Saturday, January 5, 2008

Can people tell your financial fitness by the appearance of your home?

I have been reading recently about how clutter is a sign of what your personal finances are like. Larry Winget says that when he see people on those "clean up my place," TV shows, that can't get through a room, except for a small trail. He can bet that their finances are horrible as well.

Still others talk about feng shui (pronounced in English as "fung shway"). Something that when I hear or read it, the little voice inside me says, "New age crap." I mean I am a Christian and don't get into all this stuff. My religious book (the Bible) says to stay away from astrology charts, seers, fortunetellers and the such. So when people start talking about sleeping and working facing a certain direction. Not accumulating so much stuff and adding the numbers of your birth year, to figure out according to your stars what is the best positioning for all this stuff to set up your house and rooms, then yeah it sounds pretty new age. If it was just the clutter, then feng shui might be OK. The problem I have with it is when it starts delving into Chinese Astrology. Still though I am fascinated with it. Is there anything I can learn from it? Perhaps. Maybe, I could learn to have less clutter. Keep my house tidier. My home isn't the most cluttered home, but still there isn't much question that a bachelor lives in my house. In fact, I know a lot of bachelors with much cleaner pads then mine. So if cleaned my home up, would I also be more organized in other areas of my life? That is the question. And how far do I carry this feng shui stuff? I mean, I currently sleep on a futon in a very small bedroom, facing the east. The problem is, according to feng shui (more feng shui info here)for me facing east is one of my inauspicious directions. A direction that supposedly brings mishaps. When I was working nights, I slept facing west, so that I wasn't facing the windows, however, when I returned to days, I switched so I would face the windows and the rising sun. Do I turn back around so that I am facing west and bringing supposed health to myself?

Really, I don't know how that affects my finances nor do I see how that focuses on the real need to clear my life of some of the clutter. I think, I should be more concerned with becoming more organized and in turn less cluttered, in both my home and my finances. I can see how those two are intertwined. I can see, how Larry would see the cluttered home as an indicator of a persons finances. Simply because if someone isn't organized in house cleaning, then they are probably disorganized in all the other areas of their life as well.

Besides as they say, "Cleanliness is next to Godliness."

One of the first steps in clearing the clutter, was to get a filling system for tax papers and receipts through my local freecycle. In this way, I could file my bills, receipts etc all in one orderly place. Then I began with my bedroom/office to get the clutter off the floor. Once I am done with this room, I will move into the living room, then the dinning room finishing with the kitchen and bathrooms that are in the rear of the house. Once I have the whole house done, I will need to maintain it. After that, I will need to move to the shed and get that organized. I can do it, but in order for my finances to get a total makeover, so does the rest of my life.

Wouldn't it be nice for one of those make over shows come here to my home and help me? That is probably not going to happen so I need to get started on this today. Starting as I said with this very room, my bedroom/office.


2 comments:

  1. i have tidy, organized finances, and a tidy, organized home. i have a special, hidden box with tax papers in it, but i also don't have much clutter, period. i have about two boxes of documents and pictures that i haven't really sorted out. not much at all. getting rid of stuff is a lot easier than sorting it! get rid of everything you possibly can. what's left over will be much easier to sort out once most of the junk is gone.

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