Idleness

From NYT: The Busy Trap by Tim Kreider:

“…Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done…”

Curator

From Celia Barbour’s article Clutter: The Long Goodbye in Whole Living: “…even if we have enough square footage to store all our unnecessary belongings, we should be more protective of our mental space. Because what matters more…is the room they occupy in our brains, in the stories we tell ourselves to justify holding on to them…

…‘We got these as a wedding gift’ my dad would say as he handed me something he no longer wanted. I felt like a crazy museum curator, assiduously looking after objects whose sole value was that they had once been meaningful to someone else…”

House Reduction by Studio Bright

This renovation project actually resulted in a reduction in the home’s footprint.