A little housekeeping

It's currently the dark moon, the very darkest aspect of the moon. As night is darkest just before the dawn, the same is with the moon. And it's the perfect time to clear space. I've been taking to heart the Feng Shui advice given by author and comic Nury Vittachi at the Byron Bay Writers Festival - clear the space. Nury commented that each piece of correspondence we receive is an energy transaction. What do we do with each piece of paper we receive - we file it in a pile on our desk, and when the pile grows unweildly, well then we take the pile and put it under our desk.

The amount of laughter in the marquee was testament to the number of people who know the routine. Nury remarked that it was no wonder that writers working in such an environment, with so much dead energy around them, struggled to find inspiration. In this age paperless environment (sure you only need to look at my desk a few days ago to know how true this isn't!) the 2500 emails in our inbox cause the same congestion of energy on our computers. Nury's advice - read and delete, or read-reply-delete. Don't keep the dead energy hanging around.

The past two days I've been doing just that. It's embarrassing to admit the amount of time it has taken to scour my inboxes (I run two email programmes) and delete out all the unwanted emails. The sad truth was that around 99.9% of the emails went. I have an adversion to deleting emails, after three years of editing, it was always after one of these huge clean ups that I would be searching for 'that particular email' that I had of course designated the week prior as having no future value. It's wonderful to open my email and see only a couple of emails in there ... and no they haven't merely been filed away to all those wonderful side folders. I even went through my filing system and delated out all the old emails from there.

As for my desk - I have one bill to pay, some kindy photos to order. All the books from the recent book fair have found homes downstairs and I'm contemplating the perfect place to store the growing number of filled notebooks that constitute almost a years worth of morning pages. I think I'll build my altar on them downstairs? Also on the list of contemplation is a shuffle of my books - wondering what should leave for shelves else where and what might be needed closer to home. And then some stage tomorrow or Friday morning, I'll wave my smudge stick around, give my creative space a psychic clean and leave all the neighbours to wonder if I sit and smoke funny cigarettes while my son is at kindy. After all - isn't that how all mothers of four year old boys cope?

So - my challenge to you before the new moon hits on Friday evening (in the Sth Hems or around 11am if your in London, 6am-ish in LA) be savage, be rampant, be unforgiving in your decluttering - even if it's just attacking your indominable inbox. Seriously - you'll feel better for it.

Photo from Antishay.com which incidentally has some articles on it about decluttering! How's that for a spot of synchronicity!