Feng Shui and Having Young Children

When you have small children, keeping your home as you would like isn't always an option. Between the chaos and the accumulation of stuff, it is hard to clear your environment and subsequently your mind. Figuring out how to maintain the Feng Shui of your home around the obstacle of children will calm your mind as a parent and as a person needing a comfortable personal space, and create a happy and optimal environment for your kids to learn and grow.

The first thing I have found to be most helpful is to get rid of a bunch of stuff. I used the typical 4-box or -bag system: To Keep, To Toss, To Donate, To Recycle. Everything I keep has a "home" which is simply a place where it should always be kept. I was very unattached when I first did this, so we ended up getting rid of about 40% of our stuff. How cleansing it felt! We easily went to the dumps for big trash items and dropped the donate items at the thrift store and a local church. This process took a while, especially with the constant interruptions of our children, but it was essentially very easy. Also, I would recommend purging every now and then, like every 3-6 months because we slowly start accumulating more and more junk over a period of time. Paper overflow and toy overflow has been a problem in our house in the past. I'll go more into that in a moment. Either way, it's good to maintain having less stuff. If you have less, there is less to pick up, less to cloud your space, and less to cloud your mind. The less you own, the better you will keep track of what you own and where it is all located. As for your kids, they will be able to see their choices of toys more easily, be able to concentrate better, and learn essential cleanup skills without being overwhelmed.

Secondly, my next focus would be how to manipulate everything for best placement and storage. This will be different for everyone depending upon their home, their family, their personality, their preferences...

We are actually still developing just the right essence for our home (well, it is everchanging anyway), but we have it about where we want it while living in our current 2-bedroom home. We decided our book shelves and office setup should go in the master bedroom next to eachother beneath 3 long wooden shelves filled with VHS tapes, mainly family movies. We didn't want to have to look at tapes in our living/dining room, so they go nicely with the office theme. We also wanted our office to be refuge away from the activities of the rest of the house; plus, the little one don't need access to the computer and all the wiring. The rest of the bedroom has attractive wooden dressers and a large bed with a muted earthy tone. A few pictures are up, not too many and the surfaces and floor of the room are usually free from too many things. The cake-topper of the room is the deeper-muted colors on the walls, especially on the office-filled wall. The tapes blend in more and the low lighting of the room gives the color it's warm inviting feeling, especially against all the wooden furniture. And, though it is a small room, we have ensured an open walkway from the entrance as an L spanning out on 2 adjacent sides of the bed. It works beautifully for us, since we had tried it many other ways.

We found our living room to be the greatest challenge, though. Our living room/dining room is an L shape and there is a big woodstove area on one of the 2 outer walls. We bought a large dusty greenish-grey sectional couch because it is large enough for a family of 5, it's big and cozy, it's earthy toned, and its soft looking and attractive. It is also very easy to take care of and maintain it's newer look (this is great with young little thrashers). To me, the couch is the center piece you draw from when decorating and setting up your living room (We also decided to paint the room in a soft earth tone, too, to bring comfort and openness). We have but only one place it fits in the living room, which is great because you are in a corner with a couple walls behind you, facing the rest of the entire room where the traffic and activity are happening. The L of the room is only because there is a "pillar" which is the coat closet and the pantry of the kitchen. Therefore, there is a small wall across from the couch, where we built a deep shelf over the flat screen to put all of the electronics together out of reach of little hands. Our flatscreen is nice and narrow perched on a small entertainment center filled with puzzles the kids can access any time. The narrowness of the TV setup decongests the front entrance, as well.

Next to the couch are two large speakers on either side (we use them as if they were end tables) and an attractive wicker shoe basket (it keeps our many shoes completely out of the way and neat). At the other end of the couch, next to the other speaker, is a small wooden bookshelf beneath the window sill with a variety of childrens' books. Next to that on the adjacent wall is another small earthy-toned couch in the corner with a wooden shelf uptop with a bunch of colorful tumbling play mats. This couch is mainly for the kids to have their own little comfy space, while still being able to look out at the entire span of the room (including the TV), plus some of the kitchen. It also gives them a sense of enclosure due to the KidCo gate we have around the woodstove right near it.

The other side of the woodstove is along the same wall as the little couch, but considered to be the dining room area. This area we have designated to be the younger kids' play storage area, since we don't feel we need a dining room and we have but only one other bedroom, which is designated for our oldest son. So, next to the woodstove and into the adjacent wall are a series of different wooden shelves and an open long cabinet spanning along the entire wall, all at floor level. These are all neatly lined with all tons of bins and wooden crates that are filled with everything from legos to wooden trains to Lincoln Logs to wooden play food to soft blocks to "guys" to more floor puzzles and games to..... On top of the shelf under the window is a large wooden Jungle Animal Hospital, which looks really cool with the back draw of the bamboo shade on the window. On top of the long cabinet are some baskets filled with other toys, like wooden beads and music stuff, and the wooden puzzles are neatly placed together. Just above this is another wooden cabinet suspended in the corner of the 2 walls (We left the doors on this one). It is a great storage for workbooks, coloring stuff, arts and crafts that shouldn't be within reach, and movies directly related to the younger age groups. We also have 2 medium-sized storage bins. The one with a lid is where the kids neatly stuff their dressup attire and the other one without a lid is where they throw their stuffed animals.

Cleanup is always a zip because everything has its home and it is nice because it is not overstuffed when everything is put where should go. Often there are toys spread out, but we encourage the kids to clean up the contents of the last few bins they unloaded before pulling out any more. Even if 8 bins-worth of toys are spread out everywhere and are all mixed together, I have peice of mind that if I am stuck cleaning it up, it won't take any more than about 5 minutes, and if I have my 3-year-old pick it up, it shouldn't take any more than 15 minutes because it is such a simple process of putting things into like categories. With kids, nothing ever stays perfectly clean, especially because half the time everything is spread out because they're playing with it. But, the less you have and the more efficientlyyou set it up will promote the decluttered, organized, open look and feel of your home and your lifestyle. You can worry less about your blocked Chi and more about your family and yourself. There are so many more aspects and inspirations I can touch on (like paper clutter that I mentioned earlier), but I will have to save that for another time.....I have to get back to the kids.

Namaste