3 Rules of Midwestern Interior Design

I’ll admit it. I don’t know jack about feng shui. I hear about how using feng shui principles when doing your interior design is supposed to achieve some sort of balance that allows life energy to flow and bring peace and harmony to a room. Huh?
I’m not an interior designer, but I do know what works for me. I tend to take a more practical mid-west approach to interior design when I’m putting a room together. These are principles developed after years of family life, and trying to bring peace and balance to my own life.

1. Take Advantage of the Walls

When they build a house, they put these things up to divide the rooms. They’re called walls. Once a wall is in place, it doesn’t move. Everyone who lives in the house knows where it’s at, and they become fairly adept at avoiding it. So, it makes perfect sense to place furniture items in an area where people aren’t likely to be doing much walking; against the wall.
I don’t know about achieving feng shui balance, but it does seem to achieve creating peace.

As a chronic late night person, many’s the night I wander through the house in the dark, heading to bed. With all of the furniture against the wall, I’m usually able to navigate the course with very few problems. Let’s suppose, however, that the furniture wasn’t all against the wall. Instead, the room has been arranged with some pieces pulled into the middle of the room (”Look how it divides the room. It’s like we have two rooms know.”).

So here comes Mr. Late Night, strolling through the dark, only to discover the ottoman that’s in my path. Down I go with a holler and a crash, waking the entire household with all the noise. No balance. No peace. No harmony.

2. Art Should Serve A Purpose

In the 19th century Thoephile Gautier was credited for the term “l’art pour l’art”, which means “art for art’s sake”. While this may be good for an art museum, it doesn’t work so well for my house. For me, art should say something. It should say something like, “I’m a bowl of apples,” or “I’m a pretty house beside a lake”.

Art should be something of interest that people notice (but in a good way, not in an “Oh my gosh, what the *^$*&^# is that” way). If someone has to explain it, it doesn’t go on my wall.
Some interior designers will say that art should be a conversation piece, that it should stimulate discussion. How about this; let’s discuss who the “artist” couldn’t draw a decent face, so he just put speckles and smears on the canvas. One fear is that when my guests leave the painting is still the center of conversation (”Can you believe he actually paid someone for that monstrosity?”)

3. Plants Belong in the Garden

I live a busy life. Between a full-time job, writing, chauffeuring two teenagers, sports and Community Theater, I tend to forget a lot of the things that aren’t high on my priority list. Watering plants is something that tends to be forgotten.

What I have found is, if I can kill it, I probably will. I don’t intend to kill my plants, but it’s inevitable.

So, I have this plant that probably deserves to live, and do its job restoring oxygen to the atmosphere, but the poor thing doesn’t stand a chance with me. With good intentions I start out determined to help it survive. I find a good place with adequate sunlight, I water it a few times, and then I start to forget about it. All too soon it begins to droop. The leaves begin to loose some of their luster. And before long, the poor thing is dead.

I don’t know what feng shui has to say about dead plants, but the only energy I get from them is a sense of guilt for allowing another living thing to die. (It does end up in the compost heap, so at least that’s a good thing.)

While feng shui may work just fine for some people, although I suspect it works best for the people who write feng shui books, it’s not something I really want to spend too much time trying to understand. Instead of feng shui, I tend to go more for “mid-west shui”. Keep stuff out of my path, keep the art recognizable, and don’t bring anything in that I’m responsible for keeping alive. That’s how I achieve peace and harmony in my house.