Recently I joined a program called Lovely Little Living Spaces, hosted by my friend and fellow author Devon Ervin. It’s a 21-day journey of gentle home transformation. Not a renovation or purge, but a quiet declutter that is somehow radical. The idea is simple: spend 10 to 15 minutes a day tending to one small area of your home. Clear it. Beautify it. Reflect on what comes up. Repeat.
The experience is rooted in five concepts: Gather, Clear, Notice, Reflect, and Act. We begin and end the three week program with zoom gatherings. In between, we share our daily progress and insights in a private Facebook group. It’s part journaling practice, part design intention, and part community support, all nested in a gentle, creative rhythm.
Devon teaches that clearing a physical space can do more than make a home prettier. It can open up clarity. Presence. Breathing room. I’m a naturally organized person, my home full of structured and practical systems like kitchen utensils sorted by function and frequency of use. But even I have pockets of clutter. Those areas have a way of tugging at the edges of my attention, which is a precious, limited resource.
According to Stanford’s BeWell program, “a clean, well-lighted space can promote a sense of calm and clarity.” I don’t need a study to know that’s true. Visual chaos, even at the edges of our vision, can make it harder to concentrate.
One of the first spaces I tackled was in my upstairs office. I’m prepping to paint a mural, so paint cans and tools had started to pile up in front of the closet next to my desk. Paintings the last owner left behind are stacked there with nowhere to live. I’m keeping the frames but haven’t taken them apart yet. I’d been telling myself I’d tidy once the mural supplies all arrived. But the truth is, I could tidy before that.
So I did. I put away what could be put away. I let one framed painting live on the easel, despite it being not my style at all, and I placed my favorite leafy office plant beside it (for now! it needs a brighter space, permanently) just because it makes me happy to see it. I cleared the clutter, and that little pocket of the room now sparks joy instead of tension. It feels peaceful and therefore I feel peaceful.
As Devon says, where we live is where we live.
I’m sharing this not because I think you need to declutter, though it’s not the worst idea. I’ve just seen how a small shift in your physical space can open up a much larger one inside. Devon’s program continues through early June, and if you’re curious, the details are here.
As a writer, I’ve learned that my creativity needs room to stretch out. Not just in my schedule, but in my surroundings. When my home feels calm, my brain does too. I write better. I edit with more clarity. I hear my characters more clearly. That matters. Because where we live is where we live, and that includes the place inside us where stories begin.
