Today I'm away from my cluttered apartment, there's still a lot of stuff on the floor but it's getting there. Over the last week I've been reading about tiny homes and tiny apartments partly because I wanted ideas and partly for inspiration. My first rental apartment was probably 350 square feet (32 m2) and several friends can tell the story of me reaching into a pile of stuff to pull out a cello! My current place is around 600 (64) and I have simply expanded or perhaps exploded if you remember how much there was in the old place. Can I learn to live simpler?
An interesting introduction to tiny houses can be found here. people can live in incredibly compact spaces. My old world apartment had a German fitted kitchen with cupboards and cupboards and more cupboards and surprisingly it was pretty clear for years because everything had its place.
I've also been following up Japanese lifestyle and living simply because their living spaces are substantially smaller than N. American. A very helpful blog (here) by a Westerner living in Japan helped me realize that it's not all about storage. As I have almost maxed out my storage, it is also about scale of living. Her blog points to living at the appropriate scale. Most of what she says is common sense and a lot about storage but she finishes with this:
The best way to tell how well you've organized your space is by seeing how comfortable you feel in it when you're not occupied with T.V. or the computer or whatever. If you feel a sense of peace and comfort, you've probably got it set up pretty well to suit your needs.So I have a goal which I'm reaching out for namely space through simplifying things, condensing things, and decluttering. A while ago I wrote about constant partial attention and how exhausting that can be in the info tech filled world we live in. Somehow for me, perhaps exacerbated by synaesthesia, I suspect that it is also a physical emotional issue. Perhaps even a spiritual life issue for many of us.
