Feng Shui Means Less Hazards For Seniors

Steven and Caroline had just moved in to their 900 square foot senior apartment having left their 2,000 square foot home they had lived in for 40 years. Their daughter telephoned me for help. Her parents had taken practically everything they owned with them and were now living among boxes and piles of clutter. She was worried for their safety and extremely frustrated that they refused her help. “Can you help them Feng Shui?” she asked.

I always have to sigh when I get these phone calls. It reminds me of a cartoon I saw once of a giant toy being stuffed in to a small cardboard box. I can stack it, shrink it, squish it, pile it and box it but I can’t make 2,000 square feet of stuff fit in to a 900 square foot space! Nobody can – but I see people trying to do it all the time. That’s why I like to teach my downsized senior clients the fine art of Feng Shui.

Feng Shui is an ancient philosophy that considers all objects to contain energy, called Chi. When Chi is in balance (Harmony: Ying/Yang) it contribute to health and happiness. The opposite can be true when the Chi is too cluttered either being agitated and flowing too quickly or is so packed and stifled that it is dead altogether. This could be compared to either living in the middle of a hurricane or in a buried in a dung heap. Clients living in bad Chi feel stressed, agitated, unhappy and often physically unwell and they don’t realize why. Out of balance Chi is a very harmful thing.

The practice of Feng Shui has finally made its way into the mainstream and I am so glad! Large corporations and business superstars have employed Feng Shui principles to increase their profits. Architects are learning Feng Shui principles. Even prisons are finding that Feng Shui decreases violent behavior. How amazing is that?

Feng Shui means “wind” and water”. Thus, energy should flow gently and easily as if it were water and air. Gentle breezes and soft flowing streams, not through rocky canyons causing rapids or dust storms and stagnant swamps. Look at the space and decide where air and water would get stuck and stifled. If you can’t walk there, the air and water can’t flow there either!

So how can Feng Shui help Seniors? First and foremost, too much stuff is a traffic hazard. Seniors can easily trip and fall. Too much stuff means too many things to dust – causing respiratory issues. My senior service colleagues have told me many sad stories about seniors being injured in their cluttered homes- the end result being permanent skilled nursing!

Feng Shui is all about flow. Take a look at your beloved senior’s traffic patterns in their home. Do they have to squeeze by a coffee table with their walkers? Get rid of the coffee table. Is it time to pack up some collections that are gathering a lot of dust? Seniors often keep heaters blasting and their windows closed, causing stifled air.

Are there dark corners in their home? Add light to those spaces, not only for beauty but for safety.

Broken things are very bad Feng Shui. What needs fixing in the home? Are all the appliances working? Get rid of what cannot be fixed. This will most definitely improve the energy flow as well as correct fire hazards.

There are many easy and inexpensive solutions to improve the Feng Shui in a home. Do it now and then take time to enjoy the new positive flowing energy and safety in your beloved senior’s space.

Another Side of Hoarding

When my new client, Sarah, opened the door, I immediately recognized the cluttered scene behind her. Sarah was a hoarder. Her kitchen counter as well as every available nook, cranny and flat surface was piled high with stuff – mostly papers but still the mess included all the other artifacts hoarders are drawn to: recyclables, bags, books and junk sale goodies.

Sarah was a cheerful, senior lady, walker bound but eagerly awaiting her scheduled hip surgery and looking forward to “doing things for herself” once again. The Director of her Senior Apartment complex was requiring her to “clean up her act” or be evicted for creating a fire hazard.

My initial interview with Sarah gave me the insights I needed to coax her out of some of her precious junk. This is a tender business – hoarding clients are usually emotionally fragile and obsessed with their stuff. No so, Sarah- a decidedly atypical hoarder.

Sarah confessed that she had always been a ‘clutterer’ and a saver and she came by it honestly – the child of a teacher and a scientist. My experience with hoarders is that academics are always the worst – they see possibilities and uses for everything!

In this case, however, there was a lot more to Sarah’s “hoarding”. Sarah had become the keeper of the family history and all the records required therein. Contained in her myriad of boxes were the birth, death and marriage certificates of every person in her family, also the forgotten artifacts of lost loves and failed marriages. Why, I asked, did she have to keep her daughter in law’s birth certificate? Sarah’s reply, was that her daughter in law didn’t want it. In addition, Sarah had done extensive research on the military career of a family member. She had become the keeper of neglected memories. She also confessed that she was keeping the “might want it someday” belongings of three of her adult children. They claimed they wanted it but didn’t have room for it. So it was OK for Sarah to store it and navigate around it in her walker in a tiny apartment? It reminded me of a client of mine who was keeping the wedding dresses of all five of her married daughters because “they just didn’t have the room”.

So the purpose of Sarah’s story is that hoarding, while a complicated issue, cannot always be placed sorely on the shoulders of the sufferer. How much of that stuff really belongs to other family members? If you are a relative of a senior who has a tendency to “keep everything”, you might want to consider offering to take your stuff back – you don’t have to tell them what you are going to do with it. Please just take it. You can be sure that Sarah’s family is going to be given back their birth certificates and other items that really belong to them. If they don’t want them, so be it. It won’t be part of Sarah’s “problem” any longer.