“…Researchers found that 88 per cent of homes polled contained at least one cluttered room – typically the spare room. Participants reported stashing clutter in their cupboards, garages and bedrooms…”
So I read that on the weekend and it flipped me out….88%??? I KNOW i am a freak for uncluttering (Mars in Virgo conjunct Pluto & Uranus in the 8th) but that stat surprised me. Okay, what do you think?? I am so anti-clutter that i was looking at pictures of clutter to post and go so disturbed that i had to pace around finding a drawer to unclutter by way of quick therapy and i posted a pic of one of my fave books instead.
Tags: Feng Shui, Karen Kingston, Mars, Mars in Virgo, Pluto, Uncluttering, Uranus, Virgo
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i LOVE this book. Makes you want to cull and rampage thru your house like invading barbarian, throwing last years’ fashion to the wolves.
Colon/digestive system chapter a little alarming however. I bet more than 88% of people are freaked out by that one!
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Plutonic – wots gist of Colon / Digestive system bit? pre last new moon I embarked on Colonics ‘ getting rid of old shit’ – also theme of dream yest…..still bugging me – dreamt packing packing packing recurrent theme of volumes of luggage (prized possesions) trying to cram into overscale bags will never manage on own, without success. waking am fastidious packer, tho late to notion of ‘travelling light’ – asleep it’s EVERYTHING & it wont fit & this huge panic that the transport will be missed. somebody stole my watch (I dont wear one) – it was pretty funky, & they demanded ransom to return. then there was entire public bathroom sequence. dressed in ballgown, no shoes only sox, tiptoing thru urine stained floor to find vacant stall. everyone else kept getting stalls as my urgency verged ridiculous, so ran into vacant door – a teachers shower. uncertain what to do he came in….I woke in fright as dreamt his actions turned lewd. still rattled……kept thinking about ‘clearing out old shit’ again……any interps welcome.
RE Karen above – read what’s happened to her
http://www.spaceclearing.com/html/bali-blogmenu-65/601-bali-hotel-for-salebummer – was contemplating the Bali course!!
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oh its just a chapter that follows, you know, decluttering your kitchen, decluttering your basement, decluttering your office, and then decluttering your , well, orifices and innards i suppose – with some compelling arguments about what is living inside you if you choose not to proceed with a colonic or some such.
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OMG I jsut read that link. karen Kingston got her space and life cleared out alright. OF course, how terrible. But more’s the point – how frikkin ironic.
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hey putonic – get this – since typing last post – half my client base just decluttered my esk. 50% of guaranteed project work ‘on hold’ pending internal discussion. go figure……..the punches just keep coming, or rather GOING!!
yeah the irony on Karen’s ex hub clearing her bank account / hotel / location for workshop was not lost on me…..boy there’s some BIG shifts at the mo………
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RLP – Merc Retro shadowzone – ‘on hold’ will probably be GO when Merc moves forward again. x
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That article just makes me want to go home tonight, tie my hair back with a kerchief and everything and spring clean like crazy. And I was only thinking earlier today about looking into feng shui for my apartment. Clutter begone!
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whilst i do get the whole unclutter thing, i still believe there is room in every house/life for a random spot for ’stuff’.
sometimes there is stuff for which there is no real home, so a stuff home is required, under the bed, top of the wardrobe, old suitcase on the floor.
What would I do with the kitchen door i took off, my random sewing knitting things, letters I’ve kept, stereo boxes etc without some spot I’m allowed to clutter up with stuff?
but then as a gemini, i carry so much clutter about in my brain, i just accept that it has to exist somewhere.-
Hi Shell, two important points that karen Kingston makes: (1) you should have a drawer or container or something that contains clutter, but that you should make time to perioidcally go through this; and (2) that her books aren’t necessarily about clean, empty spaces, and that a house filled floor to ceiling with stuff isn’t necessarily cluttetered if that stuff is in some way ‘puposeful’ in that person’ life. She even talks about having to temporarily hang on to some clutter but to do so consciously. Even if you don’t believe in the quasi-spiritual aspect of it, it’s a very good book for inspiring you to reassess what you surround yourself with now and in the future.
The colon cleansing chpater I take with a grain of salt. In particular, the story about the guy who kept some bit of itssue aloive for decades by keeping it clean of waste is a well known bit of shonky ’science’. There’s also one line she has about imagining yourself moving through life leaving a trail of discarded clutter behind you, which is possibly not the type of message we want out there these days! However, this doesn’t detract from the overall positive message of the book.
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Thanks HBB, purposeful stuff it is.
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I read this book years ago and ran about the joint with a smudge stick and those mini Tibetan clanging gong thingos chanting stuff and chucking out everything in sight (some of which I later regretted) and Bugger All happened. Quite frankly all this space clearing feng shuiy hoey doesn’t work for me although I naturally am a tidy person for aesthetic reasons and because my brain seizes up and refuses to work if things are too messy. Actually in my old job at the ad agency I had the tidiest desk in the entire office (there were 15+ Virgos in that office so there was stiff competition) and I, by far, had the tidiest desk to the point where my manager asked me if I did weird things with my shoes and was I possibly a serial killer.
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LOL! It just dawned on me that I cleaned my oven (Vestal scared hearth), de-moudled the bathroom walls and ran around my apartment with a smudge stick on the winter solsctice and Ex-Mr CBA moved out the next week!
But yes, previous attempts with the smudge stick and the Tibetan bells have been less dramatic!
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*sacred* not scared. Argh!
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woah CBA … he must have really needed to go for the universe to remove him that quickly AND along with the bathroom mould!!! What an analogy!
Perhaps I shall try it for myself again and this time on a potent astrological day.
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prowlers – my dyslexia misread your opening line as “you ran around with a joint and a smudge stick………” had mental picture of you sky high, clanging symbols waving sage……tehehehe
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ROFL .. no I was pregnant at the time so no drugs or alcohol just good ol’ fashioned hormone fuelled insanity
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I am left feeling truly exalted after a good declutter – my cupboards are looking & feeling mucha better after a recent clearing jag. I am a true rebel at heart tho- I can jam junk in a drawer anytime…thats really living on the edge! lol
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88% sounds like a bad numerology-feng shui porky to me.
Although after reading ‘It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff’ the figure is probably spot on for 1st world Australian / US folk who were born after 1940.
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Here’s the book review
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Dear MM and all blogists/bloggers (what do we call ourselves?) I do think that 88% may be correct. Even my perfectionist friends have places where they hide stuff. The kitchen may be stainless steel and the oven never used, the bathroom shower squidgied after showering, the loungeroom never used so the carpet stays clean, but, geez, there is always a little place where sentimental stuff is kept. I found the school reports of my ex and his brothers in the woodbox, for goodness sake!!( Her neighbour found her dead husband’s love letters from his mistress in the cavity wall of their sitting room.) Just couldn’t throw them out. The third drawer down was full of paperclips a.k.a. Ernie and Bert!! Come on now, …who doesn’t have a secret cache of paperclips or lackey bands? Or a photo of someone you can’t forget?
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We, Little Fish are a coven in the blogg-o-sphere. I have craved a coven for years! Finally, I’ve found one. Just not in the way that i anticipated…..
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Well, all my “clutter” is in storage. I have bundled up my “spare room” and paid someone to keep it under lock and key. My home is stripped bare… Will the Storage Firm take adequate care of all my hits and memories??? My entire precious vinyl collection, my momentos, my family history~ my back catalogue as it were…..
Sometime soon, I have to find to time to go there and rummage through all my sentimental stuff……. ~**not now**~ too busy!
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I have recently been taking control of the Clutter. I also read Karen Kingston’s first book (mentioned on that cover) and really like the principles she discusses although yeah maybe I could do it all if i was paid $$$ to Clear Space…mind u smudged my house (and car
) a month or so ago, smelt like a bushfire for a few days then gone. I am not necessarily throwing everything out but pasting into scrapbooks, storing ‘mindfully’ or if i know I just can’t part with something Now, I let myself keep it until next session, not hurting anyone. Controlling the clutter by knowing exactly What is kept Where…and Why…
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UP, I think that’s a good approach. KK is really into even chucking out photos and the like. If that works for her, great, but I couldn’t do it. Not that I keep every memento. But while she espouses the notion that there is sacredness and spirituality in our spaces, she perhaps doesn’t give as much due as she should to the strong emotional connection we can have to physical things because they connect us to the people, events and places of the past. Connect us, but not necessarily tie us down, which I think is what we’re supposed to avoid.
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Yeah hazelblackberry, embracing something has a different energy, to clinging…in my view.
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I love to unclutter – it is so true that good things happen after you do. It might take a week or so but bang- there she goes! One thing I worry about that is I can get so into it that one day I get scared i’ll throw out all my shit!
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Okay, an example. I got into a massive argument with Not-The-Typical-Virgo a few years ago when i was helping her declutter. She had one bed and 14 sets of fitted sheets…I suggested we turf/donate most of them. They were nearly all old, outdated, not loved, threadbare. She insisted on keeping them “in case.” I thought that bats and suggested they contained lingering qi. Some were from a previous life of hers, pre-marriage etc. But she thinks/thought i bats as i have ONE set of sheets per bed at a time, organic and lovingly tended to but when it is their time to go, it’s their time and they’re always either on the bed or being laundered…
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Ah, but NTTV understands that old sheets have sooooo many other uses. You never know when you may need a large plain sheet for something, and it would be silly to buy a new one to cover furniture whilst decorating, practising your art, wrapping up a large, valuable item to move it …..
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But 14? I have 2….. and just liberated 3rd from the mother….
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putting those precious things into the rag bag is a wonderful stepping stone to getting them out of the place! i.e. you get to still enjoy the energy and memories of said sheets (for example) whilst they are serving a useful purpose (cleaning etc). I do it and it works (especially with the sentimental stuff that is too ridiculous even for me to keep in a sacred spot – such as the kids’ old jamies).
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I’m still in the process of decluttering…it’s not like I had stacks of newspapers to the ceilings with little winding paths or anything…or like an artist friend of Dad’s who couldn’t use his kitchen for food prep because it was filled with vodka bottles…although food wasn’t the priority…anyways my point is that there are many points along a ‘cluttered’ continuum.
Most rooms are clean and uncluttered and utilised productively to the max…but there is still a room with uni notes and paperwork, and discards of other people’s stuff …and I’ve reduced it a lot…and I’m sure there is foul feng shui still…and logically I know that clearing this space will be wonderful, but it takes real fortitude to go near it.
So I think sometimes it’s a bit catch 22…the physical clutter needs to go to clear the emotional clutter, yet the emotions it evokes are repelling. Work in progress.
Also I’ve found in the cleared rooms I need to be concious of what acrues there while I’m off busy doing something else…
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I always feel bad when I chuck stuff…….like I`m hurting “It`s” feelings when I chuck it.
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I cannot declutter. I simply cannot. I want to desperately. But I just don’t have anywhere to put it all. Every spare centimetre of my desk is currently piled a foot high with all the paperwork relating to my different functions in life, my laptop in the middle. Wardrobe looks pretty much the same. Have started piling clothes on the floor as all drawers and shelves overflowing. Spare cupboard filled to rafters, under the bed the same. Kitchen table covered in bills, mail, kids books, etc. There is simply no place for this stuff to go…..
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Decluttering is mainly getting rid of stuff – not just re-storing it…one thing you could do is go to some cheapo department store and but those plastic stackable tubs (like 50 Litres or whatever size works best. Buy about 8 or something. THEN, sort the stuff out at least – one tub for domestic paperwork, one tub for work reading. then in the bedrooms, one tub for jumpers, one for pants, one for dress-ups. One tub for kids books, then toys. Piles of crap is bad for mental and physical health non? asthma (dust), and the rest. Not to mention the stress you feel when you look at it!
If you can, as you are ‘tubbing’ everything, chuck out at least 3 things per tub, and try not to let em fester for months and months as more stuff gets piled up. then you at least have nearly stacked, dust-free containers instead of mountains of things….does that help any? I must sound like a born-again organised person!!
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I would be a brilliant professional declutterer but nobody would be able to stand how utterly ruthless i am. A lovely client of mine offered to pay me to do her house & i was SO keen but she baulked as i said her OLD WATERBED THAT BELONGED TO A THANKFULLY LONG-GONE EX HAD TO GO.
To me it was an absolute no-brainer – water beds are fuqed feng shui and the qi of it being from ex + a new bed is a fantastic fresh start vibe for zillions of reasons. SO symbolic…
If I ever did it, the person would have to sign a contract…And be aware that i would be on the clock so time spent standing around grizzling and whining about what’s being chucked/donated was THEIR money…
And Sun Pisces-Moon Aries, get a shredder!!!!! They are unreal…If you want to declutter “desperately” then just do it…WHat do you mean no place for it to go?? Out???-
There is a shredder next to my desk, LOL, but it is covered in dust.
UP- thanks for the suggestion- I am already doing this with the stuff I am storing, but the rest as I described is stuff I need, if not on a daily basis, weekly. If it is put away then I will forget about it and I need it there to remind me, or use.-
Index your stuff.
My Aries Mum does this…admittedly with stuff she loans to people. She has a little book that she notes the person, the item and the date so when she is needing it she knows where to go looking. I think you could perhaps do the same for weekly/ monthly and seasonal stuff. (I’m actually pretty good with sorting functional stuff it’s the emotionally charged items I’m working on still)
Perhaps you could work out what you need daily and have that at hand, and the location of your not used as often stuff makes it to a handy A sized piece of paper that you could laminate and stick to the back of your door…ala hotel safety instructions…except this is your handy locator guide.
Maybe even work out a colour coding system based on the seasons(this could work for storage of paperwork or clothing/folders and plastic tubs readily come in colour)…orange=autumn, blue=winter apple green=spring yellow=summer …or whatever is meaningful for you.
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Wow Leonine Librarian, thanks for your reply. It also reinforces the fact that I could never be a librarian myself!!!
Seriously, I have 2 small kids, work part time and have a household to run. I probably spend far too much time on the internet, but I don’t have weekends as it is. I do not have time to plan my schedule each day let alone the stuff I need for it.
I am beginning to think I love my clutter now as the alternative seems far worse. At least when I need something it is right there in front of me, and anything I might need down the track will be there too.I am amazed by all the suggestions and responses on this thread as everyone seems to be so good at this stuff and yet it repels me. I simply do not have it in my blood.
I guess I reiterate- where do I put the stuff once it is indexed? There is no room under the desk and I have to put my feet up on boxes as it is.
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Soz spmalr, you’ve tapped into the weird spinning 3xvirgoan tendancies that lurk beneath my ummm breezy sort of flakey self.
Well that, and if it’s not on a list or something there has been times where I can’t find a freaking thing myself…so that’s why I mentioned the index. It just got to the point where the time it took to find things seemed worse than organising it. Also for me it was admitting what I did need…because for me a lot of the surplus stuff just bogged my day down.
I’m probably like a clutter zealot now because there is a part of me that is liking the ruthless cut stuff out mentality. I just got sick of storing stuff in case of stuff that never happened and then often duplicating things and ending up with mad amounts of things I still couldn’t find.
When both my girls were home and I was studying and working and just generally going a little mad I’d clear stuff out on the school holidays. Not the entire holidays because that would of been cruel…and it was more a survival thing…because otherwise we’d drown in school books and rotten fruit (stored deep within corners of bedrooms) and clothes that didn’t fit, or just didn’t fit their idea of themselves anymore. Gawd I’d use a plastic rake to get shite from under beds. So I do understand time restraints and well the feeling as though this is just one more thing.
Uncluttering needs to be a willing thing I find or else people’s inner stuff defenses just give a resounding hell no…Because you asked about where else the stuff may go? Um are you in a rented place or a place that you can put in shelves…because that can help. Even a wall with those galvo shelves from the hardware can hold heaps and if you squint it sort of looks a bit industro chic…
Also if you ever do want to organise try not to look too hard at the whole thing, just go for a little thing that can make your life easier…and then another one…as you feel the need…I’m going into the last remaining room that stores shit I don’t want to look at tomorrow and will try to take my own advice.
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Mystic – you remind me of the Virgo Supermodel – so ruthless in the declutter department gone is her portfolio, all her editorial & accolades & comp cards!!
…..have always had 1 set of sheets & 2 sets of pefectly white towels. more seems to be excess – wash in lavender, dry, remake. easy!!
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A dumpster?
I have this argument with my mother, a Virgo with Pisces moon. I can’t relax among clutter. She says trying to keep places clean and uncluttered interferes with relaxation.
88% is a modest estimate.
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This sounds like the argument I have wth my husband. I like things cluttered and clean, he likes them uncluttered but never cleans.
I completely understand the comment about not being able to relax if having to clear clutter constantly. It seems like it would be a full time job.-
No clutter clearing IS relaxing…
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nothing better for productivity as a writer than to declutter the desk and bookshelves around me. Sometimes this is just moving things around, cleaning under them, and rearranging them artfully. Always makes me feel better.
I don’t know what’s going on astro-wise that could be called responsible for this but I have managed to make baby steps back into the world of paid employment again… yay… the job is managing/producing online content for a fashion company and I’ll be able to work from home some of the time.
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that sounds like a wonderful job TA! Right up your alley.
Astro-wise – prequel to Saturn in Libra? -
Congratulations TA. That does sound up your alley. Nice to have some of the time be home-based too.
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Nice one TA! Hope it works out well for you.
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TA – same same re productivity as a writer UPS when space is clear, clean, organised. Used recent down time to practise diligence in filing Hard Drive – ditching decades of defunct image files, god it felt good!! new job sounds ACE!! very similar to new roles evoliving here – hope you enjoy both the role & the flexibility!! xox
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Great news! Good luck xx
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Good news TA. Give it your best x
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Cool TA! Go girl… Fashion appropriate for a Taurian, eh?
I remember you talking about your cashmere bat wing sweater your sister bought you. You must wear it to do your computer work as long as bat wings don’t hamper you, no?
Then of course for a break you can always hang upside down for a spell and letting blood rush to the brain get fresh ideas for layouts and such.
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Funny Sweetpea
Nice fit TA – venusian, good luck.
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I have this incredibly strong desire to declutter since a few days ago…I can’t stop myself and it’s not even pre-new moon! It’s basically compulsive – I am right on with the astro?
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Annie, it’s a Spring thing as well, new beginnings, let go the outworn or useless
to make way for new energy.
The sping clean time.
‘cobwebs’ literally & figuratively are stale Feng Shui.
It’s pre Full Moon, energy building up to obtain results from last 2 weeks.
Cancers usually love their homes with pride, true?-
I have a cancerian friend who for some reason worries about her house looking messy….I think she is starting to get that I see it differently…as I just look at her and say, ‘your house is filled with art, and books and music and good food, what’s not to like?’
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Mystic – if you know anything about Karen’s astro – are there signs that point to the Ex hub cleaning her out etc
RE Karen – her current sitch written by her here…..
http://www.spaceclearing.com/html/bali-blogmenu-65/601-bali-hotel-for-sale -
My family’s house has a such a severe junk/waste problem, it’s horrific. It’s gone beyond normal levels to represent something psychological: withering of relationships & commitments & enthusiasms, it’s like a graveyard of hopes. My Libra sun, Cancer moon, Virgo-rising mother is actually threatening to leave because my father refuses to clear out the junk & decorate the house. She’s had enough. I don’t live there anymore, and as a gem-aries-leo, i can’t understand why anyone would hang on to that much crap…
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Pff!!!!
Most people I know who are surrounded by their own clutter are very happy in their environment of memories.
Maybe all of those that partook in the survey had a very narrow choice of answers to the questions posed to them or, because the phone was so overrun by their memoribilia that they couldn’t find it – and didn’t even think phone contact so important as to be of major concern!
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