When I give speeches I’m often asked, “What if I’m not the cause of the messiness in my house?”

I first commiserate with the person, because it can be very frustrating to be working hard to maintain order only to have it wrecked by loved ones. Then I make the following suggestions:

1. Control what you can. Clear your clutter. Keep all the areas over which you have control clutter free and organized. When you do that you are shifting energies in a positive direction. Sometimes just that positive shift in energy will affect the behavior of others.

2. Make a request that everyone work together to keep public areas neat and clutter free. Don’t nag. Don’t criticize them for their bad habits. Public areas are the kitchen, family room, living room, dining room. Keeping those areas clear of clutter, neat and organized will help keep interactions between family members peaceful and positive.

3. Give those who are messy a place to be messy. For children, it’s their bedroom. Lay ground rules to avoid health hazards like attracting rodents and other pests with dirty dishes and food. Perhaps come to an agreement about how often the room is to be cleaned–once a month or so? For the spouse, leave the room alone! But, ask for agreement that his/her stuff will not spill out into the public areas.

4. Choose your battles. When clutter does accumulate in public areas, first clean up your part of the mess. Then remind others of the agreement to work together to keep the public areas neat and ask them to remove their belongings. If over time you meet a lot of resistance, or if family members seem to truly be unconscious of the mess they create, let them know that when they do leave personal items in the public areas, you will be moving those items to their rooms. If they object to you moving their things, remind them of the agreement about keeping public areas clutter free. They won’t love you for moving their things, but you’ll be able to continue to love them! And, the public areas will be neater!

5. Refuse to fight and nag and criticize others about their messy ways. Those behaviors do nothing to get your desired results and they do much that is harmful to your relationships. People who are messy usually are less bothered by the negative energy of clutter and disorder. Many of them aren’t even conscious of the whirlwind of stuff that follows them around. Most of them are awesome people, but will never be great at being neat and organized.

Happy Negotiating and Accepting Things You Cannot Change!

Organizing your home or office may seem like a daunting task. Where to start? How to get started? What to do with all the stuff that you no longer need or use? It’s easy to get hung up on any one of those questions, easy to get overwhelmed.

Part of the problem is the ego’s need to “get it right.” The good news is that there is no “right” when it comes to clutter clearing. There are many paths to success. But, all of those paths start with a single step, an action. So, doing something, anything in the direction you want to go is a success. Each step shifts energies. Shifting energies encourages movement.

I recommend that you make “What can I do today to be more organized?” a question you ask yourself daily. Even if you make just a step as small as hanging up your clothes at the end of the day. That’s a positive step and movement in the right direction. Or, you might decide to identify one item to purge every day for a week and take those items to a charity. Or, you might decide to recycle five of the 55 boxes you have saved because they’re “good boxes” and you might need one someday. Every decision and action in the direction of order and reducing the volume of unnecessary items increases positive energies. When you feel the benefit that comes from those little steps, you will be motivated to keep going.

Here’s another suggestion: make decisions about big items first and you’ll feel bigger energy shifts! Do this every day and over time you can make your way through your self-created physical barriers to success.

“What can I do today to be more organized?” Make it you mantra!

Choose contractors to work in your house very carefully. Because the projects they work on will be forever associated with them, their behavior and energy, it’s important that you choose people who will leave you with good results and good memories. Those good results and good memories contribute to the overall energy of your home. Good results and good memories equal good feng shui.

I learned this lesson the hard way. The plumber who installed my new kitchen sink was running his own business for the first time, overwhelmed, exhausted and really struggling to get the sink in. He spewed negative energy all over the kitchen with curses and anger. Unfortunately he left his negative energy behind. Because his behavior was so unpleasant and the sink was associated with him, forever after when I looked at the sink I thought of him. I still think of him when I think of that remodeling situation.

The best way to find contractors who will be good feng shui is to ask discerning trusted friends who they use. Avoid using unknown contractors. You could end up with a feng shui nightmare!

The Power Position

Have you ever noticed that attorneys and executives always have their desks facing the door of their offices? There’s reason for that, besides the fact that it makes a person seem important. Your nervous system is most comfortable and therefore works better when you have a solid wall behind you and a full view of the door. In feng shui we call that position the “power position.”

Your nervous system is programed for survival. When your back is to the door a part of your brain is always on high alert, ready to take action should someone or something come up from behind. When you can see what’s coming at you with the support of a solid wall behind you, your nervous system settles down. You are able to relax and you feel empowered.

I once had a client who had numerous problems in his personal and professional life. Both his bed and his desk were not located in the power position. I recommended he move both pieces of furniture so he’d have a solid wall behind him and a full view of the door from the desk and the bed. He and I made those changes that day. When I saw him several months later, he looked like a different person. He had gone back to his old job, which was the best fit for him. He had worked things out with his ex-wife. And, he had started dating. Not long ago, many years after our consultation, I saw him at Starbucks. Instead of presenting the bundle of nerves and insecurities I’d seen years before, I was greeted by a happy man who had remarried and seemed very content with his life.

Check it out! If you’re not in the power position, move your desk. By the way, being in the power position is more important than enjoying the view out the window. Then pay attention to how you feel, how you work, and your attitude. I predict improvement in all three areas!

© 2012 Clutter Clearing Community | Debbie Bowie

“Author, Organizing Expert and Feng Shui Practitioner, Debbie Bowie, is a leading authority on clutter clearing to attract more of what you want in life. If you’re ready to clear clutter and move your life forward, get your FREE TIP SHEET, “Feng Shui Tips for Instant Success” at http://www.clutterclearingcommunity.com.

People who know me well know that keeping my car clutter free is my biggest organizing challenge. My car is my mobile office. And, any place where you spend lots of time, do many things and come and go frequently is likely to get messy and at times a bit out of control. Here are a few actions I take that help me manage car chaos:

1. All trash I generate goes into the cooler I have on the floor between the two front seats. It gets emptied every night when it is taken into the house to be packed for the next day.

2. All items on the passenger seat are reviewed every evening to determine if they need to go back into the house or stay in the seat for access or reference the next day.

3. To corral some of the loose items that I tend to carry in my car, all books, magazines, audio books and other reading materials are kept in a plastic tub located just behind the front seat on the floor in front of the back seats.

No one would describe the inside of my car as an organized utopia, but those simple steps have helped me keep that potential organizing nightmare at bay. It takes daily action to maintain order in my mobile office!

I was recently reminded of why many attics stay packed for decades. After two hours of mounting two sets of stairs and hauling down volumes of old items I was panting, sweating (not perspiring!) and thinking to myself, “People have no idea what a nightmare they are creating when they dump items one by one into an attic.” The effort to put things in an attic in no way compares to the energy it takes to get everything out of it!

Here are a few tips to keep your attic from becoming a nightmare:

1. Don’t use your attic as a default location for things you don’t know what to do with. Most of those things are really items you no longer love or use. That makes them good candidates for purging.
2. With very few exceptions, make the attic a place to hold things you use at least once a year, like luggage, seasonal decorations, and off-season clothing. That will keep those items mobile and give you a yearly opportunity to assess whether it’s time to let them go.
3. Don’t store books in the attic. Books can’t be easily accessed for reading or reference if they are in the attic. And if they are so precious that they warrant being kept, why would you expose them to the temperature extremes of an attic?
4. Limit paper storage in the attic to records that must be kept for tax or legal reasons. Most other paper can be tossed with no significant consequences.

Remember, what goes up into an attic must come down! Make careful choices to avoid an attic nightmare.

A few weeks ago I was helping my father rake leaves. I really don’t like to rake leaves. Why? Because I can easily get overwhelmed by how much there is to do and how long it takes to see any progress.

This time I decided to apply the Lariope Method, an approach I unconsciously developed to handle big jobs, one that keeps you from getting overwhelmed. The way it works is you keep your head down, focus right in front of you and avoid looking at the whole picture of what needs to be done. By keeping your head down you can feel good about what you are accomplishing and avoid blowing yourself out of the water by comparing what you’ve gotten done to how much more is left to be done.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard clients lament how much there is left to do instead of celebrating the success of what they have gotten done. Their focus is one of the reasons they are unsuccessful at getting and staying organized. It’s so important that you do whatever you have to do to keep yourself feeling positive about your efforts. Sometimes that means you have to make yourself keep your head down to avoid feeling overwhelmed.

Once Dad and I got a large part of the yard raked, when the end was in sight, I was able to raise my head and feel encouraged by how much we had gotten done. And, yes, we finished the job!

Got a large project? Keep your head down while you work so you can stay positive and get it done!

Is the art on your walls attracting good things into your life? Check each piece to see if its energy is life affirming, having a positive subject and message. For example, art showing scenes of loneliness or struggle can attract that type of energy into your life. War scenes can attract conflict. On the other hand peaceful scenes attract peace and encourage peacefulness in the space.

Remove any art that holds negative energies in place. I once saw a piece of fine art in a client’s dining room that showed a body lying on the ground with its head cut off. I was shocked by the subject of the painting. Energetically the content might imply that while dining there one might lose one’s head.

Go one step further and find art that holds energies and reflects circumstances that you want to attract. For example, I have a print of a lovely beach house hanging in my living room because I love the beach and want to spend vacations in a house just like that one.

Art is a powerful energy enhancer. Make sure your art attracts what you really want!

It is not uncommon to feel overwhelmed and hopeless when you look at your organizing challenges, especially if you weren’t born with an organizing gene. One way to combat those negative feelings is to picture the results you want and picture yourself being completely successful in your organizing efforts. Act as if you have already been successful. Feel the positive feelings that success will cause. Visualizing your organizing success and those positive feelings will attract whatever you need to make it so.

When I am scheduled to do a speech or an interview, anything about which I feel a little shaky, I have made it a habit to picture myself doing the task being confident, competent and enjoying the process. And, without fail, I have gotten the results I was seeking. I recently used that approach when I did my first TV interview. Check it out!

Believe in your ability to be successful and you will be. Picture it. Feel it. And, move forward to find the peace that is possible when you live an organized life.

Like attracts like. If you want more peace in your life, create peace in the physical arrangement of your belongings in your home. If you want more clarity, create a clutter free home environment. If you want a Pug, get a statue or a photograph of a Pug and display it in your home.

Want a new job? Write the job description and post it in your home office where you see it often. Be sure to list the salary and other specifics you are looking for in just the right job.

Want a new relationship? Cut out magazine photos of people to whom you find yourself attracted. Put the best one in a frame and place it where you see it every day. Or, write a list of the characteristics you want in a life partner. Read it often.

When you create what you really want in physical form in your home, you are setting your intention to attract it into your life.