Moving Things, Moving Energy

I started writing this while staring at a chair stacked high with folded clothes I have yet to put away and sitting at a desk that more closely resembles a junk drawer than a space to think. I say this because as much as I want to live in constant tidiness, that has never been who I am naturally. Organization helps me think better and I find it genuinely wonderful. So why can’t I just always put things back in their place after use? I’m sure my birth chart would show some planetary quirk, but since my mom can’t remember the exact time of my birth, all the mysteries of my being should continue to be unknown.

Even through this quirk, I’ve always cared deeply about how a space feels. I remember redecorating my college dorm room and everyone would comment on how good it felt in there even though we were all working with the same things.

Over the years, a few ideas have caught my attention and added to a toolkit I can rely on. Feng Shui is one, specifically through the interpretation of space consultant Meghan Wallace James. With a background in engineering and fashion, her vocabulary around it really appealed to me. She used to have a membership site, ROOM4MORE, before those were a thing. There she would leave things like voice notes with prompts, salt burn recipes to clear your space, and numerology insights.

I’ve always admired people that can explain the seemingly mundane in ways that help redefine your relationship to them. To me, she made the energetics of a home and its reflection on your life fascinating. And because maintaining the home is an ongoing practice for me, this approach has helped me find pleasure in the study and game of it. My obsession with flower remedies is also very helpful here and so I always count on this for added momentum.

So, if like me, you could always use a little push to clean and organize, here is an attempt at a list of some of the ideas I come back to:

Start by drawing a simple floor plan of your space. Then, using a marker, divide everything into 9 equal zones. I’ve done this fully analog but you can also do it in Photoshop. You can resize the map to fit your floor plan and see exactly where each zone lands. It’s fun to see where everything lands.

This is something MWJ talks about often. Grab a notepad and pen and walk your space slowly. You can do this on a larger scale or you can take it one room at a time.

Walk from the sidewalk to the front door to each room individually. Take things in as if you’re seeing it for the first time. Take your time. Does it need sweeping? Are there any dead plants or anything making it look unwelcome? Broken things? Is anything peeling? Is there rust? Cobwebs? A stack of empty boxes? Is anything blocking your path? What could use a little attention and care? What visual metaphors come into view?

• On a practical note, I use Apple Reminders for tracking these things and making them a task to attend to. I keep different lists for each house and within that I organize columns under different categories. You can also add dates to each task and those will show up on your iCal.

Treat housekeeping as a form of self-care and meditation. A rebrand I love. MWJ refers to maintaining your home — organizing, cleaning, curating — as a “moving meditation,” a ritual that reconnects you with the present moment and moves the energy quickly.

Attaching symbolism to each task is also very appealing to me:

• Washing windows to see clearly.

• Mopping the floors with a fresh scent to help ground.

• Fixing dripping faucets to stop the draining of energy and resources.

• Oiling squeaky and stuck hinges to remove friction from transitions.

• Clearing and cleaning the path to your front door to invite opportunity in.

In Feng Shui, clutter is a series of unmade decisions. Every item without a home is a small, unresolved question taking up mental and physical space. When things have a place, tidying could become almost automatic. This is so hard for me! There’ still so much I would love to systemize but in the meantime here are some things I do:

• A seasonal clean to maintain a visually pleasing pantry and fridge with things that aren’t moldy, dusty, and out of date.

• A drawer with a system for filing, shredding, and storing.

• A beautiful bowl by the door to corral the keys.

Do you ever walk into a room and think…somethings not right? It can very well be how the furniture is arranged or that there are too many things. An easy one is that beds and desks should be placed in the command position, facing the room, with a solid wall behind them. This helps your ideas and expression stay with you. Also, conscious emptiness within a space can bring in new opportunities and abundance.

Treat your home like a living vision board. Does your space reflect where you’ve been, or where you’re going? It’s a question I come back to constantly, especially with what surrounds us — things we may have spent a lot of money or time on, things that belonged to a different time of our lives. The gifts that are not us. Nothing has more weight than a sentimental object. But so is keeping said things out of guilt rather than because you love them. Same with clothes. I try to keep a tight edit and a circular closet that is in flux and evolving. I rely on Poshmark, The RealReal, donations, and active Substack chats that host selling threads like Jess Graves’ & tariro makoni’s.

A move is always a great time to reset your space and rid yourself of years of accumulated and forgotten things. But if there isn’t a move in sight, you can always move out to move in within the place you’re in. Once you start, you might not be able to stop. Sometimes the list is too long and I find that timers work really well for me here. Sometimes I’ll do 10 minutes and completely rework a drawer. Sometimes it’s 2 hours and one side of the garage will get the royal treatment.

I’m very lucky to have some great friends that are incredible at organizing and I’m not ashamed to hire them when I’m feeling overwhelmed. Happy to share their contact if you’re looking for support.

I live for beautiful things that are utilitarian. So that is something I’m always thinking about when it comes to the things I interact with daily — things like hand soap, to-do lists, towels, silverware.

In an ideal world, we would live by candlelight at all times. But because we don’t, changing the lightbulbs to something with warmth and that is not as bright will change the feeling of a room right away. These have been our go-to for a while but we’re slowly swapping out key light fixtures for these. My husband got a set for New Mexico because we wanted to put some lights on a timer and we are obsessed. They are also dimmable (!!!) via their app.

The recommendation is to have living elements inside the home for vitality. But since we made a rule a while ago to not keep plants inside, I make sure to fill a beautiful wooden bowl with fresh, local fruits or a rotating floral arrangement. Same with color. Feng Shui has a methodology for color placement tied to the Bagua, but I’ve always found it more useful to simply live with colors that make me feel good.

Feng Shui, at its most useful in my own life, has been a framework for paying attention. Our homes are a museum of our lives, holding our world. A few hours spent on your knees scrubbing corners and reorganizing this world can move so much and bring forward some much needed changes. Pragmatic and intuitive in equal measure, your space should feel good and function well.

The clothes on the chair? I finally put those away and that’s what finally inspired me to finish this.

Until next time. Thank you for being here,
Jessica

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