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    • The Clutter Remedy: A Guide to Getting Organized for Those Who Love Their Stuff

      An excerpt from The Clutter Remedy: A Guide to Getting Organized for Those Who Love Their Stuff,

      by Marla Stone

      To live perpetually organized in a clear space using efficient and effective strategies makes your life easier, more relaxing, and productive. If you think getting organized is about getting rid of your stuff, it’s not. Instead my Clutter Remedy strategy is inspired by working with people who love their stuff but also feel encumbered by clutter. I see people, worldly goods, and space in a unique way. I don’t care how much stuff you own and how much space you have. I don’t care what things you keep or discard.

      It doesn’t matter whether you are a millennial, a minimalist, or you have gobs of stuff; what matters is there is a better way to go through your items, admire them, and keep it all rocking your world without upsetting yourself, your space, or your schedule.
      Instead of wanting to hurl everything out the window or into a dumpster, transforming your life — and space — with stability and confidence is the path to perpetual organized living. My goal is to help you become organized forever, which is accomplished by examining how you view yourself, your life, and your objects.

      Reaching the truth about what you value in life is one of the most powerful ways of knowing yourself, your stuff, and your space intimately. By knowing what you truly value in life, you will know how to organize all that you own. Desiring a creative
      and simplified way to get yourself and your space organized is a normal response to living with clutter. Yet the life you want to lead — full of activity, fun, and purpose — is more important than being a weary and downtrodden clutter caretaker. You want to declutter with grace and dignity — and with a professional flair instead of feeling embarrassed and flustered.

      Typically, the fluster and frenzy heighten when you want to find something important before walking out the door, and it’s nowhere in sight, making you late and anxious. Or you struggle with an inadequate, failing system of disorganized, evergrowing
      piles. To stay calm and functioning, day to day, you find yourself hiding your stuff, shoving it in drawers, moving it around, and storing it haphazardly — but you know this is not how to live with the stuff that you love. The round and round “human in a hamster wheel” behavior of going from clutter to clear and back to clutter is exhausting. It tires you out and makes you itch for more things to covet, instead of appreciating what
      you already own.

      From my perspective, getting organized is not about cleaning up a closet or a pantry. It’s about analyzing the causes and personal challenges associated with cluttered and disorganized environments. Realizing that outer space is a reflection of the inner self helps motivate people to look deeper for the cause of clutter. When a person’s mood is off-kilter, it colors how their space will appear. Instead of living in a sacred and splendid space, they will end up living in a cluttered and out-of-control space. A cyclone
      effect within a home or workspace is often correlated with inner turbulence and commotion. The inner self will also influence how you look at what you own and how you feel about yourself and your appearance.

      For instance, an outfit you loved a week ago will suddenly make you feel miserable, but it’s not the outfit that is causing your angst. Feelings come from your inner self, processing thoughts and formulating conclusions about your life. When the inner self is cluttered with self-doubt and insecurity, even the most elegant clothing won’t inspire feeling confident or beautiful. Your inner state can blind you to the beauty of life and all the things that you love. Since inner, emotional clutter will trigger physical clutter over and over again, it’s important to first declutter your emotions and your thoughts. This begins with understanding and articulating what matters to you most. Then and only then will you be able to move forward with the Clutter Remedy strategy. The strategy gives you well-thought-out and specific criteria for all the objects you own, and it helps you become decisive and make good decisions about what to keep in your life. The clutter surrounding you has more meaning than you realize. Matter matters. It has energy,deeper meaning, and charge.

      I meet with people regularly who consider their clutter a “secret.” Their closest friends are not allowed to see their clutter or are sometimes not even invited into their homes. Some people remark that their excessive clutter or messy space brings on so much “confusion and derailment” that they’ve stopped enjoying life and feel desperate and isolated. Others share that they are what I call “décor challenged” with blank or overloaded walls, barren or cluttered mantels, and dated or misplaced furniture. However,
      most admit they have consistent and mild clutter challenges within their closets, drawers, cabinets, and garage, and they want tips for getting and staying organized. Some have overcollected for years with no idea what to do with anything, and they are caught up in the mire and muck, believing they are “tied” to it. Others have collected out of boredom and own doubles of everything with no space to store it all.

      Ultimately you want to love your stuff and know that everything you own is in your space for a reason. You want to stop having a love/hate relationship with stuff. I know there are days of loving your stuff, your collections, your books, bags, clothes, shoes, jewelry, tchotchkes, and sporting goods, and other days the stuff takes over and becomes an irritant and you want to set it on fire or take an ax to it and bury it in the backyard. Remaining in love with your stuff instead of being at war with it becomes easier
      when things you own are in alignment with your ideal lifestyle. Then, everything you own will imbue the sparkle and radiance that is part of the inner you. You will shine in your space as much as your space shines back at you in its image of perfection.


      Marla Stone, MSW, is the owner of I-Deal-Lifestyle Inc., which provides decluttering, design, corporate training, and lifestyle coaching services. She is a former social worker and psychotherapist turned professional organizer who helps people live an ideal lifestyle by getting to the root of their mental, emotional, spiritual, and environmental challenges. She lives in Orange County, California. More information at www.i-deal-lifestyle.com

      Excerpted from the book The Clutter Remedy. Copyright © 2019 by Marla Stone. Printed with permission from New World Library.

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    • Double Vision: Does Smoking Inhibit Our Power as Healers?
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      About six months ago, I got interested in energy healing and got some training in Reiki and other methods. I should mention at this point that I’m a smoker. I believe that we create our own realities, so I believe that if a person believes they will be healthy and live a long life, they can eat what they want, drink and smoke, etc., and they will still remain healthy. Do you think this is true? People seem to be shocked when they learn that I’m a healer but I smoke!

      – Cheryl

      Dreamchaser:

      If you REALLY think something is true on every level – mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, conscious, subconscious, higher self, lower self, etc. – then you have to believe that it is true for you. That is all that should matter to you. Obviously, you must have some doubts, or you would not have come here to ask this question in the first place.

      As far as health issues go, mass consciousness often has a stronger influence than just our influence alone. For example, we were told that saccharine causes cancer. Now however, researchers have recanted and say it is fine. For the longest time, people ran around thinking they were going to get cancer because they had consumed saccharine, and some even did.

      Mass consciousness WILL affect you if you let it. However, if you believe 100 percent that you will be fine, then you will be fine.

      Your higher/inner self is the REAL ruler here. It will tell you what you should do. There have been lots of times I have personally chosen something I thought I wanted that my inner self was saying I should not have. I learned the hard way.

      When I listen to my gut, I am always in perfect harmony with what is. I do believe your gut is kicking up on you, or you would not be here asking this question.

      You need to ask yourself why you believe you need to smoke and drink. That is the real issue, not whether or not you CAN smoke and drink. It is an addiction, so it rules you – you do not rule it. You justify this habit by saying, I can create my world. Well okay – create what you want with people who question your habits.

      As a healer, you have to consider your example to those around you. Would you advocate one of your patients smoking and drinking while you were trying hard to give them healing? If a medical doctor came walking in the exam room with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, telling you what you needed to do in order to be healthy, would you take him seriously on any level?

      Also, as a healer, you are responsible for creating a healthy environment for yourself and those around you. You can mess up your world all you want, but when you smoke around other people, you are affecting THEIR world. Secondhand smoke is deadly. We know this – it has been proven.

      If you were talking to your child, what advice would you give to that child? If you can say to your child, If your belief system is that you will be okay, then I am okay with you smoking and drinking, then you can say that to yourself as well. You are talking to a child you know – you are talking to your own inner child.

      I wish you reassurance.

      *****

      Astrea:

      Ancient cultures often smoked tobacco and other substances to create visions. Plants of that kind were and still are used for medicinal purposes. Even thousands of years ago, however, they knew that these substances could be very dangerous, and they didn’t use them on a daily basis either to invoke euphoria or to escape ordinary reality.

      We live in modern times with intense advertising encouraging us to use substances that are bad for us both spiritually and physically. We still have free choice, however, on whether we want to be a victim of that advertising and become an addict.

      For the record, I smoked from 1962 until June 28, 1976. The way I quit was to dump a pack of cigarettes out and roll up 20 one-dollar bills. Every time I felt I needed to smoke, before I did, I had to burn one of the dollars. I had to roll it up and set it on fire. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t burn the money.

      I quit smoking abruptly this way, and with each cigarette I didn’t smoke, I put the dollar in a shoe box and replaced the one in the pack. I still have all 20 of those cigarettes. When I felt I was free of the addiction, I looked in the shoe box, and I had six hundred dollars! That took about three months.

      In order to heal others, a person has to eliminate disempowering dependencies. The healer has to call the God Force to his or her person and transfer it to the person who is requesting healing.

      The body is a temple that is easily polluted to the point of uselessness. So is the spirit. It will be weakened further every time you light up. Addiction to drugs of any kind prevents a person from being able to heal others.

      Tobacco has particularly nasty spiritual side effects, and it makes your hair and clothes smell horrible. Smoke and energy linger. I could never get past that smell with a healer who smoked. Most people pick up the negative vibrations from the odor, and that’s enough to turn them off.

      Tobacco calls negativity to it no matter where it is, and all those vibrations might transfer to your client. Nicotine alters natural reality and puts you in disharmony with your body. It will put your victim into the SAME disharmony. You can certainly choose to use tobacco, but if you do, please don’t attempt to be a healer. Drug addicts can’t heal others. Why would you inflict that energy on others under the guise of healing?

      If you find it impossible to heal yourself of your nicotine addiction, then please don’t endanger others by telling yourself you can help them. Please don’t be that irresponsible! At least be mindful of our safety if you can’t be of your own.

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