When you think about decluttering, you probably think about all the stuff, the stories that are attached to your things, all the decisions you need to make, emotions that might come up, such as shame, guilt, and overwhelm. It’s easy to tell yourself that you’ll start another day when you have more time and energy. Somehow months pass and it never seems to be the right time.

What if I told you there was something that you can’t see that is making decluttering seem more daunting? Something that can make you feel tired while you’re decluttering, that can create subconscious resistance to even start decluttering. That can even cause hoarding tendencies.

It’s energy.

It’s in the walls and floors of our homes, in the furniture, clothing, home décor. Our homes and our things absorb the experiences and emotions of the people who lived there and the things they own. The more intense the experiences and feelings, the more deeply embedded they are. When we are in those spaces or we bring home other people’s things, we start to be influenced by that energy. If those people had low energy, we may feel lethargic and unmotivated. If they had a lot of conflict, we may start to have more arguments in our relationships. We don’t know why we feel that way. We wonder if we need to change our diet, get more exercise, or go to therapy. Space clearing shifts that energy and frees us to live our best lives.

One of my clients was deeply affected by the energy in her mother’s things. Liz asked me to help with the energy and clutter in her home. Liz’s mother loved crafting and her apartment was full of crafting supplies, more than she could ever use in her lifetime. Then she had to go into hospice care, and Liz needed to clean out her apartment. Liz taught craft classes, so she started taking home some of her mother’s crafting supplies.

Every time Liz went to her mother’s apartment, she found herself bringing home more and more things. She couldn’t seem to bring herself to sell any of it like she had intended. Instead, they piled up in her living room, garage, and basement until there were only aisles to walk through. Liz felt lethargic and overwhelmed. She would get home from work and lay on the sofa watching TV all evening, completely unable to declutter the things that now occupied her home.

I realized immediately that her mother’s energy was affecting Liz’s life and arranged a space clearing. Once I had cleared the energy in Liz’s home, her life began to turn around. Liz said that before the clearing, she had no hope of doing anything with all the clutter. Afterwards, she would come home and feel motivated to clear things out. Within days, she was making plans to sell some of the things in her home. Within a month, she had cleared a 15-foot pile of things out of the living room. Over the next six months, she was able to declutter almost all of her mothers’ things and reclaim her home.

What kind of energy is your clutter holding? Ask yourself if it’s making it harder for you to declutter? Try smudging, using a drum, tuning fork or a singing bowl to break up the old, stuck energy. If you’re still finding it difficult to declutter, schedule a consultation with a space clearing practitioner.