Dear Karen,

I just purchased your book, Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, and was intrigued by your comment that "a home that is too tidy, where everything is 'just so,' is energetically sterile and can be as much of a problem as a place that is a complete dump." Could you expand on what energetically sterile means and why it's a problem?

My husband and I are both quite neat. I wouldn't say "pristine" (although we are neat, there IS dust) but we always know where everything is, we put things away when we're done using them, we don't have much clutter (nothing piled up in any room or on our desks, etc.), we rarely keep things we don't need (we don't even have an attic or a basement), and we're both very organized (not just spatially, at home, but at work and in our day-to-day lives).

I don't want nor look forward to becoming disorganized or messy (especially once we have children!) but your comment about being too neat made me wonder and since you don't address it anywhere else in your book I thought I'd ask you here.

- I.F, USA

Karen's reply:

I'll explain this in the following way:

In Bali they call the even numbers (2, 4, 6, 8 and so on) dead numbers, and the odd numbers (1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and so on) are alive numbers. The reason is that the even numbers are in balance so nothing can happen. They also never build perfectly square rooms or buildings for the same reason. Persian weavers evoke similar wisdom when creating their magnificent carpets - they always make a deliberate mistake so that the carpet is not perfect.

A home where everything is 'just so' is too balanced and therefore does not provide an anchor for spiritual or personal growth or creativity. Conversely, a home where everything is untidy or disorganized does not nurture the occupants either. As always, my message is about finding the right balance between the two.