Top 5 Ways To Make Your Space Fully Functional

Fully Functional is the entirely achievable goal I set myself towards in my own home. It is NOT about having a Marie Kondo-worthy household. It IS about my perception that I’m able to “take care of business” and “feel good” while doing it in my primary living spaces. Because I live with other people, including my child - and b/c the best “retirement” plan I can think of (these days) involves living in a communal/village context - I’ve learned to be flexible. Or, rather, am learning; it’s a work-in-progress. I do know that while I have personal preferences, there is also a shared middle with everyone else sharing the space. And, I also know that a clean, prepared space serves everyone who wishes to “take care” of themselves/others while at home. It’s about the flow of In & Out, Here & Away, Using & Not Using, Appreciating & Ignoring, Self & Others, Making A Mess & Honoring Our Impact. 

“Fully Functional,” when I work with my clients, depends on them. What is their threshold for chaos? What was the home-context growing up? What are the unhelpful habits? What about the experience of living-at-home is getting them down? They might also be working from home, running a business, caretaking children or elders, have many hobbies/passions or need studio space —which is often above-and-beyond the scaffold of a marketbasic homebase. Again, it comes down to the flow and the ease-of-experience. Some of the hardest work to become “fully functional” is honoring the constraints of your home, storage, property, sanity, and wallet. If a thing doesn’t have it’s own, designated place -or there isn’t room for it- then a sometimes-epic journey of prioritization must be undertaken. You can only fit what you can fit, even with bomber Tetris skills and a high-tolerance for a “full” space. There still needs to be room for you and everyone who shares this space with you. YOU still need to be able to flow…

In a unformulaic way, Fully Functional means clearing & rooting out powerful eddies in the river - places where the water is trapped in a whirlpool, unable to continue downstream; where a peacefully traveling pine cone soon becomes debris in a perpetual washing machine! Folx have different eddies. Usually we get caught up b/c of how things were done in the home, when we were kids, or an otherwise prominent domestic experience, such as marriage/divorce, living with other people (particularly as partners), becoming parents, caretaking, or practicing at Close Community. Your soul is a skipping record until some amount of spirit-release can be done; spirits that are trapped… in the “stuff.”

It often takes guides and helpers to make those breakthroughs. 

It is usually un/sub-conscious, younger, unresolved “parts” of us who are “driving the bus” when we lose functionality in our own home. 

You can very easily tell how well you are metabolizing the experience of your home, by paying attention to how you feel inside your body when you think about the state of your kitchen right now. Do you love it, does it support you, or do you cringe and want set fire to all those dirty dishes?   

Perhaps the lion’s share of our time spent in the spirit-wilds, is in this unformulaic territory. 

In a formulaic way, “Fully Functional” is a practical list to consider. These are some big-impact areas to throw your weight behind:

1. Clear The Backlog - 

A lot of the “stuff” we have, has been passed, left, or abandoned to us —and honestly, it’s hard to keep up in the face of daily chores and living The Life. This can be several generations-worth under a single roof or storage unit. The entire crawlspace, attic, shed, or spare bedroom. The kids toys, grandpa’s old suits, all that paperwork from the 20th Century. The VHS and National Geographics and e-waste and Great Aunt Mabel’s entertaining china. The family relics and collections and tchotchkes. BIG PILES, that take up valuable real-estate, that have become opaque from months/years of deferrment. It is entirely reasonable to think that you might be able to keep up with your home, once the backlog has been sufficiently dealt with. Big, scary monsters are born & may feverishly haunt us until we get through this aspect of the process. 

2. Every Thing Has It’s Place - 

A very practical equation. Does the thing have a home, an exclusive place where it goes when it is not in use? The best way I know how to track my belongings is to put them back in the same place, every time. My brain lives in many other realms besides the one directly in front of me, so I really do myself a favor by having these automatic systems. I do NOT have time to waste looking 45min for my keys! If the thing doesn’t have a designated home, it IS getting in the way and clogging up the flow. 

3. A “Staging” Location In Every Room - 

This is about the transitions we make in & out of rooms, and in & out of our home/garage/yard etc. We’re always bringing stuff in and then out again. At least, we hope that flow is there! We need to come to peace with the fact that part of our home wants to feel Instagramable… and another part needs to accommodate the movement of stuff around our space — and that’s inherently chaotic. Not having a designated place for stuff-in-transition, can cause problems. Eventually it gets difficult to tell sacred from mundane or profane, where visual static overwhelms when looking around, where gloves and wrappers and treasures are mixed in with the groceries, mail, and recycling. A “staging” table or countertop or shelf or basket, where these “things-in-transition” can be regularly deposited, removed, and put away, does wonders for our sense of MANAGING the material reality. These staging areas alert us to stuff that needs to be put away or travel elsewhere. They are NOT the places to deposit un-homed stuff. If these areas are backing up, so is your whole house and your functionality within it.   

4. Putting Things Away - 

Oftentimes full functionality comes down to making a mess, and then cleaning it up, all in the same sitting. Like, ideally, the dishes after making & eating a meal. In my young days, working in theatre production houses, these militant disciplines tied our most professional teamwork together: everybody hit their mark, put the thing in the right place, clean up all-the-way after every play session, reset the board to do it again the next day. With dozens or more people working towards the same purpose, in the same very FULL, chaotic space, this level of care-taking was essential for Full Functionality. Basically, we don’t leave until the tools & props are up, all the windows and doors locked, lights out. When we don’t put things back into the same place, once we finish using it, we can easily lose track of it. Other people don’t know where to find it. It gets buried under more things we need to put away. It gets knocked over and thrown around, it gets broken or stained. We can’t return it or wear it, now; we have to buy another b/c we can’t find the other one; why are there so many half-empty bags in that corner?? You get the idea. I elaborate more, here. This is basically the most practical & mundane sort of middleworld spiritual practice you can adopt, and there’s about 100 opportunities-a-day to do the work! 

5. Regulate the Front & Back Doors -

Stuff comes in the front door, and leaves the back door, metaphorically speaking. Sometimes it feels good and manageable to leave both doors open. When we are in a healthy relationship with the stuff in our home, this can be a satisfying way to live. Sometimes we need to close the front door in order to get a handle on the backlog. Or get the back door opened so that “stuff” can begin flowing out. This is deep meditation on the constraints of your space, your proclivities towards or against cultivating order, your tendencies to collect, desire to share & provide, and feelings of safety, freedom and functionality in your own home. This is making boundaries and setting limits and leaning into the discipline that is required to adequately manage material life. Easier said than done, but important dynamics to be conscious of, nevertheless.   

In closing…

I like to consider how the functionality of my space relates to the functionality in my brain. Brain health is a real, big deal, and many of us struggle against the implications of atypical neurological wiring, real-time brain evolution (neuro-plasticity!), degeneration (from environmental toxins), trauma-brain patterns, and deep family tendencies. Because the brain can be so chaotic and misfiring, leaning into these systems can help simplify what we need to process, in day-to-day life. It won’t work for everyone -or even be desirable to some- but becoming Fully Functional is a realistic goal, if you’re after it… and is totally worth the effort! Really, it’s a kind of game. Especially for those of us Raven & Magpie-archetypes out there, who are drawn-to and take part-of the Great Material River of Stuff, vocationally upcycling/repurposing/down-streaming (b/c we can’t help it, b/c it brings us joy when we’re in balance). As one who has had “stuff” attachment her whole life (totally inherited and culturally indoctrinated), it’s been true medicine to move past the frequent & disabling dysfunctionality, cultivate an ever-growing community ethos, and actually embrace my gifts in the material realm in a way that has flow (most of the time).

So much is changing in the way we do “stuff”… we’ll all be downsizing a bunch this century… which is its own kind of death, and we need to get good at it. Feelings of safety often come from finding order and meaning. In a world where external factors seem so far outside our control, we can turn valuable energy inward, and Clean Up Our Own Home. Cultivating ourselves to be Fully Functional in our own homes is an important puzzle piece in shifting towards a more sustainable civilization. As Above, So Below.