Olden days management of kitchen feng shui essentially is to boost family’s health and to cure sicknesses. However in today’s context certain kitchen feng shui concepts are obsolete in view of less cooking, modern appliances & helper.
Those days the kitchen is located outside the house. Today we do not have the luxury of space. So what you are hearing now are modern day interpretations & adaptations of kitchen feng shui by individual feng shui masters “hands-on” or “academic” advices.
Water and Fire confrontation 水 火 相 冲 drama
Over 20 years of verification & feedback from my clients, no evidence of sickness were found when stove and sink (水 火 相 冲) are placed directly opposite or beside each other, period.
How do you classify which item is “fire” or “water” element
Most feng shui masters will categorise items such as refrigerator, washing machine, washing basin, tap, sink as water-element. Fire element items are microwave, burner (stove) and grill oven etc.
Given the limited space of today, you will observe that the kitchen sink is either located opposite or next or diagonal to the stove. This layout is common for most metropolitan cities such as Tokyo, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taipei. Sometimes due to lack of space some even stack up appliance such as microwave oven on top of washing machine and positioning the fridge directly opposite the stove. If this water-fire principle hold true at least 50% of people living in urban cities will fall sick. The effect of water-fire conflict causes intestine (digestion) or cardiovascular problems.
Washing machine with dryer – so how
Another ambiguity is how do we “classify” kitchen appliances as water or fire element? Let’s use washing machine as an example. Thanks to modern technology washing machine now comes with a dryer. So do you consider the water presence as water element or the dryer as fire? Does that mean you cannot buy a washer dryer combo because you are unable to classify the “correct” element due to it’s conflicting entity.
Remember home feng shui is suppose to make our life happier and easier not miserable and harder!
Kitchen Door should not be directly opposite to Main Door
The main door should not be directly opposite to kitchen or toilet or bedroom door. This is really bad. It cause illnesses to the whole family, one of the major feng shui taboo 廚房 风水大忌 !
Latest Singapore DBSS flats come with Main Door directly faces the Kitchen Door! This layout sucks! It causes sicknesses to the entire family. With no rhyme or reason you and your loved ones falling sick one after another like dominoes. It also causes family disharmony. Family become bad-temper, short-fuse, financial loss or even accidents.
It get’s worse if it is this is within Home Destiny 宅命 bad energy sector. Those units i have seen, distance between the kitchen door and main door is less than 3 metre apart which makes effective feng shui rectification impossible.
Open kitchen – intense fire element
Based on feng shui perspective, the essence is not the island kitchen concept but where do you place the stove? One should not place the stove opposite to the toilet or bed or any room doors.
In my opinion, open kitchen is not good for hygiene reasons. Your entire living hall smells and oily after a cooking session. There is no doubt that the kitchen area in feng shui is classify as fire-element. So if any one of your family member unlucky element is fire then it is best not to adopt this concept.
In view of the current trend of intense fire usage such as mobile phones, laptop, router, TV, PC, electronic toys, it is not encourage to have “open-kitchen” concept. Excessive fire energy in the house causes agitation, quick temper, cardiovascular/blood/heart issues.
Stove Direction questionable & outdated 坐凶朝吉
Thousand of years ago people used wood to feed the fire through an air opening 火门see picture below. Thus it make sense for traditional feng shui schools to calculate the direction 灶门朝向 of air flow. Eight Mansion school 八宅 stresses the importance of stove must sit at negative sector 坐宅主凶方 and positive air flow direction 朝宅主吉方. The formula is popular because this is for health enhancement.
Today’s stove direction are all modern inventions of feng shui masters because there are no written formulas to follow. Some masters use the gas pipe as the direction while others use the power switch/knob. Personally i practice none of the above because “direction” is inconclusive without the impact of air flow. For stove feng shui i used other formula schools to improve health or wealth.
Number of burners equates number of mistresses
Another appalling myth about kitchen feng shui is the number of burners. Hearsay one burner equates one wife, 2 burners = 1 wife and 1 mistress, how you wish. Most families have at least 3 burners, does that mean 1 wife and 2 mistresses.
Generally speaking, kitchen affects the female head of household. Thus one has to be mindful of unsanitary items found in kitchen such as rusty pipes, dirty plastic bags, old newspapers, leftover paint cans etc. This will affect the lower part of her body.
Do not place the stove beside kitchen opening
One basic rule of thumb based on “form” factors is that you should not place your stove beside the kitchen door or opening. And also not under any overhead beam.
Stove in NW sector – is it bad for male owner?
One common misconception is that the stove should not be located within the North-West sector of the house. It is symbolic to qian gua 乾卦 representing Male Head of household. Chinese classic consider it as 火烧天门不利主 harmful to the elderly or patriarch.
Let’s be objective about it. Since there are 8 sectors in a bagua. There is a 12.5% probability for an entire block that the NW sector is either kitchen area or missing. Then is it possible that for this entire block the father is deceased, missing, bad luck or sick?
This is similar to the fallacies that North sector represents Career, South-East Wealth and South sector is fame and so forth. Following this reasoning if your house SE sector is missing it means your can’t make a living?
Don’t get me wrong i am not encouraging you to buy a house with missing sector/s.
