Symbolic Clutter

The more you read this blog the more you will realize my complete and utter gratitude and admiration for the author Karen Kingston. Her book "Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui" truly changed my perspective about clutter and how to think about it. One perspective she offers is to think of the symbolic nature of clutter. She has some wonderful stories and insights about this in her wonderful book, and it got me thinking about the messages my clutter was sending out into the world.

When I was a young girl I collected frogs. Especially stuffed animal frogs. I loved the phrase "You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you meet your prince". I had a decorative tree in my room and started piling these stuffed frogs on the tree. People caught on to the habit and started adding frogs of their own. Boys I dated, especially wanted a frog on my tree and so many of those frogs were from young men I knew.

About a year before my boyfriend (now husband) graduated from The Naval Academy, I knew he wanted to marry me, and I knew that when he asked my answer would be a resounding yes! Suddenly, my frog tree seemed very out of place in my life. One day, I gathered all the little girls in my neighborhood, who I'd babysat for over the years, and invited them over to my house to pick frogs from off my famous frog tree. These girls were delighted, and squealed with delight as they carted home arm fulls of  toy frogs. It felt wonderful. I kept one frog, the one Josh gave me, just a few months later he proposed. Today that little frog belongs to our son.

What do the items in your house say about you and your life, is it reflective of you are and who you want to be? Is it time to ditch your frogs and make room for your prince?

The Color of Closets

Have you ever noticed that the pictures of closets on magazine covers feature all matching clothes?

 It's brilliant.

Italian sociologist, Vilfredo Pareto observed that we get 80 percent of our results from 20 percent of our efforts. This 80/20 rule carries throughout numerous situations and has inspired many books and references over the last few years. It also applies to your closet.

You wear 20 percent of your clothes 80 percent of the time. We all have our favorites. Clothes can be a favorite for many reasons, cut, comfort, style, sentiment, but today I want to talk about color. You are choosing certain colors over and over again because they make you look and feel your very best.

Personally I love white, cream, pinks and yellow. These are the main colors in my wardrobe. All of my purses, shoes and accessories compliment these colors. I can interchange multiple shirts with various pants and skirts, and each pair of shoes compliments at least three other complete outfits. I have one cream coat that goes with everything. This eliminates my need to buy one pair of shoes for that random purple shirt that doesn't go with anything else I own. I call this interchangeable effect my "rule of three", everything in my closet can find a place with at least three other outfits to complete the ensemble.

Narrowing my clothes down to my favorites like this allows me to pass by fads that wouldn't look good on me anyway and would end up a complete waste of money. I spend a lot less on clothing because I'm not distracted by every sale or fashion whim designers throw my way.

You want the closet of your dreams? Start with the clothes of your dreams. Organize everything by color and instantly your clothes will look so much more appealing. If you are afraid of letting go of the complete rainbow packed in your closet, just put your least favorite colors or the colors you seldom wear, in a box and put it away for a month. If you really must have that burnt orange sweater that goes with nothing else you can always dig it out of the box at the end of the month. Most likely, however, you will find that you are happier not having to force your way through a packed closet in order to get to your "makes me feel like a super model awesome pink shirt."


What is your favorite color to wear?