Get Your Life Back By Addressing Incoming Old Stuff

“I want to get my life back.” When you hear that from a woman there are several reasons she might be longing to reclaim her own life. Wives and mothers get consumed in their roles. Women who are depressed go down for periods of time and lose touch with themselves. And, living in physical chaos created by dumping the belongings of a deceased relative in your space can do the same thing.

The tricky thing about trying to get your life back when your house is loaded with memorabilia, furniture and other stuff from family members is that in order to deal with it you are likely to be taking a trip back in time. The reason so much of that old stuff stays stuck where it landed when pulled off the U-Haul is that a part of you is resisting feeling the feelings that could surface when you go through the boxes and move the furniture.

 

Items hold the energy of the person to whom they belonged or the energy of a particular time in your life. Their energy comes from the story they have to tell. Items whose stories mean nothing to you are easy to part with. Those that bring pictures from your past into your mind are loaded and can elicit strong emotions! It’s anticipation of feeling those strong feelings, particularly sadness and loss, that will keep you too busy to do anything with all that stuff.

If you want to “get your life back”, find a way to address the influx of old stuff as soon after it arrives as possible, before it becomes a physical block to getting on with your life. The first step is to decide what you want to incorporate into your home. Keep only those things you truly love or will use. It’s OK to get rid of old stuff. Really!

Pass unwanted items to other family members, donate or sell them. If you have difficulty getting started on the sorting process or making decisions about what to keep and what to move along, get help either from a sensitive friend, family member or professional organizer. Why prolong the agony? Take the first step. There is relief on the other side of any sadness you may encounter.

Feng Shui Organizing

Feng Shui Organizing with Debbie Bowie

Discover the profound impact that environment has on performance! Debbie Bowie, Certified Professional Organizer®, professional speaker, feng shui practitioner, and author of Rock Scissors Paper: Understanding How Environment Affects Your Performance on a Daily Basis, shows you how you can empower yourself and get the life you really want by changing the spaces in which you live and work. Her column is devoted to helping you learn how to better manage your time, tasks, thinking and stuff to have the life of your dreams!

Debbie Bowie is the owner of the Rock Scissors Paper Institute, formerly Simply Organized, a company she formed in 1998 whose mission is to help people clear a path to getting more of what they really want from life. Debbie believes the condition of our living and work environments has a direct impact on what is happening in our lives.

Debbie has spoken for audiences from ages 11 to 80 about topics as diverse as art, addiction, substance abuse prevention, organizing and feng shui. Besides her B.A. in Art History from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, an M.A. in Art History from the University of Utah, and an M.S. in Rehabilitation Counseling from Virginia Commonwealth University, she has had training in Pyramid School Feng Shui, Black Hat Sect Feng Shui, and is a graduate of the Western School of Feng Shui™. In 2007, Debbie was one of an inaugural group of professional organizers to receive the designation of Certified Professional Organizer®.

Let Debbie's guidance in Feng Shui Organizing help you increase your performance and your enjoyment of life!