Unclog the Arteries of Your Home

As a Professional Organizer, I see clients who are at the end of their rope, drowning in a sea of clutter and stuff. Their lives are full of material things and they struggle to make sense of why they feel so out of touch with their partner, with their children, with their community, and with themselves.

I’m here to tell you that materialism or 'stuff' is clogging your life and will separate you from your relationships with yourself and your loved ones unless you take control. Just like fat clogs the arteries to your heart causing heart failure, the pursuit of things is causing the heart of your family to fail.

I have found my professional organizing clients generally fall into three categories:

Those who are disorganized because they do not have a system in place and once shown the principles of being organized, are organizing stars and they go on in their life in a merry way

Those for whom clutter is a manifestation of something else and until they release whatever that is, will be in a vicious cycle of organization and disorganization.

Those who have a obsessive compulsive disorder

For this article I would like to investigate category two, those who are caught in a vicious cycle of being disorganized/organized. For these people, there is definitely a connection between clutter/mess/disorganization and where people are at personally. Often people try to fill the holes in their emotional heart by buying material possessions hoping that being surrounded by things will somehow compensate for what they are missing emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and/or physically.

Examples of how emotional lack manifests as material over-indulgence include:

• Children’s rooms that are full of toys and clothes to compensate for the guilt the parent feels for being divorced or working outside the home
• A woman who buys closets full of clothes to compensate for a loveless marriage
• A home that is full of things of the past as a way of holding onto the memories of the past and instead stifles the present and strangles the future
• A person who keeps gifts they don’t like because they are unwilling to express their wants and needs for fear of not being liked. An example is one client who had a closet full of gifts that she never used and only displayed when the person who gave her the gift came to visit. She was so busy storing things she did not want and remembering to put Great Aunt Beryl's vase, that she had no room for the things that feed her soul and spirit.
• A person who keeps clothes that are too small/big. One client kept a closet full of clothes she had not worn for over 10 years and was two sizes too small in case she gets cancer. By living in the future, she is keeping the joys of the present from having a place in her life. Not to mention the fact that she is obviously expecting to have cancer sometime in the future.

When you sort through your belongings, ask yourself these important questions:

• Do I use it?
• If not, why am I keeping it?
• Does it feed my spirit and my soul?
• What am not dealing with by keeping this?
• What is the worst thing that could happen if I no longer had this item? Can I live with the result?

Clutter is often the result of other issues in our lives. By dealing with the issues, we also deal with the clutter in a way that prevents clutter returning to our lives. When we live our lives in harmony with our spirit, we live in harmonious surrounds.

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