Volume 1, Issue 1
elcome
to my quarterly newsletter... and it’s about time! Producing
a newsletter has been a goal of mine. I trust that you will
find the information useful and relevant.
“If you get rid of 50% of the clutter
in your life, you will still have too much stuff—but
you will only have half as much to organize.”
—Elaine St. James, author
Recently I attended the NAPO (National Association
of Professional Organizers) “Less Is More” seminar.
A keynote speaker was Karen Kingston, who wrote Clear Your Clutter
with Feng Shui.
The word clutter originates from the Middle English
word clotteren, which means “to clot or coagulate.”
Not a pretty picture if you are like me and get weak in the
knees at the mention of blood! According to Kingston, clutter
makes a sticky situation, because it represents stuck energy.
Imagine yourself walking down the street and you
notice an empty cigarette package thrown on the curb. As you
walk past the same spot the next day, the empty package has
been joined by a few more pieces of trash. Before the end of
the month, it becomes a full-blown garbage dump.
“Clutter accumulates the same way in your
home or workspace. It starts with a bit and then it slowly,
insidiously, grows and grows—and so does the stagnant energy
around it, which has a stagnating affect on your life.”
Clutter is defined in the dictionary as a confused
or disordered state or collection. Kingston’s definition
of clutter gets to the heart of the matter: things you do not
use or love, too many things in too small a space, anything
unfinished, and things that are untidy or unorganized.
Clutter will affect you according to the type
of person you are, how much you have and how long you’ve
had it, and where you keep it. Kingston warns that clutter can
have the following effects:
• make you feel tired and lethargic
• keep you in the past
• congest your body
• confuse you
• affect the way people treat you
• make you procrastinate
• cause disharmony
• make you feel ashamed
• put your life on hold
• depress you
• cause extra cleaning
• make you disorganized
• cost you financially
• distract you from important things
Also mentioned in Kingston’s book is the natural instinct
to clear out in spring, where there is new growth in nature.
So tune in to the Dixie Chick’s Wide Open Spaces, and as
the saying goes, “Let go and let God.”
|
Book Review
Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui
By Karen Kingston, Broadway Books, 1999
Kingston, who coined the term space clearing, asserts that the
act of clearing clutter can transform your life by releasing emotions,
generating energy, allowing you to make room for the things you
want to achieve. This is a short, easy to read book of only 168
pages. I recommend it to anyone ready to wage war on clutter at
the home or office.
Visit our website www.itsabouttime.nu to order this
and other valuable organizing books and tapes.
Did you know just five minutes a day spent weeding
out junk mail, deleting junk e-mail, and hanging up on solicitors
can add up to 30 hours of wasted time a year? With spring just
around the corner, some timely pruning can rid these pests from
your life.
Here are five ways to cutback time-robbers:
1. Send your name, address and signature to the
Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service @
P.O. Box 9008, Farmingdale, NY 11735-9008. Within three months,
about 70% of national direct marketers will delete your name from
their lists.
2. Send your name, address and phone numbers to
the DMA’s Telephone Preference Service (P.O. Box 9014, Farmingdale,
NY 11735-9014) to have your name removed from the telemarketing
lists.
3. Call 888-567-8688 and ask the credit bureaus
to block your credit files from being screened for pre-approved
offers of credit.
4. Install software that screens out junk e-mail.
You can download a trial copy of Spamkiller @ www.spamkiller.com.
It cannot be used with Macs, AOL, or web-based email services,
however.
5. Establish a second e-mail account at www.hotmail.com
or www.yahoo.com to use when you buy products on line and register
for online services. Once you’ve received your purchase confirmation
or password from the alternate e-mail account, you can let the
subsequent e-junk collect there.
These steps should reduce the flow of junk into
your life. When junk does slip through the cracks, be ruthless
and fling--fling to the nearest trash or recycle bin. For your
safety, rip or shred documents that contain personal or confidential
information. For a thorough study of what you need to know and
what you can do to lessen the junk in your life, take a look at
www.junkbusters.com.
Tell us what you think
Is there a topic you’d like to see covered in this newsletter?
Do you have an organizing success story that you would like to
share? If you would prefer to receive this newsletter by e-mail,
please notify me at mlm@marylynnemurray.com.
|
