What do you do when you need to declutter your home, but you want more than just a cleaning plan? For that you can pick up 10-Minute Declutter, which offers lots of quick tips for ridding your house (and your mind, and your spirit) of clutter while also adding more to your life by using author Skye Alexander’s tips for incorporating Feng Shui into your rooms.
Alexander starts by explaining some basics of Feng Shui, an ancient Chinese art of placement that offers up “cures” for an area that can help restore balance, create harmony, and attract health, wealth, and happiness. Many of these cures can be symbolic as well as practical, and as clutter is often seen not just as the physical stuff around us but also the blocks we set up for ourselves, then using Feng Shui to help declutter adds an extra dimension to the finished rooms.
After the primer on Feng Shui (which you can skip over if you want to, and come back to that later after you’ve decluttered), Alexander goes room by room with ideas to declutter and add warmth and harmony. And as each tip is a quick, simple idea, you can take 10 minutes a day to use one tip, and slowly uncover the comfortable, clean home that you’ve been wanting.
Alphabetize your spices. Organize your fridge. Rethink your small appliances. Clean the fireplace. Use coat trees. Get rid of objects that have unpleasant associations. Group photos on walls. Organize hobby items in your creativity area. Wash plant leaves. Pare down holiday decorations. Give away books you’re done reading.
Discard old medications and cosmetics. Keep your entrances free of obstacles. Clear passageways. Replace light bulbs. Backup your computer. Delete old files. Rearrange items on your desk occasionally. Recycle what you can. Fix cracked and broken pavement outside. Trim shrubs and tress near entrances.
Get your kids involved in putting things away. Keep screens out of the playroom. Give each kid towels of different colors. Rotate chores. Allow each child one idiosyncratic collection they never have to prune (what a great idea is that?!).
Meditate. Find a centering ritual. Use a bell to focus yourself. Organize your schedule to fit your own rhythms. Think positive thoughts while cooking. Fight fair. Pay bills as they arrive. Clean out your bag or wallet. Use calming scents. Don’t put things off. Take time out. Learn to say no.
As you use these ideas to declutter your rooms and your spirit, you can add in some of the Feng Shui cures to help you make your home cozier and more personal. Use plants and mirrors in your spaces. Choose colors and shapes that create the feelings you want. Live intentionally and with focus, and you can discover a life beyond clutter and all the stress it brings.
While I probably won’t use all these ideas, there are more than enough to get me started and to give me inspiration to clean out a bunch of the obstacles that are holding me back from feeling more free and calm. And while I’m not a hardcore Feng Shui proponent now, I do like the idea of there being “cures” for what’s holding me back, that there is hope for me yet.
I do wish that there had been more focus on the decluttering and less on the Feng Shui, but I still found a lot of ideas I can incorporate into my home. 10-Minute Declutter is a great jumping off point for creating a warm, comforting, safe home without all the clutter that’s been holding you back.
Galleys for 10-Minute Declutter were provided by Quarto Publishing Group through NetGalley, with many thanks.