Use Feng Shui to Save Money, Stay Sane and Fill Your Home with Love this Holiday Season

By Ken Lauher

Your home — as well as your social schedule, your work life, and everything else — may feel as if it’s in disarray during the holidays. In addition to your regular chores and activities, you may be adding holiday shopping, more parties and get-togethers than usual, and even a more frantic work schedule as managers and owners aim to get projects finished before year-end. Your budget, too, is taxed by these commitments – a holiday wardrobe, clothes and dress shoes for the kids, family portraits, and, of course, all those gifts. How do you keep everything in balance?

One good way to start is to make sure your home reflects a sense of balance and also reflects your priorities. Here are a few action items you can use today if they appeal to you:

1. Organize your finances, set a budget, and find a safe place to store bills and paperwork. – You could be doomed for January debt if you don’t organize your finances now. Keep track of bill due dates, set your holiday budget, and do your best to stick to it. To avoid finance charges and, more importantly, to avoid creating a mountain of debt that can weigh you down financially, spiritually, and psychologically, never charge what you can’t afford to pay off by the time the first payment is due.

Don’t keep bills or other mail on your kitchen or dining room table. These spots represent abundance, your health, and, especially during the holidays, social gatherings with family and friends. Avoid storing bills near your front entrance, too, since the first thing you see when you enter your home should not cause you stress. Keep paperwork safe in a home office or work area (not in the master bedroom), or, better yet, switch to online bill-paying and work on reducing clutter by creating a paperless office.

Consider scanning in your holiday receipts (some companies even email you receipts today) for the same reason.

2. Use Feng Shui to find the right space for your Christmas tree. – The best places for a Christmas tree are in the wealth corner of your home or room that you place it in. Wherever it goes, make sure it does not block the flow of chi through your home. It should not be placed where it blocks the flow of chi through your front entrance, or too close to a doorway.

You may have to rearrange the furniture in the room where you place your Christmas tree. If you do so, make sure that furniture doesn’t block the flow of chi, either, or feel out of place in the new location, sending your home out of balance. If you have to place some pieces in storage for a month, that’s okay. Maybe you’ll decide you can actually live without them and you can clear more space in your home for chi to flow.

3. Achieve a sense of balance in your space. – In spite of my suggestion to take time and think about items you may not need in your home, I don’t believe in Spartan or minimalist living arrangements or in creating an atmosphere that borders on sterile. Surrounding ourselves with things we love creates a sense of joy and abundance that we should treasure and that attracts more of them same into our lives.

It’s all about finding a balance between creating room to breathe and space for the chi to flow and filling your home or apartment with useful, beautiful items that bring you happiness.

Elegance can sometimes come from taking things away instead of adding things. Consider a single row of white icicle Christmas lights hanging from a home’s eaves and maybe a single strand of LEDs framing a window. Isn’t that more elegant and beautiful than a home with multi-colored lights everywhere you turn, dancing Santa’s, and blow-up animated figurines of every cartoon character ever created? Sure, kids love the latter — for a few minutes. But that understated Christmas display is better for the environment, your electric bills, and passing traffic, and can still get people in the spirit of the holidays.

When you’re decorating indoors, consider a few heirloom pieces passed on from your parents or grandparents, perhaps, and other items that really mean a lot to you. If someone gave it to you as a gift and you hate it, don’t display it. The holidays are ripe for impulse purchases of decorations. If you can’t remember why you bought an item three years ago, don’t display it just because it was in your box of holiday decorations. Give it away to someone who will love it or donate it.

Remember, everything you put in your space has its own energy and is impacting your subconscious. The holiday season already has so many variables, there’s no need to create more stress with items that may be tied to memories you don’t treasure, or worse, have no meaning to you whatsoever.

4. Create focal points in your home and in your holiday displays. – A focal point — a particular item in each room that means a lot to you – works wonders to balance a space. In scientific terms, the focal point is the point where beams of light converge and diverge from a lens. It is the center of a space, from which all other energy radiates outward. The dictionary definition is a bit simpler: It’s the point of focus. Everything else in a room seems to balance around it.

Once you’ve created a focal point, keep objects around that focal point to a minimum and, if you do add other items that mean a lot to you, decorate in clusters of twos or threes to maintain a sense of balance.

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You can use this technique with candles on a table, the arrangement of a centerpiece, pictures on a wall, multiple plants, or various holiday items that you use to share a bit of the spirit of the season.

5. Tie it all together by using all five senses to create a space that relaxes you. – To come full circle, the first thing you see when you walk into your home should immediately relax or invigorate you, depending on the time of day and the mood you want to evoke. Most importantly, it should make you happy.

Employ all five senses to make your home a place that welcomes residents, family and friends in a meaningful and pleasant way each time they step through your door this holiday season. You can do this with pies baking in the oven — or candles that simulate that scent — the right lighting, an open entryway, a comfortable temperature, and, of course, that fresh pine scent of a real live Christmas tree. Avoid sprays that seem artificial and are loaded with chemicals. Soy or beeswax candles can put a pleasing, subtle aroma in the air.

When the chi in your space is well-balanced and relaxed, you can’t help but feel that way, too. Your home will become your sanctuary — and your sanity — this holiday season.

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About Ken – One of America’s premier Feng Shui consultants, Ken Lauher helps thousands of people achieve their goals through Feng Shui. He can help you become a money magnet, attract passionate love, jump-start your career and get unstuck. Visit www.kenlauher.com to get your FREE Feng Shui guide and discover the ancient secrets that can help you unlock your true potential.