What is Energetic Spring Cleaning — And Does Your Home Need It?
The physical clean is only half the story. Here's what most people miss — and why spring is the perfect time to address it.
Every spring, something in us stirs. We open the windows, pull out the bin bags, scrub the surfaces, donate the things we've been meaning to let go of for months. The urge is almost instinctive — like the season itself is asking us to shake something off.
And yet. Sometimes you can do all of that — the deep clean, the declutter, the fresh flowers on the kitchen table — and the space still doesn't feel quite right. Still a little heavy. Still carrying something you can't quite name.
If that resonates, there's a reason for it. Physical cleaning and energetic cleaning are two different things. And most of us have never been taught about the second one.
This post is about that second one.
Why Do Spaces Hold Energy?
This is the question I get asked most when I talk about space clearing — and I love it, because it's a good one. It deserves a real answer, not just a 'trust me, it works'.
Here's the honest version: everything has an energetic field. This isn't esoteric speculation — it's physics. Every object, every person, every space vibrates at a frequency. And just as we carry the imprint of our experiences in our bodies (you know this if you've ever felt tension in your shoulders during a stressful week, or that chest-tightening feeling when something's wrong), the spaces we inhabit carry the imprint of what happens within them.
Think about the last time you walked into a room after an argument had taken place in it. Even if no one told you what had happened, even if the people involved were perfectly composed — you could feel it, couldn't you? A thickness in the air. A kind of charged quality. That's energy.
Or the opposite: you've probably walked into a space — a particular café, a friend's home, somewhere in nature — and felt immediately at ease. Lighter. More like yourself. That's energy too.
Our homes absorb what we go through in them. Stress, grief, conflict, illness, loss, transition — all of it leaves an energetic imprint over time. And while that imprint doesn't make a space 'bad', it does mean the space starts to carry weight. And that weight, over time, affects how you feel in it. How well you sleep. How easily you rest. Whether your home genuinely feels like a sanctuary, or just a place you come back to.
My first experience of clearing the energy of a space, was at a friend’s house over 20 years ago. I won’t lie, I was fully on board to help her clear the space of the home after a deeply-felt break-up, but when the person leading it started, I rolled my eyes. Clapping at the walls, singing, I thought I’d finally done something really quite ‘nutty’. But then something changed, you could feel the room shift, I couldn’t explain it but I could feel it. I didn’t come back to clearing spaces for many years, but starting in my own home I started to see and feel the shifts for myself. All clearing and cleaning of our spaces helps to shift the energy, from washing the walls to vacuuming or dusting, but imagine clearing a layer beyond what your eye can see, that is still impacting your space.
Signs Your Home Might Be Ready for an Energetic Clear
You don't need to be particularly sensitive or spiritually inclined to notice when a space is holding something heavy. Often it shows up in very practical, everyday ways.
Your home might be ready for an energetic clearing if:
The space feels heavy or dense, even when it's clean and reasonably tidy
You've been through something significant there — a difficult relationship, a loss, an illness, a long period of burnout or stress
You've recently moved in and the space doesn't quite feel like yours yet
Conflict seems to repeat or escalate in a particular room, almost regardless of what you do
You feel inexplicably drained after being home, rather than restored by it
There's a room or area you find yourself avoiding without quite knowing why
You're stepping into a new chapter — a new relationship, a new business venture, a new season of life — and you want your space to reflect and support that shift
None of these are cause for alarm. They're simply signals that the energetic field of your space has accumulated residue that's ready to be released. Think of it less like something being wrong, and more like a plant that needs repotting — it's not dying, it just needs more room to grow.
What Does Energetic Space Clearing Actually Involve?
This is where I want to be specific, because 'space clearing' can mean very different things depending on who's doing it. Some practitioners burn sage and call it done. Others work intuitively, with no tools at all. My approach is a little more layered than that — and I want to walk you through exactly what a session with me looks like.
When I come to your home or office for a The Nest session, I work with the energetic field of the space using three main tools:
Reiki
Reiki is a Japanese energy healing practice that works by channelling universal life energy through the practitioner's hands. In a space clearing context, I move through each room methodically, working with the energy field directly — clearing what's stagnant, softening what's heavy, and restoring the natural flow of energy through the space. It's a quiet, unhurried process. Rooms that have held a lot often take longer. That's fine. We don't rush it.
Sound Healing
I bring my singing bowls to every The Nest session. Sound is one of the most powerful tools available for space clearing because of how vibration works: the resonant frequency of the bowls quite literally breaks up stagnant energy — you can sometimes feel the shift in the room as the sound moves through it. Corners, low ceilings, rooms that haven't been used much — these are the places where energy tends to pool and sit. Sound finds its way into all of them.
Ritual and Intention Setting
Every session begins and closes with ceremony. The opening is an intentional acknowledgment of what we're doing — creating a clear threshold between what was and what will be. Smoke (usually a botanical that I'll discuss with you in advance, particularly if you have sensitivities), prayer or spoken intention, and a deliberate, conscious opening of the work.
The closing is just as important as the clearing. Once the space has been energetically cleaned, we anchor a new intention into it — something specific to you and what you want this space to hold and support. This is the part that gives the clearing its direction. It's not just about removing what was heavy. It's about choosing what comes next.
Space Clearing is one of my favorite things to do. I love blending into an overall energy and coaching program as well, to really move out what’s happening in our minds, within our body and within the environment we are living, sleeping & often these days working from.
Who Books a Space Clearing — And Why
The Nest draws people at all kinds of turning points. In my experience, it's rarely just one reason — usually someone arrives at the idea of space clearing because several things have converged at once.
The most common reasons people reach out:
A new home.
Moving into a new space is one of the most common triggers. Even a beautifully renovated home carries the energetic history of everyone who lived there before. A space clearing session is a way of truly beginning fresh — of saying 'this is ours now', and meaning it on every level.
After a significant life event.
A breakup or divorce. The end of a friendship. A bereavement. A period of illness. These leave their mark — in us and in our spaces. A clearing session can be a powerful act of completion: a way of honouring what happened while consciously releasing its energetic residue from your home, so you can genuinely move forward rather than just trying to.
When the space just feels heavy.
Sometimes there's no single dramatic event — just a cumulative heaviness that's built up over time. Years of stress, busy seasons, a home that's been more of a backdrop to life than a place of genuine restoration. This is probably the most common scenario, and also the one people are most likely to dismiss — because without a clear 'reason', it can feel harder to justify. But your home's energy matters regardless of whether something specific happened there. It's allowed to just need a reset.
A seasonal reset.
Increasingly, people are choosing to do a space clearing as a seasonal practice — particularly in spring and autumn, when the energy of the year is naturally shifting. This is the approach I'd most love to see become more common. You don't have to wait for something to go wrong. You can tend to your home's energy the way you'd tend to anything else you love — consistently, intentionally, before it gets depleted.
What People Notice After a Space Clearing
I want to be honest here rather than over-promise. Space clearing isn't magic — it won't fix a difficult relationship, resolve a stressful work situation, or make a structurally draining home suddenly feel spacious. What it does is remove a layer of energetic weight that may have been making everything else harder.
What I hear most often from people after a Nest session:
A palpable lightness — often noticeable the moment the session ends. Something in the air feeling genuinely different.
Feeling more at home, sometimes for the first time since moving in. A sense of the space finally belonging to them.
Better sleep — particularly for people whose home had felt unsettled or whose bedroom had accumulated a lot of stress energy.
A sense of clean slate — emotionally as well as energetically. Particularly after difficult seasons or life events.
A renewed sense of care for the space. When the energy of a home shifts, people often find themselves wanting to tend to it differently — more flowers, more light, more intention in how they move through it.
A recent client stated at the end of our session “the house feels so happy, it feels lighter and brighter in here”.
Why Spring is the Perfect Time to Do This
There's a reason spring cleaning is such a universal impulse. The season is already asking us to release — the natural world is doing it all around us, shedding winter and making space for new growth. Something in us responds to that. We feel the pull to open up, clear out, begin again.
Spring is also, energetically, one of the most powerful times to set intentions. In the Celtic wheel of the year — which informs a lot of the seasonal work I do — the Spring Equinox (Ostara) marks the moment when light and dark come into perfect balance. It's a threshold. A point of genuine new beginning, not just a calendar date.
If your home has been carrying a hard winter — and for many people, this past one has been — spring is a natural, well-supported time to let it go. The season is already doing the work in the world outside. You can invite that same energy of release and renewal inside.
Even if you're not someone who thinks in terms of seasons or cycles, the practical truth is the same: we are in the time of year when opening the windows, letting the light in, and consciously releasing what's been sitting heavy just makes sense. On every level.
The Nest: Space Clearing Sessions in Pacifica, CA and the Bay Area
The Nest is the name I've given to my space clearing offering — and the name was deliberate. A nest is something you return to. Something that holds you, restores you, and feels genuinely safe. That's what I believe our homes are meant to be. And that's the intention I bring to every session.
A ‘The Nest’ session combines Reiki clearing of the physical space, live sound healing with singing bowls, and ceremonial opening and closing ritual. I work through your home or office room by room, taking the time that each space needs, and we close by anchoring a clear intention for what you want your home to hold going forward.
Sessions are available in Pacifica, CA and across the wider Bay Area.
If any part of this post has resonated — if you've read something here and thought 'yes, that's my house' — I'd love to hear from you. The link at the top of the page will take you to my booking page, or you're welcome to reach out directly and we can have a conversation first.
Your home holds you every day. Spring is a beautiful time to give it the same care you'd give yourself.
