I’d just moved into my new flat, the first home I’d shared with my boyfriend, in a trendy South London neighbourhood – but, within weeks, the shiny new pad we’d carried our belongings into was already filling me with despair.
Piles of books, CDs and clothes cluttered up the space in our one-bed basement flat – making it feel like a den of chaos rather than the oasis of post-work calm we’d hoped for.
With a small front bedroom, terraced garden, decent-sized living-dining room and a separate spacious kitchen with windows on two sides, it had felt like a flat we could truly make our own – but now all I felt was dread and panic.
I’d spent a month assembling flatpack furniture and buying up statement pieces from Facebook marketplace to try and make it our perfect bolt-hole.
No matter how hard I tried though, it just hasn’t ever felt like a home, more just a place we’re living in.
Could Katie Malik – a self-styled ‘house whisperer’, who claims to be able to ‘align your home with your well-being through holistic, emotional interior design’, get our wonky feng shui back on track?
Such interior alchemy doesn’t come cheap, former Cambridge graduate Malik, 40, charges £500 per session but promises to scrutinise both our floorplan and the zodiac chart to ‘maximise potential space’ and ‘identify and remove energy blockages’.
Would it work? I was cynical…but willing to give anything a go to bring a bigger sense of harmony to our new flat.
Katie Malik, 40, from Cambridge trained in Interior Design at Chelsea College of Art before setting up her house whispering business in 2014
Katie used Poppy’s date and time of birth to create several charts to illustrate her character traits, which are vital, she says, for making a house feel more liveable
The stakes are high – my flat’s drab vibes, says Malik, could be impacting everything from my mood to my health and well-being.
Our map in this process would be personalised Zodiac charts. Using my exact time and date of birth, Malik created several charts that she said would help illustrate my character traits, which she claims determine what a person needs from a home.
We then, armed with a divination pendant and said charts, went through each room of the apartment over an afternoon, with the house whisperer offering her opinion on how a few simple changes could transform how I felt by the property…
First stop: The bedroom
Purple patch: The bedroom needed splashes of purple, the house whisperer suggested, after deeming it Poppy’s ‘colour’, and said it would help ‘inject energy’ into the space
Using a divination pendant, Katie then established whether the bedroom had any energy vortexes in it
The house whisperer started off by telling me my natural colouring is purple – as a redhead I can confidently say this is not the case – and that I should incorporate shades of it into places around the home where I need ‘an injection of energy’.
She added that I should be sparing with it to avoid being overwhelmed but suggested I focus its use where I sleep to help me rest. The idea of injecting energy to where I rest left me confused but I nodded and scribbled the suggestion down.
Malik then advised that I buy purple bed sheets or curtains in tribute to my newly discovered energy colour, saying it would show ‘I was in control of my fire’ – whatever that means.
We also discussed my ‘relationship direction’, the direction I should face or place things within my home to optimise my relationships. Mine is southwest. To get my romantic relationship fired up, Malik suggested I decorate the bedroom with hearts on the southwest wall – I silently committed to ignoring this hideous proposal.
There were no energy vortexes in my room (phew!), a fact Malik was able to conclude via a divination pendant – a pendulum suspended by a nylon thread, which was then suspended over my flat’s floor plan.
Exactly how this pendant knew if there were any giant Dementor-style black holes beneath my laminate flooring, I’m not sure – and Malik couldn’t really explain either.
However, she pressed on, saying I should never sleep in a vortex because my energy could be essentially stolen (I know what you’re thinking). While these energy swirls can be counteracted, they cannot be removed because they’re naturally occurring.
A deep clean: The bathroom
The House Whisperer explained that because of the age of the building – Victorian – I needed to complete a deep clean to banish negative spirits
Any negative spirits hanging around from previous centuries – we live in a Victorian terrace, could be ushered out via a deep clean to the bathroom. Were the patches of mould actually faint black phantoms?
Malik said: ‘Sometimes when a space hasn’t been cleaned – and it may appear clean – by previous owners, there can be bad energy so it’s really important to regularly deep clean and keep on top of it.’
She suggested including plants. However, only those with rounded edges. I was told in no uncertain terms that cactuses should be avoided.
To spruce up my flat, I should invest in English ivy (lovely), spider plants (they remind my of my grandma), peace lilies (I despise), bamboo (out of my price range), and Chinese ferns (my arm was twisted, they’re lovely).
They are, I’m told, air purifying and would ‘give new life to the space’.
Every two weeks, I should also ‘sage the space’ with the windows closed to keep the smoke from the burning herb inside. I was sceptical, fearing my flat would simply smell like a burnt Christmas dinner.
Career success in the living room
Poppy took on board Katie’s suggestion to avoid the colour red in decor and decided the Pharrell Williams poster and red sofa cushion would have to go but kept the terracotta-patterned throw
Katie encouraged Poppy to decorate in earthy shades such as peach, terracotta – and warned against incorporating elements of water or fire
Table task: Poppy’s previous table arrangement was bathed in the light from the living room and added to the cosiness of the space with candles and flower. It was replaced with a more functional desk set-up on the advice of Katie
The interiors expert took me through my floor plan and showed me what my ‘success’ direction was within the flat – essentially, the direction I should place objects in to excel in my career.
I was told it was west and, that to activate it, I needed to focus on my reception room.
While I wasn’t sure how moving things to face a certain direction would help me get a promotion, I listened as the 40-year-old advised placing metals like silver, gold and copper in each room in the form of a lamp or a vase.
She also had some interesting photo advice. ‘For full activation, put up pictures of yourself as a child, specifically playing in nature with your father’.
I decided it might be weird to fill a flat I shared with my boyfriend full of toddler pictures of me and my father.
For the colour scheme, Malik pointed me in the direction of earthy shades such as peach and terracotta and warned against incorporating elements of water or fire.
Specifically, she told me not include any water fountains or reds within the confines of the flat.
I was firmly told that any colours associated with natural elements had to go. To counteract the fieriness of the now blocked up fireplace, I should place blue items such as a bowl of saltwater nearby to neutralise the energy.
My immediate thought was that the fireplace clearly hadn’t been fiery for some time…and that bowls of saltwater might get knocked over – there are plug sockets nearby – but I held my tongue.
Let the energy flow in: The hallway
One of Katie’s main suggestions was to clear clutter from the hallway to ensure the efficient movement of energy – advice that gave me the final nudge to tidy up
The hallway before the consultation with Katie was piled high with boxes, coats and bags and was irritating to navigate but is now cleared of clutter
With my front door and hallway, Malik told me I should make sure they were easily accessible and free from things hanging on the walls to ‘allow a flow of energy in’.
I think this may have been a polite way of saying your hallway’s full of junk (which it was).
‘Many people who don’t have a lot of storage tend to hang things on the walls but that means you enter in to the clutter and, if you look at it energetically, the energy is stopped and can’t flow in,’ she said.
The house whisperer explained that all doors should open 90 degrees and so I should avoid hanging things on the back of them – she didn’t say why.
Near my front door, I was advised to hang a full-length mirror which would give the illusion of space while also allowing the energy to better flow down the long corridors and to have a vase of flowers to ‘encourage my energy’.
Cooking up a new arrangement: The kitchen
Katie advised me that to unlock my full potential I should ensure that my desk is in a power position – back to the wall and facing the door, so I dutifully removed my desk to the living room
My new dining set up was too crowded and the chairs blocked both the energy and my journey to the kitchen and left me eating facing a blank wall
Malik felt my kitchen was generally fine…but had a few ideas about the space off to the side which houses a bookcase and a desk.
The house whisperer suggested I work on maximising my personal success within the space. To do that, I should place my desk in a command position with my back against a wall, facing a doorway which would mean moving it from its current position next to the kitchen and into the living room.
The interior designer went on to explain that my desk had to be in my success direction to protect my working spirit. I dutifully swapped out my desk with my gateleg dining table and wondered why on earth I had signed up for this.
Laying down the law (n): The garden
I spruced up my garden but skipped on the suggestion I invest in a small patch of grass to sit and have a morning coffee to re-connect with nature
The Cambridge alumni noted that in an ideal world I would walk around barefoot on grass. I thought I would like that too but in London I was grateful for any outside space at all.
She accepted that since my back garden was full of mossy slabs I would have to improvise. Malik suggested buying a small patch of grass where I could have a morning coffee to re-connect with nature.
I quietly flicked through a mental map wondering where on earth I could buy turf nearby while my expert guest offered an alternative – a grounding bedsheet, which is a standard sheet full of silver threads which ‘channels the earth’s energy directly into the body’.
Malik said it was ‘the next best thing to being connected to the soil’ because in order to manifest my future, I needed to be ‘more grounded with the earth’. As opposed, I thought, to flying away or levitating?
DID IT WORK? POPPY’S VERDICT
And so, with all of Malik’s suggestions in mind, I changed things around in my flat. I removed the coats and shoes from the hallway to allow for a ‘flow of energy’ and focused on terracotta coloured rugs and blankets on the sofa.
I moved my dining room table closer to the kitchen and placed my desk in a power position in the living room.
Gone were the red cushions on the sofa and the large Pharrell Williams poster with a crimson background.
Clothes were removed from the backs of doors to allow them to swing open and a deep clean of the bathroom was ticked off the list.
Poppy said: ‘While I was glad to remove the piles of mess I’d stuffed in corners, I’m not sure I’ll be relying on my birth chart for future interior design decisions’
I tried to put elements of blue such as a blue lamp near my now blocked-up fireplace and spruced up my outside space to make it more inviting.
I placed my round-leaf plants in cool-coloured pots near doorways and washed the purple curtains already hanging up when I moved in.
And after a day of moving and cleaning I had transformed the flat.
But despite Malik using my birth chart, various other astrological markers and the divination pendant to decide on the perfect arrangement for my home, I preferred it how I’d had it originally.
While the desk setting did look powerful, it reminded me of a CEO and seemed incongruent to the cosiness I was trying to foster. I kept waiting for an Apprentice contestant to stand before me so I could fire them.
In order to move the desk, my dining table had to be swapped and was crammed into the room next to the kitchen, with the chairs blocking the passageway.
Malik’s suggestions of removing all red elements did make the space feel calmer – but that interiors advice doesn’t exactly justify the £500 bill.
Practicalities can get in the way of kismet too; I couldn’t have included a water feature in the flat if I’d tried and I’ve yet to get down to B&Q to buy a patch of grass to ground me while I have my morning coffee.
While I was glad to remove the piles of mess I’d stuffed in corners, I’m not sure I’ll be relying on my birth chart for future interior design decisions.