When I moved to Japan, one of the first things I started doing was cleaning and organizing my wife’s ancestral home and the former socks factory next to it.

Having become financially independent, I had plenty of time to decide what I wanted to do with my days. And for some reason, cleaning, sorting, and organizing things was something I genuinely enjoyed.

There was certainly enough to keep me busy.

Over the years, many belongings had been stored away in the house and factory. Some were still useful, others had sentimental value, and quite a few were simply broken or no longer needed.

I started going through them, one by one.

What I enjoyed wasn’t just cleaning the rooms or making more space. I liked inspecting the things I found, figuring out what they were, and deciding whether they might still be useful.

Sometimes I came across tools that had clearly been used for many years. Other times I found household items that looked almost new, some even still in their original packaging.

I didn’t want to throw things away simply because nobody had used them for a long time.

So I began sorting them into things we could use, things worth keeping, and things that really had reached the end of their useful life.

Of course, plenty of items had to go. Broken belongings were taken to the recycling station or disposed of with the appropriate household waste.

But I was surprised by how much we could actually keep.

During my second year in Japan, many of those things gradually found their way into our everyday life.

We discovered crockery and cooking utensils that had been stored away for years, often unused. Some were quite stylish, and there was no reason not to use them.

Instead of buying everything new for our household, we could simply make use of what was already there.

The same happened with the old zabuton cushions we found tucked away in the tansus. Many had hardly been used, and they were perfectly suitable for our home.

It was satisfying to see these belongings being used again rather than remaining hidden in storage.

Some objects had sentimental value and deserved to be preserved respectfully. Others were useful simply because they were well made and still in good condition.

I suppose the Japanese expression mottainai comes to mind.

But I didn’t begin sorting through the house because I wanted to practice a particular Japanese philosophy.

I’ve always enjoyed organizing things, even before moving to Japan.

What changed was that I suddenly had a large collection of old belongings to work with, along with the time to inspect them properly.

And the more I looked, the more possibilities I discovered.

I also found old gardening tools.

At first, they were simply more things to clean, inspect, and organize. But eventually they drew my attention to the garden outside.

There were trees, shrubs, raised beds, and old stone garden arrangements that had been there long before I arrived.

Gardening wasn’t something I had done back in the Netherlands, but having the tools and a garden of our own made me curious enough to give it a try.

That interest eventually developed into something much bigger, but it began with finding tools that someone else had left behind.

Looking back, I find it interesting how one activity led to another.

I started by cleaning and organizing the house because I enjoyed the physical work and the satisfaction of putting things in order.

Then I began finding uses for the things we had kept.

Some became part of our kitchen. Others found a place elsewhere in the household. And a few led me to activities I hadn’t previously considered.

Not everything needed to be preserved, of course. There were plenty of things that were beyond repair or simply had no practical use anymore.

But deciding what to keep was just as satisfying as deciding what to throw away.

I didn’t need to buy something new to make our home more comfortable or useful. Often, I only needed to look carefully at what was already there.

And perhaps that’s what I enjoyed most about those first two years.

I wasn’t trying to create an entirely new household from scratch.

I was gradually discovering what we already had and finding ways to make it part of our lives again.