How to Feng Shui Your Beauty Cabinet

originally written for mindbodygreen

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

In feng shui, areas and objects in your spaces represent something deeper. Your beauty cabinet, for example, is where you keep skin care products, hair styling tools, makeup and other toiletries, all tools that assist you in showing your best face and your inner radiance to the world. Giving your beauty cabinet the attention it deserves will maximize its potential and can reflect positively in how you view yourself and how you show up in your life. 

Whether you have a beauty cabinet chock full of the latest products, or you just have a few precious bottles that you use daily, here are 3 tricks to give you and your beauty cabinet some radiant energy! 

Toss the expired items

I think it goes without saying, but just in case... be sure to go through and toss any expired items. It may be hard to let go of some of your favorite or most expensive products, but it's important to know that using them past their expiration date can actually negate their effects! Using expired skincare products can essentially mean putting bacteria on your face, which can lead to irritation, inflammation, redness, bumps, rashes, swelling, and even infections.

Keeping them around isn't great feng shui either. The symbolism of a cabinet crammed with expired items is that your body is also cluttered with this similar energy, which is the opposite of radiant. We want to attract freshness and spaciousness instead of outdated, forgotten and spoiled qi.  

Add Citrine to the Center of your cabinet    

When I think of radiance, I immediately think of citrine, a quartz crystal with orange tones. Love is In The Earth, my crystal bible, states that citrine “promotes a radiance from within the self, culminating in a constant happy disposition. It brightens even the darkest corner of one’s perceived reality, and helps one to ‘laugh without restraint’.” I think we could all use some of that!

The reason why it goes in the center is that when we lay the feng shui bagua map on your cabinet, the center area relates to health and overall well-being. It also touches all the other 8 areas of life in the feng shui map, including but not limited to career, abundance, and relationships. The center touches all the aspects of your life! Among the many benefits of this stone include the ability to cleanse negative energy as well as clear itself. It will keep your beauty cabinet filled with bright and positive qi. 

Change out your vanity light

The lighting around your beauty cabinet helps to bring clarity and light to whatever you're doing, whether it’s putting on makeup, washing your face, or brushing your teeth. The light also represents fire energy in feng shui. Fire energy is all about radiance, like the sun at high noon. It's a good idea to clean and dust off the bulb and fixtures periodically.  

Something to consider as you’re choosing a lightbulb for this area is the temperature. If you happen to have a CFL or LED bulb (as opposed to an incandescent), opt for a bulb with temperatures of 2700K or 3000K (kelvin) or higher. The higher the number, the cooler the color of the light. You don't want to go much cooler than 3500K, or it will feel blueish.

by Anjie Cho


If you’d like to learn more about feng shui, check out Mindful Design Feng Shui School at: www.mindfuldesignschool.com

How to Spring Clean & Green your Beauty Cabinet with Anjie Cho

featured this month on Modern Minerals by Mo Mi

image credit: Lotus Wei

image credit: Lotus Wei

In the late summer of 2015, I was in Brookfield Place in lower Manhattan where I found a book titled “108 Ways to Create Holistic Spaces“. I was in a bit of a rush, but snapped a photo of this because I knew this was something I needed to read. At the time I was with my Mom and said “I would love to meet this designer one day”. A year later, my friend Katie Hess invited me to a super moon soirée on the roof top of building in Flatiron. I sat down next to Anjie and we started talking and I immediately knew we were going to be friends. It wasn’t until in 2017 that I had finally got around to organizing my photos when I found this photo I had taken in 2015 to remind me I wanted to read this book, and to my surprise the author was my incredible friend Anjie Cho! Since getting to know Anjie and watching her on YouTube, I often turn to Anjie when I’m feeling like something could be made better or for practical solutions to improve the flow of energy and balance in my space. Learn more from her podcasts HERE.

I wanted to find out more about Anjie for some advice on how to Spring Clean our beauty cabinets and asked her for some advice…Check it out!

...read full article


Things You Might Not Know About Coconut Oil

As a holistic designer and architect, I'm all about finding ways to incorporate natural, less-toxic substances into my daily life in place of those harmful chemicals we normally keep beneath the kitchen sink or in the medicine cabinet. One of my most recent discoveries is coconut oil. The holistic perks of this natural oil are incredible, and of course I want to share them with you. Some of my favorite uses are below!

In the Bathroom

Coconut oil is awesome as a natural hair serum. Adding just a small bit to your hair can reduce the frizz we so often deal with as ladies. Be careful here, as you don't want to overuse any sort of oil in your hair. Just rub a dab onto your palms, then distribute evenly throughout your locks!

Try mixing coconut oil with equal parts sugar to create your own simple exfoliating scrub for those long, nourishing showers. 

Coconut oil makes an easy lip balm too! Especially in colder, dryer months, our lips are susceptible to weather and have the tendency to chap and crack. Anyone who's ever experienced this knows it isn't fun! Next time your lips start acting up, try rubbing a bit of coconut oil on as a lubricating balm and soothing agent.

One of the most common beauty products containing toxic materials is deodorant. Unfortunately, this isn't a product we can really do without, unless we're all willing to deal with each others' body odor. Coconut oil can provide a natural remedy for this issue. Using the oil by itself as deodorant is very effective and eliminates the need for harsh chemicals that you may find in other store-bought products. 

Around the House

Aside from its numerous uses for the body, coconut oil also makes a super stain remover and furniture polish. You can rub the oil alone on a tough-to-conquer stain for some help, or mix the oil with baking soda for a non-toxic stain removal option. 

Back in the bathroom, coconut oil works wonders on soap scum, which is great, since bathroom cleaners can be some of the most toxic on the market. Instead of exposing yourself, and ultimately your family, to the toxic chemicals and VOCs in bathroom cleaning chemicals, try using natural coconut oil on a rag instead! 

There are literally hundreds of uses for coconut oil outside the most common uses in cooking. With an increasing number of cautious dieters and, thankfully, individuals concerned for the environment, coconut oil is becoming more and more popular, and with good reason! Next time you're near a natural market, stop in and get some coconut oil to get started on the many things you can do!

by Anjie Cho