Space Clearing, Space Cleansing, and Feng Shui

The advertisers claim space clearing (also known as space cleansing)

• is a "simple proven technique that immediately and profoundly cleanses and heightens the energy in an environment"
• "removes unwanted energy from your space"

As scams go, space clearing is a classic Tom Sawyer stunt: someone else does the work and pays Tom for the privilege.

No space-clearing people can prove to you that your space needs their services — unlike the services of a painter, chimney sweep, exterminator, or a carpet cleaner. The concept of space needing clearing is all in your head."Stuck energy" is a belief system, not a fact. Real energy doesn't get "stuck." It would violate laws of physics and common sense.

Space-clearing is for people who do not think clearly. They call a space-clearing consultant because they believe their life is not going the way they want. House cleaning becomes a form of sympathetic magic that enables them to achieve the life that matches their expectations.

Why feminists and most men have no patience for space clearing:

• It is illogical.
• It is demeaning.
• It is magical thinking more typically associated with preschool children.

For example, if you are concerned that your career is "stuck" why would you remedy the problem by calling a consultant about cleaning your house? That says to the rest of the world the problem is not your career. Common sense says that if you're faced with this situation you concentrate on the career, not on how you keep house (unless, of course, your career is in the house-cleaning business).

Middle-class Americans in the mid-nineteenth century sought to protect themselves from moral and physical contamination by the poor. The proper home was now viewed as a refuge from the world, and the preferred middle-class neighborhood was at a distance from the tenement districts. The middle classes further distinguished themselves from their social inferiors by their fastidious attention to domestic and personal cleanliness.  — Peter C. Baldwin: "How Night Air Became Good Air, 1776-1930." Environmental History Volume 8, No. 3 (July 2003)

Space clearing is the Empress's New Clothes.

If you call a carpet clearner and they do a good job, you can observe a difference in the carpet (you can see a Before and After). You can make them come back and clean the carpets again if you cannot see a difference.

What proof do you have that the space-clearing lady actually cleared your space? You don't. You have your housekeeping, and you have your belief.

You may believe that Santa Claus is a real person, but does that make Santa any more real for the rest of us?

Techniques have process and procedure — consider the many techniques that cleaning services use to clean houses and businesses. The techniques don't vary much. There are countless books that explain the techniques in many different ways, but eventually they all result in something being noticeably cleaner (that is, you can observe the Before state and an After state).


Space clearing is not a "technique" because it has no process, no procedure, and varies too widely in its application. If you walk into a building you've never been in before, you have no way of knowing whether the space has been cleared unless someone tells you.

And what if they tell you it has been cleared but it hasn't? You are influenced by your beliefs. If they tell you it hasn't been cleared and it has, that influences your beliefs, too. You have no measurable or observable way to gauge whether the state of the space changed as a result of the clearing, so you believe whatever you are told. A hidden camera could easily demonstrate your gullibility.

That is what makes space clearing a belief system — the Empress's New Clothes.