Imagine a river flow across your floors.  Where does it rush through, where does it get stuck and where does it nicely meander?

I sometimes get asked if I know about feng shui – not entirely sure why, though being part Chinese might have something to do with it.  Not to be at all negative about the feng shui movement but I’ve never really been able to get into it because, let’s face it, that’s a whole lotta rules to remember (it takes years to become a feng shui master) and it’s just not my forté BUT I do find myself adhering to some of feng shui’s most common sense principles without fail. This isn’t a post about feng shui however, it is actually a post about flow…but instead of talking about energy flows that most of us mere mortals find confusing, I’d like to use an analogy that I read about in Maxwell from Apartment Therapy’s book The eight-step home cure. What he compares it to is imagining a river flow – water spreading across your floors as it were.  Where does it rush through, where does it get stuck and where does it nicely meander? Fast rushing rivers in your home are dangerous (if you replace water with running kids!) and too curvy rivers end up with crud stuck in the bends (or the stuff in our homes we generally call clutter).

The happy house rule is for the flow in your home to meander like a healthy river bends – this encourages you and everyone else to take a journey through your home and hopefully to stop and appreciate each and every part of it along the way.

Now, how do you know if your home flows nicely?  You could just walk through and see how easy/hard it is to do, but if you find it hard to see this in your own home then I’d love to suggest Nat’s trick of watching a 5 year old for the first time try to navigate your house. It’ll become abundantly clear where they get stuck or where they run straight through!  (If you don’t have your own 5 year old then borrow one – I’m sure their parents would be happy to have them off their hands for an hour or two – win win!) A couple of pictures from Maxwell again to illustrate bad flow vs. good flow: I hope this helps your eyes not glaze over when someone starts talking about the energy flow in your space!

If if you are interested in understanding more about feng shui then I would recommend Karen Kingston‘s books as she’s one’s of my favourite authors on the subject…

but for now, off you go and find your 5 year old to help you create a happy healthy flow in your home.