More Than Decluttering & House Hushing – It’s Space & Mind Hushing
March 4, 2026 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Good ideas and styles stick around and are recycled by another name when the latest people to learn about it tack on another moniker and call it a new idea. That’s exactly what happened with getting rid of extra stuff and living more minimally and organically – something I covered in my first book Hit Any Key to Energize 30 years ago. Getting rid of stuff became decluttering, then Marie Kondo’ing if it didn’t spark joy out it went and now I’m seeing headlines that house hushing is all the rage with a bit of a different flavor. There really isn’t a need to move everything out of a room — who’s got time for that and who has the extra space.
Our environment we create represents the environment going on in our minds. It’s the outward expression of the clutter we have between our ears. If you’re working on quieting the noise on the inside and doing “the Work” with a capital W, then you need to take a look at your environment and what you’re surrounding yourself with. I’m guessing there’s more visual pollution than you’d like. A good place to start is to stop your unfettered consumerism, stop the ads coming into all of your mailboxes and dare I say it – stop scrolling to see what you absolutely must have, because odds are you can likely survive without it. Try creating the Scandinavian vibe of Hygge – cozy, comfortable, comforting, smells good, not too much stuff, streamlined to suit your needs without the tchotchkes to dust around.
Get ruthless in your pursuit of not buying stuff – ensure that whatever comes into your space has purpose (if not several purposes) and meaning. Dig deep into how you feel when you’re in your space. Is it supporting who you are now and who you are becoming or just who you were back in the day. Our space needs to change as we grow and change. I can’t tell you how many color phases I’ve been through during my lifetime and I cringe at some of them now. For me, at one point about 10 years ago, I had an enormous craving for bright colors in my wall hangings, so I combed through all of my travel photos and found ones that had more colors that made me very happy. Bonus is that they brought back such good memories that I now only have my travel photos and art on my walls to remind me of good times in over 100 counties.
When I moved to the California coast, I ditched my European antiques which worked so well overseas and in colonial Virginia but looked out of place at the beach. I ended up with very whimsical, artsy furnishings that were a perfect fit back then. Years later, the amount of many colors felt too brash, so I painted all of my furniture in a similar color and I painted all of my frames in a pewter wash to give my brain a rest from all of the color stimulus. I also have color-drenched some rooms so that the walls and ceiling are more soothing.
You see, I was working on intuition back then and what I now know is that it was my sensory processing sensitivity at work. My brain was on overload – overstimulated by too much color and variations of shapes and stuff and the lines of the furniture. My brain was working too hard to process all the shapes, colors, and stuff. Because us Highly Sensitive People are deep processors, our brains get tired if there is too much stimulation in our environment to process.
Even my books started to bug me. I tried arranging them by size, color, stacking them – nothing worked. What I found is that I need them behind a cabinet door – out of site so my brain gets a rest. This goes for sounds as well. I once lived in Florida on the water and the sound that carried across the water drove me nuts. I could hear every sound that came from the homes across the water and especially the mowers and blowers at all hours of the day every single day. It was like having jet engines revving up all day outside your window. Insanity for me. I now live where they do our lawns all at one time and I hear the mowers and blowers for about one hour 2-4 times per month in season and nothing but birds in the off-season.
Living in the Washington DC area was very toxic for me and my mental and physical health. Necessary for the work I was doing, but damaging my soul. The constant buzz of activity, helicopters, traffic, density of living, too many people crammed into small spaces, constant commotion and too much cement. Not to mention the toxic political stench that forever hangs in the air. Once Covid hit, I moved out to a smaller town to work remotely and retire/rewire in a bucolic, laid-back, slower-paced environment that is much more supportive of a stress-free daily lifestyle.
Listen to your body and get a gut feel for what bugs you in your space. Be militant about what you allow into your home and create a calming, quiet, supportive space that doesn’t hold bad memories from past lives. Yes, Marie Kondo did have a good idea about things sparing joy – but be honest with yourself about what ACTUALLY gives you joy. And for goodness sake, don’t spend money on a storage unit – just get rid of that extra stuff and stop worrying about it and paying for it. More is not necessarily what you need to be happy, healthy, peaceful, and calm. With all the hectic stuff going on in the world, your home needs to be your sanctuary – what can you do to make it so? Don’t forget pleasant music in the background to help soothe your mind. I haven’t listened to radio in over a decade. The noise of the announcers, traffic reports, and advertisements were assaulting on my ears. Choose your noise wisely so it doesn’t harsh your mellow as we used to say back in the day.
Back to Blogging…Transformed & With a Twist
March 1, 2026 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
It’s been a hot minute since we last came together and I’m a little embarrassed and, a lot grateful to the Universe for the interesting twist that came to be that I’m able to connect with you once again in this space.
About a decade ago I had the tech upgraded on this blog and since then, I was unable to get back in to make edits. It just wasn’t happening after I tried every which way including sideways, then I just let it go and focused on my speaking and training career. As it turns out, I was feeling more and more of an obligation to come up with content, and I was getting burnt out juggling so many things that this one just had to drop. I felt it was Divine intervention telling me to put down blogging for a while and concentrate on other things – it was not the time. I let it go and understood that when the time presented itself once again, that it would be unlocked for me to once again share my resources, my lessons, and help others connect to their capacity through blogging.
Enter the Universe and its infinite wisdom. Having retired from full-time corporate work teaching and training international clientele several years ago and transforming my life and lifestyle after learning I was an Empath and an Extroverted, High-Sensation-Seeking, Highly-Sensitive Person in 2020, the doors opened and the code was cracked to once again allow me entry past the firewall and into the blog. Thanks to a dear friend who had a friend who had a husband who was willing to crack the case wide open. It was once again time to start sharing content after all I had learned that had profoundly changed my life in every way and every day, and what has made clear all that was happening to me/for me in my life up to that point.
I’m now intent on sharing the work and words of wisdom of the many from whom I’ve studied. I’m thrilled to share their brain/mind/body/health/environmental/strategic planning work that was instrumental in reframing past life events, managing time/space/self in present day events, and how to strategically plan for future events/space/ways of being and moving through the world that is more in alignment with my natural brain and body connection.
I’m putting a twist on how I work and who I work with – moving away from corporations and organizations to individuals and one-on-one coaching and advising versus keynotes and corporate training and teambuilding events. I’m intent on helping women in particular who are Highly Sensitive and/or High Sensation Seeking Sensitives because it’s such a complex connection, a guide is most helpful to figure out how to move through the world in the best possible way while honoring your very specific set of traits. Much more on this later, but just knowing these traits exist is the first step in how to get the most out of your life and create a lifestyle by design and not default to be your best self.
