The other day, I felt really annoyed. I was in my apartment working and suddenly everything started irritating me, which honestly annoyed me even more because technically nothing was wrong. My apartment wasn’t dirty, nobody had upset me, work was fine. Life was fine and yet I felt like my entire body couldn’t relax in my own home.
Then I looked around and realized something. My eyes had nowhere to rest.
There were piles I kept moving from one surface to another pretending they didn’t exist, open shelves that looked cute at one point but now just felt visually busy, random papers everywhere and a chair in my bedroom that had quietly become both a closet and emotional support system. Even my lighting suddenly felt aggressive.
What I realized is that this is something I’ve done my whole life without realizing it was connected to Feng Shui. Annoyed? Clean my family’s bathroom. Bored? Dust the bottles in my parents’ liquore store. Distracted? Go through the piles and shred papers.
Whenever I feel stressed, overwhelmed, emotionally off, creatively blocked or mentally overloaded, the first thing I instinctively want to do is clean, reorganize, purge, reset or rearrange my environment. Not in a perfectionist Martha Stewart kind of way, but energetically. Somehow the second my apartment starts feeling calmer, clearer and lighter, my brain does too.
So here’s what I did. I gave myself a designated amount of time and started calming my environment. I washed and put away dishes, wiped down surfaces, ran the duster and vacuum quickly. Then I took the many piles around my apartment (yes I have those too), put Post-its on what the next step was for each pile and neatly stacked them to tackle another time.
And almost immediately, I felt better. Lighter, happier and more focused. Not because my apartment suddenly became perfect, but because the energy changed. You may not realize how powerful your environment is, but it has the ability to magically calm you down or sneakily rile you up without you even noticing.
I started thinking about how many women do this without fully realizing why. We suddenly decide we need to reorganize a closet, deep clean the kitchen, throw everything out, move furniture around or spend an entire Sunday resetting our apartments like our lives depend on it. And honestly, sometimes energetically, it kind of does.
This is also why I’ve always laughed a little when people assume Feng Shui is just about decorating, moving furniture around or adding a plant to the wealth corner. Nope, according to how I use Feng Shui, this work is so much deeper than that. Your environment constantly affects your energy whether you realize it or not. The lighting, the visual interruptions, the piles, the clutter, the unfinished things, the colors, the textures, the noise, the way your eyes move through a room… all of it affects how you feel inside your home.
And before everyone suddenly thinks I’m suggesting we all become minimalists with one beige candle and a floor pillow, absolutely not. I actually love layered environments, books, objects, color, texture and personality. Some people feel calmer and more emotionally supported in spaces that feel collected and visually rich. The goal is not perfection or emptiness. The goal is to create an environment that supports YOU instead of quietly draining you every day.
In my experience, some of the calmest homes I’ve ever walked into were not minimalist at all. They just had personality, style, a soul. The eye knew where to land, and the energy felt supportive instead of chaotic.
Many people underestimate how much their environment affects them because we’ve normalized functioning while overstimulated. We keep pushing through, keep producing, keep handling things and eventually stop noticing that our homes are exhausting us too. So the next time, you feel distracted, irritated, annoyed, bored, or (fill in the emotion) and get the urge to clean. Do it. Just be sure that you set your time for a specific amount of time and that you match the task to the time you give it. I don’t want you creating another messy thing to tackle later and feel worse.
So now I’m curious. When you suddenly feel the urge to clean, reorganize or throw your entire apartment away, is it really about being productive, or are you actually trying to change your energy?
Need some help figuring out what to tackle first? Leave a comment and/or ask a question. I, or this community will be happy to help!
