Sometimes feng shui can seem very complicated – laying the bagua, checking the balance of all the elements, identifying problem areas in your home or office and figuring out how to enhance the energy in them. But there is an easier way to get started. Take a small feng shui step toward clearing your energy to allow new opportunities to flow into your life. How? By cleaning out your desk drawer.
As a practitioner I like to remind people that nothing can hide from feng shui eyes – meaning, it’s great to have the top of your desk cleared off but that doesn’t mean you can sweep it all into the big file drawer and close it. The ancient Chinese believed that feng shui was the great equalizer; all spaces are equally important and each is aligned with an aspect of our lives. Meaning: the drawer (unseen when closed) is as important as the desktop (seen all the time). So, get ready for some creative chaos – because truly cleaning and clearing something out means literally and figuratively opening up the drawers and laying it all out there.
Which is exactly what my daughter – the recent college graduate – did when trying to get a handle on her new life out in the “real” world. Her desktop was all set up for her job search – laptop, dictionary, thank you notes, creative “toys” to spark her imagination – but when it came to finding something she needed in the drawers – a pen, a notepad, tape, her camera, the digital photo card reader – she needed to sort through everything to find the one thing she needed. Her solution: take it all out and lay it on the couch so that when she needed something, she could find it on the couch, use it and put it back in the drawer in a spot delegated for that item. This task took a week or two. In the photo below you can see all of the items in her drawer laid out on the couch.
The subsequent photos show the couch as items were taken and used. The last photo – which still has quite a few items on it – shows the desk items that didn’t make the cut, e.g., weren’t used in the two weeks of creative chaos this project took. What happened to those items? Some were reclaimed by family members (“I forgot I loaned those to you.”) Other items were put in the give-away pile. Many items were recycled or thrown away. Happily, the couch has resumed its life as a place of rest and relaxation and the desk drawers are organized.
She has an Anthropology degree so her project had a ring of Darwinism to it, as in “survival of the fittest” office supplies made it back into the drawer. Plus, she wanted to document her project over time; hence the photos. As her mother, I was thrilled with all the cleanliness and orderliness, and as her feng shui consultant I wanted to know: did it work? What of new opportunities now that this energy had been cleared? She’s thrilled with the call back and first interview for a job she wants – which she received after the drawer cleaning adventure. (Unlike the ads where the fine print says “these results aren’t usual,” with feng shui, this kind of result is almost guaranteed; I have the testimonials to prove it.)
What needs new energy in your life right now? I suggest you clean out your messiest drawer with the intention of clearing out some space in your mind and heart for something new to enter. Let me know how it goes – e-mail me your cleaning-out-the-drawer stories and I’ll post them on my blog (with your permission) – lwgrillo@thrivingspaces.com.
