When you stand at your front door looking into your home, what is the sense you have of the left center portion of your home? This is the family center of the map of your home in feng shui. Is it clean? Cluttered? What is its story?

Most of us want to ensure that the feng shui family section of our homes promotes harmony and happiness, and here are the age-old recommendations for doing just this.

I was horrified to realize that the family section of my home is a porch where I stored the garbage in the winter. It was piled with boxes, bottles and containers that needed to be stored for recycling! I’ve since worked on it, using many of the traditional feng shui fix-it recommendations. In my case, the family section of my home is outdoors on a porch and sub-freezing for many months of the year so it took some creative problem-solving.

The goal for the family center is to orchestrate your relationship with current family, your ancestry, lineage, and even a more global sense of family such as religious or political icons, if they are important to you.

Elements
Wood and Water.

Suggestions: Photos of family members in wooden frames; fresh flowers in water; a water fountain; wooden furniture; a bowl of stones in water; a potted tree. Mirrors are considered water in feng shui, so a carefully placed mirror could benefit.

For me, because the space is outside, I put artwork that family members have done on the porch, such as a sculpture done by my mother, and a stone painted by my daughter. I hung a a heart-shaped wreath in the space. The best fix was when I realized that because the porch looked out onto a beautiful black birch forest (lots of wood), that if I put a mirror on the wall facing the forest, I would bring the wood from the forest right into the space, and the mirror would represent water. In the summer I will put a water fountain there, too.

Color
Green. Second choices are black and blue.

Suggestions: Plants! Other suggestions are green pillows, upholstery, etc.

Please contribute your family section feng shui fixes! Particpate in the discussion in Care2Connect!