Top Clutter Tips from our Experts – Part 2
Lightening the Load of Your Clutter – Clutter is exhausting. You see it every day. You want to deal with it; but it’s overwhelming. You don’t know where to start. So you put it off another day. Read Part 2 of this incredible series, Top Clutter Tips by the Professionals of the IFSG
Clutter’s Affect on You
Clutter can be overwhelming – and as professionals, it’s the last thing we want you to feel. Understand that you can’t get it all done at once and in a certain time frame. Pressure to get it all done at once puts a negative spin on things – and that is never going to be a good thing in Feng Shui! Feng Shui is focused on the bringing in and welcoming the very best beneficial energies and opportunities – better than we can imagine for ourselves! Junky closets can represent a junky subconscious meaning junky stuff in life. The closet with everything on the floor in front of us shows also the thought patterns attached to them whether it’s hoarding, feeling lack, hiding from life, or disorganization.
Clearing that closet or that one space not only helps with the physical – but also cleanses the emotional and mental. Clearing your stuff clears the old thought patterns. When that space is cleaned, you find the clarity of the skeletons in the closets that were hidden also becoming clearer and easier to change.
Get in the Mood
Stuck and can’t get started? Sometimes a mood change and a clear focus can help get you in the right frame of mind. Here are a couple of different strategies might work for you:
- Get your own personal chi as well as your environmental chi as yang as possible before you begin clutter clearing – turn on the lights, play happy music, burn incense, open the windows, wear happy colors and use essential oils. Your attitude and mind-shift can make all the difference in the success of your clearing!
- For items to be donated to charity, visualize how much someone else will enjoy using what you no longer need and how ‘good’ that will feel.
- To create a smooth process of clearing closets, drawers, the basement and garage, clear worry and anxiety from your mind. Go to bed and in the drowsy state, just before falling asleep, use visualization to create the new vision of what you look forward to. Replace worry with good, lightening your mind. Then see the things you love but have difficulty letting go of finding their way into boxes, perhaps going to a friend or neighbor whom you know would be excited to receive them. Wake up with an energized mental attitude that allows you to more easily move forward.
Strategies
From part one, you know that it’s important to take action and often beneficial to set a finite amount of time to work in a particular space. Take that one step further and think about how your emotional lightening of clutter can be enhanced:
High Traffic and Energy Spaces: Begin in one of the rooms in which you spend the most time – you will feel more often surrounded by your accomplishment and be energized by it. Being surrounded by the positive energy shift will actually help you continue creating a positive symbiotic relationship. Additionally, consider de-cluttering the most often daily used entrance as early in the process as possible. Nothing can “suck the life out of you” as quickly as seeing (and feeling) the clutter as you enter your space. Focus on creating a “welcome home” feeling in that entrance. It will enhance your desire to spread the joy through the rest of your place.
One Thing: Often when someone gets the “guilts” about clutter, it’s when we are in the middle of something else. A way to shift that negative energy and use it for positive outcome is to commit to moving – and resolving – at least one item, space, piece of paper when that feeling occurs. You can also expand this to resolving two or three things as you get better at the process. This can help you get closer to organized, prevents guilt-tripping, and liberates the energy needed to complete the task. (Chocolate rewards are also beneficial!)
Stay on Task: Sometimes you can work a lot but don’t see the great outcome you would like. Work to discipline yourself to stay in one room, to stay on task. Place a clothes basket near the door for anything that goes out of that room. Put on a book on CD/podcast, something engaging enough to stay in the room and work, but that does not require concentration or attention. Lively fiction often does the trick. It works a charm for basement cleanup or anywhere the tasks are more physical than mental.
Off the floor: For help with overcoming melancholy and depression, avoid storing stacks of items or boxes on the floor. This drags energy downward and contributes to feelings of helplessness and moving forward.
Other People’s Stuff
It’s important to note that you can’t unclutter other people’s clutter! (i.e. wife can’t gut the husband’s ‘man cave.’)
Make de-cluttering a family affair… and make it fun. Pick up each item and ask:
- Do I use it?
- Do I Love it?
- Is it broken… if so, can it be fixed?
- Do I want to fix it?
- What would my life be like without it in 5 years?
Often, when the “clutter offender” sees the other household member(s) willing to let some of their items go; the “offender” may be more willing to participate. Encourage but don’t do it for them. Set up the space for the great energy shifts and they won’t help but feel a shift themselves. They won’t be able to help feeling it!
Feng Shui and Clutter
Feng Shui and clutter go hand in hand. To use Feng Shui in your space, you strive to surround yourself with energy and belongings that work for your higher good; support you and provide you the opportunities and dreams you desire. It’s about loving where you live and nurturing your mind, body, and soul.
Clutter stops all that.
Use Feng Shui to help in your clutter clearing process.
Clutter can’t be looked at in isolation. Combine it with an understanding of your chi to find solutions that work for you, your situation, your space, and your chi. There may be a particular area of your life that is of interest to work on first. Identify where to start the clutter clearing process by identifying which life area as related to the Bagua that you would like to impact. For example, looking to find a new job or enhance current employment, start in the Career/Life Path Gua.
Look at the chi flow inside and outside using your senses. Identify the gua(s) where the clutter is the worst. Check it’s opposite and the state in that gua. Check the physical aspects pertaining to the guas. Consider any physical or medical issues you might be experiencing. Find ways to balance the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual of the attachment and know that it is ok to release the stuff.
Final Thought
Clutter clearing can be a treat. You may find new items that you forgotten about and now get to disperse them to a new home or place of organization. Lovingly re-circling and re-cylcing the energy of all!
Contributors: Grace Becker, Renate Bell, Elaine Bentley Baughn, Laurie Bornstein, Tina Falk, Diane Gallin, Sandie Gates, Ann Marie Hunt, Joan Law, Susan McDowell, Lesley Mulvihill, Carol Olmstead, Terri Perrin, Rosalie Prinzivalli, Mary Shurtleff, Bette Steflik, Elizabeth Teberio, Marina Umali, Nicolette Vajtay, Caroline Waddington, Gwynne Warner
Don’t miss part one of this article – so many clutter tips to get you started on your decluttering journey! Free your energy and try at least one of these tips today. You got this! And if you need more help, you can head over to our professional consultant directory and search for any of these contributing authors.
