Why I started MyShelfie: the question that changed everything

It started with a question I kept getting asked, over and over, in house after house.

"Where did you get that?"

For a few years, I was deep in the world of real estate — buying, remodeling, and selling homes. I staged every one of them myself, which meant I was constantly sourcing décor: plants, pots, objects, things for shelves and mantels and kitchen counters. Not because I was trying to build a brand, but because I had a very clear vision for what I wanted these homes to feel like, and I couldn't find everything I needed in one place.

My aesthetic was — and still is — clean, minimal, modern. Every house I worked on was designed to feel like a calm and peaceful sanctuary. Somewhere that brought the outdoors in. Natural textures on the shelves. Easy, low-maintenance landscaping that looked effortlessly zen. The kind of space that makes you exhale the moment you walk through the door.

 

THE QUESTION THAT KEPT COMING UP

Buyers would walk through, stop at a shelf or a room corner, and ask where something came from. Agents asked. Neighbors asked. Friends who came over to see the latest project asked. It happened so consistently that eventually I stopped being surprised by it and started paying attention to what it was telling me.

People didn't just like what they saw — they wanted it for their own homes. They were looking for the same thing I had been looking for when I sourced it: something that felt considered, natural, and calm. Something that fit a modern aesthetic without feeling cold or impersonal. Something alive.

I wasn't just staging houses. I was creating a feeling — and it turned out a lot of people were looking for exactly that feeling in their own homes.

 

WHERE THE PLANTS CAME IN

Plants were always central to the aesthetic, and that part comes naturally to me. I grew up with horticulture in my family — my father built a wholesale nursery from the ground up, the kind of place where you develop an instinctive understanding of plants: what they need, how they grow, what they do to a space when you put them in the right spot. Growing up around that, I learned early that a living thing on a shelf does something no inanimate object can. It makes a room feel inhabited. It brings something breathing and changing and quietly alive into an otherwise static space.

When I was staging homes, plants were never an afterthought. They were often the first thing I thought about. A trailing plant in the right pot on the right shelf can anchor an entire room's feeling. And because of my family background, I understood where to find them, how to select them, and how to care for them in a way that most décor brands simply don't.

 

WHY MYSHELFIE EXISTS

I started MyShelfie because the gap I kept running into while staging homes — the place where a certain kind of curated, natural, minimal décor should have existed and didn't — turned out to be a gap a lot of other people were feeling too. The "where did you get that?" question was the market research I didn't know I was doing.

MyShelfie is the brand I wish I could have shopped when I was building those homes. Plants that are interesting and carefully sourced. Pots that have real design intent behind them. Objects and crystals that add texture and meaning without cluttering a space. Everything chosen with the same question in mind: does this make a home feel more like a sanctuary?

 

WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT THE SPACES WE LIVE IN

I spent years walking into homes and transforming how they felt — sometimes dramatically, sometimes with surprisingly small changes. What that experience taught me is that the environments we live in affect us more than we realize. A calm space makes for a calmer day. A shelf that feels intentional gives you a moment of quiet satisfaction every time you look at it. These aren't small things. They compound.

I also learned that most people have better instincts about their own spaces than they give themselves credit for. They know what they like — they just sometimes need the right pieces to work with. That's what I want MyShelfie to be: not a prescription for how your home should look, but a curated selection of pieces that help you build the space you already have in your head.

Clean. Calm. A little bit alive. Yours.

That's what I was building in those houses. That's what I'm building now.

Founder of MyShelfie

 

If this is the feeling you're going for in your own home, I'd love for you to explore what we've built at myshelfie.shop. Every piece is chosen with the same question in mind: does this make a home feel more like a sanctuary?