How your home can reflect your relationship with receiving, nourishment and self-worth.
Have you ever walked into your kitchen, seen the dishes piled up, an overflowing drawer or that appliance you've been meaning to replace for months — and felt your whole body sink?
It's just a kitchen.
And yet sometimes it feels like much more.
The kitchen is where we feed ourselves. Where we gather. Where we prepare, give, receive and replenish.
Perhaps that's why traditions such as Feng Shui have long given the kitchen particular significance. Contemporary Feng Shui teacher and author Marie Diamond also speaks about our physical environment as something that can influence how we experience areas of life such as wellbeing, relationships and abundance.
I find that idea interesting — not as a promise that changing your home will change your bank balance, but as an invitation to notice the relationship between our surroundings and how we feel within them.
Do I believe I'm worthy of being nourished by the life I'm working so hard to create?
That question connects this older piece of writing with much of the work I do today around money, the nervous system and Enoughness.
1. What Does Your Kitchen Say About Receiving?
Take a look around your kitchen without turning it into another self-improvement project.
What's there?
Perhaps there's food you've forgotten about.
A drawer you can barely open.
A cupboard filled with things nobody uses.
Or maybe your kitchen is immaculate because keeping everything under control helps you feel settled.
None of these things diagnoses anything about you.
And clutter isn't evidence that you're failing, traumatised or “blocked from abundance”.
Sometimes life is simply busy.
But our surroundings can affect how we experience our day-to-day lives. A space that feels difficult to navigate can add another layer of demand when we're already stretched.
This is also where I find some of Marie Diamond's work thought-provoking. Her approach to Feng Shui encourages us to become more intentional about the spaces we inhabit and to consider whether our environment supports the life we're trying to create.
I hold that as a reflective practice rather than a clinical claim.
For me, the useful question isn't whether clearing a cupboard will attract wealth.
It's much simpler:
Does this space support me too?
If you've spent years looking after everyone else, that can be a surprisingly revealing question.
Is there food you enjoy?
Can you find what you need?
Do things work well enough?
Does preparing something for yourself feel like nourishment — or another job?
Try this
Choose one drawer or shelf.
Not the whole kitchen.
As you clear it, ask:
What would make this space easier for me to use?
That's very different from asking whether it's tidy enough.
2. Your Stove Doesn't Create Wealth — But It Can Represent Nourishment
In Feng Shui, the stove is traditionally given symbolic importance in relation to nourishment, resources and prosperity.
Marie Diamond's contemporary Feng Shui teachings similarly encourage attention to the home environment and the symbolic relationship between our spaces and areas such as prosperity and wellbeing.
I like that symbolism.
But I don't interpret it to mean that using a particular burner — or rotating through all of them — will literally produce additional income streams.
Instead, the stove offers me a useful metaphor:
Our capacity to transform what we have into something that sustains us.
For women accustomed to giving, this can be an unexpectedly powerful reflection.
We may be very good at creating nourishment for everybody else.
But what happens when we're the recipient?
Can you prepare something just because you like it?
Can you sit down to eat without simultaneously working?
Can you buy ingredients that bring pleasure as well as practicality?
Can nourishment exist without being earned first?
These questions may tell us more about our relationship with receiving than which burner we use.
Try this
Make one meal, cup of tea or small snack this week with the deliberate intention of caring for yourself.
Nothing elaborate.
While you prepare it, notice whether receiving your own care feels natural, uncomfortable or unfamiliar.
3. Why We Keep Things That No Longer Work
There's a chipped mug at the back of the cupboard.
A pan you've disliked for ten years.
An appliance that requires a very specific combination of jiggling, patience and negotiation to function.
Feng Shui traditions often encourage repairing, releasing or consciously attending to objects that are broken or no longer serving the household. Marie Diamond's work also places emphasis on becoming intentional about what we keep in our environments.
I appreciate the ritual in that.
But keeping something broken doesn't mean you're carrying “broken energy” or blocking wealth.
There may be many practical reasons we hold onto things.
Maybe money is genuinely tight.
Maybe repairing rather than replacing reflects your values.
Maybe the object has sentimental meaning.
Or perhaps another belief appears:
It's good enough for me.
I shouldn't waste money.
Other things are more important.
I'll replace it eventually.
This is where the kitchen can become a doorway into the themes I've been exploring in my recent articles about money.
Sometimes difficulty spending isn't really about the object.
It touches something deeper about permission.
Try this
Choose one item that makes everyday life unnecessarily difficult.
You don't automatically need to replace it.
Simply ask:
Why am I keeping this?
The answer matters more than the object.
Acknowledgement and Inspiration
The original version of this article was inspired by teachings I encountered through Desiree de Lunae around energy medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, home and intentional living.
I've also been influenced by the work of Marie Diamond, Feng Shui teacher, author and speaker, whose work explores the relationship between our physical environments and areas of life including wellbeing, relationships and abundance.
As my own clinical practice and thinking have developed, I've revisited these ideas through a more grounded, trauma-informed lens.
I don't present Feng Shui, Qi or environmental symbolism as established psychological or medical mechanisms.
Instead, I see them as traditions and reflective practices that can invite interesting questions:
What am I surrounding myself with?
Does my home support me?
Where am I tolerating what no longer works?
And have I made room for myself to receive, as well as give?
For me, that's where these ideas connect beautifully with the therapeutic work of Safe Enough, Good Enough and Worthy Enough.
Sometimes changing one drawer doesn't change your life.
But it might change the way you care for yourself in that moment.
And that is worth noticing.
