Is your life stuck? Do you have trouble moving forward? Clearing your clutter could help you release fresh energy & gain fresh impetus.

Clutter is anything that you don’t use, need or want. In our consumer-based western cultures most of us have accumulated some! Unfortunately clutter collects stagnant energy & depending on what your clutter is & where you have it stored, your life will be suffering. Why? Because our homes mirror ourselves. How we are inside is shown by the state of our home outside.

Where to start
Take a mental or physical tour around your home. Where have you got piles of things you aren’t using? Think symbolically about what they represent for you. If you have heaps of unworn clothes your personal image may be ‘tired’, if you have stacks of unsorted papers on your desk your work may be stagnating & you may feel bogged down. If your attic is full to bursting you may lack clear ‘headspace’, if your basement is piled high you may have subconscious blocks and so on.

Prioritise
Many people have more than one area that is cluttered & more than one type of clutter. You need to decide where to start. Go for the pile that you feel intuitively is most troublesome first. A friend’s home is full to bursting with things- so much so it seems impossible for her to start clearing. I suggested work clearing the room by the front door first. Here her subconscious would have been noticing every unfinished project, every piece of furniture awaiting renovation, each time she entered or left her home. The clutter here was having a daily impact on her life (not to mention making a sweet little sitting room unusable.)

Is there a room that is difficult to negotiate across for the clutter? Is there a room you wouldn’t show visitors into? I confess I used to be a 'clutterholic' many years ago. I remember the box room was my office & paper littered the floor & built up until you literally waded through the slipping piles to the desk. At the time I didn’t realise how bad it was until friends came in to look at something on my computer & I saw their faces!

Plan a Strategy
I suggest my clients sort clutter into different categories. Separate things for the rubbish from things to pass to charity shops, from recycling, from things to gift to someone else and things to relocate to somewhere more appropriate in your home.

The rubbish and recycling for most people is the easy bit and is quite self-explanatory. Just watch that you aren’t in the ‘it might come in useful some day’ mindset. A friend had a mother with a 3-bed bungalow, but whenever she went to stay she had to take the couch because the two spare bedrooms were crammed with stuff. She wouldn’t throw out so much as an elastic band. If you are in this state of clutter paralysis get some help in.

Next charity shop or goodwill unwanted items- someone else may treasure an item that was simply gathering dust in your home. If you have a charity shop bag get it out of your home quickly…otherwise items have an uncanny knack of climbing back out!

If you are gifting items to individuals be sure to set a time limit for pick-up or delivery. I’ve seen people say “That’s for so & so.” When asked how long it has been there in some cases it has been waiting over a year for collection!

Sometimes items that are piled as clutter in one part of the house become vibrant again when moved. Perhaps you have too many ornaments crowded on your mantelpiece- they may be all very nice in their own right, but you can’t see their beauty because of the way they are displayed. Find somewhere different for them…and if your whole house is too full of beautiful things know that it is time to let go of a few to make space for the ones you really love.

If you feel in need of more inspiration I can recommend Karen Kingston’s little book ‘Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui’. It was an article about Karen’s work in a women’s magazine that woke me up to what clutter does years ago. I was on holiday on the beach when I read it & a light bulb just went on in my head- I couldn’t wait to return home & get clearing!

Happy decluttering!