SpaceClear Reflections

When Clutter is Too Much to Handle

Posted on10. Aug, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

I received this note from a friend on Facebook the other day:
“What do you charge to come out and HELP!!!??? I don’t even have time to read your book (which I DID buy) or the blog. And to that the 30 boxes I moved in of my dad’s crap and I am drowing in it!!!!”
My [...]

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Deb’s Story: Releasing the Log Jam

Posted on03. Aug, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

Sometimes you need a friend or family member to keep us on task. I got this email from my friend, Deb, sharing what happened after a little organizing support from her (non-attached) daughter:
“I thought of you again recently when my dear daughter Julia helped me to tackle my kitchen desk area which had turned into [...]

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Managing the Mountain of Mail (or Whatever Burdens You)

Posted on30. Jul, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

Another good question came the other day:
I am following your practice of clearing one item each day. My question for you is what about the stuff that comes into your home- like mail? I can never seem to get through it and it piles up – then if I clear only one thing, a [...]

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Setting Free the Stuff: Sara’s Transformation

Posted on02. Jul, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

I was inspired by this post, so I asked the author if I could share it with you all. Here’s Sara’s story of making friends with clutter and clearing:
Space Clearing, The Last Frontier
by Sara Beatty
No, I’m not talking about vacuuming up space litter (although that’s a terrific idea.) For me, this path started in [...]

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Listening to the Nudges

Posted on22. Jun, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“Respond to every call that excites your spirit” -Rumi
You’ve probably seen my emails or notices about a contest I’ve entered.
The opportunity to participate was announced last February several times, which I dismissed several times. Felt too gimmicky. Besides, after three years of doggedly doing everything I could to get my book noticed, I felt [...]

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Coming Clear: Confessions of a Packrat

Posted on11. May, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“I want to shed my waste with quiet reverence like the pine…
Keep me mindful of what I take into my home, the items brought to substitute
for real living…Help me slowly to surrender all excess.”
–Gunilla Norris, Being Home
I’m a packrat.
There, I said it.
Yes, squirreled away in the dark recesses of my house I still have boxes [...]

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Clearing a Space after a Person Dies

Posted on04. May, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

I was invited to clear an apartment recently belonging to woman who had suffered and died of ovarian cancer. The two women handling her estate called me in because they felt that the space did not feel good to them and they hoped to be able to sell it quickly and easily. One of them [...]

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Managing Paper, Piles… Overwhelm

Posted on30. Apr, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“Every time you feel overwhelmed, reduce the task. Every time you feel overwhelmed, stop and feel.” – Your Spacious Self, p.99
A really good question I received in this blog recently:
I have a question I have wanted to ask for  a while now. I am doing the practice of clearing one thing each day and I am still [...]

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Gathering Your Clearing Mojo

Posted on23. Apr, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

What needs gathering in your home or life that you can do in one minute or less?
My spring newsletter might inspire you.  The theme this quarter is about “gathering” – as in loose ends, all those papers cluttering up your desk, the clothes that you no longer need or love…
Gathering steam… gathering your self.
Click [...]

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Lost and Found in Letting Go

Posted on06. Apr, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“An organized clutter of thoughts consumed me – pulled me through the fog of grief that had settled….and then the memorial was done.  There was nothing left to organize, nothing left to do…” –Reflections from a reader
Recently I was invited to guest-blog for a week on DrGreene.com. As part of my series on “cultivating spacious detachment,” [...]

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Farewell, Fridge

Posted on23. Mar, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

Our beloved refrigerator leaves us today. I can hear her humming away in the other room – as she has for 25 years – oblivious to her fate. It’s like we’re putting her down.
We bought our Hotpoint side-by-side* in 1985, the year we were married. Back then her creamy nubbliness and the wood-panel stripe harmonized [...]

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Minding the Chatter Clears Clutter

Posted on11. Sep, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“There is nothing either good nor bad,
but thinking makes it so.”
–Shakespeare, Hamlet
Have you ever stopped whatever you were doing to simply observe your thoughts? Yes, to do nothing else but watch the nonstop activity of the mind without doing anything to fix or change what’s going on in there?
If you took that experience and multiplied [...]

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Packing: How Much Stuff is Too Much?

Posted on01. Sep, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“I had no idea that lots of things housed in a tiny space could result in space feeling clear.”–sbv
I received an email query from a friend the other day, who, like me, is sending her daughter off to college for the first time. She was responding to these messages I posted on my Twitter and Facebook [...]

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To Laugh or To Cry

Posted on28. Aug, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

Sometimes life delivers a perfect storm of disasters that are so bad they’re funny. It’s almost like the Universe is doing a koochie-koo to get us to take ourselves less seriously.
My latest comedy of errors was no tragedy in the greater scheme of things.
My husband and I were staying at a nice Bed and Breakfast, [...]

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Graduation (aka Letting Go)

Posted on12. Jun, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

My eighteen-year-old “baby” graduates from high school tomorrow. I’ve been surprisingly okay all week. No pangs, no tightening of the throat, no water works.
Until yesterday.
I was driving home from the gym which passes right by the field where the ceremony will take place, and there it was: the podium where the kids go up [...]

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Shining Light on Fear

Posted on28. Apr, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“One minute you are feeling calm, self possessed, happy.
Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt,
slips into your mind like a spy.”
–Yann Martel, Life of Pi

I’m in Mexico as I write this.
Face masks have sprouted everywhere in my town of San Miguel de Allende. All schools have closed until May 6th. The death toll [...]

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Being With Loss

Posted on31. Mar, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“If you want there to be peace—anything from peace of mind to peace on earth—here is the condensed instruction: Stay with the initial tightening and don’t spin off. Keep it simple.”
—Pema Chodron

“In shock and recovery after laptop crash. All emails, all photos, and who knows what else. Gone. Sending to Mac doc to dig thru’ [...]

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