“All you need to: feel happier and healthier, lower your blood pressure, increase your creativity, improve your air quality, soften a space, enliven a corner and generally making your home look nicer is this: live with some plants”

“what is so scary about a little green plant?”

Image courtesy of Carolina

This week’s happy house rule is all about challenging you to decorate with plants and add live plants to your home. Before you tell me about why you can’t, keep reading and be inspired…and hey, I challenged you – are you really telling me you can’t have a teeny green living plant in your home?

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I recently helped a couple move into a new home. In addition to decluttering and letting go, they also asked me to make recommendation for layouts and tips for making their rental into a happy healthy home. While they followed almost every suggestion they kept blocking me on one of the simplest: adding green plants. This was especially important for them as their space needed softening and one of them had a dust allergy. When confronted as to why they hadn’t bought a plant they said it was that they would forget to water them and that they had black thumbs.

It made me realise that a lot of us are not decorating with plants for some fear that we will kill it or it’s too much hassle… and I personally hate the idea that something so wonderful, healthy, inexpensive and easy to look after (create a new habit it takes 10seconds every week) isn’t found in all homes.

I explained all the benefits: clean air, good energy, lowered blood pressure, more creativity, pretty… and recommended these two plants: Golden Pathos and Fiddle Leaf – because they thrive on being ignored, not watered too much and thus are virtually unkillable…and of course they are great for air purifying and purrrty.

Still not convinced, self-confessed plant killer Anna Dorfman over at Door16 has had her Fiddle Leaf Tree (pic by Anna below) for over two years “and it’s still alive. Miracles!”

So this week our happy house rule is ALL about decorating with plants and challenging you to buy and look after even a teeny one, ask the place you bought it from what amount of light it needs and how often it needs to be watered and how much + pop a reminder to water it in your phone calender on repeat. It’s the simple…it seems so small but the benefits are so huge and plants really do go a long way in making a happier healthy home.

If you’re still toeing the line please stay tuned for more blogposts later this week and in the meantime, be inspired by Stephanie Stamatis (below) and at least put a piece of plant in water in your home today.

Images by Stephanie Stamatis: 1 2 3

Go on, we challenge you to decorate with plants!

PS if you follow you us on instagram or twitter tag us @apartmentdiet with #happyhouserules #plantchallenge and show us how this challenge inspired you or how you use plants to decorate…we’ll be featuring our favourites throughout the week.