What does your home say about you? If you try to view your home through the eyes of a stranger, considering the arrangement of each room, the amount of clutter or the lack thereof, the colors, the textures, the scents and sights, what do you think your home reveals?

• How much clutter is in each room of your house? Is the clutter reflective of your personality? A friend's teenage son defends the piles of clothes, books, papers, and other odds and ends in his room as providing comfort and security for him. “It's who I am,” he says defiantly when asked why he seems to enjoy this environment. If clutter truly reflects who you are, don't worry about it. But if you feel embarrassed by it, or, worse, constrained; if it prevents your living comfortably, keeps you awake at night, or prevents you from thinking clearly or creatively, then you should take steps to eliminate the clutter and allow the chi to flow freely.

• Conversely, are your rooms too spare? Are the walls white and bare, the furniture sterile, the space too pristine? Are guests afraid to sit or move about freely for fear of making a mess or disturbing the arrange-ment in some way? Do you cover your furniture with plastic or rush to place coasters under every cup and glass? In other words, are you projecting unfriendliness and a “keep out” mentality to others? This is fine if you truly do not want guests showing up on your door-step. However, if you are having trouble attracting friends to your home or keeping them there long once they arrive, it could be because the starkness of your décor or the sparseness of your furnishings is pushing them away.

• Is your home completely open to your children, or have you relegated their toys, books, and other possessions to only a room or two? Is there anything at all that is welcoming or comforting to children in the living room, the dining room, the patio, or the den? Allowing them even a little space throughout the house and a place for them to play in most, if not all, of the rooms gives children the comfort of knowing that the home is theirs, too. Providing child-sized furniture and allowing a few toys in even the neatest and most sophisticated of rooms tells others that there is room in your life and your heart for something much more important than material possessions–your children.

• Is your home open, airy, and filled with light, or packed with possessions, close, and dark? Are the colors rich and vibrant in the rooms where you spend your waking hours and soft and relaxing in the rooms where you sleep or unwind? Can chi move easily through your rooms and hallways? Do you demonstrate awareness of the bagua in how your furnishings are arranged? Can the flow of energy in your home be improved by making minor adjustments in one or more rooms, or even in the yard or garden?

Once you become aware of the principles of feng shui, you will see that it is not difficult to change aspects of your home and property in order to improve energy flow and open up your life to the positive results that will follow!