On reading this, and looking around my complex environment, I wondered if there might be a centre of simplicity somewhere in my own house of many rooms. (If you've lived in one room, five rooms are many. And if you've lived in a house with rooms you don't use, one room may be enough!)
Short answer: no, no centre of simplicity. Even the bookshelves have books lying across other books. Even the plants on the windowsill have pots and stones and ethnic animals among them. Though on reflection ... what is simplicity, anyway?? In my view, it's clear space - a place with one function at a time. Somewhere that you know where you are, and what will be going on.
I decided to hack out an art-space for simplicity, from the dumping ground that used to be my studio.
It took a mere five minutes to move the ironing board and all that was on it, off the table in front of the window - and that five minutes included finding "proper" places to put those things.
What joy! A centre of simplicity, for a simple task
Something simple to do daily. In a space that encourages concentration.
Rather than driving myself crazy looking for a paint palette to make various dilutions of paint, I improvised with the bottom of a water bottle -- five nice little dimples, and it cleans up quite easily ... becoming multi-use plastic ...
I use the bottoms of milk bottle cartons, (polythene) for mixing paints, the clear plastic bits removed when one gets things in boxes off packaging when I want something larger for stamping paint or rolling paint, giving them another purpose in life. so satisfying. My houmous containers get used for so many things both to do with textiles and in the veg garden and greenhouse. I can not bear throwing things out after 1 use. I am no paragon of virtue but recycling arises from my childhood, I had no shoes for first 4-5 years of life as mum could not afford them as we were evacuees from Malaya to Australia, dad was a prisoner of war in Changi and then on the Burma railway
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