decluttering

An Anti-Decluttering House and a Liberating Redefinition of Hoarding

We find ourselves sighing with relief when we see REAL spaces that embrace the stuff of living in creative ways, like this joyfully unconventional Japanese home.

Matthew Sporzynski’s Improvised Tech Screwdriver + Lesson in Knolling

Brilliant paper artist and Couturier de Cardboard, Matthew Sporzynski sent a truly wonderful insta-hack he devised recently when trying to fix a vintage toy parakeet…A valuable lesson in improvisation and knolling.

Life-Changing List: What You Didn’t Buy

Swiss-Miss, designer Tina Roth Eisenberg’s blog has provided us with consistently useful/interesting content for years. We especially love her new practice. She’s keeping a list of things the DIDN’T buy.

Roz Chast Channels Marie Kondo

Roz Chast’s “Wonderland” describes the rabbit hole the internet can be, enticing us to follow the trail of astonishing treasures we never knew existed. In true Chastian fashion, she illustrates each discovery and their additive nature, shouting “I COULD NOT STOP LOOKING….”. Chast almost seems to be channeling Japanese de-cluttering philosopher Marie Kondo…

How to Neaten Up Stuff via Sachs’ Practice of Knolling

(Video link here.) At Things Organized Neatly, a website about exactly THAT, we found this terrific except from Ten Bullets, artist Tom Sachs‘ essential principles — “his code” — for employees working in his studio. Here he outlines something he called “knolling”, an action we’ve always done but never had a word for. Sachs’ interpretation is…

What’s Better: Scared or Sensible? And why?

When contemplating a life change, what’s better: scared or sensible? How does one choose? And why? After wrestling for several grueling weeks with making a radical, lock-stock-and-barrel move, I’ve decided to stay put and work on making a meaningful internal geographic instead. In many ways this kind of psychological change is a much tougher adventure, in…

Reorganization as Soul Cleanse

A 48-hour disappearance into the depths of my studio was finally interrupted late yesterday by a well-meaning friend. He peered in to find me on hands and knees wiping out the lowest shelves with damp paper towels. “Jeez. Still at it?” I swiveled and growled like a rabid dog, sweat pouring down, hair plastered, eyes raccooned…

finding a clear work space + e.b. white on “stuff”

We were so intrigued by Charlotte’s Web author E.B. White’s utterly simple, focused work space, that we browsed some of his essays. We were heartened to read of White’s eloquent struggle with “stuff” in “Goodbye to Forty-eighth Street”:

3 rules for editing your life

In this short TED talk, Graham Hill tells simple ways to start letting go of STUFF and getting rid of it. And why it is so essential. 1. Edit ruthlessly: clear the arteries of our lives, cut the extraneous out of our lives, think before we buy, ask ourselves, ‘Is that really gonna make me…