Infographic: Improve Your Home and Health with Feng Shui

This is a guest post by Marcela de Vivo. When it comes to your overall health and happiness, there is only so much that a well-balanced diet and daily exercise can do. Did you know that the environment you live and work in affects your health as well? Energy (or “Qi”) is continuously flowing around us, whether we are aware of it or not. The way in which you arrange your furniture, the colors you choose for each room and the lighting in a certain space can greatly impact this energy. If your home or office is cluttered and dark, the energy you feel will be the same. Make sure you are living in harmony with your natural surroundings, rather than disrupting it. To do this, you’ll want to incorporate the five elements of Feng Shui (fire, water, earth, metal and wood) into your personal space. As demonstrated in the … Continue reading

SPRING CLEANING SERIES, PART 2: Tips for Sorting and Discarding

Tips for Decluttering and Organization | Eco-Mothering.com

This is part 2 of my Spring Cleaning series. Read Part 1: The Energetic Benefits of De-Cluttering. When cleaning, it is often tempting to: (1) Simply move piles from one location to another, or (2) Toss everything into the trash. Those seem to be the quickest, most convenient options, and I admit that I have done both before. However, on my latest round of de-cluttering, I’m determined to actually rid my home of stuff we don’t need while finding alternatives to the local landfill. This makes the process quite a bit longer, however, it can also be more rewarding. For example, now is a good time to sell your unwanted gold as it’s worth about $1,500 per ounce. After digging through my box for jewelry that hasn’t seen the light of day since George Bush, Sr. was in the White House, I made several hundred dollars on broken gold chains … Continue reading

SPRING CLEANING SERIES, PART 1: The Energetic Benefits of De-Cluttering

Benefits of Decluttering | Eco-Mothering.com

I have inherited the pack rat gene from both my parents. Although I have moved 10 times over the past 17 years, I have lugged with me: boxes of “childhood memories” I cannot bear to part with; notebooks of stories and school projects; photo negatives; VHS tapes and cassettes I haven’t listened to in a decade; canvases for when I “return to painting;” and tons of art and crafts supplies I anticipate being useful someday. It’s hard for me to part with stuff that I’ve imbued with meaning. And now we’re collecting even more with our daughter’s photos, videos and piles of artwork. It’s nice to hold onto memories, but when do those memories become just… stuff? The problem with all this stuff—aside from physical storage—is the energetic space it consumes. The collections, the tower of boxes, the heirloom items, create a white noise of their own, humming in the … Continue reading