LETTERS FROM HOME: HEY BABY, I'M NOT YOUR HANDYMAN

Jan. 11, 2001

Dear David,

The tree trimmer was just here nipping off branches that might endanger our newly repaired roof. As he left, a different repairman appeared to resurrect the telephone line downed by the last storm. The day before, the plumber dropped by to unstop the downstairs toilet.

What would the world do without handy men or handy women?

I don't know about the world, but DC and I spent days with a plunger and some kind of snake-like tool trying to unplug the toilet. When summoned, the plumber fixed the problem quickly.

Those toilets are mysteries to need those who understand them.

DC's father probably could rewire and re-plumb his house, and his daughter inherited his do-it-yourself attitude. She has replastered most of the walls, and she has removed and applied paint all over the house, including three different coats of yellow in our bedroom.

That's the problem with doing it yourself. Sometimes you have to undo it yourself.

Housekeeping poses the core to-do-it-yourself or not-to-do-it-yourself question. Plenty of two-career couples hire someone to come in and clean their house. We tried that, but our housekeepers spurned us after a few visits. They probably felt like the Egyptian slaves who were shown the spot on the sand where the first pyramid was going to go.

We have clutter that doesn't know there is any other way to live.

Thus a book titled "Clear the Clutter for Good Feng Shui" almost leaped into my hand at the bookstore. As a joke, I sat it beside DC's mocha. She didn't laugh. I didn't understand. Feng shui is the kind of offbeat idea that usually tickles her. She still didn't laugh until she read that clapping is one of the feng shui methods for brightening up a room.

But the more she read, the more intrigued she became. Especially when she saw the pictures of neatly arranged shelves and the serene looking rooms with furniture placed just so.

As usual, we're getting in on a trend just as it's over.

"You are Your Clutter!" the book proclaims. The writer believes that your home mirrors your soul. If so, our spare bedrooms/unexplored brain recesses are a mess, and our basement/subconscious is scary.

According to feng shui, we must learn to release our possessions in order to clear out our clutter. We have emotional ties to things we no longer use or need because we want to remember the person who gave them to us. Or we believe our possessions symbolize who we are. They may be a memorial to our past lives, the book says.

I have agreed to release some books I meant to read 20 years ago if DC will part with some of her animal-shaped knickknacks lurking around the house.

According to feng shui, energy (chi) is supposed to flow through your front door, spiral around the house and leave through the back door and windows. If you have too much clutter hanging around, your chi can't flow and the atmosphere around the house becomes sluggish.

Chinese medicine is based on the idea that energy blockages in the body can cause disease. Since we know that all matter really is a concretion of energy, it is not preposterous to believe that the energy flow through a house can get blocked as well. According to feng shui, this results in stagnation and lethargy.

I like this Chinese philosophy. Sunday afternoon when I'm sitting on the couch watching the pros play golf on Maui, I can attribute my inactivity to blocked chi.

But trouble may await in the spring. We probably are going to have to replace our fence, and DC thinks we should be able to build it ourselves. Lately she's been reading a how-to book about pouring concrete.

Love, Sam