In the practice of Feng Shui, your home is a metaphor for your life. "Life" is organized into 9 areas or Guas which create the Bagua. The basic idea of the practice of Feng Shui is to allow Life Energy or Chi to come in through doors and windows and move freely through each area thereby enhancing those aspects of your life. The position of the Bagua areas in the bagua grid correspond to the position of the areas in your home or apartment.

Each area of the Bagua represents a different aspect of your life; Career, Self Cultivation and Knowledge, Happy Family, Prosperity, Fame and Reputation, Love and Relationship, Children and Creativity, Helpful People and Travel and Health.Each area has colors associated with it and several have elements associated with them. The colors and elements are used as enhancements to Chi or as cures for anything blocking the movement of Chi.

Since discovering Feng Shui, I've self diagnosed myself as being slightly Obsessive Compulsive with Attention Deficit Disorder. So, does that also make me a Hypochondriac?

Phase One of my new Feng Shui life is DECLUTTERING. For the last two weeks or since my last blog, I've been obsessed with decluttering my life and I must say that I'm very pleased with the progress. My fear is that like so many other projects in my life, I'll get 90% completion and never total free myself of mental, emotional and spiritual clutter.

The original plan was to find feng shui in the bedroom for improved sleep. Following the feng shui guidelines, I removed all non-bedroom related stuff out of the bedroom, decluttered, rearranged furniture, cleaned out closets, bought new sheets and bedspreads, etc. As strange as it may sound, the feng shui guidelines made decision making much easier. Color choices became more obvious, placement of items became more obvious-the guidelines just seem to make sense.

With my new found feng shui expertise, I went to Knitwits and started my Feng Shui magic at the shop. Like a whirling dervish, I decluttered, stacked, tossed, rearranged and drove everyone in the shop crazy. I must get a possessed look about me because everyone just stays clear. Jill described the experience as "Scaaaaaarrrrrry!" That's "scary" with 6 a-s and 6 r-s.

As scaaaaaarrrrrry as it may have been, we can now walk through the office without straddling or moving any obstacles and we now have visible desktops. Yay!

After my bedroom and Knitwits, I did my Feng shui magic in my kitchen, living room, dining room and bathrooms. All the "bad" Feng Shui stuff (aka "clutter") was tossed out, given away or moved to the spare bedroom.

According to the Feng Shui guidelines, my spare bedroom is the place of Skill and Knowledge in the my bagua. So, it seems fitting that all of my knitting related stuff (2 bookcases full of knitting books and magazines, 6 very large moving cartons of stash, 2 Tupperware tubs of needles and notions, my Circular Solutions wall-hanging circular needle organizer, baskets, baskets and more baskets filled with zip locked UFOs and more) were relocated to the spare bedroom. The problem is....now I can bearly open or close the door. The room is filled from floor to ceiling with my "little knitting hobby".

For now, I'll keep the spare bedroom door closed.

I'm hoping that my Feng Shui will be so impressed with my progress that I'll get a little grace period in the Skill and Knowledge department. On my next free day, I'm going to lock myself in my Skill and Knowledge gua and make order out of chaos.