Feng Shui

Every now and then my life gets cluttered. My house gets cluttered. My website and blog gets cluttered. And my desk...

You know what they say about clutter being a reflection of your mind? "A cluttered desk is a cluttered mind?" Do they say that or did I make it up? And who are they? I digress.

Anyway, when I start to feel cluttered I pull out my trusty Feng Shui bible and rearrange. Feng Shui is cool because it works based on common sense that you forget when you are cluttered. Stuff like-- if you keep your desk cluttered, you won't be about to relax and your mind will find it hard to let go. Duh! Why do we need to let go of mind? So we can act through heart and soul... ahhh, grasshopper, now I understand. Actually an added benefit of cleaning your desk is being able to find stuff which will also free your mind for other stuff like "where should I put all this crap I took off my desk?"

So, I started with my website. Now, believe or not, my Feng Shui bible does not cover feng shui-ing websites. I was forced to create Linda Shui rules such as:

1. Remove a third of the clutter.
2. Make things match. (this was sorta tedious as I had to do each page)
3. Simplify.
4. Stay with one color & one font. (this was REALLY hard, I was feeling very stifled)
5. Say what you have to say and move on.

I'm not so sure I succeeded at the last one, as you know, I tend to get a bit wordy but I did my best. Anyway, I moved on to my house. One of the best Feng Shui rules is to walk around your house and anything you do not like or that has bad energy or reminds you of bad times must go. This is not the first time I've feng shui-ed, in fact, I've been doing it for years but it's amazing how much stuff we accumulate every single day. This is a great way to get your house clean because you don't have to agonize over your Great Aunt twice removed precious gravy ladle with the chipped goose neck as a handle... gravy is bad for you so out it goes.

One of the biggest thing to go this time was the piano that no one wanted (cept Cory, who is still not speaking to us, another added Feng Shui benefit LOL JK) When Cory was little, he took piano lessons and needed a piano so the Universe provided because the nursery school was trying to get rid of one so we wheeled it up the road. Considering it had been in a nursery school for 400 years, you can imagine the condition of it. But we were grateful to have it and it served us well. As Cory and Rhia got older and their pitch became more critical, they would complain about how out of tune it was. Trouble was, we couldn't get it tuned because it needed a minor repair that would have taken 400 hours. Bottom line: we needed to get rid of the piano.

You ever try and get rid of a piano? Over the last year, I have had many people interested, coming by (requiring me to dust the damn thing since no one was playing it) and saying they wanted it, only to never see them again. Finally, I get very cranky about it (menopause? BITE YOUR TONGUE!) and insist that it leaves my house this very minute! I call the City of Bowie and they say they will be happy to take it-- if we chop it into 12 inch pieces. All of it. Ugh. This would hurt our musical souls. But our feng shui was sooo bad with it here. What to do?

Saturday, We wheeled it down to the end of our driveway. Put a sign that says YOURS! Take it! We make our way back into the house and no lie-- before we even made it to the kitchen we hear it being played. In our front yard. LOL, that's something you don't hear everyday. Barry goes out and this lovely Oriental (coincidence? Ha grasshopper) man from around the corner says he wants it. Comes back to pick it up and even brings me a gift of tea he picked up on his last trip to Taiwan.

Now our hearts are happy. Our living room is clearer. The energy is flowing.

See? Feng Shui Works!