KonMari 2016 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

camelot. I feel for you. I mis-read your post, thought they had moved in with you. Oh dear, we did that for quite a few months for our dd. It`s what family do

I have finished my feng shui book and there are some excellent resonating points in there, also a few things that are a bit too `away with the fairies` for me but generally, superb advice. I`ll take a few bits eg old emotions get stuck and produce clutter. Be gentle with yourself during this (clearing) process, letting go is like peeling an onion. We hold onto things when we don`t feel safe at some primal level. Clutter is stuck energy. Clutter attracts clutter. We need to look at why we hold onto clutter. Clutter blind spots. I paid good money for this, but every time you see it your energy drops as you remember the wate of money because you never use it. Photographs, scared that the good times are over

I have just put up a few points but I could relate to each of them. I have a clutter blind spot ie my study/craft room and that about the photos is what came over me through the whole process. I just went into my study and took out five books relating to paractitioner stuff from the past and they are in my shopping trolley for the cs. I cannot release my good professional books, what if? I might need them for me or someone in my family and anyway they cost a bomb!! I am stuck, still. So I have done the easy onion layers and am now going deeper and deeper into the psychological stuff.

Morning all.

kittie, I was very taken with Karen Kingston's little book about feng shui, it made a lot of sense to me, although by temperament, I've a low tolerance threshold for anything I consider to be superstitious clap-trap.

Re your professional books, may I ask if they are still current with your profession's practices and rules? And, if so, are they realistically likely to be current for much longer? The reason I ask is that such things tend to change over time, and the once invaluable repositiory of knowledge can end up an expensive paperweight.

Sometimes, we hang onto things because of the value they had, without realising that it is dwindling away until we either try to gift them or sell them, and find that they're now irrelevent at best, and misleading at worst.

Not a professional book, but my brother (an online bookseller) and I were leafing through our mother's copy of a 1960s home-making and childcare book. Among other horrors, it recommended asbestos floor tiles as being ideal for the nursery.:eek:

In all conscience, we considered some of the other advice therein equally risky and chucked it in the bin.

Can see by my daily weigh-in that I've misplaced 2.1 kg of flab since last Monday (can't see where from, plenty left to go ) but pretty satisfied with that, especially since I haven't stinted the good food. Yesterday afternoon, I nipped into little tosspots at closing time, sashayed past the discounted pastries, which were a weakness of mine, and bought some heavily-reduced daffodils instead.

These are sitting beside me now in a tall, clear glass jug, and giving much joy (and so very non-fattening, too:p). For 30p spent, I expect many hours of pleasure in the next few days and then they'll go into the compost with no regrets.

Will be busy today with work and round a pal's this evening, so not a lot of time to kondo anything, but tomorrow is another day. Have a good spring equinox, lovely peeps.

yes re the books GQ. They are very current but are on the back burner for now. My feng shui book is by Davina Mackail. I don`t understand anyone putting all these `cures` out in the uk,like, three legged toads, the cures come from a long tradition of superstition in china and are not relevant to us here. Items like mirrors make a lot of sense as does retained energy in a home. Important to have the hall clear and the centre of the home with no cluttered blackspots in corners, which would include spare rooms, wardrobes, cupboards and drawers

I'm always being told off by everyone for rearranging rooms but I've always had to work with stuff I had rather than stuff that would suit the room. Since moving here 5 years ago it's taken a good few years to shuffle and sort stuff into the right places but I think, finally, that I'm done.

You may recall I got rid of a large Welsh dresser a few weeks ago, gorgeous piece of furniture that I'd lovingly stripped and painted and it sat in the kitchen looking pretty but something kept bugging me about it. One of our cats, who for the past 3 years has acted like hes part Tasmanian devil, part tom cat, was always trying to scale the dresser and would parquor across the room to get up there.....he earned the nick name of "gitface". Anyway, since the dresser left, this whirling dervish of a cat has settled into a purring, dribbling ball of fluffy lap cat. I know I feel calmer without it in the house, DH does too (and he's the biggest sceptic going on stuff like this) and I think the cats reaction really shows that some things do block or aggravate the flow in a house.

We had a massive blitz yesterday and rearranged the furniture and there is very little on the floors, it feels lovely and clear.:) Everything is put away so it is easier to vacuum.

My husband has (what I consider to be) a lot of clutter still.:mad: He considers it worth keeping as it is his old records, CD and book collections. Oh well, it is all neatly stacked away in our main cupboard and he did find an old playstation to sell and some stuff to be taken to the dump.

My living room and bedroom feel much more spacious and restful. I have fresh and dried flowers and candles out on the tables which bring me much joy.:A