Preface to the
10th Anniversary Edition
“It’s hard to fathom how much has changed since Your Spacious Self came out over ten years ago––especially when it comes to our living spaces and how we relate to them. The shifts have been quantum.
Remember those years (yes, years!) that we spent in lockdown? It is striking how quickly the place to which we retreated to escape from the world suddenly became the world from which we couldn’t escape. The Covid pandemic forced our homes to function in ways they were never designed for; to shape-shift at a moment’s notice––from shelter to workplace, schoolroom, IT department, infirmary, studio space, therapist’s office, you name it. Our dwellings have become essential not only for our well-being, but our livelihoods as well––while simultaneously serving as repository for all our unprocessed stress and stuff.
With so many of us working from home, attending online schools, or using our houses to generate income as short-term rentals, it has become more important than ever to learn how to keep our spaces clear in every sense of the word: not only free of physical clutter, but of the emotional, mental, and energetic residue that can all too easily pile up when we’re not paying attention.
I stumbled onto the path of clearing after leaving a twenty-year career as a high school teacher. Although I was at the top of my game professionally, I was suffering from burnout: I kept getting sick for no reason, I was tired, and my body was telling me I needed a change. In the days and months after I left my teaching job, I found myself taking on various clutter clearing tasks around the house: a drawer here, a cupboard there.
Though modest in the beginning, the process of shedding my physical clutter seemed to grow organically. Searching for a pen in a drawer that was jammed with every conceivable writing implement led to clearing that drawer and the one below it, which led to clearing the bookcase, then the piles of old receipts stashed in my desk.
Looking for a plastic food container led to recycling dozens of excess lidless yogurt cups, consolidating the condiments in the fridge, and tossing unidentifiable freezer items laden with inches of frost. Removing sticky bulletin board notices, dog-eared flyers, expired coupons, stale artistic masterpieces, and rubbery refrigerator magnets led to the long-overdue renovation project that opened up a dividing wall in our kitchen, added a fresh, colorful coat of paint, and offered a new lease on life.
Clearing out the easy things led to addressing more difficult ones, such as the clothes I might be able to fit in again someday (not), my daughter’s adorable baby clothes, my matchbook collection, all my graduate school term papers, classroom notes, and twenty years of teaching paraphernalia.
Clearing out the easy things led to addressing more difficult ones, such as the clothes I might be able to fit in again someday (not), my daughter’s adorable baby clothes, my matchbook collection, all my graduate school term papers, classroom notes, and twenty years of teaching paraphernalia.
As I cleared the physical clutter from my space, I realized that my mind was becoming clearer and more spacious as well. Whereas I’d been feeling overwhelmed when I started this journey, my mind filled with worries, ruminations, and looping thoughts, my thoughts were now becoming quieter and more settled. Not only that, but I found myself becoming less emotionally reactive. Although cleaning out my drawers and closets brought up intense emotions in some moments, I found that I was able to hold those emotions with love and compassion, instead of letting them bowl me over.
I started paying close attention to these changes. I soon realized that I wasn’t just suffering from a plague of physical clutter—I was carting around a lifetime of mental and emotional clutter as well. This clutter, although less tangible than the physical kind, had a similar effect on me as the crammed drawers and overflowing closets; stress chemicals flooded my body every time I encountered clutter—of any kind. My mind was unsettled, chaotic, and anything but well organized. My heart was weighed down with guilt, regrets, and resentments. It wasn’t only my house that needed clearing—it was my whole being.
Before I knew it, my clearing effort had grown into something way bigger than a string of tidying and organizing binges. It became a journey—a journey that had much less to do with clearing out “things” than it did with clearing my attachments to them. It became a process, an unfolding, a leaning-in to the wonders of calming the mind, cultivating awareness, and watching how ease and spaciousness naturally rippled out into my work, my relationships, and the state of my house.
Turns out, I didn’t need to go on a pilgrimage or meditate on a mountaintop to find myself. My home became my temple, my clutter was my teacher, and my journey of self-discovery began with clearing out a single drawer.
Intrigued by the larger questions of how our living spaces reflect us, affect us, and support us, I began to study an intuitive branch of feng shui called space clearing. Space clearing is the art of cleansing and revitalizing the stagnant energy in a home or other interior space. Think of it as tai chi for your house. Sound a little woo-woo? Trust me—it sounded that way to me, too. But the more deeply I began to tune in to the subtle experiences of clearing, the more sensitive I became, until I could detect a buildup of energetic clutter just as easily as I could see dust bunnies on a lamp.
My goal in this book is to help you perceive and address all four kinds of clutter: physical, mental, emotional, and energetic. Throughout these chapters, you’ll find insights, exercises, and journal prompts designed to help you relate to clutter in a new way—and prepare you to release it for good. Although other books you’ve read about clearing may emphasize speed, effort, and instant results, I teach a “slow-drip” method where the virtues of ease, surrender, and self-love pave the way to spaciousness, one day at a time. By addressing clutter at every level, you can discover spaciousness at every level—not only in your closets and drawers, but in your whole being.”
–Stephanie Bennett Vogt
–Excerpted from Your Spacious Self: Clear the Clutter and Discover Who You Are – 10th Anniversary Edition by Stephanie Bennett Vogt
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