Clear your Clutter

Last spring, I found this book hiding in a used bookstore in Princeton: http://www.fengshuipalace.com/fs101/chapter1.shtml MOVE YOUR STUFF -- CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

So I bought it, read it and began to follow the suggestions. I put bells in our Helpful People corner, put blue books in our Knowledge and Skills corner, hung a waterfall to the left of our front door, purple curtains in our prosperity corner, tried to minimalize the effect of the black refrigerator in our Fame corner with lots of wood and the color red.

And I started listening to our house. Didn't know they talked, did you? Well, they do. And ours was telling us to look at how we use money. It said this by way of the leaky shower in our prosperity corner. It said to pay attention to our health and habits. It said this by way of the clutter and blockages in the center (the health and heart).

One of the suggestions in the book proved difficult -- anything broken must go. I had a bunch of broken things waiting for repairs. I don't throw anything away.

But some of these things had been waiting for years. It was time to let them go.

Not only broken things had to go, but anything that no longer served a purpose. There were things in my house I didn't even see anymore. And because they took up space, they also hid things that had real meaning.

Literally, a truckload of things left here one Saturday morning, bound for a yard selling friend who could use them. Several more boxes of things left a few days later. I thought I was doing pretty good. I WAS doing good. As material goods left, so did out-moded ideas, grudges, old hostilities, and a lot of other things I had been hold on to. I began to actually feel lighter.

Also in the process, I found things that really could be put to use. Old clothes to work up into quilts and rag-yarn and yo-yos, and craft objects that now began to show me how they could be used (stones, shells, sticks, bark, roots and old glass, all out in pretty bowls and baskets where I could see them and give them new turns of expression -- AND with the ultimatum that if I didn't follow through, these too, must go).

I was doing alright at this and thought I was done.

Ah...

Enter: Silver Ravenwolf: http://www.facebook.com/people/Silver-RavenWolf/1579042175

and her HEDGEWITCH RELEASE CHALLENGE -- which I just today accepted. Once more, I'm on the prowl, with my illuminating candles and my objective view, determined to free up more time, more space, and let the personality of our house shine through.