Joyfully situated deep within the clutter

One Monday morning several years ago, a colleague of mine floated into the office on a magic carpet of self-satisfaction. She hovered in front of my desk for a moment to proudly announce she’d undergone a life-changing transformation over the weekend.

“I’ve begun the decluttering of my life,” Michelle said.

“Goodness, you certainly do seem like a woman transformed,” I said. “What, may I ask, has inspired this jubilation?”

“I’m reading a book on the Japanese art of decluttering,” she said. “I simply ask myself if an item sparks joy in my life, and if it doesn’t, it goes into the hopper! I took two full truckloads of miscellaneous stuff to Goodwill on Saturday, and my entire car is filled with even more random items that are headed to the thrift shop today at lunch!”

“Wow,” I said. “Maybe I should read that book.”

“Well, of course you should!” she replied, side-eyeing the piles of papers, books, rocks, coffee cups, bird feathers, varmint skulls and flint flakes covering every square inch of my desk. “I’ll lend it to you when I’m done.”

“That would be wonderful,” I said. Then I asked if I could have dibs on the stuff in her car. I ended up with three new coffee cups, a set of dinner plates, a cast iron wood stove steamer and a set of shower curtain rings.

I did eventually borrow the book, and for over a year, it occupied a very high spot on the pile of unread books on my nightstand. I shamefully returned it to Michelle declaring, “I found that this book simply failed to spark joy in my life.”

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column about how my wife Kristin and I had tried desperately to avoid the urge to shop during our town’s community yard sale and had failed miserably. In a semi-triumphant move, however, we ultimately gave our purchases away to friends and family rather than add to our own clutter.

Michelle read that column and sent me a text. “Your column sparked joy in my life.”

This was clearly a challenge I should once again attempt to face down my own inner hoarder and make an effort at decluttering.

Inspired by this challenge, I walked into Kristin’s studio with a large plastic bin containing three musty magazines, two chipped coffee cups, a well-worn pair of cycling shorts and a cheap plastic boomerang I’d picked up at a trade show.

“Hear ye, hear ye, woman,” I said in my deepest Shakespearean accent. “I henceforth declare that each week of my life I shall fill this bin with miscellaneous, random stuff — that which no longer sparks joy in my life — and I shall then donate it promptly to the charity of my choosing.”

Kristin offered me the skeptical courtesy of a slow clap.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said.

I made good on my vow later that day when I pulled into the drop-off lane at our local Goodwill store and lowered my now overflowing plastic bin into a wheeled canvas hopper.

“That’s how you do it!” I declared, basking in the glow of self-satisfaction. “Every week another bin goes out the door — step by step. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.”

Kristin gave me a one-bob head nod, and we drove in silence for a moment.

“You do know that you donated the plastic bin too, right?” she said. “So much for the building of Rome! I’m guessing that it no longer sparked joy.”

Kristin and John Lorson would love to hear from you. Write Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John at jlorson@alonovus.com.