Health- The Heart of the Home: Feng Shui and Money- A Nine Week Book/Program

“Eric has brightly lit each step of the path to abundance. Take a nine-week walk with him –you won’t regret it!” Karen Rauch Carter, author of Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life

Feng Shui and Money: A Nine-Week Program for Creating Wealth Using Ancient Principles and Techniques was written by a practitioner named Eric Shaffert.

Feng Shui is the Art of  a creating Harmony in physical spaces such as homes. It focuses on promoting flow so energy can move through a home. Feng Shui is a continual practice as things change, and grow, and as you want to have a  constant effort in bringing fresh energy into your life. As Certified Feng Shui practitioners, we tend to focus on finding the detrimental issues and work to correct them, and add cures. While detrimental issues can be huge things like an unsafe renovation, or standing rancid water, it can also be a stuckness- no motion, no way to invite in change. Even as practitioners, we work to always strive to find our next step.

I’m going to be working through the whole book up to the Lunar New Year on January 28th, 2017, and the shift to the Year of the Rooster on February 4, 2017. I’m going to be working through Mr. Shaffert’s book on three levels. Prior to Lunar or Chinese New Year it is tradition to deep clean your home. I am also moving to a different condo in my condo complex just before Lunar New Year, so I’ll actually be working on this project in both of my condo units, and I’m really excited about having a completely renovated unit to start the new year in. Read more

Building a Solution in My Own Kitchen

Even as a Feng Shui Practitioner, there are always ways to improve our homes, and lives for better functionality. We live in a decent sized two-story townhouse. Our kitchen is large, which I love. After our last apartment I refused to ever live with a galley kitchen again.

The thing is… it’s not laid out great. I wish the counter between the living room and kitchen was the same height. I wish there was at least one “wide” cabinet (and by wide, I mean normal width.)

I cook a lot. Like nearly every meal, nearly every day. I work from home so I either cook my lunch or heat up left overs (I do like to strategically batch cook.) I have four pieces of stoneware (think Pampered Chef) and a cast iron dutch oven that won’t fit in our cabinets. I used to store them in the oven, but since I’m constantly using the oven, I was constantly moving all these pieces that aren’t all that light.  Read more

10 Most Highly Suggested Books on Feng Shui

Feng Shui Books are a super popular topic. I get asked for recommendations **ALL** the time. I’ve read a great number of them- if I learn one new thing or technique I’m elated.
Here are the top 10 Books I suggest. Each of these books has a different focus, ranging from Declutter, Health, Mindset, to ADVANCED Feng Shui. Take a look and see where you are and what you personally need at the moment. They are also organized by Beginner/Casual Interest, Intermediate, and Advanced levels for your ease. Read more

My Mom’s Friend’s Art Gallery and Helping

This week, I’d like to welcome a Featured Guest Blog Author. Riley is my 8 year old, laundry 2015-11-25 14.06.30 HDRand dishwasher assistant, and is wonderful at finding tools, my phone, and other things that are just out of my reach. She is very responsible, and makes sure to feed all her animals and do her homework. She has been learning to write essays at school, and loves to read, write, and type at home as well.

This is an unedited post, and my only comments are in (parathesis) or the picture captions.

Welcome Riley!

My mom once was fixing her bunny tattoo when they somehow brought up that Todd (the guy doing
mom’s tattoo) had an art gallery and so it began. First I will tell you about the chairs, then the gallery/Todd, and last but not least the tables.

Read more

Perspective in Feng Shui

The difference between a flower and a weed is a judgment. ~ Unknown

cactus

 

Have you ever had to grieve over something that someone else didn’t understand?

Recently my cactus died after my nanny accidentally slammed it in the backdoor. She nearly cried when I got home because she thought I’d be angry. She knew how much I loved my cactus.

 

Perspective

One of the things I have learned during my Feng Shui training is to never jump to conclusions or allow your own impressions to color your perspective and the advice you give someone else. Feng Shui is, at it’s core, all about feeling.

My mentor, Tina Falk at VIA School of Feng Shui, uses the phrase “How does that make you feel?”

An item that may be adorable and playful to me, may be kept out of guilt by someone else. A piece that you love may look like a hot mess to me. Each of us is bound by our own perspective (and taste) to some degree. My question is in how far our opinions can go before they damage or harm others.

Read more

Feng Shui Tips to Bring in Money Fast

One of the questions I get asked most often is a variation of “Can you give me a remedy to bring in money… fast?”

Pick and choose from this list, or use them all!

Declutter:
I mean it. You’ll hear me say it over and over, but it works. By opening your space to allow for more and better things to arrive, your life will shift. Be mindful of not allowing decluttered spaces to become a vacuum of items and junk just falling into place.

Allow for more and better!

Get a wallet you love that is easy to use:

I bought myself a wallet for my birthday, and it was so pretty when it showed up, but the workmanship was not all that good, so it wore out super quickly. Every time I picked up, tried to use (emphasis on tried), or put away my wallet, somewhere in my mind I was agitated that the quality wasn’t better, and that it wasn’t working. After the company replaced my wallet 3 times wallet openin 6 months, they pulled the product because they were replacing so many because surprise the wallet wasn’t well made. Read more

Curse of the Deformed Towel

towelsEf this towel in particular. This towel is like a boomerang in a cartoon. I just couldn’t get rid of it, without it turning up and smacking me in the face again.

I may have seriously broken up with a guy because he pulled this towel out of the garbage.

I don’t know for certain what happened to this towel. I purchased it at the same time as all of our other towels, but it’s now been floating around my house in it’s deformed state for several years. I avoid it at all costs, and usually grab it when I’m using a saw, painting, or need to throw one on the floor. Read more

An Honest Review of The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

A few weeks ago, I watched a video on KonMarie’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, thought I should buy it, and surprisingly the next morning my READS ebook hold on it became available. I’d been on the hold list for months.

I picked it up and have noticed several things. First of all there is nothing overall Japanese about this technique. It’s based off a course created by the author. KonMarie is a decluttering expert (as we call them in the US), and she’s trained in Feng Shui and a few other practicalities- however she really only covers her course premise in this book.

As a Feng Shui Practicioner, books on tidying, cleaning, organizing, energy, and Feng Shui, are regulars for me, as a sort of research. I’m always looking for new ideas and perspectives. KonMarie is definitely not looking for new ideas or perspectives. She has a very prescribed set of instructions for her process.My eight year old daughter asked me what I was reading, and after I read her the title and a few lines,
she said: “Does that make sense to you?”
E: “I like some of her ideas, but some of it sounds a little obsessive.”
R: “I don’t have to touch our cats to know they don’t need to be discarded. What about all the items in the kitchen or the hangers?”
In the light of “takes one to know one” as I read Kon Marie’s description of her childhood and her stealth attempts to tidy and declutter for the rest of her family, lying about it, and getting in trouble, I see warning signs of obsessive compulsion. She mentions in her section on Loungewear clothing that she can be ruthless in not allowing her clients to keep normal clothes for loungewear.
Translation
I’ve only seen videos of KonMarie speaking Japanese. I don’t know if she is fluent in English. I’ve also seen some reviews of her book basically making fun of it, for her concern for the energy of rolled up socks not being able to breath and relax.
I enjoyed this book, however, I wonder if something wasn’t lost in translation. Some parts come across very ridged in their rule enforcing, and in others it seems like she might have been trying to make a joke-but it got lost in the curves of Japanese to English. I also think something might be lost culturally. I think Japanese readers might take her over-enthusiasm differently than Americans.
Read it or Not?
I’m not sure I’d buy a copy of the Life Changing Magic of Tidying, as this is readily available at most libraries. (I utilize our library endlessly so that we don’t spend our housing budget on books through.) I think she has some great tips. If you are able to pick it up and take away what works for you, and not feel guilty or oppressed when you don’t subscribe to all her sock-loving thoughts, I’d suggest picking it up. If it’s just going to become another volume in the stack of decluttering books, take this away- when you clean an area, clean all of it. Dump the drawer totally out, and hand things one at a time.
P.S. Folding is fun.
KonMarie claims that folding is fun, and that all but one of her clients has come away from her course having subscribed to that theory. I just have a difficult time believing this one. I give Riley $5 a basket to fold our laundry.

Facebook Quick Tip

Feng shui can apply to all aspects of our lives. Decluttering can be so painful so I have a super quick tip for you.

Denise Duffield Thomas, of Lucky Bitch Money Bootcamp, recently shared this tip with me.

When you are overwhelmed with Facebook friends and your Facebook feed, get ready to do some unfriending.

Take a look at the right hand toolbar in Facebook, and locate the little Red Gift. Click and take a look at the birthdays screen.

If you don’t know a person, wouldn’t speak to them in town, or generally dislike them, unfriend them!

I usually do mine a week or so at a time.

Photo Attribution: Flickr User Oli Dunkley