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April 17, 2024
ByAna Rivas

Feng Shui Decor After Spring Cleaning

Feng Shui decor is an ancient Chinese practice that helps people create an atmosphere that is prosperous, balanced, and overall healthier. Feng Shui produces harmonious and energetically-balanced environments. Change is not only essential for your health, it’s part of what helps the progression of life into meaningful experiences.

When you start seeing the trees blooming, you know spring is here and Feng Shui decor can be part of your total spring cleaning by maximizing what you can bring into your home and things you can remove.

When you want to open your windows to let the fresh air in you may notice you have a lot of things out of place, everywhere. Your place is a little dusty, but you start thinking about redecorating and with Feng Shui decor in mind you can create an environment for a healthier and prosperous year.

Feng Shui decor can be as simple as moving some furniture around, making room for something new. Feng Shui also implies decluttering your home or office space. Simple change is an elemental part of Feng Shui, change is good. In Feng Shui, change is important, it’s expected and it truly is what keeps the world and us moving.

Ancient Feng Shui Decor Practice

According to the philosophy of Feng shui, an ancient Chinese practice that focuses on creating a harmonious and energetically-balanced environment in your home, change is not only essential for our health, it’s part of what helps the progression of our life into meaningful experiences. Many Asian communities and businesses fully believe in Feng Shui for the success of their businesses, large corporations hire Feng Shui designers to help them decorate their offices and homes for maximum profitability.

I am learning about Feng Shui and understandably it is a life- long philosophy not easily learned by reading a book or a few articles, but it sure is fun and it helps to know that if you have any questions you can always come back to the book to check. More importantly, Feng Shui is a practice, and in spring time during the annual cleaning of our homes, it is the perfect time to learn a thing or two about Feng Shui and why it’s so popular among highly accomplished home-owners.

I want to call attention to the Bagua, one of Feng Shui’s tools to help us understand where the energy flows, how it impacts our lives, and what you can do to strengthen the positive outcomes of the various energies. These energies are associated with the geographical cardinal points, colors, and specific elements that shape our lives.

In Asian culture, when Feng Shui was heavily practiced, before thinking of a place, you had to think of the perfect location, then build according to the Bagua map, and finally reduce, add, or increase the elements used in the decorating. For example, the front door would be facing north and it represents water, it could enhance career prosperity, to ensure it is balanced you would want some plants nearby and some ornaments with fire element colors such as light reds or pinks. This is my understanding and an oversimplification.

The Bagua in Feng Shui Decor

Feng Shui decor involves a lot more and our living environment is not always in the best of places, so that complicates matters but there is always a way to improve. For example, one apartment where the door is not facing north could look like this, notice the creativity area is towards a bathroom and the kitchen has the recognition area, well, that would work well if you stick trophies and journey’s awards in your refrigerator door. But the master bedroom is facing north and can’t have much blue or black colors because it’s a bedroom and that would represent blockage to love.

For example, one apartment where the door is not facing north could look like this, notice the creativity area is towards a bathroom and the kitchen has the recognition area, well, that would work well if you stick trophies and journey’s awards in your refrigerator door. But the master bedroom is facing north and can’t have much blue or black colors because it’s a bedroom and that would represent blockage to love.

Another example of how the Bagua map may fit an apartment is where the door is indeed facing the front door, and the kitchen is where travel and helpful people can be recognized.

Knowing the basics of Feng Shui decor can help you instill elements in your redecorating this year, perhaps you can think of some pillows to add a pop of color, a water fountain in the wealth area, or if you have a large windows that faces the front door you may want to place a round object such as a decorative bowl so that the energy that enter through the front door circulates and not exit out.

Some simple but important Feng Shui decor principles that can be part of spring cleaning include decluttering your space, re-evaluating the colors in your rooms, ensuring you have plants, adding natural light as much as possible, fixing broken items recognizing when it’s time to recycle and let go of some items, rearranging your furniture, maybe you’ve had enough time to notice some furniture gets in your way every day, and above all, ensure your restful place, aka your bedroom, has a good balance of warmth and calm energy colors. For example my bedroom is facing north and I need to ensure we have fire element colors such as red, light red, and pink tones because blue and black are not what you want in a bedroom.

To better understand how the various elements and colors in your home align with Feng Shui to serve their purpose, you may need to understand the balance between the five basic elements of Feng Shui decor: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water.

Wood is represented with plants and green color nourishes fire.
Fire can be represented with candles and red nourishes earth.
Earth represented by earthy tones, skin tones, ceramics, and crystals nourishes metal.
Metal represented with metallic or white colors nourishes water (when melted back to liquid).
Water represented with small water features and blue hues in decor nourishes wood.

Together these five elements represent the productive cycle of Feng Shui. Those are the very basics of what I have learned, but you can consult a specialist in Feng Shui to help you re-decorate your home, organize it and make any changes to the furniture that may be blocking prosperity.

Some Feng Shui learning recommendations can be found in Amazon:

Creating Sacred Space With Feng Shui: Learn the Art of Space Clearing and Bring New Energy into Your Life

Learn the art of space clearing and bring new energy into your life.

By Karen Kingston

Foreword by Denise Linn

Click here to purchase from Amazon

The Complete Illustrated Guide to Feng Shui

How to apply the secrets of Chinese Wisdom for Health, wealth, and happiness.

By Lillian Too

Click here to purchase from Amazon

Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life

How to use Feng Shui to get love, money, respect, and happiness.

By Karen Rauch Carter

Click here to purchase from Amazon

10.6in Rock Indoor Water Fountain[/caption]

10.6 inch tall Indoor Rock Water Fountain Zen Meditation Tabletop Fountain with LED Light for Home Office Bedroom.

A cascading tabletop water fountain with four-tier bowls that simulate the relaxing sounds of a waterfall.

Click here to purchase from Amazon

8.3in tall Ferrisland 4-Tier Tabletop Water Fountain with Cascading Rock Waterfall and LED Lights for Office Home Décor

Also replicates the sound of a natural water fall with the added dancing lights from the LED light that sits under the rotating glass ball at the top (I think it’s glass, the effect is delightful).

Click here to purchase from Amazon

To truly cherish the things that are important to you, you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose. And if you no longer need them, then that is neither wasteful nor shameful.

Can you truthfully say that you treasure something buried so deeply in a cupboard or drawer that you have forgotten its existence?

– Marie Kondo

Sources:

Marie Kondo quote thanks to BrainyQuote.com

Mindful Design Consulting. Healthy by Design, Interior Design Trends, Office Design, Random Topics. Bagua Map Basics the Easy Way

The American Feng Shui Institute. The world’s leading educator of Feng Shui principles.