Piece by Piece // Building my Dream Living room
“Surround yourself only with the things you love and watch your life change.”
This was the take away I gained from the several iterations of reading Marie Kondo’s book The Magic of Tidying Up. This precious angel of a woman is an undercover spiritual power house in all of her barely 5-foot, Japanese glory. She proposes that each item we fill our lives with is infused with spiritual energy that can either support us or weigh us down. In her book, she describes the process of surrounding yourself only with positive energy so that you can live in an uplifting space filled with things that “spark joy.”
I decided that this lifestyle sounded glorious, plus a closet clean out was already wayyy over due. As Marie instructed, I pulled out everything from each category of my belongings (ie all clothes, books, art supplies, etc.) and piled them onto my bed. I held each item in my hand and waited to see if through holding the item it sparked a feeling of love/joy/gratitude in my heart. If it did, I kept it! If it did not, I thanked it for the time it spent in my life and got rid of it. I followed this method until I had held everything I owned and verified it to spark joy.
I ran into a problem with big items not sparking joy in my living room. My couch is fine, but I definitely don’t feel any joy when I sit on it or look at it. The whole room is this way - almost joyful but not there yet. Since I spend the vast majority of my waking hours in this room, I felt that it truly ought to be a place of peace and inspiration. So with the mindset that you can build your life piece by piece, decision by decision, I decided to build my dream living space. So for the last few weeks I’ve spent time selling items to save up for the big pieces and gathered little items that fill me with joy. I created this vision board to help put my vision into existence.
I already have a few of these pieces and I feel the spacing coming together to inspire me (enough so that I actually am writing on my site again!). The table lamp (totally inspired by @lesolhose) and gorgeous Matisse print have done wonders for the space already. The sofa and mirror are the final big ticket items on my dream space list and I can’t wait to have them, however long that might take.
