Tag: minimalist challenge

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.

Week 10: Thresholds and Doorways – Part Two (Addition)

Donna Joy

Welcome to week 10, where we’re doing the hokey pokey, turning ourselves around, and heading back out the door.

Last week we talked about thresholds and the “doorway effect” – how walking through a doorway sends a signal to our brains to leave behind what’s on the other side. This often means forgetting why we walked into a room, buuuut, we can also use that effect to our advantage, letting go of the stress of the workday, the grocery store, or the commute and leaving it on the other side of the door.

When our entryways are piled with shoes, bags, and a box of cement (just me?), that transition can feel more like a continuation of traffic jam stress than a clean slate.

Last week’s focus was subtraction – clearing out a little clutter each day and noticing how people in your household move through the entryway space.

This week, we’re shifting to addition.

What do we take with us when we leave home?

Sometimes it’s stress – a frantic search for missing keys or that feeling of already being behind.
This week I want to take some small steps to make it something better: the calm of knowing where things are, small confidences of feeling prepared.

I love thinking of that prepared feeling as giving myself a little gift for the future.
When I put my keys in their designated home, it’s a tiny gift to future me.
And the next morning, I get to unwrap that gift – walking out the door just a little more calm, a little more ready.

I love that feeling.
And I want to take more of it with me as I step out each day.

This week: addition through intention

Let’s talk about what we can add this week to give ourselves that confident, prepared feeling as we leave our homes.

When I observed our entryway last week, I noticed that shoes are our main culprit. They’re almost always scattered around, in the way. Since the front door is literally in my dining room, it means that clutter is not just clogging up the entrance to our home,  it’s an uninvited guest at mealtimes and throughout the day, too. My instinct was to fix it immediately. But I know when I jump to solving as soon as I see a problem, it usually involves a “click, add to cart” solution. I want to slow down this week, and see what I can rearrange thoughtfully, with what we already have, instead of rushing to what Amazon tells me will solve all my problems.

Addition doesn’t have to mean more stuff.
It can mean adding thoughtfulness, intention, or a sense of peace to a space.

This week’s assignments:

101: Add one thing that will be a gift to you tomorrow.

  • Designate a spot to hang your keys and practice hanging them there every day.
  • Place a small token, like a photo, or post-it note near your door that reminds you to take a breath and embrace peace, presence, courage, or patience.
  • Maybe it’s simply adjusting something small so your space works better for you. Can you add a basket just for mail, with a recycling bin right below it, so as you bring the mail in the door you can immediately trash the junk? Or add the habit of walking over to an existing garbage/recycling bin with your mail as you walk in the door?

Whatever it is, let it be something that makes leaving your home, and arriving back, feel like a smoother, kinder threshold to cross.

201: Pick one thing to add to your daily routine to make your going out and coming home a little easier. Can you set something out the night before? Or create a small ritual for arrival, like turning on a lamp, lighting a candle, or putting on music?

Reflection:

Instead of getting down on ourselves for things undone, or clutter left out, what would it look like to give yourself gifts for the future? Getting my lunch ready to go the night before is one less thing off the mental to do list playing on repeat in my brain when I try to go to sleep, and having it ready to go each morning means I’m not just feeling more prepared, I’m also more likely to eat a little healthier than grabbing a bar on the way out the door. Which helps create an upward spiral through my day.

Consider this your invitation to do the hokey pokey – turn around, take a deep breath, and step into (or out of) your day with intention.

This week's assignment pad

Week 9: Thresholds & Doorways (Part 1: Subtraction)

Donna Joy

We are stepping into week 9 – literally!! This week we’re crossing thresholds and doorways, entering and exiting our homes.

If you’ve ever walked into a room and immediately forgotten why you went there, you’ve experienced what researchers call the doorway effect. Crossing a threshold sends a signal to our brains that we’re entering a new space, and it often causes us to “drop” what we were just thinking about.

In my day job, I often work with people who have memory deficits, and the doorway effect can be frustrating – compounding existing memory problems, but in our houses, the doorway effect can actually be a gift.

Every time we walk through the doorway to our home, we have a chance to reset. It’s a chance to decide what we leave behind and what we carry forward.

When you walk through your front door, what comes with you?
The mental list from work? The grocery store chaos? The stress of your commute?

An entryway cluttered with shoes, bags, mail, and everything piled in a tangle can continue the “traffic jam” feeling. We walk through the doorway and stay stuck in the outside mindset, instead of shifting into the calm of home.

What if your entryway became a true threshold?
A gentle cue to your brain and body: You’re here. You’re home. You can exhale now.

And just as importantly: what if your doorway also worked in the other direction?

What if, as you step out each morning, you carried with you something from home: a sense of peace, preparedness, or calm that travels with you through the day?

This week we’ll look at how we come in to our homes, and what we may need to subtract to find more space for calm as we enter our spaces. Next week we’ll consider how we can carry that peace with us as we leave.

Time for our homework assignments!: Choose what level(s) you’d like to try out and spend some time with it each day this week:

101: Simply Observe

Spend this week paying attention to how you (and others in your household) actually move through your entryway.

Ask yourself:

  • How do we transition into this space?
  • Is there a home for the things we consistently bring in? (think: shoes, bookbags, grocery bags, keys, sunglasses, etc)
  • What has a permanent, functional resting spot?
  • Are we using it consistently?

Our house is open concept. From the second you walk in the front door, you can see most of our main living space. We’ve created a few systems that do work for us:

  • A drawer to drop our keys, so we always know where they are.
  • A simple over-the-door hanging system I dubbed Lunchbox Lane, where our lunchbags go after they’re emptied.

And then there are the systems with good intentions but inconsistent follow-through, like the bin for mail that sometimes gets sorted, sometimes gets ignored, and sometimes just becomes a mountain of circulars and junk.

And finally, a few systems that might as well not exist. Like the shoe trays at the front door that, in theory, keep things tidy…but in reality look like someone dropped a box of shoes from the ceiling and walked away.

This week, notice where you and your family naturally move, drop, and pause when coming home.

102: Two-minute clutter rescue.

Set a timer for two minutes each day and clear what doesn’t belong.
No new storage systems, no full-blown coat closet overhaul, no complaints about anyone else’s stuff.

Just take out what you can control that doesn’t need to live in this space.
The goal is to work towards a small, daily exhale – a clear threshold to step into.

Reflection: What do you want to feel when you enter your home?

Pause for a moment as you walk through your door this week. What feeling greets you?
Do you want this space to feel lively and energizing? calm and resetting?

What’s standing in the way of that feeling?
And how can you use the doorway effect to your advantage? How can letting the act of stepping through your door become a mental cue to leave the outside world behind and enter into peace?

Let this week be about subtraction: noticing, removing, releasing.
Next week, we’ll explore the addition side of thresholds: how to add small cues and touches that help us transition with intention and bring more peace into and out of our homes.

This Week's assignment sheet

Take a Hint

Donna Joy

When we sit down on the couch, my partner and I both move a pillow.
Without thinking, at least one ends up on the floor every day. Then, when we get up, we have to remember to put it back.

What if instead of treating this like another micro task on our mental to do list,
I see it as a little hint:

Like the couch is quietly whispering: “You really don’t need four pillows.”
(Even if they are really cute.)

Maybe this doesn’t need a big evaluation or thought process.
Maybe the pillows that keep ending up on the floor are the ones we never choose. And maybe, instead of putting them back on the couch again, I could pick them up, put them in the donate bin, and never have to pick them up off the floor again.

What other simple clues are scattered around our homes, just waiting for us to notice?

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.

The.Best.Storage

Donna Joy
Plastic Bin filled with health and beauty "back stock"

I keep a giant basket under the bathroom sink that holds our health and beauty “back stock”: toothpaste purchased on a “must buy three” sale, shave gel from a company you can only order from online (so might as well order enough to get free shipping)… you know all the deals.

I’m a sucker for a good deal. I used to be an avid couponer too, especially back when I was going through about a thousand diapers a week. I love watching the discounted price get calculated at the register like I imagine a gambler loves the feeling of beating the house.

And it’s not just the thrill of the win. I like feeling prepared. I feel like I have my life a little bit together if I know my family will never squeeze the last of the toothpaste onto their brush without a full tube ready and waiting just a few feet away.

But over the years, I’ve discovered there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Products don’t last forever and can expire before I get to use them. Or something changes—like when I got older and needed to start wearing lotion with sunscreen every day, so the regular lotion I’d stocked up on just sat there, languishing.

For most things we use regularly, one backup works for us. When we use the last of the mayo, we pull the backup out of the pantry and put mayo on the shopping list for the week. Backup food goes in our pantry closet. Backup health and beauty items go in that bin under the bathroom sink. I still love a good deal, and if the deal is for 3 toothpastes we like (and the bin isn’t already overflowing) I’ll probably buy three. 

Anything much beyond that? I’m learning the perfect place to store those extras.

I store them…

At the…

Store.

That’s what the store is there for.

I get it. We lived through the toilet paper crisis of 2020. There’s a lingering fear of not being able to access what you need. But it’s a pretty rare week we don’t go to at least one grocery store. And if an emergency came up, I have countless stores between work and home, plus endless online options, not to mention any number of ways I could reach out for help to get what we need.

I don’t need Costco under my kitchen sink. Costco can keep my extras on their shelves. They can manage the cleanup if something accidentally spills and assign someone to check expiration dates. They can worry about the storage space.

And when I do run out and need to replace my backup? Chances are, it will be at the store, waiting for me.

Plot Twist! Minimizing, Moving and Falling In Love

Donna Joy

Happy Monday and welcome back to me!

I recently moved and it’s been a bit of a whirlwind deciding to sell, staging and selling my house, finding a place to live and all the crazy and changes that come with moving.

image from New City Moving

I recently had friends over for dinner in our new apartment and one of them looked around and asked, “Oh! Did you choose this place because it feels like a treehouse when you look out this window?”

I laughed.

I “picked” this apartment because it was the ONLY place with the main qualification I was looking for: keep my daughter in the same school.

(OK, so full disclosure: there was also a house for rent in town. for THOUSANDS a month above my budget. umm… no.)

This apartment was not exactly love at first sight.

The showing was rough – it was cramped, stained, cluttered, dark, and the current tenants were there when I went to look at it, so I couldn’t even view one of the bedrooms.

Speaking of bedrooms, it has half the bedrooms I previously had.

Half the square footage overall actually.

That part shouldn’t be a problem, though, I thought. I mean, I literally spent months chronicling my massive decluttering efforts here, even pretending to move at one point.

Why, I’m practically a minimalist! (she said, dripping with sarcastic self-awareness)

It turns out, pretending to move as an emotional exercise and actually.downsizing.fifty.percent.of.your.living/storage space are apparently two different beasts.

But I love a good challenge, and my COVID casualty jobs have not yet returned, so I decluttered and prepped like it was my job.

I gave items to people I thought would truly need/love/want them. I listed so many items on our local swap and sell sites that I had one woman who used to just stop by on her way home from work just to browse what I was putting up that day. I hosted a garage sale. (This time with planning and signs and everything!) I filled my driveway with items and posted “free” notices.

And after a couple weeks of purging,

     releasing,

          selling

               and gifting,

the moving van showed up.

The moving men began packing items and loading the truck, making small talk as they packed.

When one asked where I was moving, and heard it was a two bedroom apartment, they surveyed my inventory and kindly offered to let a few items get “lost” in the move or fall off the truck to help us fit. 😉

Not a great testament to my decluttering efforts. 

But I shudder to think of what the process would have been like if I hadn’t started the minimizing process this past March.

So here we are, sitting in our new-to-us home, surrounded by builder’s beige and feeling a little like I’m back where I was 20 years ago, moving into an apartment complex. Except this time I brought a couple kids, a lot more furniture and a slightly different design aesthetic (not that my proudly apple-stenciled kitchen, frog-stenciled bathroom and flower-stenciled bedroom weren’t the height of fashion in the late 90’s).

It’s been a couple weeks since the moving truck left (after it delivered ALL our remaining stuff)  and you know what?

I’m falling in love.

Everything is different and a chance to create a space that works for us. And I love creating. 

I don’t intend to live here for very long, and when it’s time to leave I want to: 

Not spend a lot of time and money returning this place to it’s original state.

-and-

Get my security deposit back.

-and-

I still want it to work for our family and feel like home in the meantime.

So I’m pulling out all the creative solutions I can borrow, copy and dream up to create a functional home we love in the time we’re here, uncovering what really matters and what’s really real along the way. 

Follow along for what’s worked, what hasn’t, tips and ideas, before and afters, and lots of messy middles, because that’s where I tend to live (in design, in life, whatever).

and check out updates on Facebook and Instagram here.

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Week 6, Day 6: In Case of Emergency

Donna Joy

This week, I scheduled a technician for some work at our house. 
As I thought through where they would need to go in order to get their job done, I mentally started a checklist: Make sure they can safely get to the fuse box. Can they easily reach the other systems they need to access to get the job done? Where else might they need to go?
A picture frame may need to be moved away from the fuse box, a rug may need to be rolled out of the way on the day they arrive, but in general, every access point I thought of was accessible.

No one would walk into my house and consider me a minimalist.

But if we had to have emergency services of any kind, I wouldn’t be distracted by needing to get a lot of things out of the way.

The daily work of decluttering and uncovering is not only benefiting how we live in our spaces each day, it’s also serving as preparation for emergencies and unforeseen circumstances.

There’s a welcome peace in knowing that. 

Week 5, Day 6: More Photos

Donna Joy

One of the things I was looking forward to in this journey was gaining more of an awareness of what I have. It is so easy for me to live disconnected in so many areas – I don’t grow my own food, I don’t make my own clothes, life is increasingly virtual – especially this past year. The act of going through my possessions is bringing a level of awareness of what I own but it is also breaking through disconnection in other ways.

Going through my photos forces me to see what I have in a different way. It reminds me of the variety of experiences I’ve been able to have, from the births of my children, to bowling with friends on a random trip to Illinois; Singing in choirs from churches to Carnegie Hall to more outdoor adventures than I could remember; weddings, funerals, parties and memorials. It reminds me of relationships that have spanned decades and relationships that have come and gone, or changed significantly. It reminds me of the thoughts I had at the very beginning of this blog:

“The transformation from dust and to dust is not limited to just our literal birth and death, it is found in every season of our lives. In every season there are cycles of creation, dust, waiting and re-creation.”

Some photos were reminders of the dust, some were reminders of the cycles of creation I see in my relationships. I loved reaching out to a few friends and family members this week, sharing with them some of the little memories I found. I loved sitting with my child at the end of a long day, reminiscing and laughing at old school journals and projects.

And I love that there is still room my photo boxes. There are seasons of recreation still to come, and more photos to be taken.

Image Contents: A throw-back photo of the author and her favorite childhood dog (a Great Dane), posing like horse and jockey.

Week 5, Day 4: Donation Garage Sale Part 2

Donna Joy

There are experts who will tell you never to have a garage sale. (You end up storing stuff to wait for it, you never get a good return on your time, you waste time and money prepping for it, etc.)

There are experts who tell you to definitely have a garage sale. (sell EVERYTHING on your path to get out of debt, get rid of your stuff and make a little cash doing it, etc.)

I have typically been closer to the first camp. I’ve hosted a couple garage sales in the past, but they’ve always been fundraisers for specific organizations or causes I care about. For those, I gathered help, made a plan in advance for the leftovers, set up refreshments manned by adorable little bakers and lemonade servers, merchandized the inventory and advertised extensively.

This was the first time I’ve ever said, “hey, I should have a garage sale, right now, in the middle of the afternoon, while I’m home by myself and haven’t told anyone to advertise.”

A few things I learned anyway:

-It.is.exhausting. Even just the set up/tear down process of dragging everything out, dragging everything in when it got dark, dragging it back out the next day, dragging it to the garage or curb or car trunk after. Then comes getting rid of the leftovers, not to mention any time manning it.

-It is typically a horrible return on investment. Granted, some of the fundraisers I’ve had in the past brought in a very significant amount of money donated, and this one today most likely would have been much more profitable had I scheduled and advertised ahead, employed help, etc. 

-If you tell someone you are having a garage sale, 99.9999999% of the time, they will offer you their own items to bring to sell. Or they’ll just drop them off at your house. when you’re not there. on your driveway. in unmarked bags. with no contact info. 

-At least one middle aged or older man will drive by the garage sale and ask “well then, how much for the garage?”

-people will come by and say, “this is so nice, I can’t believe you’re just getting rid of it” and you will have to decide how much you want to tell a complete stranger about your journey to less stuff while standing with masks on talking across a lawn. Or the version from people who know you, “I can’t believe you’re getting rid of THIS!” (that comment from friends was usually referring craft items.)

After hosting my, uh, pop-up sale (does that make it sound more modern, inviting, and trendy than “last-minute garage sale?”) I confirmed garage sales are not my jam.

I loved getting to see some friends and neighbors I haven’t seen in at least a year. I loved gathering donation money from it. I loved getting rid of stuff. But it was 2 days of work I wasn’t planning on doing and I still have lots of stuff left to donate. (Plus two unidentified bags of donations.)

If you are getting out of debt or saving for a specific goal, go for it. Sell like it’s your job. 

If you’re just trying to get rid of stuff, just get rid of your stuff.

For me, getting rid of (the rest of) my stuff is going to mean a little tour of donation centers over the next couple days and I can.not.wait to come back home after it’s all delivered and assess how everything looks and feels.