I am no expert on Feng Shui, but I have read a few books and tried a few strategies to see what it was all about. I think the philosophy is really interesting, but like any philosophy it needs to be understood through it’s application. In my experience, learning Feng Shui is kind of like learning how to draw or paint; the rules are like guidelines for creating beauty, but sometimes you have to go with your gut instincts.

The important thing to understand is how the placement of objects, colors, line & form affect the energy flow in the room. A good piece of art needs to have harmony of these elements while at the same time the elements create movement or energy. Art that you like causes you to feel something and you want to keep looking at it because you enjoy that feeling. The same thing should happen in a room.

That love seat sticking out like that was not quite working. It was a hard room to decorate without getting new furniture (which we couldn’t afford). This was actually the third rearrangement, the second after painting the walls. But every time I rearranged the furniture and added or took away something it did get better. It’s a process.

This couch & painting had been with us since the birth of my second child (She’s graduated college now). The couch held up well but was getting quite worn & missing buttons. I was very attached to the painting since my husband painted it while we lived in our first little apartment.

We managed like this for awhile because the room felt better than it was before, but I was still not satisfied.

Clearly it was strange to have the love seat angled across that corner, but the kids liked it for watching TV.

BTW, 98% of our furniture are hand-me-downs from parents & grandparents.

I wanted the dining room to be bright & inviting, especially because you can see it from the front door. Now I think the yellow is a little too bright. Well, it feels nice in the winter because it gets so cold here for such a long time. I’d like to get new carpet and change the painting though.

So here is my updated living room, but there is a story here.

I never wanted the TV to be the center of attention in our house. Then someone offered to give us their old plasma screen. Since we have a regular group of people who come over once a month I thought it would be good to have. I struggled about where to put it, but my younger son had a solution.

Move the old TV into his room and put the big one on the only empty wall in the living room. Yuck, I said. No way. But he begged me to just try it. OK, we moved all the furniture around and somehow I kind of liked it. It made the room look bigger. There was also a better energy flow to the room. It’s kind of hard to tell from photos, but sitting there felt more comfortable, free & easy, yet energized.

Anyway, I decided to check my Feng Shui books to see how it scored. To my amazement the room seemed to have much better Feng Shui than before, everything was in it’s rightful place according to the Bagua. The furniture seemed to fit better. Also I was so happy to get rid of that old TV stand which was sagging and an eyesore.

 

 

There was another benefit to all this. The screen was not a TV we realized after we put it there. We didn’t have a cable box so we couldn’t get TV. We can use it with the DVD player, game consoles, or hook it up to a computer. So we don’t use it as much, and we use it more intentionally rather than as just turning it on in moments of boredom.

As far as the TV in my son’s room goes, we canceled cable, but he has his Xbox and Netflix, and movies that we own or rent. So things are running pretty smoothly these days.