Birgit Medele - Clear your Clutter - Manifest your dreams

In the unlikely case that this has yet to convince you – you are still reading, or are you already furiously busy sorting things out? – just think of decluttering as shopping in reverse! Items found by my clients include cash, crates of wine, jewellery, antique coins, birth certificates, gift coupons and parking vouchers, art materials, stamps and stationery, long lost contact details. You name it, they found it. You too can discover tons of things you forgot you had, imagine the joy: all this new stuff, without spending a penny. Who would want to go shopping if they could get digging?

Our surroundings drain or recharge us. How can you spot a feel-good oasis? It reflects who you are, is easy to maintain and supports you in your priorities. If your home or work environments do not meet those criteria at the moment –so much the better. The tiniest positive change in our living space has a direct impact on our life. It feels so wonderful to let go of excess stuff because the purification on the outside also frees the self. Decluttering is a holistic detox.

Welcome to the magical world of the clearout, the Sesame-open into a wonderful lightness of being.

What is the most thrilling thing about things?

Their stories. Every single item tells a unique tale of memories, plans, hopes or dreams. We use objects as props in the theatre of our life. When the stage gets too crammed, performers find it increasingly difficult to manoeuvre. No plot can unfold if the actors keep tripping over random stuff. The art of living is about keeping only those props around us that assist us in reaching our goals. If we never clear the stage, we will find ourselves rehashing outdated plays and ancient dramas over and over. The present literally needs space to unfold; scope for meaningful growth and progression.

Imagine you are the director in charge of putting on a new play: a brand new phase of your life; another crisp, unique, as yet untouched morning. What if you have to work on a stage that still features every single prop of all past shows? What are your chances of creating something new? If we apply that analogy to our home or workplace, how much future can we fit in? Any evidence of the present? Everything crammed to the hilts with the past? Inherited furniture, pictures, vases, presents, cards and souvenirs of the last decades; baby pictures of the children who moved out a long time ago. Homes have a tendency to turn into museums over time. Before we know it, we live in a sarcophagus, an archive, a storage unit of times gone by. If we have just celebrated our 98th birthday and love sitting down in an armchair to look at gently yellowing photo albums, this does not bother us at all. However, if we are still full of plans and beans and have a few years left to reach that age, the stagnation manifested in our museum surroundings does not help.

Tackling the problem zones gets trickier over time. We are energetically connected to our home. Congestion on the level of objects mirrors an overall energy blockage. Matter vibrates, as the physicists explain. We are flickering on and off fast enough to be able to lounge on moving atoms, blissfully unaware of the micro-particles zooming around that happen to form a sofa for us at this point in time. Intuitively however, we do register these vibes. It is no coincidence that we instantly feel upbeat or at peace on entering a building or room; that we enjoy staying in certain spaces. Good vibrations. Elsewhere we would rather turn on our heel and walk out again. Every object has an impact on our heart and soul. If we surround ourselves with things that have a joyful vibration, the environment feels like that – swinging, come rain or shine.

When does an object have joyful vibrations? When it is loved and used. A book was born to be read. Banned on a shelf to collect dust, dog-eared and lonely, it is as good as dead and emits sad ‘nobody loves me’ frequencies, turning the corner from book to burden before our very eyes. Enter the secret daydreams of gentle burglar fairies that would flutter past to lighten our load, clear out the wardrobe, relieve us of the dreaded decision making and gift us with a fresh start and the insurance money. Expats have admitted to hopes that their overseas container would miraculously disappear and sink into the remotest depths of the oceans. For the same reason the thought of a holiday appeals, preferably far away. All we have to drag with us are two (or five) suitcases, the responsibility for the rest of our stuff stays at home.

Less is more has become a cliché, a retailers’ mantra to make us buy their storage ‘solutions’. It still rings true though because objects can be demanding. They hurl themselves at us in a never-ending chorus of silent requests. “Look at me. Carry me back to where I live. Oh, actually, I don’t have a permanent residence yet. Can’t you allocate me one, right now? Please? And then tidy me away? Organise me. Notice me. Enjoy me! Alright then, at least put me out of sight somewhere.” Things are begging for attention, relentlessly. They want to be listened to, leafed through or, even worse, read properly. They need dusting, washing and ironing, folding, wrapping, unwrapping. They want to be carried upstairs and then downstairs again. Protected from cold, heat and moths and stored in a cool dry place. Admired, handled and sorted, ideally alphabetically. Cleaned, glued back together, sewn on, rearranged, filed, fixed, dusted, donated. Constantly they come up with new ideas. “Find me. Shred me. Didn’t you mean to sell me? I am past my use by date, dispose of me – in an ethically responsible, environmentally friendly and politically correct way, of course. Have you put me on the insurance, by the way?” Their never-ending nagging unnerves us. We are trying hard not to listen. Very hard. And on they go. “Buy more boxes, baskets, filing cabinets for us, another chest of drawers would come in handy or how about a trunk? Don’t forget to rent additional storage space and protect us with a safe and burglar alarm. Why not leave the car in the rain and let us live in the garage?” Finally they urge us to build an extension or move to a bigger place. “We need more space.” They put us through the paces, not a moment’s rest or relaxation until they have been dealt with. “No time right now, later,” we sigh, rushing on. The sheer presence of unwanted objects is exhausting because we never seem to be able to cater to their infinite needs. One client summed it up brilliantly, “They just sit there and look at you accusingly.”

Less is more. Our stuff, however, could not care less about this truism and continues to multiply. Somehow word must have got out that we loved cats and before long we are inundated with kittens in every conceivable shape and form: ornaments, mugs, wall calendars and kitchen towels, pens, mousemats, the works. They move in without a rental contract and then miraculously manage to resist eviction. We are just sitting there, minding our own business and then the mail comes in, the bargains and special offers and all those bothersome bits and pieces that require us to make decisions about them. We do not feel like making a decision at the moment, tomorrow we will take action on the annoying flatmates that take over more and more of our precious space. For now we could do with a rest, thank you very much. Meanwhile the relentless piles turn into mini-mountains, get banished into storage boxes while more unwanted stuff creeps in. The spare room fills up, space is running out in both loft and garage and we never seem to get round to doing that car boot sale...

Clutter is everything we do not use or love and anything unfinished. It can be a piece of paper that is past its useful-by date or a habit that we have outgrown. Clutter is stuck energy that makes us prisoners of the past and blocks good new things from coming into our lives.