Spark Joy with Deb: Simplifying and Organizing to Find Joy in Less, Not More

While sorting your things in your home, you might rediscover an object you haven't used in ages; something you remember having fun with in the distant past when you took more time for fun. Like a tent or a hula hoop. While holding the object in your hands and checking in with your feelings, you decide to keep it. You put it in a more convenient spot and take it out now and then again to use it alone or with friends. It still Sparks Joy!


photo sun with camping son
© Jason Bosinoff, 2018





photo hooping in front rock garden with pottery students
© Philip R. Bosinoff, 2016

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We can see beauty not just in objects, but in the spaces between them. In shadows and highlights...in time alone and with others...by taking time to smell the roses...while looking around...and up!

Where do you see beauty between?


photo seen at home
© Debra A. Griffin, 2017



photo hiking son
© Jason Bosinoff, 2018
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When you hold each of the things in your life in your hands, do they spark joy?
If so, keep them.
If not, let them go.

This is part of the Spark Joy process. It works.


photo Nancy's Hands Holding © Debra A. Griffin, 2018
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I needed to get rid of a bunch of things, but could never find the time and motivation. Deb offered to help me using her "spark joy" approach. It took a while for it to work for me, because I didn't think in terms of "joy" from my possessions. She has patiently worked with me and helped me figure out what to do when I feel stuck. I appreciate how she suggests where she could help while waiting for me to say when I'm ready to deal with a particular area.
- Nancy
Helping my sister once a month with her bedroom/office in her shared apartment in Brighton gave me experience and practice using the Spark Joy technique with a particularly reluctant participant who had little time or energy to care for her living space.

During one stage, Nancy gave me a ratty old cardboard filing box, with years of tape history on it, to recycle or donate. Instead, I took it home and covered it in cloth and added new hanging files. With matching cloth, I also covered another box I pl…

So after you do a Spark Joy project, you might find you have more time, since you have a simplified home space.

I changed my large perennial garden over to a low maintenance, draught-tolerant garden in the fall of 2016 in order to make more time for doing more racial justice meeting organizing. This work helps me feel like I can make a difference, build sharing communities, and more...things that bring me joy (more than any object), and hopefully the work brings joy to others too, in the process.


Below is my garden filled in more than when I made it over in 2016; this was taken in the summer of 2018. I look happy because I can enjoy the garden more now...it isn't just work!


I also realized that I had too many part-time jobs and was feeling a lot of stress from that. I decided which jobs brought me joy, and which ones didn't (anymore), and proceeded to quit some. That freed me up to do work that sparks joy. Like teaching pottery (dagworks.com)...and organizing racial justice me…

Deb helped me focus on the possessions I truly care about, instead of just the one's I thought I was saving for posterity. Turns out if you don't get joy from it, there isn't a whole lot of reason to save it. 

Deb has an uncanny ability by just listening to me and discussing how I feel about things when I pick them up, to help me realize their true value in my life. She seems to do this almost instinctively, clearly empathetically, and essentially instantly. 

Despite previously storing things "wherever", and thinking I knew where everything was kept, the new approach looks a whole lot better, and I can still find something when I need it. Mostly, my previous messy arrangement just wore on me in various subtle nagging ways at a somewhat subconscious level. Turns out a clean environment encourages better thinking and problem solving, and those are important parts of my life. 

Thank you, Deb!
- Phil

Phil is an amateur photographer (philslens.com) and software developmen…

Ingrid Fetell Lee has a TED talk: Where joy hides and how to find it

This talk is not directly related to the simplifying and organizing work that I do, but it is topic-related and interesting non-the-less, and worth watching and thinking about.

Ingrid talks about color, circles, patterns...what visual things bring you joy?


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Are you unhappy in your home due to too much "stuff"?
Do you not know where to start to simplify and organize?
Do you need motivation and encouragement to get it done?

In planned blocks of time, I can work with you step by step, to help you go through your possessions in your home...selecting and making decisions about what to keep and what to give away, or trash...based on what sparks joy for you now...not based on past experiences or future desires.

When the sorting is done for each group (clothes, books, paper, mementos, etc.) then we organize and put away what you are keeping in such a way that things are easy to find, access, and return. It is so much more joyful to have less things so they can be found and put away quickly. (Usually, the storage space and containers you already have are the perfect size for what you decide to keep!)

It is exciting is to rediscover, while sorting, what sparks joy for you, and let go of what does not, so someone else can benefit from you…

In 2016, I read this book and it did for me what the title says:

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing 
by Marie Kondo


I recommend this book for all to read. If you read it or not, and want help doing this kind of organizing in your home (if within an hour or Ashland, MA) then I can help you. I don't do exactly what Marie does, but I have learned from her and think her methods work well, in general.
More info on her book here.

Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, on Netflix as of Jan. 2019, video
I watched the whole series already and learned more from Marie about her process. I recommend it.

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