House Cleaning, Emotions Cleaning

Just as we accumulate clutter in our home, in closets, basements, and corners, we also accumulate emotional baggage in our inner selves. It is there where pains, disappointments, frustrations and other feelings swirl that take away the momentum of life. In some way, cleaning the emotions is undoubtedly as necessary as cleaning the house, something to be done periodically.

In recent years and as we well know, figures like Marie Kondo have taught us that the art of ordering the home also forces us to make certain adjustments in our own lives. A house is still a reflection of those who inhabit it. It does not only contain objects. Much of what we accumulate in our cabinets and shelves also has an emotional component, a past, a history.

Cleaning a home, or rather, ordering our living spaces, is according to Marie Kondo, something we should do alone. No one can interfere in the decision about whether to dispose of or keep certain things . We must carry out this task with a clear mind to make contact with ourselves and thus rearrange those internal spaces where realities that often make us unhappy tend to get stranded.

Cleaning your emotions is like cleaning your home

Household cleaning is more than a routine task where we limit ourselves to ordering, removing dirt, and ventilating spaces. It is to sanitize that scene where we live, it is to oxygenate it and place objects in certain places to give us well-being and happiness. We cannot forget that as the philosophy of feng shui points out , all the elements of a home, well arranged, contribute to enhancing or not our positivity and balance.

Something as simple as allowing light to enter through the windows, undoubtedly produces another state in the people who inhabit a space. Thus, within us, in our psychological world, almost the same thing happens. Cleaning the emotions also involves oxygenating, opening windows and letting go of what does not help, what hurts or does not work. Let’s see now what keys can help us to achieve it, taking into account the similarity with the cleaning of a home.

Attachments, the righteous

Something that Marie Kondo usually reminds us is that if there is something that you have not used in six months it is likely that you will never use it again. Something very similar happens in our life, an aspect that also requires emotional grooming. Sometimes we cling to certain people, ideals or beliefs that do not benefit us at all. They are those attachments that make us dependent, that hurt us and yet we are so afraid to let go of them.

Let’s reflect on this issue and keep it in mind: if something or someone offers us more suffering than calm, it will be time to make a decision.

We must not fill the empty spaces with the first thing we find

Let’s face it, many of us do. When we see an empty space at home we tend to look for something to occupy it: a piece of furniture, a magazine rack, a figure, a coat rack, a vase … What’s wrong with leaving that place as it is? In our emotional universes the same thing happens, sometimes, we tend to fill our voids with the first relationship that comes our way, with whoever passes by and says a kind word to us.

It is not the right thing to do. Empty spaces are not arbitrarily filled. Sometimes within the psychology of emotional cleanliness, we are told that it is better to fill them with self-love and not with the love of the bad guy, the kind that comes from outside and sometimes leaves our hearts in complete disorder.

The routine in emotional grooming, as at home, will be your best ally

There are those who carry out a firm routine in the cleaning of the home. For example, on Mondays and Wednesdays there is a deep cleaning. Sheets are changed on Sundays. Carpets and rugs are cleaned on Thursdays. These types of rules help us to keep the house tidy, in good condition and the way we like it.

In terms of emotions we must do the same. It would not cost us anything to establish an hour for ourselves each day with a single purpose: to meditate, think about our needs, make decisions, investigate what bothers us, what hurts us and what excites us.

In turn, emotional grooming is also taking time to oxygenate internal spaces through pleasure, those hobbies that we love so much. Sharing a coffee, going for a walk, learning new things or traveling, is part of that cleansing where we free ourselves from toxic realities to fill ourselves with nutrients that make us smile, beat with illusions and well-being. Let’s think about it, let’s remember that cleaning in our psychological universes is also necessary.