The Effectiveness of Clutter Clearing

Excerpted from
Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui
By Karen Kingston

You and Your Home

The reason why clutter clearing is so effective is that while you are putting your external world in order there are corresponding changes going on internally too. Everything around you, especially your home environment, mirrors your inner self. So by changing your home you also change the possibilities in your own life. Removing the obstacles to the harmonious flow of energy in your living environment creates more harmony in your life and the space for wonderful new opportunities to come to you.

Go For It!

One woman who came to one of my workshops got so inspired that she went home and phoned up her local Goodwill shop and said, 'You are going to need to send a truck!" She cleared out her ancient stereo system, stacks and stacks of junk, and all but five items of clothing from her wardrobe. In doing this, she released huge amounts of stuck energy, which created space for something new to come in. A week later she received a check in the mail from her mother for $8,000, and she went straight out and bought herself a new sound system, a whole new wardrobe of wonderful clothes, and everything else she wanted.

She told me the check was totally unexpected, and that the last time her mother had sent her any money was ten years earlier! I don't recommend that everyone do this, but it certainly worked for her.

Here's an inspiring letter I received from a woman called Susan Byron who lives in Ireland. She read my book and also went in for clutter clearing in a big way:

I heard you on the radio this morning and I just had to write and tell you that I am moving house tomorrow and the only possessions I will be taking, apart from the husband, kids, favorite plants, and animals, is your book, my candles, incense, and bell.

So many wonderful things have happened to me since your book fell into my hands three months ago and I space cleared my house. I kept a diary and it listed over a hundred in about two weeks. To cut a long story short, we have since accomplished our ambition to move to County Clare on the West coast, finished our house, sold it, and put a deposit on a beautiful site on the Atlantic. Lots of obstacles have been overcome quite effortlessly and recurring problems stopped.

Another person wrote to tell me:

I have read your book . . . and have now cleared out most of the clutter and would like to undertake the full Space Clearing procedure. Since I first began clearing out two weeks ago, I have had three small wins, two on the lottery and one in a raffle-as I rarely if ever win anything, this could hardly be coincidence!

These kinds of letters arrive in my mailbox every day and are what has inspired me actually to write this book.

What Is Clutter Exactly?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines clutter as "a crowded and untidy collection of things." Yes, that's a part of it, but it only describes clutter at the purely physical level.

In my definition there are four categories of clutter:

• Things you do not use or love
• Things that are untidy or disorganized
• Too many things in too small a space
• Anything unfinished

Let's have a look at each of these so that you will be in no doubt as you read through this book where your own focus for clutter clearing needs to be.

Things You Do Not Use or Love

Things that are loved, used, and appreciated have strong, vibrant, joyous energies around them that allow the energy in the space to flow through and around them. If you have a clear focus in your life and you surround yourself with things that have this marvelous free-flowing energy, you will have a correspondingly happy, joyous, free-flowing life. Conversely, anything neglected, forgotten, unwanted, unloved, or unused will cause the energy in your home to slow and stagnate, and then you will feel that your life is not moving.

You are connected to everything you own by fine strands of energy. When your home is filled with things that you love or use well it becomes an incredible source of support and nourishment for you. Clutter, on the other hand, drags your energy down, and the longer you keep it, the more it will affect you. When you get rid of everything that has no real meaning or significance for you, you literally feel lighter in body, mind, and spirit.

Things That Are Untidy or Disorganized

This category is for the messy people of the world and the hopelessly disorganized. Even if you keep your stuff honed down to just the things you use and love, your place will still be cluttered if they are scattered all over the place and it's difficult to find items when you want them. Probably, like most messies, you maintain that there is order in your chaos and, what's more, that you need to keep things in the open to remind you of important things you have to do. But if someone actually puts you to the test and asks you where something is, at best you only know the general direction in which it lies and rarely its precise location.