House Rules: on balancing your life

When you seldom throw things out, you're always finding surprises. This time it was a small book from 1999: Jane Alexander's The Five Minute Healer. Before consigning it to the charity shop pile, as I've always got good intentions, I thought – yes, I could do with some of that.

With Alexander’s help you can turn your car into a sanctuary: clean it, add essential oils and a silver ball dangling from your rear-view mirror. You can jump start your day with yoga, zap your hangover with peppermint tea and a hot bath, and conjure up romance with a purple table cloth.

My favourite section is where you boost your career, gain more money, recognition and have better relationships by subjecting your desk to feng shui. The Chinese philosophy of placement and order was all the rage when Alexander’s book first came out, though the Chinese themselves have been at it for millennia.

Zones

Start by dividing your desk into zones, beginning with what’s straight in front of you – that’s your “fame” area. Then, moving clockwise it’s marriage (or relationships), offspring (also known as creativity), helpful people, career, knowledge, family, wealth. The middle bit is chi, or health.

Then it’s as simple as clearing the clutter before adding stuff: keep the phone to the right, so that all calls are useful; put a lamp to the top left for extra loot; and place a beautiful stone to the lower left to remind you of your spiritual side. A candle or crystal on top of your computer in the fame area will make you more likely to be noticed (not least if you set fire to the office), while four red flowers in the wealth area need to be balanced against two yellow ones in helpful people. A three-legged Chinese toad god on the right-hand corner will activate opportunities. A fish tank with three goldfish at the left hand corner is a winner for extra cash.

It might be better to focus on one thing at a time, as I can’t quite see how you do all this without messing up your chi at the heart of things. But for those of us who want it all, maybe a rotation system is the answer. This could be the year everything changes.