About the Author: Xorin Balbes (born July 10, 1957) is an award-winning architectural conservator, designer, philanthropist, and co-owner of the interior and architectural design firm, SoulSpace Home. Xorin is well known for remarkable restorations of several architecturally significant properties. His newest project is the Fred Baldwin Memorial Home, an adaptive reuse project on Maui's North Shore.

Xorin's impressive successions of redesigns and renovations as a real estate developer and interior designer, currently thirty-nine major projects, encouraged him to develop his own philosophy for home design. He calls this process SoulSpace.

Xorin is also the co-founder of the nonprofit organization Global Vision for Peace. The organization's mission is to create awareness and solutions for the burgeoning problem of homelessness; focusing on one person, one family at a time.

Xorin divides his time between Los Angeles and Maui.

Editor's Notes:  I studied Feng Shui for a while and even hired a professional to "do" my apartment, What I came away with was confusion and disappointment. It seemed that no two experts had the same ideas or solutions. SoulSpace is different it exudes common sense over mystical rules. 

I found this book profoundly true. I agree that our living space is an extension of who we are. It should express our joys, beliefs, feelings, and soul. Xorin advises us to examine everything in our house and let go of things that have negative memories, things we really don't have a positive connection with, and things that we have no connection with. 

Maybe I found this book so valuable because I am doing just that. I live in my mother's house as her caregiver, she has Dementia and is nearly wheelchair bound. When she stopped being able to traverse the stairs, she moved upstairs to live in her bedroom suite. Now that her "energy" no longer permeates the downstairs, I am looking around and noticing all the things I hate, or that don't express who I am and who my husband is. We are remodeling, cleaning out, uncluttering. Unfortunately, we don't have mega bucks to go through and replace all the 1980's furniture, but I am refinishing the solid oak dining set that is washed with 1982 blond horribleness. I handy that way and I can upholster, so I might reupholster the ugly white couch. Just thinking about it makes me feel better. The tips in SoulSpace are going to be used and taken to heart.

Publisher: New World Library (September 27, 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1608680371

ISBN-13: 978-1608680375

Available from New World Library, and most retail and online booksellers in print and ebook.

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