Tag Archives: cleanliness

Five Spring Clean Decluttering Tips

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photo (86) (1)1. Start small.

If Decluttering seems overwhelming start small..  Pick one drawer, on basket, one pile, or one room.  Break it down to something that is achievable.  Even a small corner of opened space will create new energy in your home and your life.

2.  Look for paper clutter.

Paper clutter comes in many forms.  Junk mail, catalogs, newspapers, magazines, even books.  Be ruthless with the paper clutter.  Ask yourself if that piece of mail is necessary and if it is file it away in an appropriate place. Go through your filing system quarterly or at least yearly to eliminate things that no longer need to be saved.  Can you archive anything online instead? Books you don’t read?  Donate them to your library.

3.  Give away gifts you don’t want

This is a tough one for people.  Almost everyone has been given gifts that they don’t want or need.  Out of guilt we hold on to them.  That guilt can way us down tremendously.  Give yourself the permission to let go of old gifts.  Give them away to someone else.  Shed the guilt.  You won’t hurt your aunt’s feelings.  And if you do, she will get over it.

4.  Ask yourself, “Is it sacred to me?”

One point of point decluttering is to only have things around you that you find meaningful and sacred.  By eliminating the unnecessary and the never used, you can reveal the things that do hold importance to you.  And most of them won’t be things. Clear out to create a sacred space.

5.  Let go of “just in case”

Keeping things for just in case scenarios is very tempting. We have the fear that the minute we get rid of something will be the minute we need that thing.  In actuality this is rarely ever the case. Let it go and make space for the new.  Don’t reinforce to yourself that there is a lack or scarcity in the world that you need to be prepared for.  Instead, grow your social connections, your family and friend time.  These are the resources that will really matter.

8 Limbs of Yoga Made Easy

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This lovely flowchart, made by Alison Hinks, demonstrates the 8 limb path of yoga.  Patanjali laid these steps out in the yoga sutras and thousands of years later we get a handy flowchart.  I think most people work well with visuals.

Asana is clearly the limb we most dwell in, and sometimes with a healthy marriage of pranayama.  I have always found the first two limbs fascinating: the restraints and observances, yamas and niyamas.  They bring up thoughts of discipline, habits, and behaviour.  Soucha, cleanliness, seems to justify my need to declutter. Ahimsa, non violence, I find beautiful and challenging.

As one moves up this tree, each limb seems to be a gateway for the next.  The times I have found pratyahara and dharana to be at my fingertips, have been when my yoga practice is regular and consistent.  In fact, I think the only way to understand yoga is to immerse yourself in it.  Practice often.  I say that as my very own practice is currently inconsistent.  Perhaps a lack of Tapas?  Return to ‘go’.

Pattabhi Jois says, “yoga is 99% practice and 1% theory”.

Time to get back to it.  There are limbs to explore…

Home Space Solutions

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Office Nook

I got this photo from a fellow declutterer.  It’s an office space solution.  By building shelves to fit directly into a small nook, and finding the slimmest desk I’ve ever seen, the need to use an entire room as an office was eliminated.  I have found simple shelves like this at Ikea and used them in the past in fun and artful ways. Though I think these shelves were spec’d for their specific purposes as the book shelf is less wide than the bottom shelf. It’s always satisfying to use just the right amount of space.

Books can be a part of decor.  These books clearly are reference and other work related office books.  But I think books can be a part of clutter too.  It’s good to go through the book shelves periodically and pass along books that are unused, unloved, and unnecessary.  I especially enjoy passing along books I love.  I feel like keeping books passing in and out of the home is representational of a flow of information in and out of your life.  It’s healthy to share knowledge and gain knowledge and to allow the space for new ideas.

It’s just about time for spring cleaning and you can’t organize and clean until you declutter. That means it’s time to start throwing things out!

Yoga Home Practice: Have it Your Way

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Tools in my yoga corner

Developing a home practice can be challenging.  Usually, I have to feel the stars aligning in order to find the space (mental and physical) to practice at home.  But I know it’s important so lately I have been doubling down my efforts to acknowledge my resistance and work through it.

One of my issues was the space, so I designated a yoga corner in the living room. This way, I don’t have to move furniture in order to practice.  The corner is free and clear of clutter with a mat or two rolled up in the corner, an eye pillow, strap, and usually a few yoga books for reference.

ipillow?

Then I decided there was an overhead hanging lamp in the way of my sun salutations so my fiance removed it.

Obstruction no more

With the yoga corner decluttered and happy it was time to practice.  But where to start?  Sun Salutations seemed like the obvious answer.  And then I realized I could do anything I wanted in this new liberated space.  My personal class can be any length of time and take any sequence I choose.  How fun.

I have decided to make it my yoga work zone.  I am working on poses or transitions that I don’t really take the time to focus on in class because I am “flowing”.  Right now, my focus is lifting from a standing forward bend into handstand (handstand pike press).  I don’t have it yet, but will be sure to let you know when I do!

With the freedom to do anything we want, what do we do?  I am trying to break free of the “what should I do” thinking and just do what I want. Who knew unleashing ourselves could be so challenging?

With a home practice, I think the key is just to get started.  It doesn’t have to be right, or rigorous, or anything really.  It could be a seated meditation.  Decluttering helps to make the space ‘sacred’ and allow for mental and physical freedom.

Namaste!

De-cluttering

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When my mind is cluttered and I cannot focus, I look for something to throw out.
A few years back I became a de-clutterer.  De-cluttering the space around me and de-cluttering my body leads to the prize, which is a clean brain.  And what is a clean brain, but one that works efficiently and with acuity.  The idea behind clutter is that everything you have should be useful and should have its own place.  Useful things must be cared for, looked after, kept clean, and put away for next use. A less perfunctory way of explaining it, as I read in the book that first influenced this behavior of mine, Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui, is that one should only keep things that are sacred, thereby making life sacred.  De-cluttering is a method of eliminating the proverbial chaff from the wheat.
Throwing things out makes way for the new.  If something is meaningful, useful, and sacred, then it stays in our life and we care for it.  But the rest is our past, quite literally, and it keeps us locked there, unable to live in the present moment, ready for new ideas, new experiences, and new abundance.  To make life sacred is the true nature of abundance, to feel more gratitude with less stuff.
If you look at the life of hoarders, who by nature are unhappy, you can trace their lives back to a specific moment, event, and year, when their lives essentially stopped and the hoarding began.  As long as they hoard, they will be kept in that moment where time stopped.  There can be no future in this scenario because there is no ability to enter the present moment.
Cleanliness is next to Godliness?
Saucha, the first niyama, or observance, mentioned in Patanjali’s yoga sutras, translates to purity.  Literally this means to clean the body.  We wash off the day after work, we wash off the sweat after exercise and we feel cleaner than we did before, we feel fresh, all the way into our organs and our blood.  New energy is the result of de-cluttering.
The relationship I have with “things” in my life has changed since taking on de-cluttering years back.  I now think long and hard before I purchase something.  I want to know that it will last, that it will work efficiently, that its texture pleases me, and so on.  I have thrown away so many things in my life that I used very little, but spent money on, that now I part with my money far less on material objects.  As Robert Kiyosaki says in Rich Dad Poor Dad, “people turn their cash into trash”.
A life uncluttered is something I strive for, but it did not come naturally.  It is a practice, like many of the best things in life.  It can be exhausting in the beginning, but soon becomes a daily habit.  I encourage you to go out today and find a box, a pile, or a junk drawer, and push the envelope of what you are compelled to throw away or donate to charity.  Enjoy the satisfaction of a life uncluttered.  And see what else gets the opportunity to enter.  Perhaps it will be an experience, or a person, that you otherwise would not have had room for.
Creating Sacred Space With Feng Shui: Learn the Art of Space Clearing and Bring New Energy into Your Life The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!