This year has been very much about rearranging – my priorities, my work life, and now, all the stuff in our home to bring more flow and function to our family. When we moved into our house nearly 3 years ago now, I was 10 months preggers, and days away from delivering our fourth and final babe. The energy to organize the house impeccably just wasn’t there, and well life since hasn’t afforded the opportunity either. Until now…
First, let me address a common misconception about me I get simply because I have a large family. Most people assume I’m insanely organized. Nope! While we absolutely have systems in place to avoid total dysfunction, organizing is not my forte, but purging, that’s my jam. Clutter drives me bonkers. I mean, I probably should put more effort into organizing, but, really, I’d rather be making memories in this season of our lives then fiddling with our material things. But after many months of accumulation and disorder and things becoming a mishmash and heaping pile of, well, EVERYTHING in our basement storage room, I reached my clutter threshold and we used a rainy weekend to begin mission basement purge. There is a really good reason for tackling this room specifically…it’s location in our home.
Back in the Fall I visited a world-renowned Geomancer & Feng Shui master (yup…I’m into that kinda crazy stuff), and he took our birth dates and other numeric information and gave us a life chart reading and basic Feng Shui advice for our home/life based on the birth elements (either Wood, Water, Fire, Earth, Metal) that rule our personal charts. Things like what colour to paint our walls, what colour car to drive, how to position our bed, what regions to live in, colours that block good energy (explained why I naturally despise the colour red!), etc. were shared. If you don’t know what Feng Shui is, in a nutshell, it’s an ancient Chinese practice about placing things in your living environment to keep good energy (“chi”) flowing, which, in turn, creates a more harmonious home. Following the Feng Shui energy map, you can find out which areas of your home represent specific areas of your life (such as your career, love life, health, spiritual growth, etc.).
Source: TheSpruce.com, (C) Rodika Tchi
There’s WAY way more to it then I could possibly cover here (For incorporating the basics of Feng Shui in your home, this is my favourite site – TheSpruce.com), but wanted to share one very fascinating piece we’ve personally experienced really cool results from – clearing out the area of your home that represents abundance and wealth.
What area is that you ask – the rooms in the South-East corner of your home (or back left for the directionally challenged 😉) For us, this is our Master bedroom, family room & basement storage area. I thought I’d test run the Feng Shui magic and cleared out Andrew’s nightstand which is situated in the south-east corner of our bedroom, and was filled with years of junk and clutter.
Within a week of this purge:
– An E-Bates cheque came in the mail for a whopping $22!
– I nailed a lucrative partnership for the blog
– Hubs experienced a strong momentum in sales (despite volatile times in his industry)
– A pending bank fraud case we were subject to closed and thousands of dollars were returned to our account
– Payment on a job I completed 3 months prior finally arrived via mail
I know what some skeptics might think – this could all be circumstantial. But it literally all happened within a short span of clearing out this area and I was inspired to apply the Feng Shui concept to the next room – our basement, which was swallowing us whole and one massive job. Hence why I put it off for months.
After 8 hours of pitching and sorting (with kids in the mix that made it extra challenging), we’ve got 3 large garbage bags of stuff to donate, 4 large blue bins of recycling, 4 large bags of garbage & tons of stuff to bring to the waste depot for proper disposal (paint, etc.). And…I have lots of floor space in our storage room now…exhale! We were so engrossed in the purge-fest and heads were spinning from the mess that followed, that we didn’t get blog-worthy shots of the process, but perhaps I’ll post something via video soon about our progress.
Four things I learned from this exercise:
1) Getting rid of any of the kids’ stuff will have to happen in mom-ninja mode the wee hours of the night when they’re asleep – they were not having it when we started purging their toys
2) Anything more than 10 pcs. is never coming in this house again! (unless it’s a box of chocolates 😉
3) Vacuuming up mini pcs. of Lego from small crevasses is wickedly satisfying/thrilling
4) While I’m sure I could try to keep up with and get better at organizing from this point forward, really, I think we just need WAY less stuff.
The basement is by no means in perfect order, but HUGE progress has been made. A quick trip to IKEA to get some affordable kids storage should get things a tad more visually appealing down there, but it’s where we let the kids be kids and free to play, so at least all the free space will come in handy.
And after it’s all in order, we’ll see if the good fortune and energy of practicing Feng Shui comes through. I mean, after a big undertaking like the basement, we could be rich by next month 😉 Jokes aside, being on leave from my full-time career means focusing on other ways to bring abundance to our family, so if this helps, game on! Other perks – the feeling of freedom and relief from lightening the motherload of stuff…that in itself made the tedious, long overdue task worth it! You’ve heard me say it many times before, clearing clutter is incredibly therapeutic.
Next room up on our hit list is our front office – which currently serves as a substitute walk-in closet because of it’s proximity to our front entrance. It’s situated at the North point of our home, representing CAREER according to the energy map, so this one is holding big significance for me right now as I’m navigating a transition in my work life and career path. Stay tuned on that one…we’re working with a fabulous partner to get that room in shape we can’t wait to share with you in the coming weeks.
Before I head back to hauling out all the loot we’re donating from the purge, tell me: have you incorporated the practice of Feng Shui in your home…we’d love to hear more of your experience! Or if you do try it out, make sure to share your journey with us!
Love & light,
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