Spring cleaning as a spiritual practice

It's that time of the year. You wake up feeling energized and with the oddest urge to scrub every piece of furniture, blind, and baseboard you can possibly find. Aside from the benefits of reaped from having a gloriously shining interior, there are many more benefits for Spring cleaning. Among them is the removal of stagnant energy and energy pockets that hide in corners, under furniture, and generally anywhere there is clutter. This stagnant energy can make you feel very heavy as well as your sacred space. That is, after all, what your home is. It is where you raise your children, prepare your family meals, and generally where the members of your family find sanctity and solace after a rough day in the outside world. This is more than a yearly ritual, something every does and a time honored tradition among homemakers. It is a practice that reaches from deep inside our spirits.

The spirit is very aware of everything. It allows you to tap into intuition and keeps you safe, provided you listen to it when it's trying to tell you something. The spirit doesn't deal in time. All time is relative and being such it allows precognitive warning when things are about to go awry, even in a minor way. When the energy levels in your home become unbalanced, your spirit makes the announcement: Get up, get dressed and get cracking with the duster and mop! All cleansing begins from the inside and moves outward.

The best way to begin a Spring cleaning is to first cleanse yourself. This is your inner temple. Spend time fasting, meditating, and rehydrating your body. Remove as many toxins as possible by eating clean, fresh foods, drinking clean cold water, and a healthy practice of yoga or tai chi is also helpful. Take cleansing baths with sea salt, epsom salts, springs of rosemary or lavendar, white sage, or white rose petals. White tea rose petals are especially refreshing. The object is to move into release spiritual toxins...anger, fear, anxiety, tension, aggression, stress, hurt, etc...into the bath water so that when it flows out it is gone. The same effects may be achieved with a shower by hanging a fresh sprig of rosemary in the shower and running it as hot as you can stand it. As with the bath, visualize all your inner turmoils flowing out and into the drain. When you feel lighter leave the shower and get ready to clean your outer temple.

Begin with the furthest point in the home, usually the master bedroom. Start by creating a wash that invigorates you as well as cleanse the energy in your space. Since this is where you sleep and rest, this room is very important. All bedrooms should be cleansed in the same fashion and with the intention that they will be places of solace, rest , and peace. Wash every available corner, clean out cluttered areas, go through the closets and drawers and get rid of anything that isn't needed or worn. Generally if it hasn't been worn in 6 months it's not likely to get worn anytime soon. Someone else can get better use. Contact your favorite charity to see what their needs are. Pages like freecycle.com are eager to help people remove clutter by allowing a space to offer items you no longer need t someone who can use it.

Next clean bathrooms, laundrey room, and linen closets in the same way. Finally do the kitchen, dining room, and living areas. Don't forget closets, book shelves, anywhere that could house dust or energy pockets. It is so important to remove them even though you can't see them physically because they will affect your energy and the energy of those living and visiting your home.

Lastly smudge every available, reachable space, beginning with the part of the home you began with and moving in the pattern you used to clean your home. To do this, you can use a smudge stick ( a bundle of dried herbs usually completely or partially sage), an incense, a spray infused with herbs or even ground crystals (preferably a mix of malachite, clear quartz, and rose quartz), or actual bundles of herbs tied and placed strategicly around the home near or over doors and windows. The practice of hanging swags and wreathes in the home is in part a form of clearing the energy in a space. Herbs and flowers were often used in many temple spaces not only as an offering to the gods but also as a form of keeping the energy clean and priestesses in a sacred state of mind.

Herbs, resins, and flowers used for cleansing and rebalancing the energy in your home. This is your temple space. Nothing evokes this as strongly as scent. The following may be used together to create pleasing scents meant to establish a connection with Spirit and remove any barriers that prevent your life from growing in a positive direction.

Cinnamon and rose

Rose and amber

Rose and white tea blossoms

Rose and cedar

Frankincense and myrh

Frankincense and amber

Frankincense and rose

Lemongrass and basil

Lemongrass and bay leaf

Eucalyptus and white sage

Eucalyptus and cedar

Juniper and sage

Juniper and cedar

Lavendar and rosemary

Lavendar and rose

Orange peel and sage

Sage may be mixed with just about anything although the amounts may have to be adjusted to suit your tastes. In the old days, Pagans and Heathens didn't have apothecaries they could visit or sites they could order from. They had fields of nature's bounty to select and mix. They may have used sage, if it grew wild in the areas where they lived, but it is almost exclusively a North American smudge. Be sure to blow smoke from whatever incense or smudge you are using into every reachable corner. Say a prayer or speak an affirmation in each room that is smudged and close the door when you are done. Hang a bundle of fresh herbs over your door on both front and back doors (some people just hang cinnamon brooms or natural wreathes) to both keep negative energy out of your home and enforce the cleansing done inside your home. Be sure to also smudge and bless every window and every door leading outside the home, the porches, or other entry areas. Don't forget to also give the car a good cleansing as that is where the majority of stresses are transported.