DOES IT GIVE YOU JOY?

Have you been hearing the buzz about the latest book about decluttering and organizing? This one is from the Japanese point of view, and is called The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo. The basic premise is that you have to do much more than just hide all your "stuff" in attractive organizers. In fact, she calls storage experts "hoarders." No, she believes that the only way to get one's home into shape permanently is to get rid of everything in it that does not give you joy. I have not read the whole book yet, but that alone got me to thinkin'. It got me to thinking about this wooden tray I bought to hang on my wall a few years ago.

My original intention was for it to be a place where I could bring all my bits and pieces of vintage ceramics, which I had scattered about the house, together in one place. I figured they would have more impact that way, right?

The only problem was that there were a lot more spaces in the tray than I had ceramics, and we know what people tend to do with empty spaces, don't we? Fast forward a couple of years and you'd find that every single niche was now filled with so much stuff that it was impossible to dust, and most of it wasn't even ceramics. Instead of giving me joy when I came into the room, it gave me anxiety attacks. Usually, I avoided looking at it altogether! Finally I decided it was time to do something about that. Enough was enough. In fact, it was way too much!

Know what happens when I enter the bedroom now? I find myself pausing just to stare at it. And smiling.