What's' so bad about clutter?
Living with clutter can confuse and depress you, cause disharmony in your life, and make you feel tired or lethargic. It can make you feel disorganized and ashamed and cause you to procrastinate. Living with clutter puts your life on hold, keeping you locked in the past. No only does it affect the way people treat you, but it can also be a health or fire hazard. It can also cost you financially, especially if you've reached the stage where your stuff has overflowed your home, and you are paying premium rentals for commercial storage space elsewhere.

Exactly what is clutter?
The dictionary defines clutter as "a crowded and untidy collection of things, " and, yes, that's apart of it, but it only describes clutter at the purely physical level. In my definition, there are four categories of clutter:

1. Things you do not use or love
2. Things that are untidy or disorganized
3. Too many things in too small a space
4. Anything unfinished

Things that are loved, used, and appreciated have strong, vibrant, joyous energies that allow the energy in your home to flow smoothly, while anything neglected, forgotten, unwanted, unloved, or unused causes the energy to slow and stagnate. You will feel that your life is not moving. Get rid of anything and everything that has no real meaning or significance for you. You will literally feel lighter in body, mind, and spirit.

Your home is an outward representation of what is going on inside you, so if you are messy on the outside there is a corresponding mess of some kind inside too. People say, "There is order in my chaos," or " I need to keep things in the open to remind me of what I have to do." Even if you clear your clutter and keep just the things you use and love, your place will still be cluttered if these things are scattered all over and hard to find when you want them. Your life works better when you know where things are.

Sometimes your problem is simply one of space. Your life expands but your home stays the same size, or it was never big enough in the first place. The more you cram into your living space, the less room there is for energy to move, and the more difficult it becomes for you to get anything done. You will feel constricted and limited in what you can do in your life. So, what's the solution? Move to a bigger place or get rid of the clutter.

Anything "unfinished" is a form of clutter that is harder to see and easier to ignore than the other types, but its effects are far-reaching. There is no hiding from "Feng Shui eyes." Anything unfinished - physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual -clutters your psyche. Things not dealt with in your home reflect issues not dealt with in your life, such things as fixing the broken drawer, mending the broken appliance, replacing a burned out light bulb, repairing a dripping faucet, or taming the jungle that has become your garden. Such things are a constant drain on your energy. Your subconscious mind will nicely suppress these things for your, but it takes a lot of your energy to do so. You will be amazed at how your vitality levels soar if you complete all your unfinished business.

So why do people keep clutter?
Some of the reasons people give for keeping clutter are "I'm keeping things just in case," it a status symbol - "Well the Joneses have this so I need one, too!" Advertising is deliberately designed to play on your insecurities. "If you don't have one of these, you will be a lesser human being" and "More is better!" Other reasons include inherited patterns, that is, we learn most of our behavior from our parents, patterns that have been passed down through generations. Some people refuse to let go of their old junk until they've really got your money's worth, and every last drop of usefulness has been wrung out of it. Maybe you use clutter to suppress unwanted emotions? For example, are you uncomfortable with too much empty space around you or too much free time? Clutter conveniently fills that space and keeps you busy. But what are you really avoiding? Loneliness? Fear of intimacy or some other buried emotion?

Know This!
The good things in life cannot flow easily into your life if you block the flow of energy by persistently clinging to outdated clutter. Take the clutter test. Ask yourself three important questions when faced with clearing clutter: Do I absolutely love it? Does it lift my energy when I think about it or look at it? Is it genuinely useful? If your answer to these questions is NOT a resounding yes, then what is it doing in your life? The process of clearing clutter is all about letting go.

How do you staying clutter free?
Get organized! Find a place for everything. Everything in its place. Stop clutter before it starts. Think twice before you buy anything. Empty the wastebaskets in your home regularly. If you are prone to hoarding, make a new rule for yourself: "When something new comes in, something old goes out." If your have clutter in your home, you will also have clutter in your mind. To clear mental clutter stop worrying; stop criticizing and judging; stop gossiping, moaning, and complaining. Stop the mental chatter.

Life is constant change and it abhors a vacuum. Make room for something new to come into your life, and when it does, enjoy it, use it well, and when it is time, let it go. It's that simple. So, what are you waiting for? Get busy and clear that clutter NOW!