What if you treated your home like a garden?

Photo by Annie Spratt

Imagine treating your home like a garden.

Intrigued? Confused? Let me explain.

This metaphor was inspired by some decluttering and organizing I did over the weekend, and it came to me while I was working on a new botanical feng shui illustration this morning. I’ve been feeling the urge for a while now to go through my bedroom closet. My current home doesn’t have a lot of storage space, so the closet has been a bit of a catch-all for anything that I wanted to keep out of sight on a daily basis: extra towels, suitcases, hair dryer, Christmas tree ornaments…and of course clothes also. The problem with this situation, as you can probably guess, is that the closet quickly filled up, and finding things started to become a hassle. I don’t have a ton of clothes, but it was really hard to access the things I was looking for. 

After putting off the task for months, I finally decided to start tackling it this past weekend. I pulled a bunch of stuff out, found some things to let go of, made piles of things to donate and sell, and put the things I wanted to keep back in a way that made more sense and was easier to access. Just what you’d expect from a closet cleaning/organizing session.

What I realized in terms of the garden metaphor is that we, just like plants, need room to grow. Room to let our roots wander. Room to stretch out our little tendrils and explore beyond where we’ve explored before. If your garden is full of crabgrass, the sweet little seeds that you intentionally planted don’t have any space to expand. 

In the same way, how can you expand if your home is full of things that are blocking your path? This can happen physically (not being able to easily reach your favorite sweater because it’s under a pile of sweaters you don’t love), mentally (a broken doorknob constantly reminding you of a never-ending to-do list), or emotionally (something is just off in your space and it’s affecting how you feel). 

While I believe there’s nothing wrong with plants that we often call “weeds” (most of them are actually really amazing friends and healers!), I would encourage you to be intentional about what you’re surrounding yourself with. Love dandelions, even though it seems like everybody else hates them? Amazing! Fill your home with dandelions! However, if your home is full of dandelions, and what you really want to cultivate in this season of your life are sweet peas, you might need to move some of those dandelions to a new home so that your sweet peas can actually have a chance to flourish. 

In this case, what I really wanted was beauty and simplicity. I wanted to be able to go into my closet, and easily pull out an outfit that made me feel like me. The piles of unloved and disorganized stuff in the closet made it a lot harder to cultivate those feelings, so it was time to let them go. Also, from a feng shui perspective, my closet is in the Xun, or Abundance, area of my bedroom. Clutter there can represent blocks to abundance, whether that’s material wealth, a spiritual sense of abundance, or feelings of self-worth. More reasons to remove the things I don’t want and make more space in that area of my home!

If this idea resonates with you, I invite you to look at your home as you would look at a garden that you’re intentionally cultivating, with love and curiosity. Where are you allowing unwanted “weeds” to overtake your precious garden, physically, mentally, emotionally? Where are you allowing your favorite flowers to languish, overdue for water and nutrients? 

Treat your home like a garden. And then treat yourself like a precious sweet pea, and give yourself room to grow.