Litter Box Feng Shui – Updated!

There’s this thing that no one is talking about. I’m not sure if they just don’t obsess about such things as I do or if they just don’t have cats, but either way, I’m about to give up all my Feng Shui litter box, art of placement secrets right here and now. Unless you are lucky enough to have a fenced in backyard with a cat door, and cats that will happily poo in your garden, you have had to deal with the eternal question of where to put your cat’s litter box. Since I have grown up with cats my entire life, and I have been studying and teaching Feng Shui for over 20 years, I feel like a genuine expert on this topic.

When I was in college, I moved into an off-campus apartment with two girls. One of them got a cat and then left it every weekend to go to her boyfriend’s house in another city. This wouldn’t have been a big deal except that she refused to clean out the cat box. Clumping cat litter was just becoming popular back then and she seemed to believe that because it was so expensive, it would last indefinitely. After several weeks, her cat’s box was becoming intolerable and since she was out of town again, I cleaned it. All I remember about this event afterward is that she was pissed when she came home and insisted that I replace the litter. I have no idea if I did, but knowing me, I didn’t!

I was not aware of Feng Shui at the time, but I do remember the layout of the apartment and I have since Feng Schway’ed it from memory. It does not surprise me one bit to discover that her cat’s filthy litter box was in the Relationship or #2 gua of our apartment. Looking back, it makes perfect sense that we completely lost touch. I am not saying that our friendship ended because of the placement of her cat’s litter box. I am saying that the litter box, in this scenario, accurately reflected the status of our friendship.

In a lot of ways, Feng Shui has some psychology to it. In fact, it is this piece to the Feng Shui puzzle that keeps me so intrigued. Everything in our home or workplace is a reflection of something else in our life. Everything is placed either by accident or on purpose to create or reflect something seen or unseen. We can become aware of subconscious and unconscious patterns and habits when we use Feng Shui on purpose. In fact, that is what makes it so fun.

This brings us back to my original query of where to put the cat box. In order to decide this, we need only look at the primary element of a cat box, sans the pee & poo. Litter represents earth so once we determine which part of the room either creates or supports the earth element, we will have our answer. Conversely, we can approach it from the specific life area within the bagua that seems the most logical.

To keep things on the easy side, I am going with the logical explanation. Since the act of cleaning out a cat box on the daily is indeed an “act of service”, it fits nicely with the #6 gua of the bagua which is the Helpful People, Service and Travel section of the nine gua bagua. (See the bagua example below). When standing at the door to any room, aka the mouth of chi, the #6 gua of the bagua is in the far, front right corner.

Now, let’s face it. Even with the cat box in a Feng Shui appropriate place, it is still an unattractive piece of decor. With this in mind, I have a few suggestions for making it less obnoxious. If you are limited to where you can place the cat box, I recommend hiding it inside a piece of furniture and placing small, round beveled mirrors facing out on all sides of the cat box so that it effectively “disappears.” Even if you don’t have it hidden inside a piece of furniture, placing small mirrors on the outside will then reflect all the things that are around it and it will appear to disappear.

1.) You can put something over it to disguise it.

2.) You can place a small mirrors facing out, around the box so that the box itself appears to “disappear”.

3.) You can go to your local thrift store and find an end table that can be transformed into a perfect kitty box hideaway.

4.) You can order fancy cover from Chewy or some other online source.

Advertisement

The Feng Shui of Moving

Some people hate to move.  I love it, well, that’s not entirely true. I love the opportunity for a fresh start that comes with moving. I love getting to know a new space, figuring out how to connect with it and learn from it. Looking back through my old address book, you know, the kind made out of paper, I can see every address that I have had since I moved away to go to college.

Including the move that I just made, I will have moved 18 times in 31 years, or on an average of every 1.7 years.  I guess you could say I have gypsy roots; either that or I just like using my home to heal. Either way, I definitely have this down to an art form, and I have learned a few things along the way. I could talk here about all the benefits of moving a lot, including the inability to become a hoarder, but I’d rather talk about using the spaces we live in to heal the broken parts within us.

Consider for a moment the possibility that every home has a purpose beyond the obvious. What if our homes were lined up to meet us, waiting for the chance to get to know us like a potential new relationship partner? What would they want to tell us? What would they want to know about us? What if every single house has a language that until now, we have been deaf to hear? What if I told you that Feng Shui is the language of our homes? Would you be willing to learn that language so that you could communicate and learn from it?

Feng Shui has been called a lot of things over the years, but until now, I don’t think that anyone has taken the time to get to know its true self. There is so much more to Feng Shui than the definition it has been given, and I am here to explore its gifts and its true purpose for showing up for me, for you and for the world.

When we move to a new place, we are confronted by a lot of changes all at once. It can be very chaotic and full of anxiety, but it can also be exciting and mysterious.  Most of the time, it is actually all of the above!  I started my deep dive into Feng Shui shortly after I got married and we decided to buy a house.  Since then, I have been utterly fascinated with everything that my homes have stepped up to teach me, and I want to share this gift with the world.

The number one thing that I have discovered is that there is nothing truly random about the homes that we choose.  There is also nothing random about being attracted to a house with rooms in one place or another.  Why are we attracted to this house more than that one?  If you take away the external factors like cost and location, one house may seem just as good as another.   Usually, we react to a home because of something within us. When we operate on a wholly intuitive level, we fall in love with a home because it reminds of something, someone or some history within us.

Every thing in our home, every room placement, every seemingly randomly piece of furniture or artwork, has a subconscious source.  It isn’t until you work with a consultant  (worth every penny) or chose to dive in on your own (much more difficult), that you learn to see the messages hidden in plain sight.  The truth is literally staring right back at you.  The challenge is to learn to stare back, and see the gift it is there to give.

Let me give a real life example.  One of the things that I no longer attract are homes with doors that fight.  This is a very common design in apartments and houses where space is at a premium.  For some reason, architects frequently create homes plans with a front door that bangs into the closet door behind it.  I am SURE that if they knew that this was a Feng Shui no-no, they would stop doing it, right?!

When I think back to the homes I’ve had that provided the most yelling, arguing and fighting, they all had two doors that either banged into each other or had the potential to bang into each other.  For a very long time, I always seemed to find those places and move into them.  However, since moving to Boulder 18 months ago, I have stopped attracting those type of homes.  It just isn’t an issue anymore.  That is what Feng Shui can do when you use it for healing and self-awareness.

I’ve been using my homes to test out my own blocks, the blocks that I discovered because of the journey that I live daily with Feng Shui awareness and tools.  I can’t NOT do Feng Shui.  It is woven into my DNA after studying it, helping others learn from it and applying it to every aspect of my life for over 20 years.  That is when you know that you are doing the thing that you soul wants you to be doing.  It becomes the thing that you can’t imagine not doing.

My goal is to help others heal their lives using this beautiful and sacred tool.  If you are ready to dive in and explore your inner world with Feng Shui, call me today at 512-496-9232 or email me at logynnbnorthrhip@gmail.com or fungschwaygirl@yahoo.com.  I’m here to help.  Are you ready to wake up and create the life that was meant for you?

The Relationship between San Pasqual & The Oriental Cranes

There is a phenomenon in Feng Shui that occurs when we are too close to a thing to see it clearly.  We become blind to the things that we notice in our daily surroundings and that is one of the benefits of hiring a professional to analyze a space.  A Feng Shui consultant is able to see the items that have become invisible to our clients.  We are not attached so these things pop out at us.  I know all this and yet, I recently noticed something in my own home that I had never noticed before.  As is usually the case, now that I have made the connection, I have made a swift and non-negotiable decision to let them go.

It occurred to me recently that I have been taking the same artwork along with me to every single place that I have lived since my divorce way back in 2002.  One of my favorites was of two Japanese cranes hand-painted on silk.  In East Asia, cranes are symbols of love, happiness, marital fidelity and longevity that mate for life.

Each time I moved, I made sure to hang the cranes in one of the many relationship areas that can be found in a home, and I have always loved it.  I felt like it was a beautiful symbol of what I should want, a permanent mate for life.  I say it is something that I feel like I should want because this is the message that society teaches and preaches.  We should want to get married, have a family and grow old together.  Coming from parents who divorced when I was five, and then getting divorced myself, this idea of relationships has often felt just out of reach for me.

One day, I was standing near the kitchen and for the first time, I noticed the stark dichotomy of the art on my walls.  On the wall opposite the cranes was a framed poster of a whimsical drawing of the Patron Saint of the Kitchen, also known as San Pasqual.  This piece has been in my kitchen as a faithful companion almost as long as the cranes.  However, for the first time, I actually looked at the scene with fresh eyes.  I don’t know a lot about monks, but I do know that they do not typically get married or have intimate partnerships.

In the print, the monk is standing in the doorway of the kitchen, looking outward away from the viewer with a halo of sorts around his head. The kitchen behind him is full of pies, fresh loaves of bread and cats.   The cranes and the monk do not go together.  They are sending mixed messages about this area of my life.  It was truly a holy shit kind of moment!  It’s times like these that I just really get goosebumps about the power of Feng Shui.  It reflects the subconscious like no other healing system I know.

Within moments, I had taken San Pasqual off the wall.   As much as I like my alone time, I am not interested in being the poster child of pious solitude.  It has been a few weeks since San Pasqual left.  I can already feel the shift.  At first, the walls looked forlorn and empty.  Now, they are like a clean slate where anything is possible.  The beauty of life is that we are the creators of it.  We are not at the mercy of the unfortunate events that have led up to this moment in our personal evolution.  Feng Shui is powerful medicine when you are ready to shine a light on your shadow self.  Are you ready?