Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui (Revised and Updated)

by Karen Kingston

  ⬦ A whole house full of possessions kept by a woman who bought herself a new home next door and didn’t want to clutter it by taking all her things with her.

  If you dig around in your home, you will probably find your own absurd items to add to this list.

  The wonderful thing is that once you fully understand your own role in creating the sudden need for things you have finally decided to get rid of, this scenario stops happening. Instead, when you let things go, you either never need them again, or if you do, similar or better things will somehow turn up in your life at the right time. There’s a certain knack to this, it’s true, but anyone can learn it. The more clarity and integrity you have in your life, the more you’ll find that things come to you when you need them.

  IDENTITY

  Another reason you may get attached to your belongings is that you feel your identity is somehow tied up in them. You can look at a ticket stub from a performance you went to ten years ago and say, “Yes, I was there, I did that.” You can look at a gift given to you by a friend and say, “Yes, I had a friend who cared enough about me to give me this.” By keeping these reminders around you, you may feel more secure in who you are.

  It is fine to keep some gifts and mementos of happy times, providing they still have current value for you and are not so numerous that they anchor your energy too much in the past instead of the present. You can make sure of this by having regular clear-outs to keep the things you surround yourself with up-to-date with who you are and who you wish to become.

  However, clearing outdated belongings of this type can present unique difficulties. You sometimes identify with them so strongly that you feel you are throwing a part of yourself away, or if discarding a gift from a friend, that you are throwing your friend’s kindness away. This accounts for the many ambivalent feelings about clearing sentimental clutter and, to a certain extent, these feelings are valid. Our possessions do become filled with our own frequencies, and the things we use often, feel fond of, or created ourselves are particularly permeated with our own energy. Gifts from friends, especially treasured items that they “want you to have,” are permeated with their energy.

  This, incidentally, is one of the deeper reasons why people feel so emotionally devastated when they lose everything as a result of theft, fire, or flood. They are grieving for the parts of themselves and their friends they have lost with the possessions (although with hindsight they usually come to see the event as a wonderful opportunity to have a fresh start in life).

  The fact is that our own continuance and well-being do not depend on keeping certain objects in our possession. It is perfectly okay to let these things go. If you identify very strongly with certain things and want to make it easy on yourself, see that they go to a good new home. Let them go with love, and give them to someone who will appreciate and use them. In this way, you will eventually come to feel guiltier about holding on to them than letting them go, because if you hold on to them, you become the obstacle to letting those objects have a whole new lease on life with someone who will really use and value them!

  STATUS

  Otherwise known as “keeping up with the Joneses.” This serves the function of bolstering low self-esteem. Now, I am not saying that everyone who lives in a grand mansion has low self-esteem. Far from it. But many people do create the trappings of prosperity around themselves simply to keep up appearances, and no amount of “stuff” will ever be enough until they tackle the deeper issues of self-worth.

  It’s so easy in our modern-day possession-oriented world to lose track of who you are and why you are here. Nowhere is this more evident than in the United States, where personal status is so often defined not by who you are, but by what you are worth. However, if you own things for this reason, you are buying into an illusion, for you cannot take any of it with you when you go. Your status as an eternal Spirit is defined by an entirely different set of principles than those set by our transient, materialistic world.

  SECURITY

  While it is reasonable to have a basic nesting instinct and create a home that serves your needs, there is a point where the motivation for acquiring things goes off track. Modern advertising is deliberately designed to play on our insecurities. “If you don’t have one of these, you will be a lesser human being” is one of the consistent underlying messages we receive. To discover just how much you are influenced, I challenge you to try not to read the advertising billboards next time you go down the street. Unless you are in a country where you don’t understand the language, this is very difficult to do. These multimillion-dollar advertising messages relentlessly condition us in very persuasive ways without our ever realizing it. We are bombarded by them—television, radio, newspapers, magazines, posters, T-shirts, the Internet, you name it—all encouraging us to buy, buy, buy.

  But here’s the thing—no matter how many possessions you have, you never feel secure. As soon as you get one thing, there is always something else you “need.” And also, you have the added problem of worrying about losing the stuff you already have. Some of the most insecure people I know are multimillionaires. Eventually you come to realize that all things are constantly in a state of change. There is no such thing as security. It’s a myth.

  TERRITORIALISM

  Let’s look at what happens when you decide to buy something new. Suppose you are out shopping, looking for a new jacket. You find one you really like, leave it for a moment to check that there isn’t one you like better, and along comes another shopper who picks up the jacket and looks interested in buying it. Panic wells up inside you—“That’s MY jacket,” you are thinking. And then there is the relief when the person puts it down and moves on, or the awkwardness of butting in and saying you were there first. These feelings can be very intense, but realistically it’s only a jacket, which minutes before meant nothing to you.

  Then you buy it and take it home, and your connection to the jacket strengthens. If the next day it gets accidentally stained, ripped, mangled by a passing elephant, or whatever, it feels like a calamity! Disaster! Heartbreak! And yet, two days earlier, before it came into your life, it meant nothing to you. What’s going on?

  This territorialism and desire to possess things come from a lower, grasping part of you that strives to own and control things. Your Spirit already knows you own nothing. It is a matter of realizing that your happiness does not depend on your ownership of things. They can help you in your journey but they are not the journey itself.

  INHERITED CLUTTERITIS

  We learn most of our behavior patterns from our parents. And if one or both of your parents are or were clutterholics, the chances are that their parents were, too, and their parents before them. These patterns are passed down through the generations.

  So that you can appreciate the immensity of what you are up against if you come from a long line of clutterholics, let me relate an astonishing fact I discovered. If you go back just six hundred years in your family tree, which is about twenty generations, and if each of your clutterbug forerunners replaced themselves by producing just two offspring with their spouse, then the total number of your direct ancestors in that period will total over one million people. That’s a lot of clutterholicism to contend with!

  The “just in case” mentality is part of the psychological state of poverty consciousness (the opposite of prosperity consciousness), and is usually handed down from parent to child. So you, yourself, may never have gone hungry or wanted for anything in your life, but because those who brought you up once experienced such hardships, they instilled the same fears in you. Thus people in America still carry the emotional luggage of fears handed down from the time of the Great Depression of 1929, many in Ireland carry the legacy of the Great Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, people from many nations remember the scarcity or rationing of wartime, and so on. By choosing to think differently, you can free yourself from the anxieties of those who broug
ht you up, and when you go one step further and focus on abundance rather than lack, you will happily let go of things you no longer need. In fact, you will be eager to let them go to create more space for good things to come to you.

  What will happen to your children if you don’t learn how to deal with clutteritis yourself? Now is your chance to clean up your family line for all the generations yet to come, and help yourself in the process, too.

  A BELIEF THAT MORE IS BETTER

  Here’s an example of this mind-set. In the West we have a whole selection of culinary knives in our kitchens. We have small knives for chopping small things and big knives for chopping big things; some have pointed blades, some are square-edged; some are lightweight, some are heavy. We carefully select the most appropriate knife for the task at hand.

  Go to Bali and you will find something interesting. Not only do households have only one knife that can be used for many more purposes than we can imagine, but even a five-year-old child is usually more dexterous with it than most Western cooks (just ask one to peel a pineapple for you!). We have been brainwashed by advertising moguls into believing that we need a huge range of cutting implements, and now most of us have lost the skills to manage without them.

  This “more is better” theme is constantly being touted to us by manufacturers who want to create a need in order to sell their products, and gullible folk fall for it every time. Next time one of those “useful-gadgets-you-didn’t-realize-you-needed” catalogs pops into your mailbox, spend a hilarious half-hour reading it and almost getting convinced how much better your life would be if you only had a nonslip, multipurpose, easy-care whatever-it-is, and then toss the brochure gleefully in the trash without ordering. Pulling back from the brink of near-certain shopping is tremendously empowering, and you never would have used the gadget anyway!

  “SCROOGENESS”

  Entrenched clutterholics refuse to let go of their junk until they feel they have really gotten their money’s worth from it. This applies even if the item was purchased at a bargain price or picked up for nothing. It feels indecent to let it go until every last drop of usefulness has been wrung out of it, even if it means that it sits on the shelf indefinitely, waiting for its time to come.

  However, if you are hanging on to things for this reason, you will find that life does not treat you kindly. Good things cannot easily come into your life if you block the flow of energy by persistently clinging to outdated clutter. Relax your hold a little and see what happens.

  USING CLUTTER TO SUPPRESS EMOTIONS

  Do you feel uncomfortable with too much empty space around you or too much free time? Clutter conveniently fills that space and keeps you busy. But what are you avoiding? Usually it is loneliness, fear of intimacy, grief, or some other buried emotion that is easier to submerge in clutter than to cope with. However, it takes a tremendous amount of energy to keep that emotion suppressed. You will be surprised at how your life takes off when you finally face your fears and find yourself. Clearing your clutter is one of the most painless ways to do this because you can do it at your own pace.

  OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDERS

  Some people have so much clutter they have what amounts to a serious obsessive-compulsive disorder. If you have reached the stage where you never throw anything away because you are so worried you may discover later that you need it, this book will help you to understand your problem, but you will also need to seek the professional help of an experienced therapist (cognitive-behavior therapy has a good success rate). I have met people who save every cash register receipt, plastic bag, newspaper, and everything else because of the paralyzing fear of what could happen if they didn’t. Then, instead of being a nurturing place from which they can launch themselves into the world, their home becomes their self-created nightmare.

  While clutter clearing is by no means a substitute for appropriate therapy, it can be a vital part of the recovery process on the journey to a happier, obsession-free life. For further insights, read the story of “Mr. More, The Man Who Couldn’t Throw Anything Away” in Raeann Dumont’s book, The Sky Is Falling (see the bibliography).

  The process of clearing clutter is all about letting go. Not just letting go of your belongings—that is only the end result. The most important thing is learning to let go of the fear that makes you hold on to things long after it is time to move them on their way.

  “THEY’VE COME FOR THE STEREO”

  In 1990, I decided I wanted to live in Bali, Indonesia, so that’s what I did. Sometimes people tell me they wish their lives could be so free. They imagine that I started out with pots of money and could do whatever I wanted, but the truth is I started with nothing except an ardent desire to live in Bali and a willingness to change everything to achieve this. When people look honestly at their own lives to see what prevents them from doing something they say they really want to do, a lot of it is attachment to possessions. They have set up their lives so that they are not free to do what they really yearn to do.

  Stuart Wilde has a chapter in his book Infinite Self called “Hold On to Nothing.” In it he explains:

  Everything you have is in the care of the God Force. If you come home and the stereo is missing, you can say, “Ah, they’ve come for the stereo,” rather than getting uptight about it. It’s just gone back to the God Force. Somebody else has it now. That leaves space for another stereo to come into your life. Or it leaves space for no stereo at all. Now you’ll have the silence to meditate and think about who you are and what you want in this life.

  And if you’re looking for something to spend your money on, here’s his advice:

  The whole function of money is not to have it; its function is to use it. The main reason for generating money is to buy experiences. You want to get to the end of your life with zilch in the bank, and look back and say, “My God, look at this huge pile of experiences,” because none of your memories are ever lost.

  JUST PASSING THROUGH

  Life is constantly changing. So when an object comes into your life, enjoy it, use it well, and when it is time, let it go. It is that simple. Just because you own something doesn’t mean you have to keep it forever. You are just a temporary custodian of many things as they pass through your life. You can’t, after all, take them with you when you die!

  Everything material is merely energy in transition. You may think you own a house or have money in the bank, but the fact is you don’t even own the body you stand up in. It is on loan from the planet, and after you are done with it, it will be automatically recycled and appear in a different form without you. You are Spirit—glorious, eternal, indestructible Spirit—and your human circumstance is what can best be described as a transient “rent-a-body” situation.

  Your body is the temporary temple of your Spirit. What you keep around you in the extended temple of your home needs to change as you change and grow, so that it reflects who you are. Particularly if you are engaged in any kind of self-improvement work, you need to update your environment regularly. So get in the habit of leaving a trail of discarded clutter in your wake, and start to think of it as a sign of your progression!

  LET GO OF FEAR

  People hold on to their clutter because they are afraid to let it go—afraid of the emotions they may experience in the process of sorting through it, afraid they will make a mistake and later regret getting rid of something, afraid they will leave themselves vulnerable, exposed, or at risk in some way. Clearing physical clutter can bring up a lot of emotions, as well, and intuitively everybody knows it.

  However, the rewards of clutter clearing are well worth it. Love and fear cannot exist in the same space, so everything you are holding on to through fear is blocking you from having more love in your life; clearing it allows more love to start pouring in. Fear stops you from being who you truly are and doing what you came here to do; clearing clutter brings you greater clarity a
bout your life purpose. Fear suppresses your vital life force energy; releasing clutter helps reconnect you to your own natural vitality. Letting go of clutter leaves you free to be all you can be, which is one of the greatest gifts you can ever give yourself.

  If the previous chapters didn’t get you motivated to start clearing your clutter, this one is sure to make an impact.

  THE BAGUA CLUTTER CHECK

  The feng shui bagua is a grid that reveals how the different areas of any building you occupy are connected to specific aspects of your life.

  If there is a particular area of your home or workplace that always seems to get cluttered as fast as you unclutter it, see where in the bagua it is located and check what is happening in that aspect of your life. You will likely find that this is a part of your life that needs constant attention and keeps causing problems. Our lives and the buildings we occupy are strongly connected, so it is wise to be more selective about what you keep in that area in order to bring greater ease and harmony to that part of your life.

  Storing out-and-out junk anywhere can have a more serious effect. A junk room in your Prosperity area, for example, can create financial problems in your life.

  An accountant who attended one of my workshops decided to put this to the test. His business had slumped and he noticed that in the Prosperity area of his office he had a stack of broken mirrors and decorative items. He cleared them out and was astonished to receive not just one but two phone calls within a few days from inquirers who became major new clients. What was even more extraordinary was that these were large corporate businesses that had become exasperated with their existing accounting firm and suddenly decided to find a new one through the most unusual route of looking through the Yellow Pages. His accounting firm just happened to be the first name they picked. He was so impressed he came back to take another workshop and to tell us the story. I have heard of countless similar successes over the years.