Sometimes it has to get really noisy before we can realize inner peace.
Who could have guessed that a pressure washer would become my latest spiritual
teacher, or at least a new favorite in my positive energy toolbox?
I gave the pressure washer to my husband for Christmas a year or two ago. He had never mentioned wanting one, and was a little grumpy when he unwrapped the bulky box.
When he suggested that this was a gift I should have given to myself, I recalled an episode from The Simpsons, in which Homer gave Marge a bowling ball for her birthday engraved with his own initials.
Guilty as charged.
But I hadn’t tried the thing out myself until last week, while buffing up my home and garden for a neighborhood meet and greet party.
Blasting Away Negative Chi
Looking at the back of my house from the patio, where I was hoping to hold the party, I took in the dirty kitchen windows, various and sundry webs (spider, cob, etc.) gumming up corners and doorframes, and mud splatters on the siding.
The windowsills were covered with dead bugs and unidentified gook. The alcove that housed the gas meter and water spigot looked like a how-to display for Halloween spider web decorating.
It was the same story in the carport, where the memory of a mud fight involving one or both of my boys was recorded in brown globs hanging like nascent stalactites from the ceiling. Every nook and cranny was encased in gauzy cobwebs–the space between the shed and storage cabinet where rakes were propped, the ceiling corners, the grill base, the bike rack.
It’s not that I hadn’t noticed any of it before. On the contrary, the weight of the collective gunk’s negative chi had been weighing me down for months. Now that the neighbors were coming, it was time for another round of Feng Shui fixes.
Time to power up the pressure washer!
The Storm Before the Calm
I wasn’t expecting it to be so loud.
The electric hedge trimmer I had used a few days earlier to give my ornamental grasses a careful haircut wasn’t nearly as deafening. Though gorgeous in their late-season fullness, the almost-six-foot-tall grasses (miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light’) arched well over the patio walkway, making it difficult for anything–people, pooches, or positive chi–to circulate. I had always trimmed back their late season abundance with hand pruners, but this year I plugged in the goofy sawfish-like clippers and experimented.
Let me just say, I’m not a fan of wrestling plants into unnatural shapes. But the path needed to be cleared, and I think I managed a decent compromise. I must have something going on with The Simpsons, though, since the grasses are now reminiscent of Bart’s spiky hairdo.
The pressure washer brought things to a whole new level. Wielding the rumbling wand while the screaming motor shot water through the nozzle at 1,900 PSI (that means pounds per square inch, but I had to look that up), I became one with the machine. The sprayer became my Superman cape, my Bat Mobile, my Wonder Woman bracelets.
Nothing could withstand my power…except for one amazing spider web that I finally left alone out of sheer admiration.
The siding, sills, and storage sheds were cleaned up in no time. Then I honed in on the smaller stuff–muddy balls of all shapes and sizes, the waste basket that held them, my gardening clogs.
I cleared every corner of the carport, threw away leftover bits of PVC pipe, chucked two pairs of petrified mud-covered shoes the boys had long grown out of, tossed the length of stiff hose that had been replaced years ago.
And, as is always the case with my clutter clearing exercises (or, as I like to call them, my Feng Shui reboots), I felt my inner being lighten in tandem with my progress.
Instead of the calm before the storm, this was the storm before the calm.
Should Have Used A Chain Saw
Once the patio area and carport were sparkling–both on the surface and energetically–the last nagging source of negativity was the dead branch stretching from my dogwood tree over my front walkway. The branch had probably been dead for a year, which is a long time to have bad chi hanging over the approach to your house.
I was on a roll, so I pulled out the ladder and a hand saw, and began to work my way through the branch, which was as thick as my forearm.
The job was harder than I anticipated, but I finally brought that bad boy down. In the process, I scraped the skin off of two of my knuckles, which I can already tell is going to take weeks to heal.
Note to self–add a chain saw to my Feng Shui tool box.
How about you? Do you have clutter clearing stories that have boosted positive energy in your home (and the world)?
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