Feng Shui'ing the apartment

Ok, the semester is over, so I've got free time on my hands.

On Monday, I went out to mail off my friend TJ's birthday card.  I was hungry while I was out, so I decided to take myself to an early dinner, but being as I eat alone all the time, when I go out to eat, I always take a book.  Well, I was a goof and had forgotten to take a book with me, so into the neighborhood Barnes and Noble I went. 

I love my neighborhood bookstore.  It's a candy shop for a bibliophile like me.  I checked the shelves for my favorite romance author, Sherrilyn Kenyon, but I have every single book she's published and I have to wait for her latest release "Infinity" to come out on the 25th, so I struck out there. 

I then looked around for an advertising section to see if I could find a good ad book.  Nope, no Advertising section, truth told, I didn't try very hard to find it, I just browsed the tops of the shelves to see the sections, but didn't see one on business in my immediate vicinity.  What I did see though struck me as interesting...Interior Decorating.  My apartment is a disaster zone, so I figured, hey, what better way to put myself in the mode to clean up and get organized than to have a decorating goal.  So, I stumbled over into the decorating section and found a book called "Feng Shui in a Weekend" by Simon Brown.  It's all about how to make your home more Feng Shui in about a weekend's worth of time.  Ok, let's just set the record straight, before I purchased the book, I knew all of jack shit about Feng Shui except it's supposed to be really healthy and make your home feel wonderful.  That's about all I knew.  But, if it'll get the energy in the apartment feeling good, I'm all about that.  So, I walked up to the counter, bought it, and took it to dinner with me.

Sitting in my neighborhood Chili's restauraunt (where I usually take myself to eat), I cracked open the book and began to read.  Right off the bat I find illustrations of Tortoises, Dragons, Phoenixes, Snakes and Tigers.  I found out that if you sit with your back against a wall, it's a tortoise thing because it's hard shell implies protection and you're more apt to relax with your chair or sofa against a wall.  Neat.  My couch is already against the wall, so at least I don't have to move furniture right now.

I also read about different types of plants and how it's a good idea to have a plant next to the computer.  Never would have seen that one coming a mile away, but there it is in the book having to do with electromagnetic radiation or some such thing.  I don't know, I'm not that far into the book yet.

To tell the truth, it's going to take more than a weekend to get through the book, even longer to make the adjustments to the apartment, but I figure it this way, it's a project, it's keeping me busy.

The one thing I noticed in flipping through the book is that it talks about clutter.  Now, as we know, I used to have to live with a lot of clutter.  Well, it's taken a while but I'm slowly but surely reducing the amount of clutter left behind by someone else.  Just today I worked on my bar next to the entry way of my apartment.  It was laden with all kinds of old receipts left by my previous co-habitant and things that just didn't need to be there anymore, but it was rough to try to get rid of it before because I was busy with school and all of my other activities.  Now that my days are free?  Yeah, I've reduced a fair bit of clutter there.  It's amazing, more than half of the stuff my old co-habitant had was trash.  Literally.  He filled the house with garbage.  I didn't think it was that bad until I really went through the items on the bar.  So, as the Feng Shui book and common sense says...yeah, I got rid of it.    I also cleaned out some bins that he had made sure to mess up in the bathroom, cleaned those and got them in respectable shape again. 

But, I'm not anywhere near finished yet.  My apartment is a very large project and it needs a LOT of work.  So, one part down and I'll take up another section tomorrow.  Piece by piece, that's how you solve a puzzle and it's a great way to look at a large project, just little piece by little piece and before long, you've got one big picture.

I applied for 4 jobs today.  Let's hope someone nibbles.  I need to be out of the house, but if I'm stuck here, I'm going to make the most of the time and get this place into shape!