“When you free up the stuck energy in your home, you dramatically change the feeling of stuckness in your life, and new opportunities can come your way.”
 – Karen Kingston

For the past week, I’ve been in what my husband calls a cleaning frenzy. I call it Spring cleaning in January. The crazy thing is, I’ve been following my bliss. It all started in meditation last week.

In that meditation I saw myself clearing off a dirty dish-filled kitchen counter by sweeping my hand across and knocking everything off. I felt fine about doing it this way, seeing the dirty dishes as energy dissolving into the air. Along with this visual I felt the energetic benefit that I would experience from decluttering and cleaning my home.

Cleaning is sacred, spiritual practice. As we clear and clean away the ego debris of daily living, we raise the vibration in our homes and our inner being, freeing up energy, aligning ourselves and making space for God in our lives.

After that meditation, I walked around the house and realized how heavy it felt. I could feel the clutter and accumulation weighing me down energetically and emotionally.  It made me tired just thinking about all the cleaning and decluttering I had put off. That's when I realized that I had been feeling tired for days.

I thought back to how, in the evening, I want my kitchen cleared of dirty dishes before I go to bed. It is rare that I leave the dishes unwashed. When I get up the next morning, ready to start the day fresh, and walk out to see the kitchen filled with the debris of yesterday’s living, it feels like the plug is pulled on my energy. It drains right out of me as I look at the clutter and work to be done that should have been done the day before.

“Your home is the outer expression of your inner environment.”
- Shoshana Ortalia Aurora Rogers
 
The same is true of other areas in the house in need of clearing and cleaning. All these areas are the outer reflections of stuck energy in our lives. Places where the energy that should support our daily living is dammed up, stagnating and unable to flow. 

Several days ago, Peter and I received a wonderful gift from our daughter and son-in-law. In beautiful synchronicity, they had our car professionally deep cleaned and polished, inside and out. It really needed it because our much loved and fed grandchildren had been riding and snacking in it for many months. Driving the car home from the car wash I reveled in the clean look, the clean smell, the shine inside and out. Our car sparkled!

Arriving home that evening, I began dinner preparations and thought no more about the car. A short time later I realized that I felt really cheerful, upbeat and energized, noticeably more than usual. Driving in that sparkling, clean car had lifted my energy significantly.

I hadn’t realized how much driving around in our usual clutter and dirt was affecting my attitude and my energy.  

How much more does living in the accumulated clutter and dirt of daily living affect us in our homes?

“The stagnant energy that accumulates around clutter causes you to feel tired, but when you start clearing it, this frees up stuck energy in your home and also energizes you.”
 – Karen Kingston

Over the next few days, feeling inspired by that experience with our clean car, I went into cleaning mode. It felt great. I scheduled carpet cleaners to deep clean all our carpets.  I deep cleaned our bathroom, reorganizing and decluttering as I went, as well as our floors. In preparation for the arrival of the carpet cleaners, Peter and I moved everything off the carpets, shifting large amounts of stagnant energy as we did so.

The house feels different now, lighter. It feels like springtime, when the windows are thrown open and warm and fragrant breezes waft through the house, this despite the fact that it is January and the outside temp is in the single digits. The energy has lifted and most significantly for me, my energy right along with it. I experience this emotionally as happiness, physically as increased energy, and spiritually as renewed creative inspiration. I can feel my energy opening up and expanding outward.

Perhaps you too have been experiencing the winter doldrums, feeling tired and low on energy. If so, move stuff around in your home, rearrange, organize something, clean something out. You’ll be amazed at how starting small can lead to big results energetically and emotionally. Check out today’s Spiritual Toolbox for some ideas to get you started.

​ “For one minute, walk outside, stand there, in silence. Look up at the sky and contemplate how amazing life is.”
—Anonymous
 
In the months before we moved into our new house, I came across a home show on TV hosted by a loving and humorous couple from Texas.
 
There is much to love about the show, but what grabbed me was the decorating style. I loved the look, and studied everything I could find about it. By the time we moved into our new house I had incorporated those ideas into my own decorating style and had a wonderful time creating that look in our own home.
 
My home now inspires me as I walk from room to room and see the results of creating each room with love. Not because the rooms are fancy or elegant, I must admit they may not even be clean and neat, but the colors, the textures and the balance, still evoke a feeling of love within me.
 
Throughout this adventure I learned that decorating is fun and satisfying if you start with a look that inspires you. That inspiration gives you the colors, form and feeling that you want to convey in a room. It is like a master recipe from which to work, inspiring creativity.
             
The same may be true in creating our lives. We can live creatively, approaching life as an art form, creating each day rather than just surviving it. To do this we need to find our inspiration.
 
What would inspiration for your daily life look like? Here are a few ideas.
 
My life inspiration is that feeling of love and appreciation I feel when I lose myself in the night sky, or the fresh, deep green of my yard and woods with its symphony of birdsong, or the laughing delight of my grandchildren in play, the centeredness I feel when writing and meditating, that feeling of tuning in with a client, loving connections with family and soul family, the excitement of a new adventure, a new idea or understanding. All of that inspires me with love and appreciation.
 
What inspires you in your daily life?