?

Actually, that’s the path most of my projects tend to take. Big energy start, a swirl through overthinking and distraction, then an overwhelming crash that leaves me with a bigger mess than I started with.

Not exactly a remedy for stress and uncertainty. 

And when I’m stressed, I like to reorganize my closets. Notice a pattern?

Stress leads to action, which feels productive – until it spirals. I want to feel in control, so I dive into something I can control. But then the thing I thought would soothe me ends up adding to the chaos.

I’m learning the urge to reorganize is a flag – a signal that something inside me is asking for attention, for care, for clarity.

Lately, I’ve been trying to pause when I feel this signal flare. Instead of pushing through, I’ll ask myself: “What did I really need when I started this?” 

Sometimes it’s control. Sometimes it’s rest. Sometimes it’s just a sense of forward motion.

And sometimes it’s a better system for managing my bedroom closet. And that’s ok, too.

(check out pictures of my latest bedroom closet side quest on Instagram)