This is a simple but revelatory guide to freeing yourself from patterns, habits and the past by assessing your relationship with everything you own.
It outlines how clutter affects you – from keeping you in the past to making you feel tired and overwhelmed to even manifesting as extra body weight and it explores the reasons why we keep clutter, ranging from self-protection to status and security and how we have imbibed our parents’ views on possessions.
You may not even realise how ready you are to let go until you read this. Things that were once loved and held great meaning for you may no longer do so and yet, you’re still holding on. The nicest part is that you can clear clutter in layers and phases. No one is forcing you to get rid of anything; this is entirely about going at your own pace which makes it a peaceful and energising process. It’s about creating space in your home and life for the things and energies that you do want to invite in.
So an important note is that you can never clear someone else’s clutter – their emotions and experiences are tied to their belongings. Being forcefully separated from your stuff can cause or exacerbate trauma. At the most, you could give them this book!
The text itself is written in a fairly dry, unimaginative style but one can read it in snippets or skip to relevant sections or chapters. If you can’t bring yourself to tidy up, the book has practical tips on how to break the process down into manageable tasks.
The feng shui is used to look at areas of your home associated with health, family, knowledge, relationships and so on to see where your clutter has accumulated and how that is affecting those aspects of your life. This ideology is minimal and one doesn’t need to believe in it to benefit from this book.
It has the potential to help you release who you were by accepting who you are now and laying a foundation for who you want to be.
Ayesha Anna Ninan 