Tag: joy

BTS Week 12: Finals

Donna Joy

We did it!!!!

For the last 12 weeks, we’ve worked our way through our homes and spaces with the goal of heading into the holiday season with more calm, noticing what works, subtracting what doesn’t, and adding tiny habits that make our lives feel gentler. No perfect-home goals here. Just small steps toward calmer spaces and truer reflections of who we are.

As we move into a season that can feel loud and fast, I hope you are heading into it with a little more space to breathe.

So…how are you doing?

I’ll go first: I was doing okay. I was doing the things. Not all the things, not all the time. But I was doing the things.  And then I decided to add one more thing.

Then another.

Then another. 

and before I knew it I had like 57 big giant things on my calendar over the next month. Why do I do this???

It’s easy to feel like a failure and let things slip. But last night I had a bit of a revelation.

Yesterday I saw a contractor my husband had scheduled arrive on our security camera and felt a spike of panic. I didn’t know they were coming. I hadn’t “gotten the house ready.”

Then I realized: the house was fine.

They could walk in and get to what they needed. Yes, a few things had to be moved where they were working, but there was space to move them. There wasn’t an avalanche of shoes at the front door. 

Even in this very busy season, I can feel the difference. I may be exhausted heading to bed, but my clothes are (usually) set out and tomorrow’s coffee is pre-measured. Less last-minute scramble. Less searching. 

Over the last three months we’ve tackled making our beds, setting out our clothes, simplifying mornings, doing the dishes, streamlining pantries, smoothing our entrances and exits, and making space for creativity.

We’re ready for finals.

The Final Exam

For our final exam, we have two images to compare/contrast and two questions to think about. That’s it. Oh, and it’s an open book exam – feel free to look back at any of our notes from this past semester. 

Image One:

(Where’s Waldo crowd scene)

Remember these books? “Where’s Waldo” has entertained thousands simply by hiding one striped character in a chaos of distractions.

Before you get too distracted trying to find Waldo, let’s move on to image two:

Image Two:

(Social distancing Waldo cartoon by Clay Bennett for the Chattanooga Times Free Press)

Now for our questions:
Which Waldo was easier to find?
What made it easier?

Here’s what I’m learning:

So often in life we create that first, harder version for ourselves, because we think the solution to not being able to find something is to add more. We want to find “Waldo” but end up burying him in a crowd.

Some examples that may or may not be personal testimonies:

  • I can’t find matching socks. So I buy a dozen more pairs of socks so I never lose a matched pair of socks again. Then the next time I need a pair of socks, I have to dig through a sock drawer version of “Where’s Waldo” looking for what I want.
  • My kids can’t find a snack they like in the pantry. So I buy 3 kinds of bars, 4 boxes of fruit strips and a Costco variety box of snacks. Now my kids have to swim through a life size Where’s Waldo page to find anything and the fruit expires before they can eat it all.
  • “I want more rest, more creativity, more joy.” So I buy the latest gadgets, tools, and systems promising to make my life easier. Instead, they add to the sea of tiny red-and-white imposters crowding out Waldo.

Adding more didn’t help me find anything. It just made more places to lose stuff.

The key to finding Waldo was never in just adding more.

It’s in less.

Like the socially distanced cartoon of Waldo above, when we simplify and remove the excess, what we are looking for is so much easier to find. 

Rest and creativity aren’t found by piling on more.

They show up when we remove the distractions and create space for them.  

That’s what these last twelve weeks together have been about: bedrooms and pantries, doorways and nightly resets, minimizing and giving tiny gifts to your future self:

Simplify, subtract, create space…and what matters slowly becomes easier to find.

Peace, calm, and joy don’t arrive because we do or buy more.
They show up when we make room.

This is the work  –  and the gift we’ve been giving ourselves for twelve weeks.

Let’s keep going.

Summer Assignment

Donna Joy

Before my daughter heads off to school each morning, I remind her to “send me a photo of something that makes you smile today.” It might be something as seemingly small as a green acorn on the side of the road, but asking for that little photo helps put her in a mindset to be on the lookout for joy.

Because when we’re on the lookout for joy, we can usually find it. 

Of course, the opposite is true, too. When we’re on the lookout for frustration, comparison, perceived affronts, or anger, we are REALLY good at finding those too. Our brains love a well-worn path and following the direction we’ve told it to go, so whatever we are used to looking for we are certain to find. 

If you haven’t searched for joy before (or in a long time) it can feel like trying to flex a muscle you haven’t used in a long time. You may wonder if you still have it, or if you left it back in high school gym class. It can almost feel like trudging through an overgrown field. If you haven’t searched for joy before, your brain might be confused; this is not the path it is used to traveling.

Like a trailblazer, when we search for joy for the first time in a long time, we have to leave the familiar pathways and clear out the brush and stickers. But the more we direct our brains to travel that path, the more our brains say, “oh, I remember this way! I know what to do” and it will help us find our way to joy.

As we prepare for our Fall Semester (beginning next week),  I’m giving you and I a little “End of Summer Assignment.” No book reports or citation formatting required, just one simple task:

Take a picture of something in your home that makes you smile. Every day.

a hand holding a small green acorn.

The Joy in What Stays

Donna Joy

Uncovering real isn’t a blog about decluttering. I mean, I do a lot of decluttering work here. But the point isn’t decluttering. The point is uncovering what’s real and living life well. 

Sometimes what I get rid of  allows me to live more simply – like the weekend I wrote about a couple weeks ago, where we were able to enjoy hosting a family gathering AND engage in relaxing activities before, because we chose to simplify our processes, our expectations, and the amount of stuff we had to manage.

And sometimes uncovering real is about celebrating what stays.

This little vignette is one of the first things we see when we walk in our front door.  

A little vignette made up of a vintage dresser, mirror, and etagere.

Sometimes it gets extra crowded with random sunglasses, receipts and other things that got put down instead of put away. But most of the time it’s contained, and I love all the little elements that make up this scene.

I have always tucked dressers anywhere I can find a place to fit them. This one was a $5 find at a garage sale I drove by many years ago. I cleaned it up and replaced a couple knobs and legs. (The new legs got a little damaged in our last move, but it seems to hold its weight fine so I’m not touching it)

The étagère was a roadside treasure that just needed a good cleaning before joining the vignette to add a little height and storage, and the planter bursting with pothos is half of an old lamp I pulled out of my sister’s garage when she was sorting through what the old owners had left behind, paired with a gold tray “saucer.” 

A small hot cocoa station for the kiddos is contained in a “silver tray” (aka: a repurposed filter basket I salvaged from a broken coffee urn. One of those giant ones churches always had at their Sunday morning coffee hours in my childhood. 

I love the mixes:

Modern and Vintage: the modern electronic photo album that occasionally features little videos from our wedding day and big round mirror (the only things purchased new for this space), with the thrift store score of the parfait glasses like the ones we ate pudding out of in my childhood. 

The highly functional (keys and office supplies storage tucked into the top drawers) with the goofy –  Star Wars themed cocoa mugs for each of our kiddos, a coffee drinking Lego figure, and a cracked owl lamp who is still sporting the mustache sticker my daughter decided he needed many years ago. 

Like many of my spaces, it still has lots of stuff. (Have I mentioned I’m not a minimalist yet today?) but keeping it maintained – dealing with the receipts that pile up in the key drawer,  culling our coffee supplies – means I get greeted with a display that makes me smile every time I come home. 

It’s functional AND pretty, layered with stories, memories and joyful pieces, and exactly what I want to come home to.