feng shui clutter clearing
A few years ago, around late 1999 I was living with a guy that had so much stuff that a few months after he moved in there were still unpacked boxes in the hallway. The boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling and over the next few months, even though he was in debt, he accumulated even more stuff. For christmas that year I gave him a book by Lillian Too called “Clear your Clutter with Feng Shui”. I thought he may be a little offended by it. But it was just added to his pile of stuff.
Before I gave him the book I had a look at it myself. It was a small pocket guide and I found a page that really summarised the whole book. Leaving aside all the ringing of bells and incense there were four guidelines for clearing out your stuff.
- Things you do not use or love
- Things untidy or disorganised
- Too many things in too small a space
- Anything unfinished
One could summarize this further with “Use it or lose it”.
Even though my housemate didn’t put the book to use, I certainly did. And it has to be done on an ongoing basis because stuff in continually coming into ones dwelling place. And more stuff comes in than goes out. So where do we start?
Storage would be a good place. All those things that we keep in paid storage. Couldn’t we just get rid of them? Well some of them I guess. But if we got rid of other things then perhaps we wouldn’t need that paid storage anymore. If you don’t want to just throw it out, then you might consider something like freecycle or even sell it on ebay.
Books, CD’s, clothes, magazines. So much stuff that will never be used again. And doesn’t have any aesthetic appeal either. So it has to go. It’s hard I know. But little by little we can whittle it down and soon we will have more space and more energy.