fen shui for the soul...

When Steve and I first moved into our house, there was something about our dining room that I just didn’t like. Something about it, aesthetically, wasn’t working for me. I am certainly not an interior designer by any means, but I do know when something doesn’t fit. Often times though, I don’t know what it is that doesn’t fit. Like life, all of my design preferences revolve around balance. I need things to look and feel balanced in order for me to enjoy them and if they don’t feel right, it will nag at me endlessly until I make it right.

Our dining room was especially daunting for me because I had never had a dining room before. The second floor of our house (home to the kitchen, living and dining room) is very open and in turn, offers a unique challenge when going from decorating a small space to decorating such a large space. We didn’t want to over clutter the room but at the same time, the large wall added a rather dramatic advantage that we had never enjoyed before.

One night, Steve came home from work and I had removed everything in our dining room and had it all sitting in the kitchen. I stood looking at the dining room, completely bare, with nothing but the chandelier and the table. I had gotten so frustrated with the look of this space that I had just decided to start all over again.

Slowly, throughout the night, Steve and I began to replace certain items in the room and one at a time, we rebuilt the décor of our dining room. In doing so, it was much easier to identify what was throwing off the balance of everything else. Eventually, we discovered the culprit and our dining room is now one of our favourite and most loved places in our house.

This strategy of “going bare” had never occurred to me before. In the past, I would just put on my best fen shui hat and play around with things until it looked right. This time though, I was so overwhelmed, mostly by all of the little things, that I felt the need to disassemble and start again from scratch. It worked well though. By pulling apart the bigger picture, all of the small details weren’t so intimidating.

This summer, my life felt much the same way my dining room first felt; cluttered, unbalanced and it made me cringe every time I looked at it! Also like my dining room, the task of figuring out the one piece that didn’t seem to fit felt overbearing and unappealing. Come August though, I decided to try the same technique that I had used on the dining room; remove all the activities from my life that were taking up space (good and bad), leaving only the essentials, and slowly but surely, start putting them back in to see what works and what doesn’t work. Of course, there was a bit of unease towards this process as it also meant removing some of the things that I love as well but sometimes, even the things that we love most need some tweaking.

So, that’s what I did. I took a nice long break for all the “extras” in my life to see how it would fit. For two months now I haven’t run with my group (so sad!), volunteered, attended church activities or extended myself beyond the fundamental activities throughout my day. I am normally quite a busy person, so this experience proved to be more difficult than I anticipated but it was good though…enlightening. It was refreshing to see what it is that actually consumes my time on a daily basis and how much they contribute to my well-being (or don’t).

The result wasn’t necessarily surprising. I concluded that like space in a house, it’s not really a matter of how much time you have (because that’s not going to change!) as much as it matters how you use the time that you are given. Running with some of the best training buddies ever – GOOD! Watching the new remake of Beverly Hills 90210 – NOT GOOD! Bible study and church BBQs – GOOD! Facebook – NOT SO GOOD! Reading a delightful book with a yummy coffee in hand – VERY GOOD! An hour on a crowded, smelly bus – TERRIBLE! It’s all a matter of priorities really! But sometimes you have to blow the dust off in order to even catch a glimpse of them.

I’ll admit that it’s a little bit of a shock to the system going from two months of “quiet time” back into the full swing of things but I’m trying to consider it kind of like going back to school; no more slacking…it’s time to put yourself to good use again (at least for five days out of the week!). As my day timer is slowly filling up again with lots of delightful commitments, I’m trying really hard to keep a close eye on it and not let things become too cluttered again. After all, I’m a busy girl…I don’t have a lot of time for cleaning anymore!