Many people try to add items to their home to improve the feng shui there, but that can quickly become problematic. As you increase the number of things in your home, you can create chaos. You can get so caught up in balancing the different elements that you miss out on the value of simplicity.
Feng shui is just as much about removing things as it is about adding things, and by keeping that in mind, you can create balance and reduce clutter. Consider if there may be some items in your home that you could do without and that might be hindering your feng shui efforts. Here are some tips to help you reduce the mess and improve the flow of energy in your home.
Use Storage Wisely to Get ahead of Clutter
How do you stop clutter in the first place and keep the flow of energy moving through your home? You need to think about storage. Where does each item go and which items should be packed away out of sight? Try to store away any items that you don’t need or don’t use often. Look for inventive storage options to help reduce the clutter, like concealed cupboards and closets and cubbyholes. You can use storage space under staircases, behind doors, and in other out-of-the-way places.
We allow clutter to fill up our home simply because we have accepted it and have not actively worked against it. If you move through your home room by room, you can analyze each space and determine what should stay and what should be packed away.
Decide What to Get Rid of
We said at the start of the article that removing items is every bit as vital to proper feng shui as adding items. Before you work too hard to find storage space for everything or rearrange your furniture to fit all the times you have in the house, consider getting rid of some things. What items could you do without? What items could be placed into an outdoor storage shed or could be sold off or given away? Maybe a friend or neighbor could use them and you could benefit from the added space.
Don’t focus too much on the small items that can be easily packed away but instead look primarily at larger items and at collections of items and see if any of them could find a home elsewhere. With fewer items cluttering the house, you will have more room to work with, less clutter, and less risk of chaos developing in the home. How can energy flow through your home properly if there are countless items in the way? By getting rid of some things, you will have less to worry about and find it easier to focus on what is important.
Do Regular Cleaning and Decluttering
If you don’t stay on top of the mess in your home, it will return. A home that was once cluttered will become so again after a while, if you don’t change your habits. Creating healthy cleaning habits in the home will greatly benefit you and your family. We recommend having a professional cleaning company work in your home a couple times a year and then having a decluttering weekend every other month.
If you can manage to do all of that throughout the year and keep it consistent, then your home should stay decluttered most of the time. You will enjoy better feng shui and have less of a mess to deal with. That’s less stress for you and a neater, cleaner home, so why not give it a try? As you clean your home regularly, you will see that it takes less time to clean it and less work to keep it clean. Pretty soon, decluttering will become second nature to you, and you won’t have to think so much about getting rid of clutter.
Prioritize Decluttering Items with Bad Energy
Sometimes it is better for you to put items out of the house rather than to keep them around. If there is anything in your home that has bad energy, you should get rid of it or try to fix its energy.
The most obvious examples would be items that are chipped, damaged or broken. These can attract unwanted energy to your home, and you should deal with them appropriately.
Just think of how our mind handles these items, even subconsciously. If you see items that are in poor shape or dirty, then that makes your mind think that your home is dirty and broken down. You are creating negative energy in your mind and thinking negative thoughts about yourself and your home by having these objects in the home. Even if you don’t see them, you know they are still there. It is better to be rid of them or to try to fix them up so that they do not weigh on your subconscious and drag down the energy of the home.
Work Little by Little
Is your home in quite a mess and does it seem like it would be a really big project to tackle all of the clutter at once? If so, then don’t try to handle it in one weekend or a single day. You will stress yourself out and make poor decisions because of how tired and overworked you will be.
Instead, take your time going through each room of the house. Take just one room at a time and work there until the room is decluttered and neat. Then, you can take a day to break from the work or move directly onto the next room. Don’t stress yourself out by giving yourself too much work at once, and don’t try to handle more than one room at a time. Taking each room on its own, judging it by its own merits, you will have a better idea of what the right move is for improving the feng shui in that room.