The Diet

Ok, stop the eye rolls, you Mobamas out there. I’m not on a diet… my house is.

I remember thinking as a kid, how could my teacher still wear polyester pants and it’s 1989? I mean, weren’t those polyester pants popular in the late seventies? Or I’d go to my grandma’s house and notice the curtains hadn’t moved in the entire time I had known her. How can someone live in a place for ten years and never change the decor?

Ahem, yeah. Crap. That is me now!!!

I still have three-sizes too big sweatshirts from fraternity dances (it was the 90’s, ok?? we wore things BIG). I haven’t changed my curtains in five years. I’ve been wearing the same New Balance dog walking shoes for TEN years. Yes, ten years. Wth. How did I become a grandma… I’m thirty-five for God’s sake.

How does time magically whip by so quickly that your sweater (or dog walking shoes) are now ten years old!!??

The last couple weeks I posted about being stagnant and needing an environmental change; that while I love the beach, I needed new scenery. I’m still looking for a place to buy… but it appears the good ol’ days of having perfect credit, a down payment and a mortgage = being a lameo now. Cash is straight up king o’ the castle, and this chica has not done enough drug deals, have a Saudi uncle, or put enough under my mattress.

What to do, what to do? Well, I haven’t necessarily given up on the buying game. I just put another offer in. Someone told me four offers is the minimum in LA before you start getting traction in the market. Some say it takes fourteen offers. Whatevs. In the meantime? I’m making my current nest the best I can make it…. i.e. I’m putting it on a diet.

I recently bought a book by the founder of www.apartmenttherapy.com; a super cute web site with tons of decorating and organizing ideas. The book is aptly named, Apartment Therapy, The Eight Step Home Cure, by Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan. I bought it because I figured, if I can’t get a new house, maybe I can work with the one I’ve got.

What I love about the book is that he applies Feng Shui-types principles, but explains it in a very commonsense way. There’s no figuring out the bagua or finding your direction… he just breaks down how to make a home have the right ‘feel’ for you. He describes a home this way:

A Home is living place. It has bones, breath, head and heart. Bones are the structural elements of the home. You need to make sure this is well-cared for before you even tackle anything else. Repair cracks, fix floors, etc., before anything else is done. Breath is the flow of the house- much like chi. Are there areas where it is difficult to vacuum, or things stuck in corners, dust bunnies collecting because there is no flow of air in that space? Head is the functionality of the place. Do the rooms make sense for you? And heart… that is the decorating part- adding emotional life to your home.

The home is your energy space, and the perfect gauge of who you are as a person, a family. A cluttered home is filled with people who are most likely warm, but have cluttered lives. A stark home is usually occupied by a person/s who are colder in nature. It is a reflection of your own soul.

He says like a human body, if you don’t take care of it, it will break down. If you begin filling it, bringing more and more things in, but never taking things out… it becomes obese and … stagnant. Ding ding ding!

And thus began the diet. I started clearing things out I hadn’t used in years. rearranged things for better flow and function. It’s taking me some time, but I can already feel the changes. It’s really, honestly very weird. I’ve only worked on the living room and the bathroom so far, but I can already feel like I’m in a new house. I also have new floors coming in next week, which I know will make for greater change.

While I am looking to buy a place… in the meantime, the place I have is transforming, and surprisingly, transforming my energy and life too.