The art of moving home

One of the main reasons moving home can be so stressful is because you are energetically uprooted during that period of time. Here’s how to ease the pain of transition.

Moving home

I’ve often wondered what it must be like to be so wealthy that moving home simply entails getting in your car and driving to the next place while a high-end removals company takes care of packing up all your belongings, transporting them and beautifully organizing them in your new place.

I’ve moved home dozens of times in my life and the closest I’ve come to this are the intercontinental moves that Richard and I made from the UK to Australia in 2017 and then back to the UK in 2020. We were not allowed to pack our own things because they wouldn’t have been covered by insurance if we did.

It was a treat to see sofas, armchairs and other furniture leaving the house wrapped like huge Christmas presents and miraculously appear at the other end in pristine condition after having been at sea for six weeks. But after the team had removed all the packaging and placed the items in more or less the right rooms, we were still left with a huge amount of work to organize and store it all.

Declutter before you move

In my twenties, I used to be able to pack everything I owned in a car and move from place to place with ease. If it was too heavy for me to carry or wouldn’t fit in my car, it didn’t come with me.

Now, in my sixties, I own one of everything I need to make life work in a permanent home, which amounts to a lot more stuff. I regularly declutter but there is always more to be done when moving home to adapt to the new location and environment. It saves a lot of time, effort and expense to declutter before moving instead of dragging it all with you and having to do it at the other end.

When people ask me for advice about this, the first things I recommend letting go of are any items you’ve taken from place to place and have never used or haven’t used in many years. Often these are sentimental items or expensive things that you don’t feel you’ve got your money’s worth from yet.

If they are sentimental items, photograph them and let them go. Photos are a surprisingly good way to keep the memories without having to lug the physical items around with you wherever you go.

If the items are expensive, cut your losses and sell them before they lose any more value. Each time you see them, consciously or unconsciously you will beat yourself up for having wasted your money on them in the first place. Let them go and get on with your life.

Purpose your rooms

When you arrive at your new home, the first and most important step is to clarify the purpose of each room. Decide what you will use each room for and what you therefore want and need to keep in it. If you live in a home where some of the rooms are multi-functional, then define the different areas in each room. If possible, do this before you move your things in so that all your furniture and boxes can be placed where they need to be for you to unpack them.

Purposing the rooms of your home is the best way to avoid creating a junk room. If you find yourself with boxes of things that have no place in your new home and you’re not planning to move again anytime soon, then the best thing you can do is bite the bullet and let them go. If you store them in a junk room, it will stagnate the energy of your home and have a corresponding stagnating effect on your life. This article explains more about this: How not to have a junk room

If you do have to create a temporary junk room for a while, then at least put a time limit on it (say, one month). Don’t allow it to become an unconscious area that never gets sorted out. Your home is a reflection of you and, if left too long, it can create a corresponding unconscious area of mess in your life too.

Set up your kitchen first

The trick to moving into a new home is to get organized as soon as possible so that you can land yourself both physically and energetically in your new space.

The best way to achieve this is to unpack and organize your kitchen first. This is because the kitchen is the source of nourishment in a home, so even if the rest of the place is in chaos, having a kitchen that is set up and functioning will immediately make the whole place feel much better.

An important tip for unpacking your kitchen is that if the new space won’t accommodate all the equipment and gadgets you have, this is the time to decide whether to invest in new storage (if there’s room for it) or let go of the things you rarely or never use.

To minimize visual clutter and maximize your enjoyment of the kitchen, avoid open-style storage and keep your worktops as clear as possible except for essential equipment you use on a daily basis (kettle, toaster, cooking utensils stored in an open jar, etc). Avoid any downward-hanging things on the walls (pans, etc), because these will pull the energy of the space down.

Set up your bedroom

The next most important room to set up is your bedroom, at least to the point where you have a bed to sleep on the first night and the bedding you need. If you share your home with others, help everyone else to set up their bedrooms too.

If you know how to do space clearing, it’s unlikely you will have the time or energy to do the ceremony for your entire home on the first day you move in, but at least try to space clear the bedrooms for the first night. You, and anyone who lives with you, will have a much more peaceful sleep that way because you won’t be subject to the etheric debris and astral imprints of everyone who’s slept in that room before you moved in. In a brand-new property, this is not a big deal, but in a place that has had multiple occupants before you, it can make a huge difference.

Set up the room that is most important to your wellbeing

The next most important room to set up and get organized is the one that is most important to your wellbeing or to the wellbeing of all the occupants of your home. Prioritize doing this, if you can.

For me, this is always my home office, where I do my writing. Once my desk and computer is set up, I feel at home. I can tune out and live with the rest of the home being a work in progress for a while if this area is up and running.

For you, it may be a very different kind of room, perhaps the living room, the dining room, the bathroom or a hobby area. There’s no set rule about this. It’s whatever works for you.

Unpack everything

It may take a few days or a week. Or, if you live in a very large house, as long as a month. But aim to open all your boxes in that time and leave nothing unpacked. If you have mirrors and pictures that need hanging, hang them. Don’t just leave them leaning up against the wall.

During this process, some tough decisions may need to be made. If you have things you want to keep but nowhere to store them, then you will need to buy or acquire new furniture to keep them in. If you can’t afford to do this or there is nowhere to put new furniture in any case, your options are to let them go or pay for storage elsewhere (although there are downsides to this, as this article explains). Don’t just leave things in boxes or storage tubs piled up in a corner. Anything unused or unloved will create stagnant energy in your home and stagnant energy in your life.

Space clear

After you’ve unpacked and got each room set up as best you can, the final step is space clearing, to clear out old energies and land yourself in the space.

The space clearing ceremony I have pioneered and developed over the last 40+ years is designed to clear out the energetic residues and imprints of previous occupants and instill new, higher frequencies that will support you in your life. Your home will become your greatest support instead of a hindrance that can hold you back. Space clearing will also allow you to land energetically in the space more quickly so that your new home more quickly feels like home.

Richard and I are writing a completely new book about space clearing this year that will be published next year and will replace the old book. In the meantime, the basic techniques for space clearing can be found in my first book, Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui. It was published in 1996 so is quite outdated now because space clearing has moved on a lot since then (incense and salt are no longer used, for example). However, the essential steps of the ceremony described in that book remain the same if you can cut through the flowery New-Agey descriptions I wrote that have become an embarrassment to me now.

The new book we are writing will be radically different to the old book, with a much deeper level of information about what space clearing is, what it isn’t, how it works and how to do it.

Copyright © Clear Space Living Ltd, 2020


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About Karen Kingston

Karen Kingston is a leading expert in clutter clearing, space clearing, feng shui, and healthy homes. Her two international bestselling books have combined sales of over three million copies in 26 languages and have established themselves as "must-read" classics in their fields. Her best-known title, Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, is now in its fifth edition. She is best known for her perspective-changing insights and practical solutions that enable more conscious navigation of 21st-century living.
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