Episode 161 - The Art of Divine Decluttering
I don't know about you, but I am someone who wants to be buried next to my label maker.
I'm not a neat freak by any means, but the joy I glean from seeing my belongings beautifully organized is downright heaven-sent.
In today's brand new episode, you'll discover my four-step system to transform the chore of decluttering into a streamlined, sumptuous, ritual of renewal.
With love,
Mary
P.S. - August is the month of Luxurious Living Spaces in The Sanctuary. Ready to learn how to turn the small corners of your life into portals of luxury and wonder? Click here to learn more.
Image by Jason Leung via Unsplash
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Hello, beautiful beings, and welcome to today's episode where I get to put my Virgo nature to good use in service of more peace, pleasure, joy, delight, luxury and beauty in our day-to-day through the art of the divine declutter. So creating beautiful living spaces has really been on my mind because in the sanctuary which is our membership community, where we practice presence through daily experiences of pleasure and charm and delight, this month coming up, we are exploring luxurious living spaces and how these tiny details that we attend to in our lives can have profound results and create extraordinary magic in how we feel.
02:08
I am someone who wants to be buried with my label maker in my hands. I am not what some people might consider, you know a classic Virgo wear and this is not an astrology podcast. If this is your first time listening I just know that perfection and organization and discernment are very Virgo traits and I'm a Virgo and I relate to a lot of the traits of being a Virgo. But one of the areas where I definitely surf the spectrum is around order in my living space. You know, sometimes things are in chaos, sometimes things are beautifully polished and orderly, and what I can say is that the art and the craft of removing items that are no longer useful and that create a sense of clutter in my physical space is an incredibly therapeutic process that creates more space in my mental body, my emotional body, even my physical body. And so today's session, today's episode, is all about not just how to get rid of things, because, as you'll learn in this little mini masterclass, purging is just one aspect of divine decluttering. What we are doing today is taking a come to your senses approach, where we use the tools of beauty and simple luxury and simple pleasures to make these tiny corners of our lives, like under the bathroom sink or the pockets in your handbag, little portals to wonder and if this is a topic that you cannot get enough of, like me. I invite you to join us in the sanctuary, where we will be exploring this in a much more in-depth way, and you can find out more about that at schoolofsensuallivingcom. Slash sanctuary. And with that, let us now dive into our gems on the art of divine declaring so as we dive into our gems.
04:58
As I shared in the intro, you know, purging and getting rid of things is just one aspect of this process. In working with my coaching clients, one of the things that we'll sometimes do is something called divine design, and that is a process where we go about styling your living space where, in addition to how things look and how things feel, there is also a component of feeling like you are expressed through your space. So in the book Home Sweet Maison by Danielle Pastel-Vinet, she talks about her experience of American homes and French homes and her in-laws and her husband is French and so she's American, and that in American design there is a attention to symmetry and aesthetics and that everything looks nice and orderly and well-coordinated and orderly and well-coordinated, but that in a French home you see much more attention to storytelling and character and rather than just seeing a beautiful space, you see the beautiful space of the person who lives here, and that, to me, is what divine design is all about. It's like soulful styling, which is another service that I do with my coaching clients. It's bringing who you are into the process of what you see, what you hold onto, what your feet touch when you wake up in the morning and swing your legs over the bed, what you find in your handbag when you reach in to get your wallet or your phone.
06:51
Or I'm just remembering a few months ago, on a date, I was smooching in the front seat of the car with my date and we were having a great time. And after our smooch I was reaching into my handbag to get something and I said, would you like a lavender mist? Because in my handbag I carried a lavender mist and I was just so embodied and feeling delicious and I just thought a lavender mist would make a great accompaniment to the moment. And he was delighted. And so you know that is one example of divine design, of all of our little spaces, and it may seem, you know sometimes, something I come up against in myself, even even though he doesn't know.
07:49
He's my mentor, john O'Donohue, who wrote the book Beauty, the Invisible Embrace. And he says something along the lines of you know, in a world where violence and conflict prevail, is it meaningful, why does it matter to give our attention to something like beauty? And yet, is it not our loss of connection to the spiritual homecoming and radiance that beauty is that creates so much conflict and disharmony? And that's just a way of saying that, even though under your bathroom cabinet may not seem like it's top priority right now, one of the things that I think is top priority right now is our sense of serenity, our sense of embodiment, our sense of staying inside our own hearts and inner sanctuaries, as there are multiple opportunities to jump out of ourselves and into fight or flight. And, as with all of the episodes and all of the things that we practice here at Come to your Senses these tiny moments of pleasure and serenity, and I'll just speak for myself the elation of knowing where my neosporinoidment is at all times, being able to go into my pharmacy drawer and retrieve it, know that it's clean, know that it's stored with the band-aids. These are all part of the ecosystem of my mental, emotional and spiritual health, and so I share all of that, because in our world of information, you know, especially with social media, there is no lack of information in this world on how to declutter, how to really do anything. What is often missing is the context for that content, and if you are like me and you are a spiritually moved and motivated being who is more focused on enriching the journey, necessarily, than getting to the end destination, this is meaningful to you. So let us now pry open the doors of your bathroom sink cabinet and I'm going to use that as an example.
10:50
As I was preparing for today's episode. I wanted to choose a simple area, a small area, to use as an example for sharing with you my system of divine decluttering. So one of the most valuable things that I've learned about decluttering, that I learned in an organizing class in like 1998, it was. I was very new to New York City and I went to New Yorkers will remember the Learning Center which they did a workshop on organizing, and one of the lessons was that when you're organizing a small space, especially like a drawer or a cabinet, rather than trying to organize what's there inside the space, what's there inside the space, she recommended taking everything that's inside that small space and putting it somewhere that is not that small space, because when we are organizing inside that space, we tend to see things in the context of how they've always been Does this belong here, doesn't this belong here? And seeing everything laid out. When I organized my bathroom cabinet before leaving Asheville to come to California, I took everything out and I put it all on the floor of my bedroom, which is the room next to my bathroom, and seeing everything just snaps it into focus of what I need versus what I don't.
12:31
And so this first gem in divine decluttering is to give yourself a bit of breathing space and seeing space to see your objects through different eyes than you see them in the day-to-day. So we're going to call this step prepare the next gem. The next step is pare down. So this is the part where we are assessing, evaluating what needs to stay and what needs to go, and so, once again, if we're using under the bathroom cabinet as an example, I start with the easy wins, and so that is going through and discovering what's expired.
13:20
What do I have? Doubles of? What do I have that I'm gripping onto in fear that this might happen someday, like I have some packages of Theraflu that are from I don't know 2016, almost 10 years ago, and can I release these with the faith that I will have the resources, I will have the ability to replace them if and when I need them, or to replace them now, in case I need them in the future with a product that is not 10 years old and expired? Another thing that I find helpful around decluttering is the things that I feel uncertain about, like, hmm, I have two tubes of Neosporin ointment. One is really full, the other is half full. I should keep them both, and you can you absolutely can.
14:29
You may also find that you want just one of those items hanging around, and so something I'll do sometimes is take all those items that are lingering in this collection and the ones that are still valid, not expired yet, but that maybe I have doubles of, or maybe that I just don't use. Like I have these alcohol swabs that I bought in the height of the beginning of the pandemic, that I had as kind of my emergency disinfectant and I've never used them, and so I put all of that in a basket and I bring it with me when I'm with friends and I say, hey, do you need any of these items? I do these with shampoos, with kitchen items, you know, with this idea of divine design and divine decluttering, there's that common KonMari saying of like if it doesn't spark joy, let it go. And I don't know about that philosophy. That philosophy has not rung totally true for myself, because do my wooden spoons spark joy? I mean not necessarily. But do I need to get rid of all of them and replace them with Sur La Table olive wood spoons? I don't think so. I am okay with the functionality of my wooden spoons for now, and maybe one at a time I'll replace them with olive wood.
16:09
But what I do find is that there are certain items where, when I open a drawer or when I look in a closet, it's like I have the queen wooden spoon and then I have the what are those things called the pawn in chess, the pawn wooden spoon, and then I have the what are those things called the pawn in chess, the pawn wooden spoon, and it's like I'm holding on to the pawn wooden spoon just in case, just in case something happens to the queen. And those are items where I find it helpful to sit with myself and say, okay, I find it helpful to sit with myself and say, okay, is this something I really need? Is this something that's contributing to my mental space? Or, when I see it, does it represent fear of there not being enough? And these are personal questions that Neosporin and wooden spoons and the rest are simply symbols of and that only we in our intuition can answer. But I want to speak to that because I think an important part of divine decluttering is following those laws of nature and laws of usefulness that nature sheds when something is no longer useful or full of life force.
17:37
That thing becomes composted for new life to emerge. And if we find that we can't use it anymore, is there a way it could be repurposed by giving to a friend, giving to an organization that might find it useful, or giving it a new life? And she was saying how she has all these yogurt containers, glass yogurt containers that she saves and adorn the base of those jars, and they make beautiful candle holders, bud vases, gifts, and these are just some of the ways that we can use beauty to give things new life. So once you have prepared, you have pared down, it is now time for the next gem, which is to polish. This is my favorite part. This is the part where we take what we have and we pour our love into it, by removing the crust off of our toothpaste, by slapping a label on a drawer so we know exactly what's in there, tossing out old crusty Band-Aids that are no longer useful, putting them in a beautiful container.
19:31
I love a basket everybody, and under my sink one of my favorite features is all of my menstrual products are so beautifully organized, like little jewels in a basket. They're like spring flowers, just waiting to be used, and they feel so honored, being out, being visible, context of divine design. I am a big supporter of normalizing menstruation and cyclical awareness that not all beings follow a linear system of energy, and so for me it's like one small way that I can practice my values that if anyone peeks under my bathroom sink, they can see that my menstrual products are not tucked away. They are loved and polished and pampered and visible. And so this is just one way that we can bring a little bit more divinity into our decluttering and our designing. And that also leads me to the final gem and the final process, which is pleasure.
21:01
So preparing, paring down, polishing and then pleasuring your space, and so polishing and pleasuring kind of overlap here, where the polishing is an act of making using your items more of a pleasure to interact with but where also you may want to introduce some elements of pleasure in these spaces. So some examples of that might be in your handbag keeping a lavender mist for moments of sensual emergency, as I shared about before. Eventual emergency, as I shared about before. It might be in your nightstand. Oh, do I love a well-curated nightstand. I actually created an entire episode you wouldn't think that there's 25 minutes of things to say about how to curate a nightstand for the senses but all my friend are there and I'll link that episode in the show notes. I'll link a couple of episodes actually in the show notes all around creating more harmony and more happiness in your home. But another example you know would be in your nightstand aside from lip balm, lubricant lip balm, maybe you keep your favorite chocolate, or maybe you keep a bottle of sweet orange essential oil to awaken your senses first thing in the morning with the smell of bright citrus.
22:44
One of the things that we're practicing in the sanctuary this month in luxurious living spaces is a morning ritual tray where the items that create a more beauty filled, pleasure filled, presence filled morning are all assembled in the same place in a beautiful way and in the book Atomic Habits way, and in the book Atomic Habits. I actually have never read that book, but I learned this one phrase, which is keeping your habits visible, from that book and it's this idea that you're probably more likely to go out and do a morning walk if your sneakers and socks are by the door, because you'll see them and your habit is visible. And similarly, with these practices that keep us tethered to our sense of presence, having them not only visible, but visible in an inviting, seductive, beautiful way can soften and lubricate the process of discipline and devotion in the morning. If you're like most folks, myself included, that first thought in the morning is what am I doing today? How can I jump right into it? What's going on with my phone? What's going on in the news? What's going on in the news? And our living spaces are like little geographical maps for following that path home to ourselves first, before welcoming in the circumstances outside of us and how we respond to them.
24:31
So, my loves, this has been such a pleasure to share with you and I want to recap our steps. So, when it comes to your divine declutter, we start by preparing, taking your items, placing them outside of their original home so you can see them in a different light, paring down what is no longer useful, polishing what remains and pleasuring yourself with the way that you assemble, collect and organize your items. And if this episode resonated with you and you want to bring more of this simple luxury into your home, into your heart, into your life, come and join us for this exquisite party inside the sanctuary on the art of luxurious living spaces. As a reminder, this is going to be one of the last episodes in our collection of my mini masterclasses Starting in August. I'm going to be taking my original content and sharing it only with members of the sanctuary. The library of episodes that we've recorded up until this point will still be available and going forward, there will be new episodes with new guests coming onto the velvet couch to talk to us about all things body, beauty and sensory delight. But if you'd like to deepen your connection with me and with the concepts and practices shared here at, come to your Senses. Come join us in the sanctuary at schoolofsensuallivingcom slash sanctuary.
26:22
Thank you so much for listening today and have a beautiful week Ciao. And have a beautiful week Ciao. If you enjoy what you hear on this podcast, you'll be besotted with what you discover in my brand new audio collection In Celebration of Beauty. This three-part series explores beauty as more than a pleasing aesthetic Beauty as a spiritual calling, a tool for healing and an unexpected way to soothe our minds, nurture our bodies, awaken our spirit and transform our world. Head to schoolofsensuallivingcom. Slash beautiful or click the link below this episode to download your complimentary collection today. Thank you.
