Updated October 16, 2021 by admin
There are a surprising amount of actual philosophies dedicated to helping decide where to place things in your home. The most commonly known is “feng shui”. Taken literally, feng shui means “wind water”. But in the context of interior decoration, it is more accurately translated as “geomancy”—the magic of the earth.
The idea behind feng shui is to find the balance between two forces: The force of the human observer’s taste, and the force of earth’s energies. This is highly relevant to deciding where plants go in your house since that decision is as much motivated by your own personal sense of aesthetics as the plant’s health.
House plants should mostly go in your kitchen and your living room. You want your plants to go somewhere that you will frequently go through, and also has ample sunlight for them. They should not go in your bedroom unless they are specific kinds of plants that specialize in oxygenating a room.
The reason you want to put plants into rooms you use frequently is because this will make it far easier for you to remember to water them. No matter how much you love your plants in theory, if you do not place them in your path, you run the risk of neglecting them.
Besides, it has been proven that plants grow faster, stronger, and healthier when they receive positive attention from their caregivers. They are essentially green, immobile pets. So do not neglect them.
Using Feng Shui To Place Plants
As stated earlier, feng shui seeks to balance your needs with your plant’s needs. But that is only the practically-minded interpretation of feng shui; in reality, feng shui is about balancing energy. According to feng shui, plants have essential, life-giving energy. When placing them, consider where you want the most growth to happen.
This is another good reason to place your plants in a living room or dining room. The growth energies of the plants will amplify the growth that happens between and among your family. Just be sure to actually use your living room and dining room for living and dining. Otherwise, you will never reap the benefits of these energies.
If you wish to use these growth energies to stimulate personal growth rather than communal growth, you can place your plants in a home office or home gym. Just be sure to place them respectfully. If you surround a desk with plants when your focus is always on the technology at the desk, the plants will notice and feel used.
That is one of the essential elements of feng shui: The process is essentially personifying whatever you are placing in your home. The thing about it is that the personification is as much about the thing you are placing as who is placing it. The objects in your home, even the plants, are both projectors and mirrors.
If you place a plant selfishly or treat it selfishly, you will get a plant that reflects that selfish energy. But if you place and keep a plant with love, then the energy it gives back to you will reflect that love.
In today’s world, it can be hard to be so altruistic as to love a plant. Plants do not make you any money. They do not go out of their way to entertain you. They cannot even talk to you about your problems when you are feeling bad. They offer patience and peace, but those gifts are lost to the impatient and wrathful.
Related Questions
Why Not Put Plants In The Bathroom?
On the surface, this seems like a good idea, as there are few rooms in the house you will visit more frequently than the bathroom. A kitchen can be under used if you order food all the time, and even a living room can be neglected if you are very busy or do not have guests. But a bathroom will always be used eventually.
The only drawback is that many people’s bathrooms lack sufficient sunlight. Even if your bathroom has a window, it will either have a thick curtain or a privacy hedge blocking a portion of the sunlight that can reach it.
Why Not Put Plants In The Bedroom?
This is not a hard and fast rule. In fact, there are as many exceptions to the rule as there are codifiers of the rule, so it can be hard to make a convincing case out of it. But here is the reasoning behind it being a rule at all: The way most plants breathe will result in them negatively affecting your sleep if they are in your room.
You see, plants breathe in a weird way. You have probably heard of the fact that they breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, meaning they clean much of the air. But what not everyone knows is that this only happens during the day. At night, this reverses so they breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide.
This can have a range of health effects on you, most of them negative. In the best-case scenario, it will make your sleep less restful. In the worst-case scenario, it can make you physically ill. It all depends on the number of plants you have and the size of the plants. The more you have the worse it is.
However, there are plants that do not do this. The Japanese Peace Lilly, for instance, is popular precisely for the fact that its breathing cycle never changes, meaning it always provides rooms with oxygen.
In Conclusion
Plants are easy to place when you know both their needs and your own needs. Their needs are sunlight, water, and love. These are very similar to your own needs. The big difference between you and them is that they cannot leave one room and go to another in order to fulfill a need. They need you for that.
So, place your plants somewhere you will bump into them. Place them like you were placing a guest that you not only needed to be courteous to but wanted to be courteous to.
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