Simple, Perfect, Peaceful Harmony, by Marty Blue Waters

There are many jobs that have to be done even though they would never be something you would choose to do, if you had that choice. Life is full of them, especially after a major reality check -- like moving from a big house into a small apartment.

One of my favorite TV shows at the moment is "Hoarders: Buried Alive." I think that's the full name of it, although I may have made up the "buried alive" part just because that's how I feel right now. I turn the sound off of that creepy show and put Mozart or Bach or Puccini or Pink Floyd on my CD player and turn up the volume. Then I go to work in that slow pace that is the only pace that works for this kind of boring job.

Don't have anyone else try to help you sort through all your beautiful and/or strange collections. They will get impatient with your odd fascinations and try desperately to speed you up. They can help with other stuff, like carrying heavy bins down the stairs, packing them into the car, and driving them away to charity or re-use places that will find new people to appreciate your special things and give them a new home. But only you can decide what goes and what gets to hang around with you a while longer.

Glance at the TV and take in a house piled to the ceiling with stinking, broken garbage bags, random junk from yard sales, and rotten food feeding hordes of cockroaches and mice. Get a load of the thousands of squirming maggots some poor soul just uncovered and shudder. Then take a look at your stacks of music, art books, notebooks, toys, etc. and feel superior for a moment. Appreciate that at least you can identify everything in the piles of stuff before you and that you don't need a fly swatter to keep the bugs at bay.

Close your eyes, tune yourself to the music in the air, and re-enter that monochromatic zone where focusing on one tiny paperweight for 30 seconds is not a waste of time ... as long as it also goes through the final acid test of "present needs/keep" vs. "collective excess/let go." Give it a kiss and either put it on your desk or into a bye-bye bin. Then, immediately pick up another beautiful thing and make the same final decision, again and again and again. Eventually, everything will find its way to a new life. Either with you or someone else.

After you've cleared this overwhelming mess up a bit, you'll start rediscovering the magic of empty space here and there. Feng Shui will naturally carve its way into the room and show you how to arrange the survivors of your material past into simple, perfect, peaceful harmony. Then you can sleep deeply every night like a happy baby. And wake up each morning to a cozy room full of inspiration, potential, and joy. Life is good!