Tag: decluttering

Get your Home in Order and your Life will Follow.
Photo by Volha Flaxeco on Unsplash

One of the best things you can do for yourself over the month of January is to clean, declutter, organise and Feng Shui your home.

Seriously, get your home in order and it will reap benefits in other areas of your life.

I know that sounds like a lot of work, but you do have a full month to do it. A month when there’s often not a lot of exciting social activities to distract you (even pre-Covid times).

And if you’re looking to bring about meaningful change in your life over the coming year, this work is a perfect foundation. Because spring cleaning is emotional clearing.

It has this magical, alchemical effect on our energy. It’s as if clearing out the physical debris in our homes has a metaphysical correlation on the mental and emotional stuff that’s been weighing us down.

It’s amazing how many people report an upturn in their mood, their creativity and the opportunities coming their way after a thorough decluttering of their homes.

So while spring cleaning might not be a traditional January activity, this year more than ever, it’s a great time to focus on sorting out your home.

So tidy up the coat and boot mess in your entryway. Clean and reorganise your kitchen cupboards. On a dry day, wash your windows, even if there’s still plenty more rain to come in the weeks ahead.

Go through your home room by room and remove anything that you don’t actively love, or use. Stop holding onto ornaments, artwork and knick knacks that were gifted to you by loved ones, unless you love the actual gift as much as the gesture.

At the same time, make a list of any repairs that need to be made. Undone tasks are a form of mental clutter, and they drain our energy on a subconscious level every time we notice them. So make that list, and start ticking the items off it as you move through the month.

Learn about the Feng Shui bagua, which divides your home into nine equal zones that energetically correspond with different aspects of your life: health and wellbeing, relationships, finances, career path, personal development, family and community, reputation, travel and helpful people.

When you regard a corner of your home as being reflective of your financial situation, it will motivate you to keep it in good order.

There are a lot of rules and guidelines that Westerners may not resonate with, but the important lesson we can all benefit is to create homes where the energy can circulate freely.

This is why decluttering can have such a powerful effect on our lives, not just our homes.

Piles of stuff that need to be sorted through, cleared away, or moved around when we need to get to whatever they’re blocking, is a constant drain on our energy—even if we’re not consciously aware of it.

When we declutter and clean, we also cleanse the space on an energetic level and leave room for that energy to move unhindered around our homes. On the contrary, clutter causes stagnation in our homes’ energy, and also in our lives.

And quite apart from the Feng Shui benefits, a decluttered home helps us in other, simple ways which generally improve our day to day experiences in our homes:
- Less items to accumulate dust makes it easier to clean and improves respiratory health issues.
- Precious time is saved when we no longer need to hunt for items.
- Decluttered spaces are calm spaces, and calm spaces are easier to relax in than busy ones.
- We can use our space and furniture properly, for example sitting to eat at the dining table instead of balancing a plate on our lap because the table is buried under books, paperwork and ironing.
- We can see all the clothes we own and access them more easily. Although the quantity of our clothes will decrease, the variety of what we now wear will probably improve.
When our homes only contain what we need for the day-to-day functioning of our lives, and just enough artistic and decorative pieces to give us a lift, we gift ourselves with a home that is so much more than a shelter from the world.

It becomes a true sanctuary for our bodies, minds and souls.

Instead of draining our energy, our decluttered homes gives it a boost. And that empowers us in all the other areas we’re hoping to make changes.

If we didn’t know it before, 2020 taught us that our home is our castle. And it’s in our best interests to enable the energy to flow easily and make it as uplifting a space as possible.

So, let’s use this oft-maligned first month of the new year to get our houses in order.

First published on Newsbreak.com
January 4, 2021
Spring Clean with Me.

Photo by Good Soul Shop on Unsplash

Spring cleaning and decluttering our homes makes them far more pleasant spaces to spend time in…need I say more in the current circumstances?

It’s the time of year for it anyway, and with all the extra time we’re spending at home it’s a perfect opportunity to tackle it.

I started a couple of days ago with my entryway and yesterday I tackled my kitchen. Today I still have plenty to do in the kitchen – the more hidden areas. But the external area of the kitchen is now making my heart sing and I’m happy to cook and eat there again. (And do what work I do have left at the kitchen table – I have mostly been doing that from the sofa.)

I’ve made a short before and after video of both my kitchen and entryway, in the hopes that it will motivate you to join in with me. They’re all on my Facebook page and you can view them on the following links:

Entryway: Before

Entryway: After

Kitchen: Before

Kitchen: After

If you have kids at home with you who are old enough, get them involved – it’s an important life skill so qualifies as home-schooling, methinks. 😉

Next up for me will be my bedroom and bathroom. Followed by living room and the middle hallway (that I pass through a gazillion times a day).

I’m aiming to complete my entire home this week. But if you’d prefer a baby-steps approach then my 30 day decluttering challenge might help. That’s a free resource that you can get here.

Come, Spring Clean with me! 🙂

You might also be interested in:

Spring Cleaning is Emotional Clearing.

March 24, 2020
To Close the Year Strong, Detox your Home.

As autumn hits and the end of the year fast approaches, the signs around us in nature are all about endings (to make way for new beginnings).

Maybe it’s a resistance to what is—such a human quality—and not wanting to let go of the more active energy of the brighter months. Or maybe it’s a sense of panic related to our (perceived) lack of achievement around the goals we set back in January.

And maybe it’s simply because the “back to school” routine was ingrained in our psyches during our formative years. Whatever it is, autumn often sees us refocusing our attention on what we want to get done before we ring out the old year on December 31st.

And a good old home detox can be a powerful tool in this process.

As we clear out our physical stuff, something magical takes place on the metaphysical level. Old mental and emotional issues can come to the surface, to be fully felt and finally released. And clearing out the non-physical, alongside the physical, also clears the path forward. Not only is the physical debris removed, but blocks in our psyches can also be dissolved.

Hence the popularity of Marie Kondo’s KonMari movement: Clearing out your home really can be magically life-changing.

And the only way to test the theory is to give it a go.

Over the coming weeks, why not resolve to clear out as much of your physical clutter as you can—and see what knock-on effect that has on your personal energy levels, your creativity, enthusiasm, and outlook on life.

There are different ways to approach the challenge. The KonMari method is to organise in categories and to create a huge pile in one place in your home. Pick up each piece, ask if it sparks joy, and if not then thank it and move to a donate/recycle/bin pile.

For me, this method is overwhelming. I prefer to go room-by-room, or area-by-area. A fantastic resource for this is Declutter your life with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston. As well as guiding you through the decluttering process, it’s a fabulous Feng Shui primer. It’s the book that turned me on to decluttering and, like me, everyone I’ve loaned it to got the decluttering under way before they finished the book.

When I couldn’t find a start-today online challenge that guides you through the process, I created one myself. My free guide leads you through a room-by-room method through manageable daily tasks. I designed it for those (like me) who get overwhelmed by the very idea of undertaking a giant purge in one day, one weekend, or even one week. (If it appeals, sign up here.)

You’ll also find thousands of videos on YouTube to guide, inspire, and motivate. The most important thing is to get started. Start with your purse, with a single drawer, with the cupboard under the kitchen sink. Once you get started, an energetic momentum gathers and it’s much easier to keep going.

The home detox golden guideline is this: love it, use it, or lose it.

If you feel able to commit to clearing a full room or area, but are wondering where to start, try the entryway to your home. Make it so that it uplifts your energy every time you walk through the door. Clear away the summer jackets, shoes, and bags, and bring out what you’ll need for the coming new season. Organise a system for keys and whatever else you usually grab on your way out. And place something on a wall or shelf that will cause you to smile when you come home.

Hopefully, completing one area will motivate you to detox another. When resistance arises, remember that it will reap benefits on the metaphysical realm as well as the physical.

View your home detox as a self-care exercise, because that’s precisely what it is. On a well-being level, we gain so much more than we lose. And all that we lose, we no longer need anyway so there’s really no losing involved. It’s win-win all around.

First published on elephantjournal.com

Photo by Sarah Brown on Unsplash

Thank you for reading. You may also enjoy:

Decluttering is an Act of Self Care.

September 2, 2019
Spring is Coming: Why you Should Set your New Year Intentions Now.

At the beginning of January, the world is awash with new year intentions and resolutions—and before the month is out, most of them have fallen by the wayside.

There are many reasons for this, and often they stem from the place where we set them (e.g. self-loathing instead of self-love).

However, one I rarely see discussed—and which I firmly believe plays its own role—is this: it’s simply the wrong time.

January is in the depths of winter. Although the days are beginning to get longer, it’s still a dark month. And cold.

It is a time for hibernation. For deep reflection.

And for relishing in the opportunity to snuggle indoors and dream about our year ahead.

Setting new year intentions and resolutions early in this month can be somewhat self-defeating because we have to dig quite deep to get ourselves into motion. We have to rely on willpower rather than a natural spark of energy. And willpower is a battery that can run down very quickly. I’m sure it works well for the determined Type A personalities, but for the rest of us, there is an alternative approach we can choose.

If instead, we spend the month of January playing around with ideas about what we could do (not must, or should) in the coming year and wait just a few weeks before we commit ourselves to action, we might see different results.

February marks the approach of spring. We start to see more light in the mornings, as well as the evenings. And the increasing daylight has a more noticeable effect.

In the coming weeks and months, we’ll prepare the ground and start sowing seeds in our gardens and on our window sills. These seeds will grow into food to nourish our bodies and flowers to nourish our souls.

Why not align our minds with the natural rhythms of nature and choose this time to sow the seeds for our life changes too?

Spring puts a bounce in our step. If our bodies are aligned with the cycles of nature, we do feel a sense of reawakening after the slumbering months of winter. As the days and weeks go by, it becomes easier to motivate ourselves to go outdoors for a morning or evening walk, a run or a social gathering.

It makes sense that this be the time when we decide to implement changes—if we feel that’s appropriate for us.

And before we decide on how we’re going to make changes, it’s helpful to lay the foundation by decluttering. (It’s the equivalent of weeding the soil before we sow our seeds.)

If we want to welcome in something new or different, we need to make space in our lives, and spring cleaning our homes has a magically cathartic effect on our hearts and minds. Do it mindfully, holding the intention for what you want to draw into your experience, and more pertinently, how you want to experience your world.

While clearing out whatever is no longer of use, it’s helpful to reflect on the true desires underpinning our goals. What is the essence, or the feeling we want to experience? Setting intentions around that will help us to be kinder and more realistic in deciding the paths we will follow to achieve them.

While I do believe any day is a good day to start over, I also believe in harnessing the power of nature when it can help us. And right now, in nature, we are on the cusp of endings and beginnings. So now is a great time to say goodbye to what no longer serves us and make space for something new. Springtime is a better time for setting our new year intentions.

So if all your resolutions have already melted away into the river of abandoned goals, then consider revisiting them again in the coming weeks with a fresh perspective.

Image: Markus Spiske/Usplash

First published on elephant journal.

February 2, 2019

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