Wellbeing experiment #1: Results from clutter clearing

To quote James Brown, "I feel good!"

The wellbeing experiment for Week 1 is now over and the results are in.

Drumroll please!

This week’s approach

Our approach this past week has been focused on clearing physical clutter to bring mental and emotional as well as physical benefits.

For a step-by-step guide to the approach I recommended and used, based primarily on Karen Kingston’s Clearing Your Clutter with Feng Shui, see the first post.

Allow me to review the remarkably satisfying results I obtained by using this approach.

Physical results

In the first post I identified the specific areas of my home that I wished to tackle and shared ‘before’ pictures of these unsightly and frankly embarrassing areas.

As recommended by Karen, I used five bags to separate things into ‘Repairs,’ ‘Recycling,’ ‘Transit’ (to somewhere else in my home), ‘Trash,’ and ‘Dilemma’ (for anything I couldn’t decide what to do with).

These were quite useful as I did have things that went into all of these bags except ‘Repairs.’

That’s my cat overseeing the process, as usual.

Here are the ‘after’ pictures, which show a dramatic difference after clearing and cleaning these five areas.

The first area I tackled was the table with the beautiful tilework that was so covered you couldn’t see and appreciate it. The magazine rack is now underneath it, and the stack of books, weights, and clock put away where they belong. The lampshade went to the local recycling center for someone else to use.

The closet below is now organized so that I know exactly what I have and where I can lay my hands on it. In the clearing process I got rid of quite a few things, which went to the town recycling center.

By the way, those sturdy Corona boxes contain food supplies in case the power goes out for three days as it did last year — not a handy supply of beer!

Next to the closet was this cabinet (below) that had been covered with a bunch of supplies like toilet paper and tissues and random things I didn’t know what to do with. The coat rack had been covered with carrying bags.

Now everything is in an assigned place and I feel thrilled whenever I walk into that room and see the clean, well-organized space.

My coat and hats can now hang where they’re supposed to!

The table below had toilet paper and paper towel supplies on it, which every visitor commented on, asking “What’s all that for?” or making off-color jokes.

The present for someone’s birthday that was sitting on it is now wrapped and waiting to be delivered to the recipient, and everything else has been put away.

The mini-trampoline is staying there, as this is my new designated workout area. Yeah!

Here is my pride and joy from the week. I went through that ‘Leaning Tower of Puzzles’ and decided to get rid of all but my favorites. As you can see, I’m a big fan of Wasgij jigsaw puzzles.

The life-size Chris Pine is now in another room where he doesn’t obstruct the flow of traffic.

Empty shelves are something I haven’t had in years. It’s thrilling to have *space*. It gives a feeling of spaciousness.

Below are the bags full of puzzles that I will be taking to our local puzzle exchange.

I used Karen Kingston’s three questions — does it lift your energy, do you love it, and is it genuinely useful? — and realized that I was only holding on to these puzzles ‘just in case.’ I didn’t really love any of them, and they weren’t useful as they were just sitting there taking up space on a shelf.

I was so thrilled with these results that I kept going and did clutter clearing and reorganizing with every single closet, shelf, cupboard, and drawer.

I have been through every item in my home. Literally. It’s amazing what I forgot I had.

That sense of accomplishment has motivated me to such a degree that I moved on to doing a deep clean of everything, with the intention of starting the year fully content with the state of my home.

It has also motivated me to commit to a cleaning schedule, rather than my usual haphazard approach to getting things done.

Mental and emotional benefits

Looking at Karen Kingston’s list of ways in which clutter can cause energetic problems, I definitely think quite a few of them were afflicting me.

To put it in positive terms after getting rid of the clutter, I now feel I’ve experienced the following benefits around how I feel about my home:

• a feeling of being supported and focused as opposed to distracted by my physical environment

• a sense of comfort, enjoyment, and harmony with my living space

• complete clarity on what I have, so I don’t purchase things I already own — which has been happening, especially with books

• a commitment to keeping my living space free of clutter, organized, and clean

• a desire to invite others over as guests.

But, surprisingly, I have also experienced some ‘bigger’ and more profound benefits in terms of what I want and how I want to be going forward:

• clarity on where I stand in terms of what I’ve done versus what I need to do, and a better sense of my priorities for the year

• a sense of momentum and purpose in dealing with things that need doing, rather than procrastinating

• increasing clarity about what I want in relationships with others — and what I don’t want.

That’s pretty damn good, no?

Overall conclusion

Clutter clearing is — no question! — a viable path to enhanced wellbeing.

Rewards to motivate me turned out to not be necessary once I got going. Seeing order and beauty emerge from disorder and clutter proved to be a powerful reward in and of itself.

The other big positive is that other people are going to benefit from the things just lying around in my home that I am giving away. These include a lampshade, curtain rods, a chair in great condition, and about 50 jigsaw puzzles.

To quote James Brown, “I feel good! I knew that I would now! So good! So good!”

Stay tuned for Experiment #2!