Imagine an art gallery with its large white walls and comparable small paintings, with lots of white space around them. You stand back, and take in one painting at a time.
You might notice the colours, the composition, how the painting makes you feel overall. Then maybe you walk up closer to a painting to admire the details of the brush strokes and the fine details not visible when you are farther away. You move along the gallery, admiring and appreciating each painting as you come to it.
Now imagine the same art gallery with white walls, filled with paintings all hung side by side, floor to ceiling, with no space in between them. Would it not be harder to appreciate their beauty? Would it not be harder to savour and take in what each piece of art had to offer you?
The same goes for your home.
The space in between and around something is what allows you to fully savour and appreciate the beauty of it.
If there is too many of anything, too many things close together, it takes away from the fully appreciating each object’s beauty.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote in Gift from the Sea:
“For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms. Only in space are events and objects and people unique and significant and therefore beautiful.”
If you are staring daily at a mountain of clutter, you can’t appreciate anything because it’s overwhelming to your senses.
To appreciate beauty, you must create the space for it.
Here is a challenge for you in the next week – decide you are going to take one room in your home to edit, so you can more fully appreciate the beauty of each object / piece of furniture in that room. You don’t even have to give away, throw out or donate anything. Choose some things you really love in that room, and remove the rest for two weeks. Observe how it makes you feel.
Some examples of this could be:
Removing one or two pillows from the couch or bed.
Styling your bookcase and artfully placing photo frames, vases and things you found when travelling among your books. Choose one of two items, plus books for each shelf. (Use Pinterest for inspiration!)
Clearing off all of the bottles of lotions and potions from your bathroom countertop and finding a place for them in a cupboard.
Store away all the items on your kitchen counter tops that you don’t use on a daily basis.
Put away the shoes in the entrance that aren’t wearable in the current season. Clear your desk of paper and non essential items that you don’t use for work everyday.
Remove one piece of artwork on your walls.
Eliminate everything on your nightstand except your current read, a lamp and a glass of water.
Have fun and get ready to create the space to appreciate more beauty in your life.
Love, Bre-An