Category: Declutter

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Curating Good Feng Shui

How do you know if your home has good feng shui? What qualifies as good feng shui? How can you recognize it? How do you get it?

You can feel it

Homes with good energy are exceptionally easy to recognize. These are the homes you walk into and immediately feel at ease or comfortable. There is a sense of calm in the air, conversations sound happier, and the rooms look brighter. They are the homes that feel welcoming and comfortable, from the moment you step in the door, even if it’s your first time visiting this home. They may be active with children and/or pets, but there is also a stillness of belonging. You have trouble leaving these homes because you feel secure and protected. 

There isn’t any clutter in sight. The colors are all subtle and soothing, nothing too busy or conflicting. Nothing is too loud and overwhelming, yet there also isn’t complete silence and dullness. You can feel the home is balanced with a calm and simple nature as well as the movement of energy that the space is alive. A home with quality feng shui is cared for. It’s clean and nothing is damaged or broken. The dog’s water bowl is full of fresh water, and there are no unpleasant aromas in the air. 

For comparison let’s consider homes that have more challenging feng shui. These would be the homes you walk into and feel anxiety, panic and confusion. Maybe they bring on claustrophobia or overwhelming feelings of chaos. These homes generally have clutter in many places, cobwebs in corners or on ceiling fixtures, things feel out of place, the ‘flow’ to walk through the home feels forced or just ‘off’. The home seems to say “stay away” and you are hesitant to stay long.

Do you have a good picture of each of these homes in your mind? It likely isn’t that hard. We have all likely been to the homes of each scenario at some point in time. What’s the major difference between these types of homes? Typically, homes that feel full of quality energy are intentionally curated to be havens for those that live there. These homes are nurtured and cared for, plants are loved, pets are snuggled, the home is kept clean and clutter is never seen. Arguments are rare in these homes, or at least civil when they do occur. Love is abundant, expressed freely and often. 

I don’t exactly believe that energy is good or bad, or that things are only one way or the other. I do believe that energy speaks to us in good or bad ways. You may have a plant in your home that is thriving and another one that is suffering. They are both speaking; one saying it’s got a great spot to develop and evolve, the other is saying it’s missing the resources it needs to live at all. The energy in the area of the plant that is suffering isn’t bad energy, it’s just not the energy that plant needs. Maybe a different kind of plant would be happier in that space. 

There are many ways to transform the energy in your home and many ways to know when things are working well. 

Here are a few ways to pull in the good:

  • Clean up your clutter.  The number one thing that can change the energy in your space is cleaning up clutter. In the kitchen, in your office, in your car, in the fridge. Clean it up and keep it tidy. 
  • Walk-through your house as if you’ve never been there. Start at the front door and walk through every room. Do your steps flow or are you met with obstacles to maneuver around? A home with good energy is inviting, you don’t want to have to hurdle over a sideboard to get to the couch. 
  • Are things clean and in working order? Get those ceiling fans and light fixtures. Bring in help to do a deep clean to really get all the dust gone. 
  • Find a place for everything in our home that you love and use. Let go of everything else. 
  • Write down your intentions for changing the energy in your home. Honor them. Create an alter to those intentions and build a practice to review them often as you work toward your goal. 
  • Clear the walk path from the street to your front door. Any energy the Red Phoenix is bringing to you needs a clear and unobstructed path to follow to reach you. 
  • As you use each area of your home, pay close attention to how you feel. Are you anxious? What makes you anxious in this space? Do you feel at ease? Do you feel safe? Listen to how you feel. 

When you know its working:

  • Most importantly, it feels good when you walk in the door. Like immediately when you walk in, you feel calmer and safer. You’re not thinking about the dishes in the sink or the mail to go through, no to-do list going off in your head. You are just calm and grateful to be home. 
  • You don’t have to clean anything, put anything away, or spend any significant amount of time getting ready to relax. Your home just organically calms you, and your guests.
  • You feel safe and cared for when you’re in your home, even if you are alone. You know your home, you have a relationship with your home. You’re safe there and you know it. Just like the home knows you will look after her and keep her safe. 
  • It supports your life. You feel focused and able to accomplish all the goals you choose to pursue. Life feels a little magical. Not every moment, or even every day. But the big picture is that you feel like your home contributes to your life in a positive way. You can see evidence of your life evolving since living in your home. Things have progressively gotten better for you in life as you’ve lived in your home. Every living thing is thriving in your home; the people, the animals, the plants. 
  • When you are traveling, you look forward to returning home. Sometimes returning home is the best part about traveling. Though you greatly enjoy your adventures away from home, there is an eagerness to return to the space you’ve curated for yourself. 
  • When you have social events, it’s hard for people to leave the energy you’ve created in your home. You are often the host of your social circles’ events, and you love it. Friends will come early and many will linger for hours. And, it takes you no time whatsoever to get your home ready for the event or to clean up after one. Your home is eager to invite others within her walls. She lends herself to visitors in her own way and it’s a comfortable fit.
  • Guests in your home can quickly get to know you by walking around your home and taking in your belongings and the energy you’ve built. Everywhere you look, you see things you love. Your home brings you joy every single corner of her. 

Curating good feng shui can sometimes naturally occur on it’s own, absolutely. Though it is pretty rare that it lasts. Maintaining a home that is full of good energy takes intentional effort, you have to want it and you have to develop it, and then you have to live it. 

Often, you may feel you need some help seeing how to open up to the good energy you want in your home. 

Feel free to reach out with questions, I’m all too happy to help. The more good energy we create in the world, the better!

Namaste.

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Clutter is a killer!

There, I said it. Loud and clear. Clutter is a killer. It kills auspicious chi as soon as it arrives. It kills your calm as soon as you’re immersed in it. Excessive consumption and accumulation seems to be a large part of the American way of life. You can pull up a startling number of statistics from Joshua Becker, my favorite go to source for many years now for such information.

We all know how clutter makes us feel. Congested. Overwhelmed. Anxious. Shame. Guilt. We’ve all walked into homes that immediately raise our heartbeat, so much stuff strewn about everywhere. Sometimes it’s our own living rooms.

If that’s how you feel when you come into your space, how do you think the auspicious chi feels when it’s flying into your home? It likely just turns around and leaves. Chi needs to feel welcomed into your home and life. If there is no sense of calm and harmony, no place for it to swirl and pool, no place for it to rest or enhance, why would it stay? Yet auspicious chi is what every home and life needs to live fully, and at it’s most happy state.

When I’m working with a client on their home, clutter is the first thing we attack. There are nine directions in feng shui landform, and none of them like clutter. None. Clutter in your home, in any of the directions, will create harm. Period. You likely don’t even notice it because you’ve been living with the clutter for so long that it’s your sense of normal now. Our minds are built to adjust to things, so when clutter is the norm you no longer notice it. But you can feel it.

Any decluttering you do is time well spent and visual clutter it phase one.

Every time you clear off a counter top or put away a pile of paperwork, you are opening more space to let the chi flow into you home and life. Pick one room in your house and get busy. You don’t have to hold every item, you don’t have to clear out the entire room, you don’t have to minimize down to a certain number of any one thing. You do have to work at a pace that keeps you able to commit to the process, you do have to be consistent about your efforts, and you do have to find your level of acceptance in the environment within which you live.

This goes for your outdoor spaces also. Have a beat up old shed that you toss broken stuff into randomly sitting in your southeast area of your backyard? Recycle or give away all the things you aren’t using, repair or remove the follow down shed. She this area some love, the southeast direction is energy focused on the abundance in your life, your wealth and self worth. Care for this sector and watch your confidence blossom.

My guess is since you are still reading that your current environment isn’t working for you. You want something different. You’re frustrated when you come home and your home makes you feel more so. You dread having people just show up at your door. It takes you days to ‘clean up’ for a social event. You don’t sleep well. You don’t eat healthy. You don’t have ‘down time’ because there is always something to clean up before you can sit down.

You are not alone. More often than not a clients home is congested with clutter. They are having relationship problems (southwest) or work life balance struggles (north). And more often than not the landform direction that serves those energies for them are a mess of excess and disorganized clutter. Cleaning up these areas and intentionally creating some space for your relationship or career, sends a loud message out to the universe. A message that these things matter to you and that you aren’t going to neglect them anymore.

Curating your spaces is a seriously intentional act that raises the vibrational energy of your home, the property and your life. I can help decipher the landform mysteries of your property with the ancient geomancy of feng shui.