Well a brief description of Discardia is:
With its three key principles and numerous practical tips, Discardia—a new holiday—helps you carve away the nonsense of physical objects, habits, or emotional baggage, and uncover what brings you joy. You can find the website here.
How does it relate to home improvement?
I believe that ridding your home of excess clutter (i.e. JUNK) is type of home improvement. It may not involve lumber, hammers, a drill and screws but you are improving your home. When you live in a home that is neat and free of clutter it just makes you feel better.
It is like when you go to an open house of a new construction home. It is staged so beautifully and there is no evidence of real life there. (Like my teenage sons underwear on the bathroom floor) It is neat and clean so invokes really good feelings. So do we really want a new house or do we want what we have to be neat and clean. Have you ever cleaned your house super good and you didn't even want to leave because you just wanted to stay home and enjoy the fruits of your labors. Same goes with cars.
I have an obsession with the Amish. What I love about the Amish is their simplistic life. I do not want to be Amish because living without electricity would suck. I mean like really suck. Bad. But when you look at the Amish as whole they have only have the possession that they need. No more-no less.
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| Amish Bedroom |
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| Amish kitchen |
I am sure as much as much as I believe that this would be the best way to live I am also sure I would have a HUGE culture shock without the modern comforts of home and my "stuff'. This get me thinking about how much of my stuff I could get rid of and do without.
It is not like my place is a candidate for the show Hoarders and if you ask my friends they probably would not call my place cluttered but I could stand to eliminate some "stuff" out of my house.
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| WTH??????????? |
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| Really???? |
Can you see the difference? I am not making light of the hoarders. They have a real problem, but when our closets are bulging with "stuff" I think we have the same problem on a smaller scale.
So while I wait on our first major show storm to get the stairs moved in my house, I will be practicing a little Discardia and trying to achieve a simpler life. I think it is a great New Years resolution.
If you are looking for more inspiration check out my buddy Miss Effie who had the same revelation the same day as me! Great minds think alike I swear.
I have been slowly but surely doing some Discardia at our house lately too! I had already made the resolution-a-little-early to clear out the extra stuff in our house over the next year. It is not something that comes easily for me, but I keep reminding myself how good it will feel to not have the hidden messes in the house. So count me in!
ReplyDeleteI have a fascination with Amish also--I grew up in an Amish/Mennonite community. We used to have horse & buggies on the roads years ago, but not anymore. We still visit the area in Ohio where there are still Amish and I've read books. But I'm with you--no electricity would be IMPOSSIBLE!