The Ultimate Feng Shui Clean Out

Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese practice of creating space and capitalizing on the Qi or energy flow in space. Feng Shui is believed to impact all aspects of a person’s life, health, employment, relationships, etc.

Over the past ten years we have absorbed significant parts of five estates. I am embarrassed to say that when dear husband and I bought our house we shopped for our house to accommodate the furniture we had inherited. What we have come to know is that we live in more house than we need and are now taking some time to get rid of the things in our lives that hinder our doing what we believe we need to be doing. We have also come to know that it is not our responsibility to hang onto other people’s stuff because someone else didn’t want it. In other words, if we don’t love, use it, or if it doesn’t bring joy to our life pass it on to someone else.

I’ve done a bit of this in the past by selling stuff on Ebay and giving things away of Feecycle, but recently we decided to do the ultimate Feng Shui clean out and took a truck load of stuff to an auction house. Stuff that was gathering dust and taking up space and stuff we were not ever going to use and stuff we didn’t like but were keeping because well the family said, ‘we don’t want this anymore, let’s give it to …’ Part of this Ultimate Feng Shui clean out is realizing that we aren’t responsible for other people’s baggage just because they want us to be.

Now of course someone could turn the scripture passage of the reply that Cain gives to God about Able’s disappearance (murder) in Genesis 4:9 as including responsibility for ‘my brother’s’ stuff. We are responsible for caring for other people, but cast off lamps, china, and other items that have not seen the light of day for decades! Stuff and people are different. We ARE responsible for caring for and keeping people, but in our materialistic society we often place things over people. Look at the number of laws on the books that protect property (beginning with our Constitution) and the number of laws that protect people. It is a digression from this argument but interesting to note that Bill of Rights was an addendum to the original constitution…so this fascination with property, things, stuff is an ingrained cultural value.

Organizer Peter Walsh of Clean Sweep fame, points out that how much we value our things is reflected in how we care for our things.

What we have come to learn is that if we don’t value the thing it is time for the thing to move on to a place where it will be valued, but our time and energy should be focused on people not things. The primary responsibility of life is to care for or keep people and things do not equal people and just because a long gone relative valued an object doesn’t mean that I have to value the same object in the same way.

For example, I know that my ancestors are probably not going to value my squeeze ball collection or my taste in literature, after all who is going to want to read Waste and Want the Social History of Trash! It is actually a very good read! I recommend that along with the Story of Stuff, which can be found on the internet.

One could argue that ‘recycling’ things through Ebay, Freecycle, or an auction is better stewardship in that those items are given new life and a loving home. Since the objects were cast off from the family and no longer loved, even by us, does this not reflect how they are valued or not valued? Sooooooo we sent them off to be loved by someone who would love them in our Ultimate Feng Shui clean out.

One of my friends said to me, after I told her about this clean out: “I can’t wait to hear about all the new things that come into your life.”

All I know is I have space to park in my garage, I have space to work in the craft room, and we are not tripping over boxes of books. Being a worrier, I do wonder what the family will say if they find out we sold the…., dear husband has reminded me, ‘we made this stuff work for us and it was our stuff because they didn’t want it.’

I’ll probably be writing more on this topic or related topics of stuff as this seems to be a big theme emerging in my life these days.