Clear your Closet: Change your Life

You may not be a poet, but imagine writing a poem and you’re struggling over it as it’s not flowing too well. How would you fix it?

At a poetry workshop last week one of my clients was surprised to hear the workshop leader say:

“First you declutter your poem. You remove anything that doesn’t feel right…..phrases, words, whole lines. And even if you are left with only one line, you’ve created space for something new to emerge.”

Does this sound familiar?

One of my clients decluttered her closet – she said she took out two thirds of her clothes and gave them to charity. What happened next was amazing. Within a couple of days she found herself writing, day and night. She couldn’t stop.

Four years earlier, she had started writing her autobiography and she’d got stuck. It had been on her mind ever since.

Now it was flowing out of her. She told me her family had a lot of secrets and she’d got stuck trying to write about them.

What she didn’t know until then, was that closets represent secrets. Things hidden away. Once she freed up the energy in her closet, her writing energy freed up and she found herself writing about the secrets that had stopped her in her tracks years before.

So, how is your closet, and what do you think decluttering might free up in your life?

If your closet has clothes you don’t wear, it’s disorganized and/or you have clothes that don’t make you feel great when you wear them, this will create an energy block which will keep your life from flowing as easily as it might. As you’re decluttering ask yourself these questions about each piece of clothing:

1. When was the last time I wore this? Sometimes you need to give things a rest for a while – but if your reason for not wearing it is that something else always feels better then perhaps it’s time to let it go.

2. Does it fit? Keeping clothes you no longer fit into can really bring your energy down. When you put them away out of sight, or even better, give them away, it means you’re living in the present and treating yourself well. It doesn’t mean your weight might not change in the future.

Having clothes that don’t fit is a constant reminder of the past. How about promising yourself some new clothes if you clear out those clothes that represent who you used to be?

3. Do I look good in it? There’s no point keeping things that don’t make you look your best – even if you paid lots for them. You’re not going to wear them. Take them to a consignment shop and get some money for them. Take a look at what inspired you to purchase them in the first place – how can you make a wiser decision next time? Now, go out and buy yourself something that makes you feel on top of the world.

4. Do I feel good in it? Given that your clothes are a reflection of who you are, why keep anything that doesn’t make you feel good?

5. Does it fit my current or desired lifestyle? Do you have clothes from a past lifestyle still in your closet? Any corporate suits that are no longer appropriate? Anything you bought because it looked wonderful but it doesn’t fit who you are? In Feng Shui it’s important to surround yourself with things that represent who you truly are now.

6. Is it in good condition? You’ll not wear old clothes, except to paint in and you only need one set of those. Throw anything out that’s past its best.

7. Is it ready to wear or does it need repair or cleaning? Set it aside to do now so you can wear these things.

The clothes that will be most difficult to let go of will likely be those you paid a lot of money for. Giving clothes to charity can help move past those guilty feelings. It will make you feel good if you focus on the value you’re creating in someone else’s life.

Action Step: This week set aside some time to declutter your closet.

Just as in reworking a poem, the easiest way I know to declutter a closet is to take everything out, clean the closet, and only put back what you’d like to keep.

And once you’ve done that, do the same in a month’s time – you’ll find you can let go of even more.

When you unlock the energy in your closet, you might just find something wonderful coming your way. Perhaps you’ll start writing poetry.