“Declutter your mind, your heart, your home. Let go of the heaviness that is weighing you down.” ~Maria Defillo
As a young teenager, I recall browsing through an old bookstore in a New England town. A book caught my eye—maybe because its spine was a MacIntosh apple red—and I slid it off the shelf. It was called Feng Shui: Clear Your Clutter Karen Kingston.
It was a book I devoured in my Boston apartment. This book changed the course of my life. Fast-forward seventeen years later and living clutter-free is not only my lifestyle, it’s my calling and my passion. It’s what I’ve used as the foundation to find home again, inside myself as much as out.
When I went into that bookshop, I must have been about eighteen years old. I had devoted the last ten years of my life—sacrificed my childhood—to become a professional ballet dancer. “Sara the Ballerina” was my whole identity, who people knew me as, and the only way I knew myself. Due to a very real burnout, and a severely restricted support system I decided to attend college. Ballet career is over.
In the ballet world (at least my part of it), there is a common practice to never discard your pointe shoe. We dancers shared a close relationship…
