Room-by-Room Series: Children's Bedrooms

In this episode, I give you a rundown on the most important aspects of your children's bedrooms with regards to Feng Shui, and more importantly, how to combine Feng Shui with your child's desire for 'stuff'.

You'll learn about bed placement, storage, and you'll hear about the moment I became a 'believer' in Feng Shui.

All of the advice I provide here in these podcasts is general. If your own circumstances make these tips hard to incorporate, please reach out to me.   

Your intention with all of this is so important, so rather than feeling frustration at decluttering or irritation at finding new homes for things, try to channel a more positive energy. Something like 'I am creating space for my child to live a happier, more joyful life' or 'I am creating space for my child to welcome new experiences' - whatever resonates with you.     

You may find my blog interesting over on my website.

www.everydayfengshui.co.uk

@everyday_feng_shui 

Lots of love,

Speak soon,

Rachael xx

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hello@everydayfengshui

@everyday_feng_shui

www.everydayfengshui.co.uk

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello, I'm Rachel. You could say I'm a modern-day Feng Shui consultant here to help you transform your home into a space that truly supports and uplifts you. My passion is showing you how to work with your home to unlock its full potential. I'm here to show you how to tap into the power that your home holds and make this powerful practice simple, accessible, and something everyone can use. Hello and welcome back to the Everyday Feng Shui podcast. So today we are talking about children's bedrooms. Now, if you've been following me on social media, you will have seen that I'm in the middle of this sort of series, if you like, of talking to you about various different parts of your home. So we started with the living room a few weeks ago and then we moved on to the master bedroom, and today we are talking about children's bedrooms. Now, children's bedrooms are actually relatively simple. Hopefully, you will have gathered with sort of surface level feng shui that actually is quite simple. Now that's not to say that there are not moments where you have to put in some effort, and if there is a room in your home that is possibly gonna give you that kind of you know feeling of oh, this is gonna be a job, then it might be your children's bedreams. However, all I can say at this point is I would really encourage you if you are struggling with your children's sleep, or whether they feel like they are particularly unhappy, or if they are um you know struggling with school or anything like that, I would really you know encourage you to dig deep and it doesn't have to be done in one day, it doesn't have to be done in one day. You know, none of this is about you sort of making life difficult for yourself. Um but unfortunately, the hard truth of it is is that you know, a lot of the times we have let too much stuff come into our home. Our children have got too much stuff. We live in this world at the minute whereby there is just an abundance of stuff, and I mean, my goodness gracious me, my own children are a nightmare for it. You know, we're wandering around or we go somewhere, we go to the seaside and they'll win a little prize. And I mean, we must have a hundred bouncy balls or you know, all that kind of stuff in this house. And do they want to be rid of any of it? No, they do not, and that is the issue with children's bedrooms is that they collect stuff. So the the problem with that is we don't want our children to be getting rid of things that they love, you know, we really don't, but let's be truthful, and you know, this is a little bit of that kind of tough love approach, I suppose, but let's be truthful. How much of the stuff that your child owns could they, if you said, right, you take them to a hotel, you're gone for a few days, and then ask them to list their belongings, how much of their stuff could they tell you that they have? Do they love it or do they is it just there, you know? And that's what I mean about the 100 bouncy balls. Probably you know, that's probably an exaggeration, isn't it? But you get the point. We have just so many things, fidget toys, just there's just an abundance of stuff. And the issue with that from a Fangshire perspective is that the energy can't circulate and the energy gets stale because it can't move, it gets trapped, it gets dusty and old. Even you know, and we're talking about in drawers and in wardrobes and all this kind of thing. So, children's bedrooms, and I do this for a living, and I still find my children's bedrooms probably one of the harder spaces to keep on top of. Um, maybe that's because there's three of them, I'm not sure. But let's just go through what we would ideally do to create a nice space for our children. So the command position for a child with their bed is the exact same as an adult. We want the headboard against a solid wall, and ideally, we wouldn't have the headboard underneath a window. And from their bed, they need to be able to see the door. Now, the difference between a child's bed and a bed in a master bedroom is that a child's bed should really go up against a solid wall on one side so that the headboard is against a solid wall, and one side of the bed is against a solid wall, and that just gives them that feeling of protection. Um so that can be quite tricky with this, you know, with modern houses and things like that, with the there's a a wall is taken up by almost everything, but have a play around and see if you can just shuffle things around to be able to pop their bed in the best position for them. So when we've looked at the bed position, we look at what's underneath the bed. Now, you've probably heard me talk about this a lot. It is the same for children as it is for adults. Ideally, there would be nothing beneath the bed. If you have to use that space, use it for things like um soft toys, um, bedding. So I'll give you the example of my own son. He hadn't slept for, and this was my kind of oh my god, Feng Shui's actually real moment. He hadn't slept through the night. He was probably nearly six, so of I've never had particularly um my children have just never wanted to sleep on their own, they always have wanted to be kind of close to us, and we that has been fine, and it is fine, but so they've never been like you know, independent sleepers. But my other two had slept independently earlier, and so we were nearly at six years old, so by this point I am 10 years into motherhood and ten years into broken nights because of how um how they weren't sleeping and when they were born and things like that. So we hadn't slept through, we hadn't slept through as adults, hadn't slept through the night for ten years. So, you know, there becomes an element of let's call it desperation, let's be honest, to kind of improve the situation. So my son, and this is again I bought this bed, I bought this bed, and he still has this bed before I knew about Feng Shui. So his bed is one of those whereby it has got um cupboards, it's not a like a mid-height one, it's still just a low height one, but it's got storage underneath it, basically, like some shelves and some cupboards and stuff. And in there, in the cupboards and on the shelves, I put his toys, and we are talking things like um plastic swords and um you know shields and dinosaurs and like just boy toys, you know, and he wasn't sleeping, and this bed, by the way, it doesn't have a headboard either, so that's something else to bear in mind. Now, when I discovered Feng Shui, and when I was learning about all of these things that you know, potentially you are learning from me, this was the bit where I went, okay, that's an easy fix, that's an easy fix. I know I need to keep it as storage, so that's fine, I'll just swap it over with something else. I mean, we had things like um oh, what are they called? The Hot Wheels cars, the Hot Wheels tracks under there. So these huge, like plastic, um, you can take them apart, but you know, big plastic tracks where you put batteries in it and it whizzes the cars round, and yeah, just awesome things like that. So what I did was just swap it some of the bits over from my um airing cupboard. So I put the boxes of the Hot Wheels in there, and I popped the swords and things in the bottom of the wardrobe, um, so he still could have them and he could still play with them, but they just weren't stored underneath his bed. And I swapped it out for things like the Christmas bedding and you know blankets that needed to be stored somewhere and just stuff like that, stuff that wasn't relevant to him, but that he could still get to his um he could still get to his toys quite easily. And I kid you not, it was that day, that that night he slept, and he has slept. I mean, bar the odd, like he still comes in for a cuddle every now and then, and I you know absolutely don't mind that, and I will cling onto that happily for as long as need be, you know. Soon enough he's going to be a big belly teenager, I'm sure, and he won't want mummy, so I'll keep hold of that bit for now. But you know, we are out instantaneously, we were out of that relentless awake three, four, five times a night kind of spell, and that was the moment for me where I just thought, do you know what? This stuff is real, I don't I can't explain it, I don't necessarily want to explain it, but it that was my I believe moment, and that was sort of the beginning of it all, really. And so, if I can you know encourage you to do one thing, it would be just to have a look underneath their beds and see what's under there. What can you change? What can you swap out? Even things like shoes, that's not ideal. Try and bring them out of that kind of space. You want soft things like soft, fluffy things that you would happily lay on. If you wouldn't lay on it, don't put it under the bed. So that's that one. Um, and that kind of leads nicely into the wider declutter. I actually saw on Instagram yesterday. Um, I have got no idea who she is. Again, one of these people that just pops up on your feed, and it was hilarious. So, Stacy Solomon Sort Your Life Out. I've never actually watched it as a show, but I do kind of love Stacy Solomon. I just think she's great, I think she's so normal. Um, but I know that she does this show called Sort Your Life Out. Now, the lady whose reel I saw was talking about how she had played Stacy Solomon's Sort Your Life Out with her daughter. So, what she'd done was on a really sunny day, she had got everything out of her daughter, literally everything out of her daughter's bedroom, all of her possessions, and put them on her patio in categories of you know Barbies and stationery and whatever. And apparently, this was like nine hours of absolute hell, where she was going through everything saying, Do you want to keep this or not this? And you know, I was laughing because I was thinking, Oh my, I mean, that's brave, that's brave. I am I am all about a declutter. You will know this, you will know this, and it's not about getting rid of things that you love or you like or serve a purpose, it is just getting rid of the stuff that you don't even know that you've got anymore. So I thought this is a great thing, but my goodness, I'm not sure that I'm brave enough to empty an entire room because you're just gonna get decision fatigue, in my opinion. Anyway, by the bye, I thought it was fantastic and it was a really good um it was funny, but it proved a point. She said that they reduced her belongings by half, and she hadn't even noticed that she had all this stuff. So again, and I I suppose I do actually do this with my children, but I don't do it in quite the same way because I'm not brave enough. But go through, pick a drawer a weekend or a unit. So let's say the wardrobe. So this weekend you could um, in fact, I am going to do this this weekend. You could go into each child's wardrobe and you know, have pull not pull everything out in one go if you don't want to, but you could take a drawer at a time or what however it works for you, just do the hanging stuff, whatever, however, it fits with you, with you're not going to be overwhelmed by it, but literally have a situation where you go, right, this jumper, keep it, donate it, has it got holes in it, actually doesn't need to go to rags, and do and literally go through all of it because again, you know, life is so busy, and we're not on it all the time, and it is so easy for us to for things to kind of collect and you don't even notice that they're collecting, and I'm absolut I am absolutely guilty of that at the minute, and this is my job, you know. So it shows how easy it is for it to happen. So go through everything, go through their wardrobes, go through their toy boxes, you know. If they've got a toy that they love but it's broken, then either fix it if you can fix it, don't don't keep stuff if it's broken just because it cost money, like again, that has been something that's happened in this house before, where something has broken and it's like but that cost 80 quid or whatever it is, and you don't want to get rid of it because it cost a lot of money. Now it's really hard, it is it is really hard, but if you can't fix that thing, if you can fix it 100% fix it, if you can pay to have it fixed and it's not gonna cost the same, you know, if it's gonna cost another 80 quid, then one would argue whether there's much point in trying to repair something that then has no warranty, blah blah blah blah. So, you know, we have to be sensible about it. But if you can get whatever it is that's broken repaired, get it repaired, don't be wasteful. But keeping hold of something just because it costs money isn't gonna put that money back in the bank account, right? It's not gonna have it, it doesn't have any value, it's broken. So unless it is something that is like meaningful to you that you are keeping for sentimentality rather than just because you can't bear to put something that costs money in the bin, again, that is something that we that that's a something to work on. That is an area to look at where you know only you can decide um you know what you what you do with things like that, but just be ruthless, go through absolutely everything, open the drawers, go through their underwear drawer, go through their t-shirt drawer, ever literally everything. Pull it all out, go through the books that are on their bookshelves. Have they outgrown some? There are people everywhere who don't necessarily have you know the ability to go and buy these books that you see on the shelf at the supermarket that look cute and funny or whatever. There are people everywhere that will be so grateful for good quality books, and also it's just a lovely thing, isn't it, to be able, and I that we are big, big book people in this house. If there is something that we probably have too much too much of as books, my children have got bookshelves full of books, I've got bookshelves full of books, and actually, you know, I was about to say it's probably more my you know, children's bookshelves that we could go through, but myself myself as well. There's things that I've got here, um I'm sort of just looking at it nicely now that I could probably be rid of. But you know, my children now are um seven, ten, and very, very nearly twelve. So the books that we read when they were two may not be appropriate anymore. Now, again, I say this with a little laugh because I quite often try and go through our books to you know hand down to younger, um younger children in the family or uh to friends that have got younger children. My kids are having none of it because they're lovely memories, and in that case, we keep them because actually on the odd occasion we do get them out. But what I would say is if you can just start with things like that where they don't want to let go of them, get yourself a core bunch of things that that that are that are lovely, things that you read regularly together or their old favourites and keep them, don't be rid of things like that, but you know, something that you read maybe once or twice, just decide whether or not that needs to stay in their bedroom. So have a really really thorough declutter, and that is so between the bed and the decluttering, truly you are about 60% of the way there with the child's bedroom because it will just mean that everything can move. So down into the more specifics, so colours and things. Now, in children's bedrooms, we do not want our children. I truly and honestly believe that our children do not need to be living in Instagram rooms where they are beige with just um you know beige-coloured toys, so it looks like you could just take a picture of it and stick it on Instagram for however many likes. I do not believe that that is what our children should have. Children are bright, they're colourful, they're full of life, they're full of energy, and their bedrooms should be representative of that, in my opinion. So I believe that a children's bedroom should or can not necessarily should, can take that little bit more colour, can cope with that bit more boldness that you might um have. So let's think about you know, there's nothing wrong with having pink walls. My daughter has pink walls, there's nothing wrong with boys having blue or whatever boys can have pink, whatever. Doesn't matter, let them have a space that they love, even if that includes bright colour. The only two colours that I would say be cautious of are red and black. So red, you know, bits of red in a room, lovely, no problem with that. Having red walls is very fiery. That is a lot of energy in that colour. So I would, you know, just err on the side of caution with red, and black, it can well, you know, if you have a black room, just imagine yourself standing in the doorway of a room that is black. It doesn't necessarily invoke feelings of joy or happiness in you, and that if you have got children who are highly emotional, maybe you've got a teen or a preteen, black is not a great choice for them because it can kind of contribute to this like emotional roller coaster. So, but other than that, colour is amazing. If you are going to be cautious of anything, I would not be cautious of colour, I would be cautious of pattern and like busyness. So, you may have seen my um reel on Instagram where I was talking about bed covers. Now we have got all sorts of bed covers in our house, and they are patterned because my children like childish things because they're children and they should be able to have them. So things like um bedding, it's fine for them to have a pattern on there, but maybe try and steer them towards one that's slightly less busy. Go for a bigger print rather than kind of intricate like designs and stuff. We want it to be colourful but not chaotic, is what we're going for. And if the other option, I suppose, if you're kind of anti-having um patterns and things or prints or characters or whatever you want to call them on bedding, on bed actual bed covers, you could go with your a a standard bed cover, but have a throw or a blanket that is draped across the end of their bed to just make it theirs and make it their own and bring their personality into their room. So, yeah, try not to stress too much about the colour, just be aware of the pattern. Pattern is fine, but just try and make it not crazy patterns, and the same thing goes for things on their walls. So we want the walls to be able to breathe, covering them in posters and all sorts of stuff, whatever that might be, is not ideal. So if you've got a child who is absolutely hellbent on putting posters, I mean, my goodness me, I remember back to me being, you know, nine, ten, whatever it was. I can't even think. And it it was I was I was an absolute take that mega fan, and I was a boys-owned mega fan, and my bedroom was quite literally plastered. And when I say plastered, I truly mean the posters were sellotaped, edge to edge, so it was almost like I had wallpaper that was posters on every single wall. It was wild. Now, if I knew then what I know now, you know that it's not great, it's not great because the walls can't breathe, the energy can't flow. So there is again absolutely nothing wrong with having the odd poster on um on a bedroom wall. There's nothing wrong with having that decoration, and again, my own children have got pictures on their walls, and that's great, but again, just try and just bring it back, just take wherever you know, bring it back to something that you when you walk in, you don't go, oh my god, you're not hit with it. It's not it's not too wild. The other thing to think about in their bedrooms are is um you know, children's bedrooms are a bit of a catch-all room, and ultimately what we want our child's bedroom to do for them is to support them for sleep and rest and all of those lovely things and to make them feel safe. It's a space that they're gonna that we want them to want to be in, but again, we're sort of living through this era where our homes are no longer allowed to look like children live there. Now, that means that many, many, many people are putting everything that their child owns in that one room. Now, if that is the case, and your child, let's say your child has a desk that they do their homework at, if your child is trying to it's like me asking you to sleep in your office, is what I'm saying. You know, if you are asking your child to sleep and rest and do joyful things that they love in a space where they're all also doing going to do their homework or their revision or whatever it is, like how would you feel in those situations? How would you feel about that? Because I'm fairly confident that if I asked you to go to bed in your office, you probably would think this isn't ideal, I can't switch off, I'm thinking about this, that, and the other. Now I say that knowing that many times we don't have much choice, you know, and and it is sometimes it is the way it is. But if you have got a situation whereby your child is um doing their homework at a desk in their own bedroom, then using something like a screen or a throw that you can put so hide it away at the end of the day so it can be shut off. We don't want them, you know, forever being reminded of their work. Again, if you took a week's annual leave and you hung your uniform on your wardrobe door and looked at it every day for your annual leave, you probably wouldn't feel wildly rested because you've got this constant reminder of your job. Now it's the same for children. So if you can get them set up with appropriate storage, um, you can use things like room dividers or screens just so that they can put things away. And if you are looking at storage like boxes and stuff, things that aren't transparent again are better because if you put things in a box, although a transparent box, obviously, it's gonna look neat and tidy, but you can still see through it, and that's not the energy that we want in there. We want to kind of put it in there, not forget about it, but so it is shut away, and we can just close the door on schoolwork and we can open the door on being a child and having fun. So, the final thing I'm going to talk to you about with children's bedrooms is cuddly toys, and I've left this till last because it is a bug bear of my own. Ma again, my children, they are cuddly toy fiends. All three of them, all three of them have an abundance, and when I say an abundance, I mean it is absurd, and they love them, they name them, they know who they all are. It is a lot. Now, that's totally normal, and they love them and they're theirs, and they keep them. I mean, I do have to take a deep breath every morning as I'm you know putting 90,000 squashmallows back onto my daughter's bed, but it's fine, it is, but we do what we do. So when it comes to um animals specifically and that kind of soft furnishing, although obviously they are cuddly toys or pillows or whatever they are, if the animal is um one that would be considered aggressive or predator predatory, um just maybe try and keep those stored or kept where it's not quite so visible. If you have children that have got cuddly toys in a trunk and they like having some of them on their bed, maybe choose the softer animals, as in you know, let's think um things like tigers and lions, elephants, even because they're quite aggressive, even dinosaurs, cuddly dinosaurs, unless it's a completely non-aggressive dinosaur, but they are quite a predatory type of animal. So if you can swap them out for things like turtles or whatever it may be, I mean you'd have to look through. If you had to, if you had to, you could probably make two piles of peaceful and not peaceful in terms of the animals and cuddly toys that you've got in your home. So all I would say is if you like me have got a house that are full of cuddly things, just be mindful that although because they're cuddly does not mean that they necessarily give off that nice cuddly energy. So if you have got things like tigers and lions and you know those sorts of things, try and try and store them in a place that is slightly less obvious, not under the bed, not on the bed, because that is where we don't want that kind of aggressive energy. We want the calm energy. Same as things like um, you know, racing cars and stuff, too much, too much racing car energy is probably gonna not um not assist with keeping a calm mind with our children. So again, it's just being mindful. It's go into your your children's bedrooms and just stand there. What is it saying to you? Is it chaotic? Is it cluttered, or is it neat, tidy, and calm? Is there too much stuff? You know, it this is not about have they got a big room or have they got a small room. You can absolutely keep a box room with a beautiful flow of energy, and it comes down to, and again, this is you know, it's a really hard truth, but we have this habit of filling our homes beyond what our homes can be filled, and if there isn't the space to keep all of the things that they want, maybe you need to think of another way. So that might be having things on rotation, it might be utilising an an airing cupboard, it whatever it is that you need to do to kind of clear some of that space. If you if you sit in that in their bedrooms and you're like, Oh, there is just stuff on top of me, that is what they are going to feel like. They're gonna feel like everything's on top of them, and that isn't what we want for these kids, whether they are two or whether they are 14, whether they are 18, doing their A levels and all those sorts of things. We don't want them to feel like life's on top of them. We want them to feel this expanse, we want them to feel like they're free, that they can actually just be children and be joyful. So that is where I'm gonna leave you today with children's bedrooms. You may be able to tell that I'm a little bit passionate about this one. Not because I'm perfect, and I absolutely my children's bedrooms are not Feng Shui perfect by any stretch of the imagination because I I don't believe that's a perfect that it's not a possible thing to do if you've got young children, like it's not possible, but we only ever can do the best with the time and energy that we've got, and we can only ever do the best with the resources that we've got. But what we can do is be honest, what we can do is be ruthless, what we can do is be mindful about what we're kind of doing, and you know, I think children in this day and age are they're up against it. I'm not gonna lie. I think they are living through a tricky, um, a tricky existence, not because they haven't got all of these amazing things, but almost they've got too many things, you know. Our expectations of children is that they are no longer children. Um that is a different episode, so I'm not gonna go down that rabbit hole. I'm not gonna go there. But if you can do one thing for your child, I personally believe it's to make their bedroom this beautiful. Not I don't mean beautiful as in decor, that's not what I'm talking about. I mean beautiful as as in energetic, this light, airy, safe feeling space where they can be who they are, that represents who they are, and they can feel truly at home. Um, I think next week we will be going on to um the bathrooms. So I will be here next week. All of my social media next week will be all about the bathrooms. Bathrooms are very interesting when it comes to Feng Shui because they are known as a waste room. So um I will be telling you, you know, lots of tips and tricks for your bathroom. Um I have got a bathroom that sits in my southeast area, which in fact I've got two in my southeast area, which is less than ideal. So again, don't panic about them. There's no need to stress. Everything is fixable. So I will speak to you very soon, and I hope you have a wonderful week.