How to Clear the Clutter in Your Life Using Thoughts, Voice and Action

By Kay Newton

Women often declutter at this time of year. We can’t help it; women are physically connected to the cycles of the earth, from the monthly pull of the moon to its annual seasons. When you declutter according to the natural rhythms of the world, you are said to be in flow and may see huge life changes.

It’s not all the mountains of ‘materialistic stuff’ that need sorting through. Decluttering comes in many different shapes and forms. Did you know you can also dust the cobwebs in your mind, clear your energy using your voice, as well as spruce your home in just 15 minutes?

Why is decluttering so important? We often forget that in order to bring the new into our lives, we have to let go of the old. Here are some new ideas for cleaning on all levels.

Judith Quin

An actress, voice coach and sound healer, Judith Quin says that the most powerful thing about working around voice vibration is that it helps you clear the gunk, the rubbish, the emotional baggage sitting within you.

“Your voice is energy. Energy affects our physical and mental-emotional state all the time. It is both practical, physical, personal and powerful. By connecting to your voice, not only do you expand the physical and bring your voice much more into your body, but it also helps you extract and get used to hearing your voice, therefore becoming less self-conscious. This is also an excellent tool for those struggling with public speaking,” she says.

According to Judith, sound healing can take many forms – gongs, Tibetan bowls, crystal bowls, chimes and so on – yet the voice is the only sound healing that comes from the inside out. “It is your own unique sound that only you can truly feel. It can be used whenever you need to and you don’t need any other equipment,” she says.

When doing voice energy work it is important to know what you are creating the space for and what you are clearing out. “By connecting to your voice vibration, you also connect to the intention behind what you are doing, which in turn regulates your energy. It is important to ask, ‘What is my intention behind it?’ Whatever you bring up, you create and you need to be prepared to own it and let it go if necessary.”

Breath is also an integral part of this work: breathe out through your mouth and in via your nose so that you can welcome in what you want to create, she advises.

“For example, if you are clearing out the dark stuff, the cobwebs, be aware that bringing up these things you may not like looking at (anger, depression, vulnerability, sexuality) can also make you feel angry, tearful or sad.”

Judith knows from personal experience just how powerful sound healing work can be. Just before Christmas, Judith ran a solstice sounding to recognise the shadow and the darkness and to release this from within. At home that evening, Judith started to get angry about things going on around the festive season.

She narrates, “The next day I woke up depressed, I did not want to be involved in the usual traditions. Then that evening, something clicked and I remembered the sounding. With that awareness I was able to let it all go. All I needed to do was sound in the light. I brought it up, I created it, I own it and accept it and I can let it go.”

Find more of Judith’s work on yourwholevoice.com.

Carol Richardson

“Procrastination and overwhelm go hand-in-hand with cleaning spaces and even though most of my clients know what to do (after all there is so much information out there on Google), it’s actually doing it that is the sticking point,” says Carol Richardson, the UK-based founder of Space Creator, a service that helps people declutter their spaces in holistic ways.

“Rather than overwhelm, the concept is to finish the task in a quarter of an hour. Starting with the easier tasks such as a shelf or drawer, you can soon find confidence and create motivation momentum. Daily impetus creates daily habits and satisfaction. The feel-good factor is what we are all looking for in all of life,” she says.

Carol also recommends setting a timer for 15-minutes to keep you on track, overcome procrastination and the interference of subconscious mind, which is often stubborn when it comes to change. “The timer will allow you to work faster and without realising it, you will have tackled your biggest task first. You must not stop until the timer goes off and then when it does, you can either do another task or leave your decluttering for the next time.”

It is also an excellent way of involving other members of the family, particularly children. We both laughed when I said I had learned a similar skill when my children were small: we’d have 10-minute frantic tidying up as if I had just received a phone call telling me that the ‘mother-in-law or Queen of England’ was just about to arrive on the doorstep. It is surprising what you can get done in such a short time.

Carol is creating a boxed set of fun 15-minute organising cards with simple ideas to keep you focused. If you would like to pre-order them, visit spacecreator.co.

Kay Newton

Having just bought a new home, I seem to have done nothing but declutter and clean for the past week or so. Fortunately for me, our new space is small, was left in a good state and we have very few boxes to unpack. It has also been a perfectly good time to ditch some old mental baggage.

Humans are good at organising an annual holiday, taking time out to clear the home, yet we often forget to spend time dusting the cobwebs and clearing out the rubbish in our minds. This is the key to an awesome life.

Our thoughts create our reality. Whether it’s through constantly repeating the same thing over and over, or holding onto deeply held beliefs that no longer serve you, you may find yourself stuck.

Our mind is rather like those boxes I have been unpacking – boxes stored in our minds. We have our favourite boxes, ones that we turn to day by day, hour by hour. Others we completely forget about. Some come back to us out of nowhere – great memories, grief, pain, hurt. The stories we create and put in these boxes become our truth, who we are right now.

Whenever we meet a new experience, our minds will race to find the box most appropriate to the circumstance. We open the box and believe everything stored there and this can stop us in our tracks. Our minds only want the best for us, they don’t want us to come to harm. New experiences are often fraught with the unforeseen and this ‘has to be dangerous because it’s not in the box’. The next thing you know, you are paralysed, unable to move forwards, feeling stuck or out of balance.

By clearing out the boxes in your mind and decluttering thoughts and beliefs that no longer serve you, you create space to move forward into the next stage of your life, no matter what that may be.

Repeat this exercise at least twice a year or before you reach a large crossroads in your life and the roadblocks will not be there.

Kay Newton is an award-winning speaker, writer and midlife strategist. Follow her on KayNewton.com. First published in eShe’s April 2019 issue.