Clearing Out the Chaos

Do you have too many things in your home and not enough room? It may feel that way when you live in a disorganized space or fail to make a regular practice of clearing out the old to make room for the new.

We are connected to everything in our environment, so when physical things in our environment have no “home,” we mirror that internally and feel unsettled emotionally and mentally, becoming frustrated and irritable. Putting some thought and effort into the organization of your environment is a key to mental and emotional peace.

Organizing from a feng shui perspective

Hiring professional organizers or finding helpful-hint sources to maximize every square inch of a closet or shelf is a great start, but you can create even smoother energy by looking at storage and organization from a feng shui perspective.

With awareness, you’ll move toward your dream of “having a place for everything,” and get the energy flowing by looking at supportive feng shui organizational solutions.

Keep these tips in mind:

• Refrain from putting shelves over a door or on a wall where they hang over your bed. These shelves create energetically challenging downward-pressing energy that symbolizes a person or a situation hanging over you.

• Avoid filling your storage space completely. When your shelves or closets are completely full, energetically you leave no space for something new. Full shoeboxes block new sources of support and prevent new movement. Full kitchen cupboards block new opportunities for wellness; full bookshelves block new sources of wisdom, promoting stagnant thinking. Full bedroom closets show that you are not open to new relationships or new ways to relate to those in your life.

• If you have a bed with storage drawers built in, only store items that have “restful” energy, such as linens, blankets and towels. Avoid shoes (symbolizing “movement”) and items from the past, such as photos of old relationships that symbolize emotional upset. Never store sharp objects, books or media or exercise equipment in your bedroom (keeps your mind and chi active).

• Avoid too many storage units that hang from the ceiling. An excess of overhead storage is not only visually heavy but contributes to supporting feelings of overwhelm. If you have a lot of things weighing you down in your life, more overhead storage only exacerbates that feeling.

• Hooks on the back of the bathroom door are fine to hold towels, but refrain from putting hooks on the back of all the doors in your home, especially your main and bedroom doors. Doors are the portals to the energy flow and if they are overburdened, transitioning your life from one stage to the next may be difficult. Doors should open freely.

• Avoid visual overwhelm. This happens when you store everything you own that is nice, cute and meaningful on open shelves around your home. From a feng shui perspective, it is better to have only a few treasured items on display. Store the others behind closed shelving and rotate them when you need a change of energy. Themed collections can be grouped together to create a unified energy. For example, if you have many rabbit-themed items, place them in one place for a powerful visual.

• Functionality is important, but so are aesthetics. Store the things you use often in convenient, but outof-sight places. Open shelving promotes visual clutter. So the more you can hide (in an organized way) the better you will feel.

Discard and donate as you go. You will create valuable physical space, and eliminate a drain on your energy. It doesn’t make sense to store items you really don’t need.

To learn more about feng shui expert and life guide Alice Inoue, visit www.aliceinspired.com.