So let’s talk about clearing clutter. Here’s how to do it. Turn on some good tunes, roll up your sleeves and tackle one room. Identify everything you don’t love or use regularly. Everything else you need to get rid of. If you don’t love it, it’s a downer to have around. If you don’t use it, it has no value to you so it’s a downer. If it makes you think you “should” do something you have no intention to do, that’s a downer too. Be who you are and surround yourself with only the stuff you use and value. You do yoga to treat your body as a temple right? You need to treat the real estate in your place as a temple too.

When you look at your mantle or a tabletop it should contain a *few* things, each of which you love and that make you smile. It should not be crowded with inappropriate gifts that don’t speak to you but you’re too guilty to ditch. Ditch it. The person who gave you the gift will not notice, or they’ll love you anyways. Not convinced? Then offer them the gift back and they can value it. If you’re really not sure about something, put it in a box and create a reminder to check in a month if you missed it or not - then ditch it. Ditch stuff that spoke to who you were five years ago. Move on. Ditch books that you know you won’t open again, we know you’re smart and well-read, now move on.

This is also a good time to think about storage - the things you love and value should be stored in furniture that makes them accessible and keeps them clean and organized. It’s great to have 200 CDs if you love music, but they shouldn’t be in stacks all over your living room gathering dust. Organize them so you can find them and enjoy them.

This doesn’t mean you don’t have a junk drawer, but it’s a contained spot and it gets a go-through regularly too. I’m a pretty sentimental person so I love my tchotchkes and used to believe that I needed to be surrounded by them all the time. Then I purged a bunch and kept only the ones I love in a box in the basement. I take out only a couple at a time and cycle through them based on my mood and the season. This way my living space isn’t jammed and I appreciate them more.

When you’ve got a room de-cluttered give it a good cleaning. Then notice how it feels. Sit in it and look around. Notice the stuff and how it makes you feel. Now you’ll feel motivated to move to the next room to achieve the same results.

When you’ve done a room-by-room clutter clearing it gets easier. Your space feels so great that you’ll want to maintain it. You may gather up new stuff less. You may start to look at your stuff with a more discerning eye regularly. And that’s good because ideally clutter-clearing should become a habit.

Here’s a good one - when you pull out your winter clothes go through them. Anything that doesn’t excite you, turf it, before it even gets into your closet. As you’re putting the summer stuff away turf anything you *didn’t* wear. This a great way to guarantee that you don’t stand in front of the closet and say “I’ve got nothing to wear!”. There may be less stuff in it, but everything that’s there works for you.

It’s interesting how much this process brings up our issues. Do we horde stuff because we believe we may not get any more - ever? Do we buy stuff that we hope will say certain things about us? Do we hope that the stuff we have in our place will reflect parts of ourselves that we want to be on display? It’s interesting process in letting go and being who we really are.

The fact is, there is no need to horde stuff because, new stuff *always* comes around, in abundance. This is all about trusting the Universe — you’ll be OK without this clutter because you are enough. You can trust you’ll always get what you need. And you don’t need *stuff* to tell people who you are. Right?

The next post is about getting rid of the clutter.