78: Honing Your Intuitive Sorting Skill

In last week’s episode on Using Your Intuition to Declutter & Purify, I shared about:

• Why your Intuitive Sorting Skill is so important to your Purification process
• What the Intuitive Sorting Skill is, exactly
• How to develop your Intuitive Sorting Skill (even if you think you’re not intuitive!)

If you missed that episode, be sure to check it out! It will give you the foundation upon which these two tips for honing your Intuitive Sorting Skill will build.

Tip One: Practice

Now, you might be saying to yourself, ‘Michael – you told me last week to practice. Why aren’t you giving me a new tip?!?’ Read on, my friend…

We are so accustomed to listening to outside authority and guidance, which can really undermine our ability to listen and trust our inner wisdom. It takes consistent practice to remember how to listen within. And, even if you have developed the ability to listen to your inner wisdom in other facets of your life, we don’t often think to tune in with ourselves when doing a process like decluttering.

So… Practice. Sit quietly in your space among your belongings and simply notice. Notice how you feel in your body, notice how you feel emotionally. Is there tension? Excitement? Dread? Pick up an object – really experience it directly. What does it feel like? Are you attracted to it – or repelled?

Go back and listen to episode 77 again and keep practicing. And don’t just take my guidance. What does your guidance say about what you need to do to become more aligned with your intuition as you’re Purifying?

Tip Two: Make a List of Guiding Questions

A list of guiding questions will give you personalized criteria that your belongings need to meet in order for them to be ‘keepers’. Guiding questions provide a bridge between the logical mind and the wisdom of the body.

Marie Kondo gave us the ultimate guiding question when she asked, “Does it spark joy?” While this question is brilliant, it can also bring up inner conflict if you feel more than one way about an object. For instance, if an object sparks joy but also stirs up profound sadness, it can be hard to decide if you want to keep the object based solely on the spark joy question. (You can learn more about my perspectives on Tidying Up in episode 22.)

The spark joy question also does not make room for the belongings that may not generate a strong emotional response, but are still important or useful. Other decluttering experts recommend using 2 main questions:

• Do I use it?
• Do I love it?

The combination of these questions allows for them to be applied to a much wider range of belongings.

I suggest that you create your own list of 3 to 5 guiding questions that reflect your values and other things that are important to you. In addition to the three questions mentioned above, you can consider these:

• Does this object serve my vision?
• Who am I becoming, and how will this belonging support me?
• If I lost everything, would I replace this belonging?
• Does the energy of this object resonate with my personal energy field?
• Does this belonging contribute positively to my life, my home, my family, and/or my community?
• Do I have more than one of this belonging?

Connecting with your own personal list of questions will help you tune in with your values and what is truly most important to you. This will help you avoid making decisions based on shoulds, supposed tos, have tos, obligation, and guilt.

I’m here to help! If you need some extra support as you’re developing your Intuitive Sorting Skill and Purifying your home, schedule a free consultation. We can get to know each other and see how we could work together to help you meet your decluttering and Purifying goals.

Schedule Your Free Consultation Now

Until next time, my friend, keep on practicing – and keep on Purifying!

Episode Dedication

This week’s episode is dedicated to Sonya Renee Taylor. Sonya is an award-winning poet, activist, author and leader. While I am still relatively new to her work, it feels like she has grabbed me by the shoulders and is shaking me awake. She speaks boldly and directly about whiteness and white supremacist delusion in ways that are disrupting the comfort zone that I and many white people reside in. You can learn more about Sonya at sonyareneetaylor.com and on Instagram @sonyareneetaylor.