Where Energy Flows

Many books on symbolism or dream interpretation include the meaning of the different rooms in your house. Last fall I wrote about what clutter might mean in the different rooms of your house.  Of course this is meant as a guide — it is not written in stone — but something worth thinking about if you are doing a clear out and clean up this summer. 

Attic: Represents things hanging over your head, goals or dreams beyond your reach. With clutter over your head there is a phsical safety issue as well, of having things fall through the ceiling, or of not being able to find things in an attic.

Bathroom:  Water is connected with the emotions - we use water analogies to describe emotions - someone is flooded with tears, is blocked up emotionally, has a meltdown (ice) - even verbal diarrhea which isn’t really a water analogy, but is connected with plumbing! Energetically speaking, plumbing is considered to be symbolically related to the body’s natural system of release. so clutter in the bathroom can interfer with the natural emotional releasing process.

Bedroom: The Bedroom is related to our inner self. Clutter in the bedroom can take the form of needing a great deal of privacy, hiding yourself or some aspect of your life from the world, being out of touch with your emotions or your inner self.

Basement: The basement represents your foundations or roots in life, as well as your subconscious mind. Clutter here can represent thoughts that hold you back,  Suppressed desires, unconscious beliefs, thoughts, patterns of behaviour, or the lack of foundation or roots in your life.

Cupboards: Upper cupboards, same for attic. Lower cupboards, same for basement.

Dining room: The dining room represents nourishment  on all levels and a sense of community on our lives. Clutter in the dining room can manifest as feeling unnourished, unnurtured, not taking care of your health, or lacking a sense of community in your life.

Kitchen: The kitchen represents the heart of the home, and in earlier times, the hearth of the home as well, where people cooked food, kept warm and gathered. Therefore the kitchen represents abundance and nurturing. Clutter here could mean you are not fully allowing abundance, the harvest — what you have been working towards, into your life.

Living Room: The living room represents relationships and connections between other people. It is where we unwind and relax after working all day, as well as to entertain friends and family. When the living room is cluttered, it can represent difficult or absent relationships, feeling unconnected from loved ones and your community.

Under: Sometimes clutter is not in a room, but in locations, such as under things (bed, cabinets, cupboards, etc.). When clutter is hidden away underneath things, it can contribute to feeling bogged down and cramped.

 © Copyright 2007 Deborah Redfern. All rights reserved.

I suppose one tends to think that a feng shui practitioner would be completely clutter-free. Well, surprise! Almost all of us have clutter to some degree. I admire homes which have that ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’ look, but that’s not me. I do try my best to keep things in order, realizing at the same time that having things around probably feeds my creativity. 

One room in my house periodically gets completely out of control though — our tiny storage room. When we moved in, it was difficult to imagine filling it. We saw the empty space and thought ‘meditation room’ or even an office space (vetoed because it was really too small). There also needed to be a place for the cat litter box and this was the best location for it.

Once the litter box went in there the space wasn’t long filling up but it was organized at least. Soon however, it became the ”I’ll just put this here for now” room. By the time I couldn’t stand it anymore I had created a narrow aisle on one side, in which to get to the litter box.

It took a few days to get it completely cleared out and reorganized. Right now it is clear and the energy is good. At the same time I know that this room will always suffer from the ‘let’s put this here just for now and get it out of the way’ syndrome.

It is good feng shui to keep on top of what we are keeping and deal with accumulation before it grows to the ‘can’t stand it’ level, but at the same time we do need areas in our home that are utilitarian and functional — the place where the litter box goes, to store the recycling, or to keep the Christmas decorations — or whatever.  

I believe the best feng shui strategy it to acknowledge that we need storage rooms and that they will get messy from time to time, and to allow it. We can compensate for whatever bagua map gua these areas fall into into by enhancing that area in other rooms — and to schedule periodic clean ups in that storage room to keep the energy moving.

(c) Deborah Redfern, 2008. All rights reserved. 

By far the most challenging clutter area for me is clothing. Although my goal is to ‘live light’ I find the clothing area is difficult to manage because while I’m not trying to keep up with the latest fashions by any means (I don’t care for most of them), neither do I wish to look indifferent. My goal is simply to feel good, comfortable and relaxed and I have learned that what I am wearing greatly influences how I feel.  

Style is most annoying. For example, I have several jackets (blazers, coats) that are perfectly good but just do not look appropriate because the cut, colour, length and fabric looks dated. I believe your outerwear (blazer, coat) is important because it is the first thing people see (especially in the colder months), and as a people we make our minds up about others in a matter of seconds. So first impressions are worth paying attention to. But neither do I want to have a lot of clothes. I developed that habit from my year of living in an RV with a tiny closet space. It was those years when I developed a strong appreciation for reversible clothes! 

So my goal is to find that perfect, take-me-anywhere garment that fits like a dream. They are difficult to find (at least I find it a challenge) and there are more ‘misses’ than hits — when you think you’ve found ‘it’ but after wearing it a few times, the fit isn’t quite right or it is not as versatile as you thought it would be. Or you have found the perfect outfit, but sadly and eventually, it succombs to wear and tear and is not so much ’all occassion’. Perhaps it has become just a little too worn to go to more formal events. So then quest begins to replace the perfect garment.

But what do you do with the old, almost great piece that you adore? Keep them? Let them go? I hang on to mine until I find something to replace it with, but that doesn’t mean it is the best decision because it does lead to accumulation and clutter. And combine that with the other reasons why we hold on to things and the cluttered closet is born:  

• it was expensive
• it is for a very dressy or special occassion
• you haven’t worn it much
• it doesn’t fit right now but it will when you you lose or gain a few pounds.
• everything is great but the style looks dated.
• they don’t make them like that anymore.
• it is a classic!
• it is a status symbol.
• it is a colour you just had to have (vibrationally speaking) but no longer feel a need for.

But what do you do with garments that look ‘wrong’? Personally I let them go through a couple of seasons and then if I am still not wearing them, I give them away or sell on consignment. If something sits in your closet year after year and you can no longer find anything…then it is clutter and making life more complicated than it needs to be. I promise myself I will clear out the ‘mistakes’ and pare down once and for all. But I know in my heart I am always on the look-out for the next go-everywhere, perfect outfit.

© Copyright Deborah Redfern, 2008. All rights reserved.

Do you have clutter hot spots in your house? Me, I am looking at my linen cupboard in dismay. The first problem is I simply have too much of everything because as new items come in, I am not doing anything about the older ones. Some of these dish towels are so old the pattern has faded right off! Others are stained and frankly unattractive.

So the question is, why do I hang on to old dish cloths and towels that I’d be embassed to use if I had people over for dinner?  I know many of us have the same challenges when it comes to what we are ‘allowed’. As I looked at the lovely new dish towels I was given during Christmas, I felt they were too good to use. Compared to what I used everyday, they were! But, (my scarcity-thinking brain said) if I use the new ones, they’ll get stained and old and I won’t have nice dish towels if I have visitors.

As I began to pull everything off the shelves and sort, I promised myself the next time I have house guests, I will buy brand new dish towel in honour of the occasion. Second, if I decide I am worth “the good stuff” every day, I need never worry about not having something decent to give a guest to help dry the dinner dishes, because it will all be good stuff.  After sorting and putting everything that was staying back on the shelves, I had about a weeks’ worth of decent dish towels left. As I looked at the neat shelves some words that come to mind:

• organized feels good
• it is prosperity thinking
• it is quality over quantity
• it is living for today
• I am pleasing myself instead of keeping the best for ‘others’.</li>

This is one of the reasons why clearing clutter is so powerful. It is an opportunity to change your internal script each time you examine what you are keeping and why. It changes your energy template and your idea of who you are. In no small way, clearing clutter energizes and heals your life.

(c) Deborah Redfern, 2008. All rights reserved.

I thought I knew everything there was to know about removing clutter from a house when I moved from the east coast to the west, taking only what would fit into our RV.

Emptying the house was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Many of the things we liked but wouldn’t be taking with us were offered to family and friends. We had a giant house moving sale, then truck loads were donated to the Salvation Army, and by the time we left, we filled a dumpster with things no one would want.

In the end, we reduced our belongings by about 95 percent — as I said, only what we could take with us.  It was difficult both physically and emotionally. Five years later there is still a sense a loss over some things and a wondering…where did such and such an item go?  But the good part of it was that we learned all about clutter because there wasn’t much room to bring new things into an RV.

But, five years later, I realize we only thought we had learned about clutter. You know that saying about expenses increasing to meet income, no matter how much income increases? Well the same is true of belongings and space.

A few years ago we moved back into an apartment - a change that necessitated starting from scratch to outfit a home. And once again we had space we could fill. People began giving us things, we found ‘treasures’  and incredible bargains we simply could not pass up…

We’ve been apartment dwellers going on 4 years now, and while it is true that we are much more conscious of accumulating than we have ever been in the past, we have watched (almost helplessly) as old habits crept back into our lives. It has become obvious that there is much room in our lives to learn more about living lightly.

One of the things I’ve noticed is a tendency to give things emotions: that the knickknack a friend gave you (that you don’t love) will have its feelings hurt if you give it away. Or that the person who gave it to you will know it’s gone from your life — some kind of psychic connection. And so we hang on to things that are obviously clutter, until the appropriate time comes to let it go. And this is the reason people end up having to rent dumpsters when they move — all those deferred decisions finally catch up with them.

I had an idea, that if space clearing was combined with clutter clearing, the items needing new homes could be honoured and blessed for the intent behind them. I would make them part of a blessing altar, take photographs and bless and clear everything on the altar before the objects I no longer want to keep are sent on their journey to find new owners who will love and treasure them. 

And that would feel really good because I know that objects that have been part of a blessing altar are very auspicious gifts to give and some of my energy has gone into the item to be passed to new owners.

(c) Deborah Redfern, 2008. All rights reserved.

As a feng shui practitioner, one of the things I love is that it can be presented to people according to their comfort level and belief systems. I use 3 levels, or intensities of feng shui, which are: 

1. cures and enhancements
2. home as a metaphor
3. Intent

 Cures and Enhancements
The first level is the initial feng shui set-up and arrangement of your home. This is the stage where you will deal with all the big items such as missing areas of the bagua map, arrangement of furniture, and the flow of chi. Cures and enhancements are often ‘one-time” something that is set up and finished. Other enhancements may be seasonal. 

Home as a Metaphor
In the second level of feng shui  I look at is the metaphors in your home. Every object in your home has an energy and ‘story’. Some of the stories are wonderful, others clearly are not optimal and still others are in a grey area. There is just something about it that ‘isn’t right.’

When there are mixed emotions about an object it is especially important to look closer. It might be an object that is beautiful to look at, but the circumstances under which you got it were less than ideal. Or there is a less than ideal history with people who are involved. Although you may not consciously think of the associations every time you look at the item, you may be aware that something is not quite right and it will affect the overall energy of the room and your energy.

Intention
In the third level, we bring your intentions into the equation. For example if your Intention is to find a romantic relationship, we will be looking at the metaphors in your home that either support, or do not support that intention. It is not uncommon for example to see that someone has put items in their home that sabotage your efforts to meet someone. Metaphors can also take the form of clutter or neglect.

I encourage my clients to remove those items that are not supportive and replace them with things that reflect your intentions. For example it might be images of healthy happy relationships in the relationship areas. Some people will choose to have traditional feng shui enhancements (pairs of things in the relationship area) but it can really be any symbol that supports your goals and dreams in life.

Some people may not choose to beyond the first level of feng shui - and this is neither right or wrong, but a personal preference. They may choose at a later date to go deeper in to the energy patterns of their home and I consider myself fortunate to be a guide in this process.

© Deborah Redfern, 2008. All rights reserved.

Dr. StrangeRebmann, or how I learned to stop worrying and love cleaning my chemical free home - Part 3
Read part One & part Two

My family and I sure spend a lot of time in our kitchen. I feel lucky to have my own kitchen sitting in the Family & Foundation and Abundance areas of the home. I love to prepare and share good food with my family.

I suggest trying to keep this area free from Clutter when possible, especially because of how much time we spend in the kitchen, and how great it feels when it is clear and clean. As we know, it is a powerful metaphor to have your space clean and clutter free.

I have to be honest and tell you this room is where I use the most commercial products. While I would like to use all homemade cleaners, I have run into difficulty finding ones that work well here. Yet, I do have some good tips.

1. Surface Cleaner – Mrs. Meyers All Purpose Concentrated Cleaner. I bought one of these sometime last year, and I haven’t even gone through a fifth of it. I take one capful of cleaner to 16 oz of water – and I am set for several weeks of cleaning up counters, tables and highchairs.

2. Dishwasher – Ecover Dishwasing Detergent. It works well with my pots and pans cycle. I have to use a little more water, but I think the reduced phosphates is worth it. Also – substitute white vinegar in your rinse aid compartment – works great – no chemicals.

3. Liquid Dish Soap – Mrs. Meyers again. It just works so well and I can clean an entire sink full of dishes with one squirt. I have also had good luck with Seventh Generation Dish Soap – it requires more - but is a bit cheaper.

4. Stainless Steel Appliances – Mrs. Meyers Stainless Steel Cleaner. This is more like a polish, but it works very well. I only have to use it once a month or so – and my stainless steel appliances and compost bucket look great!

5. Floor Cleaner – I use water. Unless it is raw chicken on the floor where I would feel the need to use some disinfectant, I use a damp microfiber mop. It works great!

6. Other cool tricks – Salt and Lemon Juice Paste for rust stains. Combine into pastes – leave on rust overnight – wipe off in morning. No need for CLR at all.

Next week – the rest of the house and laundry!