Feng Shui from the Inside, Out – Day 26
Feng Shui from the Inside, Out? Day 26
Detailing 2
How much is too much?
When does collecting become cluttering?
When does clutter become hoarding and what’s going on there anyway?
We love our stuff. Most of us, anyway. And if I had to pick between erring on the side of too much stuff or too little, I’d go with too much, for sure. But that’s me…and it’s me with a lot of space. People have different tastes in everything including how the feel about and react to non-necessities in the home. Then there’s the fact that one person’s non-necessities are another’s necessities. Again, it’s a very individual matter.
But stuff can reach a tipping point and then it’s called clutter. When there are too many things in a space to be able to see and appreciate the individual things, when you have to move things out of the way to see something else, or to put something else – like a cup or a glass that you are using – down, then you’ve hit that tipping point. When there’s no open space on a side table, you don’t need a table, you need a display case. When tchotchkes have rendered the flat surfaces of your home un-usable for anything else except their own display, something has to change because the energetic effectiveness of your space is being seriously compromised. You’re being compromised! In your own space. That should be a clue.
There are two ways you can go to get out of this energetic dilemma and they both relate to the energy around the items in question. If you love them, really love them, if they mean something to you, find them a home of their own in a showcase or vitrine. Corralling numbers of items in one space makes them a collection and that can actually amplify the good energy in your space. Placed in the finance area of a room it speaks directly to an abundance that matters to you. Placed in the resources area, it identifies a passion of yours, something you know about, something people can know about you.
You can also perform triage on the items. This is useful when you actually do collect something – like elephant carvings or turtles or Hummel figurines – and over the years people who know you, and may have been stuck for a gift on a special occasion, have given you one of these items and you don’t particularly like it. Holding onto things you have no attachment to, especially if you actively don’t like them, is especially bad Feng Shui for both you and your space, reminding you every time you see the thing that you are doing something you don’t want to do; that generates more of that feeling energy for you. The next time someone admires the thing, give it to them. Or ship it off to a non-profit second-hand shop.
“But what will I tell the person who gave it to me?” Tell them the truth, carefully phrased. Tell them that a dear friend fell in love with it and that you gave it to them. Or tell them that you had to scale down and let go of a number of things, that you were sad about that (sad that you had to scale down) but it had to be done.
Collections, even when corralled, can unbalance Feng Shui, particularly if the collection is of an animal of some sort. Birds and fish and animals carry a lot of symbolic energy on their own; it’s why we’re attracted to them. In many ethnic traditions, it is thought that each of us has our own power animal and that if we lose touch with that we become ill. It is wiser, from Feng Shui standpoint, to have only one representation – or a few, at most – of any animal in your home, lest its primary characteristics be amplified out of proportion. (Of course, if you should happen to actually have a representation of your power animal, that is best kept in your bedroom, and not open to public display.)
The extreme condition of clutter, hoarding, in severe cases, often doesn’t appear to be as cluttered as plain old clutter does because very frequently people who hoard are quite orderly about their stash. Behind hoarding lies a deep seated fear about not having enough; a sense of not having control over the vagaries of life leads to the need to control whatever can be controlled so, as a rule, although the person has way more of whatever it is that they’ve focused on – and sometimes there’s no focus at all – they keep it arranged in such a way so as to make it easily assessable because they might need it. It’s important to know what you’ve got if you are constantly concerned that you might not have enough.
Hoarding is a symptom of a psychological issue and needs to be addressed tactfully and, ideally, with professional help. It is, of course, the person who needs the help first as you cannot deprive someone who feels that they need a lifeline of that lifeline without causing serious emotional damage.
Just to help clear out your internal clutter, let’s have another pre-birth assignment:
As I am reading this, I allow myself to feel gratitude for all the many ways you, my dear body, help to keep us comfortable and functional.
I notice how you are feeling and I give you permission to relax as we are reading this allowing the words to sink deeply into the cellular consciousness of our body.
Now I picture myself asleep in bed tonight.
I know that you remember the moments after our birth. If during that time our mother may have felt in any way unclean or dirty and passed that sense on to us, to the degree that it is comfortable for you, I give you permission to let it go.
You can fill the empty space its leaving may create by expanding the way I feel just after a bath or shower.
Thank you for helping me to feel the light that I know I carry.
