A Crash Course in Feng Shui

I didn’t know much about Feng Shui when it became an issue for a married couple I know buying a house. There are rules.

The staircase cannot face the front door.
The front door can’t be hidden.
The front door and back door cannot line up.
The house must not be across from a T intersection.
A bathroom door cannot be off the living area.

It’s all about the flow of energy, called the chi or the xi. Feng shui means wind and water.

I’d read somewhere that a red front door is a good thing for feng shui. And I knew about the staircase. But I didn’t know about bathrooms and how they should not face the front door (that would be weird) and how a bed should never face a bathroom door. And that nothing should be stored under a bed because it blocks the flow of energy.

Beds should never face a door, but a person should be able to see the door from the bed. Electronics should not be in the bedroom. Neither should an exercise bike, or anything that represents work, like a desk.

I didn’t know that using plants and mirrors can take the eye away from something that is not good feng shui.

Guess what else blocks the flow of good energy? Clutter. Clean surfaces are best (I am in trouble).

Bathrooms aren’t good. Long hallways aren’t good.

Things in groups of four aren’t good.

I had a handy man for a time who was six feet four inches and close to 300 pounds. I asked him to take out a post in the greeen belt where a fence used to be. I imagined he’d go back to my house, get a shovel and return to dig out the post. Instead, he bent down, put his two hands on either side of the post, and grunted and groaned as he pulled that post and attached concrete out of dry clay.

You don’t want to mess with this guy. He had a mental health issue and took drugs that prevented him from driving. He only wanted to work for two hours at a time. When I couldn’t find him, he’d be sitting under a tree with my dog, Pepper.

Once I had him help my handy woman trim an overgrown hedge. Kelly was doing all the work. Adam was taking each cutting and making a pile. I asked him to bundle the pile with rope for the extra trash pick-up.

“I can’t,” he said. “My job is to stack the cuttings.”

We figured out that when he had worked for CalTrans, there were eleven guys on a crew, and each guy had one job, and one job only.

“I only have the two of you,” I said. “You need to do more than one job.”

Another time, I asked him to trim back the neighbor’s bushes that were growing over my property line.

“It will ruin the feng shui,” he said.

I didn’t expect that from a giant post-pulling man who didn’t really like to work but liked getting paid.

Who knew he even knew about such a thing? I was both amused and impressed.

“Do you want to keep working or do you want me to take you home?” I asked.

He cut the bushes, Feng Shui or no Feng Shui.