With gardening, lawn mowing and summertime fun trumping housekeeping chores, the results inside my house can be summarized in one word: clutter. Or may be two: clutter everywhere.

I decided it was time to get a grip on my indoor mess and firmly toss most of it into the trash. But I didn’t want to stop there. In the hope of establishing a more lasting household orderliness, this time I thought I’d also get acquainted with the principles of feng shui.

Pronounced “fung schway,” this is the Chinese art and science that looks at how forces of energy may be harnessed to benefit one’s well-being. Proponents of feng shui believe the forces of energy known as “chi” may be used to good effect in many arenas of life, including one’s home environment. The general notion is that literally making space for effective flow of this energy leads to happiness, success and even financial good fortune.

Figuring it would be child’s play to get some quick tips on “chi”-friendly housekeeping, I dropped into the public library and returned home with enough tomes on the topic to completely clutter my dining room table. This did not bode well.

Neither did the conflicting advice. For instance, the book “Feng Shui for Dummies” recommends hanging a mirror behind the kitchen stove if it is located in an inauspicious position. Reading this, I frowned to think of all the energy it would take to keep that mirror clean of grease spots. It didn’t look like this was going to cut down on housework.

Fortunately, I turned to “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui,” which advised me that, “modern feng shui is plagued with misconceptions. These misunderstandings include the use of mirrors.”

Phew, I could dismiss the mirror worry. But reading on, I ran head-on into a feng shui problem that runs rampant in Maine – and at my house, too: the lack of a sidewalk or path leading from the street to my never-used front door. According to “Feng Shui for Dummies,” by using our side doors as main entrances, we Mainers “may receive less income and have fewer helpful friends in [our lives] than [we] deserve,” thanks to the fact that we are not welcoming “chi” in through our front doorways.

There is a “sidewalk cure”: building a new sidewalk from the front door to the street. Realizing this would encourage the inflow of “chi” but the outflow of cash, I threw up my hands and said, “‘chi’ whiz!”

I noticed that by packing up the feng shui books to return to the library, I felt a certain energy surge. Could it be that by saying “phooey” to feng shui problems – not to mention the clutter of the books about it – some important energy was beginning to flow?