The decorating mistake almost everyone makes
There’s a wall of open shelves in my living room where I keep the things I love most. It’s my favorite place to play, and it’s always changing: a new find comes home, a piece rotates back in from a drawer, something gets nudged over to make room.
This week it had started to feel heavy, so I did what I’d tell anyone else to do and took a few things down. Some beautiful painted pottery came off the shelves, along with a ceramic vase and a few candles. Nothing went in their place, and the whole wall came to life. It’s a lesson I keep relearning, and it surprises me every time how much a little emptiness gives back.
When something at home feels off, most of us reach for a new lamp or one more plant. It rarely occurs to us that the room might be asking for less.
My last post was about going inward to find out who you are. Saturday’s Torah reading, Vayera (Genesis 18:1–22:24), turned to the harder part, which is living alongside others once you’ve found it.
Abraham’s story began with leaving his father’s house, and in Vayera he parts painfully from each of his sons. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reads those partings as part of a pattern that goes back to creation itself, where God first divides day from night and sea from land, and only then fills them. “First separate, then connect,” he writes. Elsewhere he describes it as “the carefully calibrated distance that allows us to grow as individuals and create stronger relationships together.”
Healthy space in our homes supports healthy space in our relationships.
Without it we feel cramped, and cramped turns into irritable, and irritable turns into resentful. My shelf reminded me that every object, like every person, needs a little distance to be fully itself.
Feng shui concept: metal deficiency (when nothing gets edited)
Metal is the element of autumn, when trees let go of their leaves without any sentiment about it. In five-element theory it’s also linked to the lungs and to breath, and to the quality of discernment: knowing what matters and releasing the rest. When a home is low on metal, everything gets to stay, and everything starts to look equally important.
Signs of metal deficiency in your space:
Every shelf and surface is full, including the ones you promised yourself you’d keep clear
You move things around instead of moving them out
You keep things “just in case,” even ones you haven’t touched in years
Your favorite objects get lost among the objects around them
How this shows up in life:
Trouble deciding, saying no or finishing what you started
Blurry boundaries, so it’s hard to tell where your needs end and someone else’s begin
What this imbalance teaches: Keeping everything is its own way of avoiding a choice.
There’s no universal answer to what “balanced” looks like. Only you can tell what’s too little,
too much or just right for your space at any given moment.
This week’s experiment: room to breathe
Choose one shelf, mantel or surface you see every day, ideally one that holds things you love. Take everything off and wipe it clean. Then put back fewer pieces than you took off, and leave the gaps empty.
Some of what stays off may be things you genuinely love, and that’s part of the practice: sometimes a favorite piece steps back for the good of the whole. Nothing is gone for good. Tuck those pieces in a drawer and rotate them back in when the shelf is ready for a change.
For the next seven days, resist the urge to fill the gaps with something new, even something better. Each time you pass, notice where your eyes land now. Does anyone else in your home notice the change before you mention it?
Closing insight
In the Kabbalah of Rabbi Isaac Luria, creation begins with an absence: before anything could exist, God withdrew to leave an empty space for the world to fill.
If infinite light had to make room before there could be anything else, a few gaps on a shelf seem like a reasonable place for the rest of us to start.
Make space for the people you love to become more fully themselves.
Forward this post to the friend who buys a new plant every time their living room starts to feel wrong.
