Decluttering My Life

Yes I freely admit it: I have too many shoes. My excuse? I'm on television every day, with people looking at every detail of what I'm wearing. Of course, I also have too many jeans, and a designer bonanza of black skirts, size 8 to elastic. Plus tank tops and T-shirts and even cashmere sweaters. So it was a relief (sort of) to be able to use this month's focus on clutter to sort through my own issues with having too much stuff.

All of our material excess is about so much more than the physical objects themselves. Although I needed to let some things go (as you can see here !), doing so causes anxiety. Yet I know that letting go leaves space for more to come. That's true of our relationship not just to shoes but to all things.

Here we are in the spring of a brand-new decade. I've heard so many people say they feel this will be their best year yet. I feel that way, too. There's something about 2010 that makes us hopeful. We sense an invitation to begin this next decade of the millennium with more conscious attention to our lives.

And cleaning house—both literally and as a metaphor for life—is a great way to hit the Refresh button.

When you look at your relationship to things —and the energy they contain—ask yourself if they promote joy, beauty, and usefulness, or are they burdensome?

What I know for sure: Life is about an energy exchange. Everything and everybody is vibrating at different frequencies. And you get to choose the vibration you want to resonate with and how to manifest that choice through your actions. Which is what I'm trying to do this year.

So I started 2010 not on a diet. (We've all seen how well my diets worked in the past.) Instead, some friends and I are doing a lifestyle cleanse. It began with a concerted effort to eat foods that give you real energy and "love you back" , as featured in the January issue. Also from that issue, we decided to take Michael Pollan's advice: "Eat [real] food. Not too much. Mostly plants"
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This principle alone eliminates a lot of clutter. And once you get that far, you want other areas of your life decluttered as well. In case you're looking for inspiration, here's my list:

• Relationship to self—good riddance to decisions that don't support self-care, self-value, and self-worth.
• Relationship to others—do the people in your life give you energy and encourage your personal growth, or block that growth with dysfunctional dynamics and outdated scripts? If they don't support you as a loving, open, free, and spontaneous being: Goodbye!
• Relationship to emotional life—out with stagnant patterns that no longer serve you.
• Relationship to work—not only reducing the "clutter" of paperwork, inefficiency, and overcommunication, but also striving to create a balanced workload and make your work invigorating, inspiring, collaborative, and empowering to others.
• Relationship to nature and play—seeing these as expressions of love and opportunities to fill your life with truth and joy.

To me, all of this is the real deal of de-cluttering, a process that's ever evolving as you move closer to the self you were meant to be.

And saying goodbye to too many shoes is a darn good start.