Census 2010: Are you represented in your house?

A couple of years ago I was reading a feng shui book that mentioned the placement of photographs in your home.  According to the book there are certain areas in the Chinese Ba Gua, such as Family, Children, Helpful People, or Relationships/Marriage, that naturally invite photos of those people.  The book also talked about balance: making sure that all people living in the house were represented equally in number or proportion.  For example you may have four 5x7 photos of your children in small frames and only one 10x13 wedding photo that is matted and framed.  The photos are still in balance because proportionally you are represented equal to your children because of your bigger picture and more elaborate frame.

I started looking around my house to see how balanced we were.  I was shocked to discover that no picture of me existed in the house!  There were plenty of pictures of my daughter, many of them with my husband too, but none of me.  I knew I was responsible for this absence because I am the one who makes 99% of the decorating decisions and 100% of the photo placement decisions.  I also knew how it happened: over the years as my taste in frames changed and we moved and our daughter was born and pictures were put up and taken down and frames reused and I'm usually the one who takes the pictures which means I'm not in a lot of them so the next thing you know: I've disappeared from the displayed photos.

I immediately went through a box of photos, picked out 3 that I was in and re-did the photo display.  There!  Problem solved.  But then when we moved to our current house and I was putting out the family pictures I noticed something else.  There was not a single picture of Steve and me together.  We've been married for almost 19 years and yet there was no photographic evidence that we had ever been in the same room together!  I remedied that situation as well.

Look around your house.  Are you represented?  Is it a priority for there to be beautifully framed pictures of you as well as the spouse, children, even pets?  If not, why not?  For your inspiration, here are some of the photos that now reside in my house: