A Delightful Introduction to Feng Shui

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	• Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui Karen Kingston Broadway, 1999 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 211 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Clean Up Your Clutter

This is a very small book. Sometimes there is just so much to say about an issue and it doesn't take a lot of room. That is what happened here.

As I worked through the book I realized that I had cluttered up my life, and my home, with things that belonged to interests that I no longer was interested in. Some of those things have been easy to get rid of; some are taking longer. But I am doing the work.

I probably don't have as much of this stuff as some people my age because we moved across the country several times and you tend to be forced to cull out things you should not be keeping when you do that, but I was surprised at how much there still was. There are a couple of things that I have given away that resulted in a huge release once they were out of the house. That was a surprise.

It is worth reading the book and doing the work.

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A Delightful Introduction to Feng Shui

My sister is a certified Feng Shui consultant, and I've learned quite a bit from her, but nothing was as much fun as reading Karen Kingston's book. She covers all the important ideas and material one needs to know about the Western approach to Feng Shui, but she does it in an extremely practical, down-to-earth, and often hilarious way. I'm not sure how librarians catalog this book--as philosophy, architectural design, or humor! I also have several other Feng Shui books in my collection, but I find myself referring to this one most often, because it's organized so sensibly.

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Life-changer

This book has been instrumental in changing my life. I happened upon it when I thought I might be moving and was overwhelmed thinking of everything I needed to do. Turned out I didn't move, but I started uncluttering my house of everything that was not important to me and found out there are few material possessions that I would carry with me if I were to move. I cannot believe how many things I carried with me when I moved across country the last time. I'm keeping the things I love and use, and things I enjoy but would discard if I were to leave. I have gone through every room in my house, thrown things out, donated to thrift stores, given a few things to friends/family. This weekend I got a dumpster and have gone through my basement and yard. I feel so much "lighter", "liberated", "free". It feels so good! I've rearranged what I have because I have more room. I've decided what is important and what is not. But the philosophy grows from there. I've found many things I was holding onto were only dragging me down. It has motivated me to work on the house and clean like I never had before, because there's not all this crap crowding me. I don't care about shopping any more. A lot of things I love that I donated to thrift stores (mainly clothes that I can't wear any more) I figured, let someone else enjoy them. The clothes are only sitting in my closets; let someone else love them. I donated about a thousand dollars worth of books to the local library. I have a better perspective on what's important in my life, not just pertaining to material possessions. I have always been a home-person, a "nester". Cleansing my home has cleansed my soul and will change other areas of my life. I highly recommend this book.

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Throw the Clutter in the Gutter!

I bought this book, and Karen Kingston's Creating Sacred Space With Feng Shui: Learn the Art of Space Clearing and Bring New Energy into Your Life, together. To call myself a "clutterbug" (or more ominously, a "clutterholic") is an understatement. When I finally realized I couldn't go on, it took four people four hours to clean out just a couple of rooms; and that didn't include clearing the clutter, a process which still continues.

I enjoyed this book, and found it very helpful in reorganizing the "sacred space" of my home. It suffered however, from a few very irritating flaws which cost it some stars in my estimation.

But first, the Good: Karen Kingston has a very insightful way of looking at the accumulated detrius of our lives, and her analysis of Why People Clutter and What People Clutter With is generally on point, although it's nothing very revolutionary. This discussion takes up about half of the book overall.

I think she missed an overobvious reason for cluttering, which is that clutter becomes invisible---to your average clutterbug, all the stuff becomes so much a part of their environmental background that they don't see it. Ms. Kingston came close to recognizing this when she discussed a client who had filled her house with images of ducks---"What's with all the ducks?" "What ducks?"---and that is the whole underpinning of her idea of "Space Clearing": Make the person see it and then dispose of it. (While decluttering, I rummaged through two packed cartons of "important papers" which yielded about 20 items worth keeping, all of which fit neatly into a file folder.)

Feng Shui is based on Taoist and Zen principles of energy flow. In the book, Ms. Kingston discusses the "bagua," an energy matrix which pervades any space you are in. Unfortunately, her discussion of the bagua and its importance are very much slighted between the covers, and I had to visit her website to gain a fuller understanding---not a good point. (Even though CREATING SACRED SPACE came first, she should have included a useful summary for readers of this book as a stand-alone.)

This brings me to the book's weak points: Decluttering is demonstrated largely as a process of ruthlessly throwing away everything from canned food to family photos, to your broken rubberband collection. She rather unimpressively talks of throwing away books (and then changes it to giving them away), but either is an odd predilection for an author, totally counterintuitive to the fact that truly successful people (however you define that word) amass impressive and varied libraries. To declutter, a lot of tossing must go on by definition, but Ms. Kingston hardly addresses what to do with those TRULY valuable old family heirlooms or with the REALLY important papers that can't be thrown away but that have no set places: I would have preferred a bit more discussion on creating additional, ergonomic, attractive and useful space in (what is after all), the average person's limited cubic footage inside the home. Organizing seems to be a vital part of "Space Clearing," yet organizing per se gets few words.

And my apologies, but Karen Kingston is such a blasted British xenophobe and snob that it made me laugh. Huzzahs go to the multibillion-dollar Arabian family that bought four identical houses on four continents with four identical sets of everything. Now, that's a useful tip. Remind me to tell Bill Gates the next time he and Warren Buffett and I play bridge with the Queen.

Likewise, "Americans clutter EVERYWHERE" (sic) and "In the United States personal status is so often defined not by who you are but by what you are worth." Excuse me for being born on the left side of The Pond, will you? This from a woman who claims, "I don't have pots of money" but manages to live in Bali six months out of the year and makes her living telling people how to clean their closets. Trust me, she has at least one pot of money, and it's bigger than yours (and mine...put together). I guess there aren't any slobs in Bali, either.

So thus, despite the New Age patina, Ms. Kingston isn't a follower of the Tao she espouses, and she isn't very Zen. It's a shame she heads down the prickly path, since the book is otherwise a good and useful guide to clearing out your clutter. The end of the book has a chapter on high colonics, and how we can all use one. Lead the way, K.!

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A LIFE CHANGING Book

Got this after browsing it at a friend's. Don't know a bit about Feng Shui, but the advice and direction are as clear and relevant as any scientific theory. Read parts of it to a group of (30)women, as a thought provoking discussion and it prompted many to recognize the "mess" in their lives... begins with the mess in their environment.
Should be re-read yearly!
Worth it's weight in gold!

In Harmony,
Diane L. Donohue

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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