When we first moved into our current home, about 5 years ago, I felt both elated and terrified at this new thing I was lucky enough to be able to move into and design and decorate. As a designer, I've always felt a lot of pressure to make sure my home fits into a mold that will appeal to many people, photograph well, be beautiful, etc. 

It's a real "First World" problem, I'll be the first to admit. But I want to be honest about this because I don't think designers often are. 

Let's talk specifically about my living room. The home had already been beautifully renovated, and so we were starting with a very pretty blank slate. But I needed to put my own stamp on it.

I felt very intimidated by this task. I fretted a lot about what I could do to make it better and make it mine... ahem, I mean ours; unfortunately, my husband has opinions too. 😉 I was not thinking so much about what I, or we, wanted for the room but instead, I was thinking largely about how others would perceive it. And therefore how they would perceive me. 

Those feelings stifle creativity. I was too concerned with others' opinions and less concerned about what I wanted from the space at large. What I should have been most focused on was how I wanted my living room to feel when I was in it, and how I could make it reflect our family. 

Let's look at a shelf-olution of those big long shelves, which was the part of the room I felt most stumped by at first. 

Here is a snapshot of move-in day. You know, move-in day? A day where you forget to eat or sit down and your kids binge screens and only eat chips, and everything is everywhere and you question all of your life choices? That was this day...

That picture is all of our furniture from our most recent U.S. home just thrown in a space that it wasn't designed for. It was okay-ish but not great. 

The long white shelves span the length of the entire room. They felt intimidating to me from day one. More than excited I felt this pressure to make them immediately perfect, which I realize now is very silly. 

I had some ideas, but those shelves are over 16 feet long and the height of each one was quite short. I couldn't really get any art to fit in there unless it was small. Small art felt strange because they are so high just so flipping long. As far as books go, I love decorating with them! But we digitized most of our physical books about 3 moves ago when we left Canada. We've moved a lot in our relatively short marriage of 14 years. Anyway, I didn't want to go buy a bunch of thrift store books when I wasn't really sure that was the look I wanted. 

Because we purchased a renovated house, I did not have the budget to immediately spend what I wanted on new furniture, lamps, shelf decor etc. I actually think this is ideal when you move into a new home, but at the time I was anxious to at least get those shelves how I wanted them. This is my work after all! I must be perfect and have a perfect home at all times, right?! 

Again this is a silly self-inflicted notion, but I didn't want to wait. I wanted my shelves Instagram-worthy right away. 

I styled them as I could with what I had, and continued to dream and scheme what I actually wanted them to look like. (Again this felt more anxiety-inducing than liberating at the time. If I could talk to that Val now, I'd tell her to chill.) 

_{The shelves were 'meh' but my plant game was pretty strong at this point} 

Eventually, I decided to hire a handyman (because we are not DIY-ers) and have the top shelf removed. This was a terrific idea! Now I had an art ledge and this was MUCH easier to style than all 3 squatty shelves. 

_{An art ledge is born, but far from complete}

Everything in the room at that point felt a bit too small scale. All the stuff on the shelves, and the furniture. 

Time moved on, as it does, and gradually over a few years, I have been able to transform this room to function better for our family while adding layers of pattern and color that reflect us.

Eventually, we replaced our too-small-for-the-room sofa with a very large charcoal boucle sectional and I acquired a lot more plants.

I also designed a custom built-in drinks cabinet and installed my dream Schumacher wallpaper in the adjacent toy room. I've tiled the fireplace wall with subtle salmon and off-white hex tiles. I painted the tv wall black to balance the black drinks cabinet and black and white wallpaper opposite to it. 

These are just some of the changes we've made and they've all happened slowly over several years. Here are some current photos made for our home as an Airbnb listing as we travel the world for a year. 

Looking at these same shelves 5 years later. I love them. They're a little quirky, and imperfect, but they're meaningful. The leaning art pieces I have collected over time since we moved to England. The Picasso, which I picked up at a vintage fair with a friend a couple of years ago, desperately needs to be reframed, but I just haven't bothered. It looks okay and never seems to be a priority. 

I think my satisfaction with the shelves, the living room, and my entire house, is partly a result on the work I've done on myself and my mindset over the last few years. And it's also in part due to a new mindset that has emerged in the world. 

The "wrong shoe theory" is partly responsible, and thanks to whoever made that popular. There is a consensus as of late that we can all just relax. We don't need to strive for perfection. Quirky, eclectic, imperfect interiors can be celebrated too. And when something is a little "off" or imperfect, this makes it more appealing. 

There are, to be sure, plenty of perfect-looking people in perfect-looking houses on every social media channel to make you feel like you should just give up, burn your house with everything in it, and start over. But there are also real people doing real things, with their imperfect shelves that are still insta-worthy. 

Maybe this article makes you roll your eyes at me, and say 'Val, your shelves and your house are perfect.' And I get that perspective. Although I disagree, I think the point is, everyone is just trying their best. We're all striving for good enough, and winning is finding the place where you start caring less about how the world will perceive you and striving more towards what will satisfy YOU most and make you feel satisfied with your home. 

So for all of the designers (and non-designers) out there, who've been striving to make their homes look perfect, to keep up with the Insta-goddesses who dress their children in only the same 3 neutrals their entire house is decorated in, I see you. You and your shelves are doing great. 

Happy designing and happy hosting,