In Gretchen Rubin’s book, The Happiness Project, one of the actions she takes is to leave a shelf bare and clean, and not feel the need to fill every shelf with something.
I talk a lot about this with respect to time but I must confess, a physical shelf in my house without nothing sounds like a dream 🙂
But then we reorganised some things, tossed other things and we had TWO shelves free.
The kids had too many stuffed animals on their beds so I put some of them on the bottom shelf and then placed some wooden toys on the top one, mainly for decoration.
It’s not an entirely clear shelf but I can feel how this could become addictive because of that feeling of having the peace of space. It’s a little bit like how I don’t like ornaments in my house because I feel like I can breathe better.