Getting Organized to Spark Joy

I Googled top 10 health blogs and found the Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (British MD) show Feel Better Live More.

The episode I tried to tune into was an interview with Joshua Fields Millburn the Minimalist creator. The topic was: Why Decluttering Your Home Can Calm Your Mind and Improve Your Wellbeing.

30 minutes into the podcast I shut it off as no specific steps were given to help listeners improve our wellbeing. Instead of offering an action plan Fields Millburn gave an academic treatise on the subject.

What stood out is that the guest speaker said the average person has 300,000 items in their home. We throw out 85 pounds of clothes every year.

What! I wondered how this could be possible. As I keep clothing items for over 5 years routinely.

The simple habit to improve wellbeing is to not bring home excess stuff in the first place. Filling a void in our life by buying things won’t fill us up or make us happy.

Forget the Minimalist. Sign up for the KonMari email newsletters instead. I’ll take Marie Kondo any day over a verbose rambling expert. Kondo’s newsletters are short and list 5 or 6 tactics you can use to spark joy.

Perhaps in the end this is why I was disenchanted with the two men talking on the podcast: They focused on what was going wrong with consumerism. Not on how exactly to Spark Joy. After 30 minutes of listening to the Feel Better Live More podcast episode on decluttering I had no real idea about how to get happy via other means apart from buying things.

I think I must be the biggest fan of Marie Kondo and her Spark Joy ethic precisely because for over 5 years now in my blogs I’ve talked about doing what you love to feel good and to heal from ill-ness. Which consumerism taken to the extreme might just be considered a dis-order.

This month of January is Get Organized Month. I’ve created a category Get Organized Month for readers to click on in the future.

I have no idea about other folks yet I want to read or hear about an itemized list of steps to take via an action plan. I don’t want an analysis of what’s wrong. I want a clear specific agenda on how to make things right. Then I’ll decide if the advice is worth using.

The expression is: “Take what works and leave the rest.”

I’ll end here by saying that lately I’ve been tempted to buy clothes. As I’ve discarded a ton of clothing items that yes I’ve had for at least 7 or 8 years. You want to get happy? You and I are not going to get happy sitting around all day in pajama pants that are worn and faded and have seen better days.

Right. Get rid of the items that make you feel sad or depressed. Replace them with new clean colorful clothing to feel good.

Round here there was a snowstorm. We don’t want to experience cabin fever and the winter doldrums sitting on our bums typing at a computer in 10-year old rags.

This is common sense. After my mini-shopping spree I won’t be buying anything else new.

What really sparks joy for me now is using recipes I find in magazines to create healthy meals.

Eating well to feel good sure beats racking up charges on a credit card. Plus it’s cheaper and really does spark the joy that can be missing from our lives in these dark days.