Your Spring Clearing Action Plan

By Erica Sofrina, Author of Small Changes, Dynamic Results! Feng Shui for the Western World

There is something so freeing about unloading stuff in our closets and garages and everywhere that it has unconsciously accumulated in our homes and workplaces.

Doing a major clutter clearing is like throwing out all the clothes you’ve outgrown or that are out-dated, washing the rest and hanging everything up in the fresh air to dry. You energetically feel like you have been given a fresh new start, and you have! It’s like resetting your life. You get a fresh new chance to get organized, get it right and start over!

Do you notice how clutter seems to have babies? The few little things that landed on the floor next to the chair becomes a major clutter pile in no time.

The word clutter comes from the Middle-English word “clotter” which means to coagulate – which says it all. Clutter accumulates when the energy or “chi” is stagnant, and correspondingly, stagnant energy attracts more of the same.
According to Feng Shui clutter is considered things we don’t love, things we don’t use on a regular basis, untidy or unorganized things, unfinished projects, too many things in too small a space, things that no longer represent our current tastes or who we are now in our lives.

Things We Don’t Love: Things we love have vibrant energies that invoke a happy response in us. Things we don’t love and/or remind us of unpleasant or unhappy memories will bring our energy down, causing our space to feel stagnant and depressive.

Spring Action Plan; Weed out the things that fit into this category and donate, recycle and or throw them away. You will be moving them on to someone who will benefit from them and enjoy them, giving them another life!

Things that Don’t Reflect who we are Now: It is important to update our space to reflect our current tastes. We change completely every seven years and our space needs to reflect our new self. We might have decorated with earth tones but the new colors that feed us are blues and purples. Bring in the new more vibrant energy in pillows and accessories. It will freshen up and enliven the chi without the expense of completely redecorating.

Spring Action Plan: the Same as above

Disorganization: When our space is disorganized our lives feel out of control. We often feel shame at having people over and tend to isolate, our self-esteem plummets and our brains feel frazzled as we try to get a handle on where everything is. My home office is the largest challenge for me. It is a huge time-suck to be disorganized and I can feel my stress level climbing every time I tear things apart to look for something.

Spring Action Plan: Make a home for all of the things you use every day to land in and always put them there. I am very big on baskets. All of the little things such as keys, glasses, remotes, all smaller office supplies get a basket where all “like-objects” live. This organizes all of the “bits” in an attractive container and the eye sees one thing instead of twenty. Get Key pegs for the keys close to the most used door, baskets for the where the mail– always lands anyway, hall units with pegs and drawers or bins for backpacks and coats and everything else we unload when we first come in.

Too Small a Space: When dealing with too much stuff in too small a space, I tell my clients if they are going to live in a small space they need to be very Zen about accumulating things.

Spring Action Plan: Everything in a small space  must have multiple-uses and be something they absolutely love and need.

Unfinished Projects: Unfinished projects are called “naggers” in our space because they are sending us a negative message every time we look at them. The message could be “you never finish anything,” “you are such a procrastinator,” etc. They keep our minds jumbled and we feel badly about ourselves whenever we see them.

Spring Action Plan: Box up unfinished projects, put a completion date on them six months from now or earlier and store them somewhere out of sight. If you don’t finish it by the specified date, chuck it! The same principles apply to unused exercise equipment, you don’t need the negative messages it is sending you every time you see it. We want our space to affirm positive messages only!

Here are a few more:

• Go through the Closets and purge the clothes that have not been worn in a year. Purge the linen closets of all of the bits of unmatched towels and sheets and just keep the ones that still look good and match. We don’t need more than two sets of sheets and two sets of extra towel.
• Go through the kitchen drawers and purge the junk drawers along with pans in the cupboards that haven’t been used in a year.
• Unload all of the little bits of beauty supplies in the bathroom and just keep one extra set of the products you use on a regular basis.
• Purge the garages the same way you do the house, if you don’t use it, love it or need it then send it on to its next incarnation.
• Move Objects off the Floors, find a home for everything or deep-six it. I live in a small but cute cottage and have to be ruthless, if I don’t have room for it then something else has to go for it to come in.

Clutter clearing works on the inner and outer worlds. Freeing up the clutter in the external will make room for new things to come into our lives, allowing you to welcome Spring with a sense of excitement and anticipation for all of the great new opportunities that are coming to you!

Other related articles by Erica Sofrina

The Anatomy of Clutter

Space Clearing

Feng Shui for Small Spaces

Erica Sofrina is a Internationally recognized speaker, teacher and author and the Founder of the Academy of Feng Shui. Her book: Small Changes, Dynamic Results! Feng Shui for the Western World provides a simple, practical  western interpretation to Feng Shui  that brings it into our contemporary lifestyles.