I'm busy today, cleaning our my spare room and various closets. According to feng shui principles, getting rid of clutter makes room for new stuff to enter your life.
This reminds me of an essay I wrote years ago, and since I have no time to write new stuff, I'll recycle it:
De-Cluttering
I cleaned out my closet the other day. Inspired by a book on feng shui I decided to get rid of a few years’ accumulation of clutter and release all the stagnated energy trapped in my closet. (It seems that’s what energy does. Stagnate, particularly in corners and around unused, unloved junk.) Plus, getting rid of "old" makes room for "new"—new opportunities, new directions, or just plain new stuff.
It had gotten pretty bad. Children would enter and become lost in a Time Warp, filled with assorted doll parts, unread books, a cute little vase that came with my firstborn, jeans with ticket stubs in the pockets from the Depeche Mode concert I’d gone to in ’92… Even our pet rat avoided my closet—he knows a maze when he sees one.
There was some serious energy stagnating here, I realized. And until I cleared out my clutter, I wasn’t going to have the energy to do what I wanted to do—write.
So I spent a day or two, not simply organizing, as I’d done in the past—those TBR books were arranged by author/date, the moldy baby clothes sorted by size—but by actually getting rid of stuff. I didn’t need that Lady Epilator, after all, a torture device that was probably invented around the time of the Inquisition; or the 1993 edition of Writer's Market.
After de-cluttering, clapping in the corners (apparently energy scatters at the sound), and burning incense to celebrate, a funny thing happened, just like the book said. By ridding myself of possessions I’d hung on to for years, I released a whopping amount of energy. Enough to tackle the laundry room, and eventually, my manuscript.
My mind buzzed with all the activity. Out with the old, stale ideas—endlessly reworked scenes, old torn jeans–and in with the new, in the form of words, images, scenes, chapters—and permission to go shopping. (After de-cluttering, it turns out I’ve only got two pairs of pants!)
Another funny thing happened. After months of idle mail, or worse, rejections, I suddenly got a request from an agent for a complete manuscript.
De-clutter. You’ll be glad you did.
—KathyF
February 2001
