When I first started posting over here on the organization forum, someone recommended I read on wabi sabi & japanese simplicity. When searching the library index I found this book and found it very helpful. I thought you might find some of the points in it helpful too. So I thought I would post them.

Book:

"Japanese Style"....Sunimita Lim

"Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep."

LeCorbusier

Wabi...is quiet serenity, a silence this is deep and profound-and sometimes mistaken for loneliness. But it is a deep silence that enriches the person with self-discovery"

.... not being trapped by worldly values but finding a transcendental serenity apart from the world.

....the incomplete is clearly more beautiful than the perfect. A deeper beauty in the blemished than in the unblemished.

Sabi is rusticity, and a closeness to the naturalness of nature

Wabi sabi...suggests such qualities as impermanence, humility, asymmetry and imperfection

....Japanese architecture and gardens reflects a universal desire to live in natural harmony with self, others and the world- where the home environment reflects soulful sentiments of simplicity, sincerity, humility and purity that continuously refresh spirit, emotions and body and where every item performs at least one useful function, if not more and it is comfortable to the touch.

" In the East the foundation is in the heart and its inspiration, which to the Western mind, with its emphases on the intellect, must appear very strange, for the Eastern man jumps to his conclusions on wings of intuition" Soetsu Yanagi

Home is not merely a shell of a house. Our dwellings are imbued with our feelings and thoughts with attempts at building and decorating and with using spaces that suit our activities. A home grows, along with its owners and residents, not by grand design but by the small celebrations of everyday life.

Less is more...