Albert Einstein may not have known anything about feng shui, but his opinions on clutter control suggest he understood its basic concepts when he said, “Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.”
Much of feng shui involves symbolic associations. Physical conditions in our environments symbolize emotional issues and attitudes we hold. Broken furniture, for instance, can signify broken dreams, physical injuries, or a breakdown in communication among family members. Dirty windows make it difficult to see situations clearly. Doors or drawers that stick may represent aspects of your life that are stuck.
It’s easy to see the connection between physical clutter and messiness in your personal life. We even use the term “baggage” to describe old concepts, hang-ups, and behaviors that limit personal growth and happiness. If an area in your home is cluttered, you are probably experiencing confusion or blockages in the part of your life that corresponds to the cluttered section. Conversely, areas that you just naturally tend to keep neat and organized show the parts of your life that function smoothly. (I’ll talk more about this in the next chapter.)
I have a friend whose home is extremely neat—except the area that’s linked with love and relationships. This room is full of empty bottles and boxes, old paint cans, cast-off furniture, and cartons of memorabilia from his youth (including photo albums containing pictures of old girlfriends). The room has no heat and the roof leaks. No one who understands feng shui would be surprised to learn that this man has a lot of unresolved issues and outdated attitudes about women, love, and relationships.
Large-scale clutter produces physical obstacles that indicate the presence of psychological obstacles. The home of another man I know is cluttered with enormous piles of stuff. Books and magazines, clothing, DVDs, dishes, electrical equipment, athletic gear, and more are stacked on top of furniture. It’s almost as if he has built a “clutter fortress.”
Many people who have experienced poverty hold on to stuff they may not need because—consciously or not—they fear the shortages they experienced earlier in life. Holding on to old stuff, however, can keep you from letting go of the past and moving ahead with your life.
From the perspective of feng shui, clutter can represent several things:
• Confusion: Disarray and disorganization in your environment show that some areas of your life are messy or unsettled.
• Old baggage: Saving old and worn-out or unused items suggests that you are holding on to old ideas, attitudes, grudges, fears, or habits and allowing them to clutter your psyche.
• Obstacles: Piles of stuff represent blocks that limit your progress; they physically hamper your movement and hinder the flow of ch’i through your environment.
By clearing away the physical clutter around you, you can actually clear up disorder and difficulties in your life—sometimes overnight!
CLUTTER, DIRT, AND DISREPAIR
From the perspective of feng shui, it’s advantageous to free your home of clutter, dirt, and disrepair. Some homes are plagued by all three, while others may suffer from only one. That’s because each of these problems symbolizes something different.
Clutter refers to an accumulation of too much stuff, without proper organization or distinction. Clutter usually signifies confusion, lack of focus, chaos, instability, or muddled circumstances. If your home is cluttered, you may have too much going on and lack direction or a sense of priorities. Perhaps you are scattering your energy, rather than dedicating yourself to what’s really important. You may be uncertain about your goals, who you are, or what you want in life. Often we see this sort of clutter in teenagers’ rooms because they haven’t sorted out these personal matters yet.
Dirt suggests low self-esteem, a low energy level, or poor health. Animals often stop cleaning themselves when they are sick or under stress. The same thing happens with people. If you lack vitality or enthusiasm for life, you may not see the value in cleaning your home. If your sense of self-worth is poor, you may not feel you deserve to live in pleasant surroundings. Do you know people who always apologize for the unsightly condition of their home? These people are actually apologizing for the inadequacies they see in themselves.
Disrepair around the home equates with emotional despair. Broken furniture, cracked tiles, and crumbling plaster suggest broken dreams or a sense of hopelessness—your life seems to be falling down around you. Doors and windows that stick indicate feelings of being stuck or trapped by circumstances. Systems that don’t work properly may symbolize self-imposed limits or areas in your life that aren’t functioning adequately.
NEW CLUTTER, OLD CLUTTER
In my home, clutter tends to collect in my office. As a freelance writer and artist, I’m often working on a number of projects simultaneously, and my desk may hold several stacks of paperwork that pertain to various jobs in progress.
“New clutter” of this sort usually indicates that you may be trying to do too much, that you lack focus and direction, or that you are letting things distract you from your primary path or purpose. New clutter can also include clothing lying around, toys or sporting equipment scattered about—things you’ve used recently, but haven’t bothered to put away. Cleaning up this clutter can help you to become more centered, focused, and effective.
“Old clutter” is all that outdated, unused stuff that tends to get stashed in the basement, attic, closets, and garage. Old files, physical or digital, fall into this category, too. Lots of old clutter suggests you fear letting go of things that no longer have purpose in your life, even though they may actually be holding you back. Perhaps you are living in the past, are letting old ideas or emotions govern your present behavior, or are too security-conscious.
I used to work with a woman who never threw out any of the paperwork from her old jobs. Her files were stuffed with old folders, plans, cost sheets, etc. Although she rationalized that she might need to refer to this information someday, in reality she rarely did. With so much old clutter filling her drawers, the message she projected was that she didn’t have room for new jobs, and so she subconsciously undermined her success. Once she realized the connection, she tossed most of her old paperwork and quickly attracted new business.
WORKPLACE CLUTTER
Do stacks of papers, books, and file folders fill your work space? Do you have to shuffle through piles of paperwork to find something? On your computer, is your desktop a mess of icons? On your phone or tablet, are there apps you never use? Is your email inbox overflowing?
Disorganization in your work space wastes valuable time and money every day. How much does it cost you to search for misplaced or inaccessible materials, return phone calls because you can’t put your finger on information when you need it, redo work, replace supplies that you stashed someplace but can’t remember where, and so on? A carpenter I know has so much clutter in his truck and workshop that often he can’t find a tool he needs and has to buy a duplicate. In some work environments, clutter can even lead to accidents and injury.
But clutter in your office has another drawback, too. It prevents you from focusing completely on the task at hand—your subconscious keeps reminding you of the unfinished business all around you. Over time, this can cause you to feel ineffective, unproductive, and overwhelmed.
ACTIVITY CLUTTER
Multitasking has become a way of life in our modern world. We pride ourselves on being able to juggle a number of operations simultaneously. We check social media, talk to our loved ones, watch TV, go over our to-do lists, and eat breakfast all at the same time. At work, we follow the same pattern—scrolling through our email while talking on the phone, filing paperwork, and jotting down appointments on our calendars. Even when we’re engaged in a single activity—particularly a mindless one like unloading the dishwasher or raking leaves—we’re usually thinking about something other than the task at hand. Yet no matter how busy we are, we rarely feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day—most likely because we haven’t truly experienced anything we’ve done.
When you try to do several things at once, you can’t pay attention to—or enjoy—any of them fully. Confusion, stress, and forgetfulness are the inevitable results of this “activity clutter.” How often have you put something down when you were involved in some other activity and forgotten where you left it? How many times do you have to ask someone to repeat what he or she just said because you were thinking about something else?
Narrowly focusing our attention and living in the moment reduces the confusion and stress produced by activity clutter. His Holiness the Dalai Lama even recommends against talking while you are eating, because in order to get the full benefit of either activity you must focus on it completely. When our attention is fragmented, we feel disconnected and derive less satisfaction from what we’re doing. We end up missing out on what’s going on right now—which is most of life!
Activity clutter also includes packing our days and nights with so many engagements, projects, and tasks that we rarely have a free moment to just be. One of the reasons we fill our lives with busyness is so we won’t have to confront our feelings—and ourselves. To avoid looking deeply at ourselves, we scroll through social media, watch shows or movies, text or talk on the phone, do household chores, work out, go shopping.
Some of us load ourselves up with activities in order to boost our sense of importance. When many demands are placed on us, we feel needed. We don’t delegate responsibilities to others because we like to think we’re the only ones who can handle the job. If we’re constantly doing something, we feel like we’re making progress, even if we’re really just spinning our wheels.
Controlling activity clutter requires you to examine your life and assign value to the various activities in which you engage. It may help to list out all the activities you participate in on a weekly basis. Put these activities under headings such as Essential (eating, going to work, doing laundry, etc.), Enjoyable (going to lunch with friends, playing the piano, reading bedtime stories to the children), Optional (shopping, watching TV, checking social media), and Obligatory (serving on a committee you wish you hadn’t volunteered for, catering to an elderly relative’s whims).
Examine your list with a critical eye, with the goal of reducing activity clutter by, say, 20 percent. Ask yourself some pointed questions: Are you devoting entirely too much time to some of the things on your list or doing them to avoid another part of life? For example, do you really need to watch every basketball game, pro and college? Are you letting someone else dictate how you spend your time or shouldering more than your fair share? Can you cut back on some of these duties, entrust them to someone else, or eliminate them entirely? What would happen if you did?
RELATIONSHIP CLUTTER
Most of us know people we’d rather not spend time with, yet out of a sense of duty or guilt or good manners, we allow ourselves to be drawn into unwanted associations. Some of these people simply waste our time or distract us from more important things in our lives. Others actually drain our energy or have a negative influence on us.
There’s no law that says you have to give time and energy to people you don’t like or who aren’t good for you. You don’t have to be rude, but be clear and honest with these people. Depending on the circumstances, let them know you’d prefer not to spend as much time with them as you have in the past or that you don’t wish to continue your association with them at all.
Even people we care about can clutter our lives with their problems, needs, and expectations. Family members, in particular, may not understand or respect the importance of personal boundaries. Friends may enjoy your company and want to include you in all their activities or share everything that’s going on in their lives with you. If your friends or loved ones are cluttering your emotional space so that you feel you don’t have enough time or energy for other things you want to do, set limits—for yourself and them. Learn to say no and stick to it. Explain, nicely, that you have work to do, need some time to yourself, are being drawn off-center—whatever the case may be. In relationships with other people, quality is more important than quantity.
Relationship clutter has another aspect, too. The I Ching, or Book of Changes, to which feng shui is closely connected, is not just an oracle, it’s a three-thousand-year-old guide to living in harmony with the Universe. Much of the advice the I Ching offers involves relating to other people. Following its wisdom can help us eliminate clutter—confusion, tension, conflict, and other difficulties—in our personal relationships.
According to the I Ching, we clutter our relationships when we place too many of our own expectations on other people—when we expect them to fulfill our desires or satisfy our demands. A father who expects his son to be the star athlete he always wanted to be in his own youth, for example, adds clutter to the son’s life. The need for ego gratification can also produce relationship clutter. If, for instance, we constantly look to other people to validate us or to boost our egos, we make unreasonable demands on them and may take offense if they don’t give us the attention we want. In chapter 8, I include some tips for reducing this sort of relationship clutter.
MENTAL CLUTTER
Memory gaps are more often due to inattention and “mental clutter” than to actual disease or intellectual decline. The truth is, most of us, regardless of age, lack mental focus and clarity—our minds constantly swirl with thoughts. We’ve become an attention deficit disorder society.
To see just how cluttered your mind is, set a timer for one minute. Try to hold a single thought for that brief span of time—it’s harder than you might imagine. How many other thoughts popped into your head?
Mental clutter keeps us from being as productive as we could be. We derail our trains of thought thousands of times a day. Each time we allow ourselves to become sidetracked, we lose momentum.
Smartphones and TV are two of the most common and insidious sources of mental clutter. Our phones are always by our sides, pinging us with notifications and tempting us to check our email or newsfeeds even when we just looked at them two minutes ago. Streaming services have made it easier than ever to watch one thing after another, sometimes without processing what we’ve seen. Many of us leave the set turned on as background noise, where it continues to clutter the subconscious mind. Much of what we see onscreen is not just useless information, it’s damaging to our mental clarity and peace of mind. Your mind retains everything it witnesses and stores it someplace in your brain, even if you aren’t aware that this is happening. Do you really need to watch multiple news clips about the same story, morning, noon, and night? Repeated viewing of scenes of violence, tragedy, political conflict, and so on can be mentally and emotionally disconcerting. Studies have shown that people who consume a lot of mass media believe the world is a more dangerous place than those who rarely do.
Meditation is one of the best ways to reduce mental clutter. Meditating for just ten minutes each day will improve your concentration and clarity, calm nervous tension and stress, and increase your sense of well-being. Some people who meditate regularly say it produces all sorts of other benefits, too, such as helping them to sleep better, enriching their creativity, diminishing worries and fears, and enhancing their relationships with others. Professional athletes have even improved their skills as a result of daily meditation.
ATMOSPHERIC CLUTTER
Have you ever walked into a room and felt bad vibes, even though you couldn’t identify the cause? Buildings retain the energetic vibrations of their inhabitants for a long time—especially vibrations generated by strong emotions. The combined vibes produced by all the feelings, actions, sounds, and even thoughts of the people who have spent time in your home can add up to atmospheric clutter.
Therefore, it’s a good idea to “clear the air” in your home periodically. Open the windows and allow fresh air to circulate through your space. Smudging is an easy and pleasant way to cleanse your environment of atmospheric clutter. White sage is one of the best materials for smudging, but incense—particularly pine, peppermint, eucalyptus, or sandalwood—will work fine, too. Light a bundle, cone, or stick of sage or incense and let its fragrant smoke waft through each room of your home.
Perform this purifying ritual to disperse unwanted vibrations before you move into a new place. You’ll also want to cleanse your home after an argument or other distressing experience, after a party or large gathering, or when you sense that the space feels uncomfortable in any way. Furniture, jewelry, and other objects also retain the vibrations of previous owners, so before you use them, smudge antiques and preowned items to remove traces of other people’s energy.