Boost the Energy in Your Home with the Front Door

The other day, I wrote a post called Entryways and Doorways Should be Clutter Free. In response, Barbara Ann O’Leary wrote a comment about not being sure which of her doors constituted the “front” door.

She wrote: “I live in a ranch house. The formal front door opens to the front yard which is a wooded lot which rises upward. In other words our home is built part way down a slope that reaches down to a lake behind our house. I think of myself as living in a grove of trees by a lake. It is very beautiful here... but in some ways we have never fully moved into this place.

We never use the front door. And we frequently have things piled up in the foyer area.”

The front door to your home is the “formal” front door, the door that faces the front of the home and that the architect designed to be the front door. In Feng Shui, the front door is the “mouth of chi.” It is often centered in the middle of the home and is the main entryway of chi or energy.

If you are like Barbara, you probably enter your home by whatever means is most convenient—often through the garage. If this is the case, you may—like Barbara—ignore the esthetics of the front door and entry and allow stuff to accumulate.

Barbara told me she feels stagnation and I’m not surprised. If you aren’t using your front door, I recommend you do an experiment. Clean up any clutter inside and outside your front door and use the door, at least once a day. Ensure that the energy that enters your home can meander throughout without large obstructions.

If your door doesn’t work properly fix it. If the paint is chipping, paint it. If the door has glass in it, make sure it’s clean. Finally, if you don’t like your front door, consider changing it.

Use your front door for a week or so and note any differences you feel about the energy of the house or how you feel in general.

Barbara also wrote that her home is built part way down a slope. It sounds like there are trees in the front to help prevent too much energy from entering her home, but if there are no barriers, a home on a slope could be subject to too much energy rushing in. (Let me know, Barbara.)

For example, if the home were close to a road and the energy from the traffic could enter the home, that would result in an overabundance of negative energy coming in. If that were the case, I would recommend putting up barriers, like trees or a fence.

Another way to slow down the energy entering the home is to have a meandering walkway from the driveway to the front door.

I worked on a home that had a poor layout in terms of its front door. Here are photographs and the story of how the space was reconfigured. In addition to the changes made inside the home, the straight walkway from the driveway was replaced with a beautiful, stone pathway that meandered from a gate by the driveway to the front door. These changes made a remarkable difference in how the home felt.

If you are unsure about the importance of energy or how to feel it, consider how you feel after spending time in the following environments:

· At the sea

· In a forest

· In a crowded mall

If you are like most people, the sea and forest will invigorate and the mall will exhaust. That’s the power of negative and positive energies!

In these times of economic hardship, it may seem frivolous to worry about your front door. I’m certainly not suggesting that you spend money you don’t have to make some grand entrance. However, working within your budget to make your front door, and the areas inside and out, feel special will absolutely be worth the time and money you put into it. As the “mouth of chi,” allow your door to bring in only high quality energy and watch your life change!