Clear Your Clutter!

How to Make Way for What You Want

Have you got a build-up of stuff in your home? Feeling stuck or apprehensive how to move on? Even If your Feng Shui is excellent, you won’t be able to take advantage of it if your house is full of clutter. Here’s some helpful hints…

When we first choose a home, we do so because we *like* it; therefore our home is an extension of ourselves, our personalities.

Once we’ve moved in our belongings, our home portrays our character and how we like to live.

That means, if we care deeply about our home, we care about ourselves, too.

Our ‘stuff’ helps us to live our lives comfortably, and gives us comfort because we feel we have everything we need. Yet, everything we need is really, right in front of us when we stand in front of the mirror.

(Have you seen my ABCTV appearance with Wendy Harmer on ‘Stuff’ – on my website).

According to the principles of yin and yang, we experience different periods of ups and downs in our lives. With this in mind, we can anticipate what will happen next. How to do this? When we are really busy in our lives (yang), expect the next phase will be quiet (yin); when there is clutter in the house (yin), the next phase will be clearing out (yang).

It’s a natural cycle that can be applied to anything in our lives.

So if you have clutter (and we all do!), then it’s time to decide what you need in order to live a happy life and what doesn’t serve you any more.

I recently went through this myself after I sold my business and moved out of my apartment. It’s the decision-making process that becomes harder as we’re sorting, and sometimes we give up. That’s okay, take time off to de-stress and then get back to the task later; give yourself your *own* timeframe.

A friend once said to me about making decisions, consider: is it good, is it true, is it beautiful? I like this philosophy. I’ve changed it a little…

Is it Good? – Does it make you feel good to know you have it? Or is it just a ‘thing’ that you don’t need any more?

Is It Useful? – Is that item useful and can you really find a use for it?

Is it Beautiful? – Does it ‘spark joy’ (as famous Japanese clutter clearing expert Marie Kondo would say).

The question is: What do we need in order to be happy in life?

Perhaps something tragic, an unpleasant event, has happened in the past; this can trigger a sense of loss, and that sense of loss can cause us to hold onto stuff we don’t really need. We fear more loss, or, we wish to retain memories.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed right now, don’t worry, it will pass.

1. When starting a clearance, begin with one room at a time, and the most important place in the house to be clutter free is the entrance hall. The front door must be able to open completely with no restrictions. This is the ‘mouth of qi‘ so it’s important to keep the area clean, neat and tidy.

2. These days many of us work from home so the next place of clearing should be the office:
   1. Sort – What do you need for your business? Make a list. Sort out the paperwork on your desk, some of it can be tossed, filed, or you can photograph/scan the documents and put them in a file in your computer, if you need them later.
   2. Declutter – remove anything from your desk that doesn’t relate to your business, even including desk ornaments at first, so you can get a good picture of the size and use of your desk.
   3. Where does it go? – Allocate places in your home for different types of items, such as laundry for cleaning and washing items (good to keep chemicals out of the kitchen too); craft room for all your projects; bedroom for personal items, clothing etc.; bathroom; garage for things you don’t use any more or can’t decide what to do with yet.

3. We are nothing without our health so the next place to remove clutter should be our bedroom. There should be no items at all under the bed, and the room should be very tidy and most importantly, dust-free to protect our health.

4. Bathrooms often accumulate way too many personal care products that we don’t really use or need. An easy way to decide what you need here is to check the chemical list of the products. You’ll soon find you’re not purchasing them any more!

5. Then go on to do the rest of the house afterwards, removing items and making decisions on the way, you’ll be so glad you did it when you’re finished; and that doesn’t mean it can’t take a while, there’s no rush.

6. Buy containers – Then label each container and try not to fill them up! Have a couple of containers in each room you’re working on because inevitably you’ll find items that belong elsewhere; place these in a container and move them later in the day, don’t get distracted. Finish one room at a time..

7. Not sure? Put a use by date – I found this suggestion on one website and I like it. If you’re not sure you want to keep something, put a use-by date on it and if it hasn’t been used by then, discard it.

8. Special memories – In your Feng Shui report I’ll suggest the best place for family photos. It’s understandable to want to hold onto something that reminds us of the past…that’s fine, perhaps make up a collage of memories and place them on the wall where I suggest.

So there’s my guidelines, and it’s a good time to start now! The problem is letting go!!! If you consider good-useful-beautiful, if it’s not useful then it must be useless, so let it go!

The only constant in our life is change.

Want to make a change?

Prepare for change and it will come to you, naturally.