Micro-decorating as micro-dosing

If you follow trends in well-being, you've likely heard of "microdosing" – the consumption of tiny amounts of psychedelics like LSD for their supposed therapeutic benefits.

The trend began as early as 2010 in Silicon Valley, where it became associated with heightened concentration. It recently edged closer to mainstream with the publication of A Really Good Day, Ayelet Waldman's account of her personal experiment with microdosing and how it changed her life.

While I claim no microdosing expertise and have yet to read Waldman's book, I do know firsthand that there's a powerful equivalent in the world of design. When it comes to the spaces and objects around you, there's no need for a total overhaul of your surroundings when you're feeling blue. Instead, a tiny dose of change, so small you hardly notice it at first, can be the gateway to bigger transformation within.

It's a truth that the shelter magazines don't want you to know. They'll bamboozle you with palatial rooms filled with esoteric tchotchkes, in the hopes that you'll run desperately into the arms of their advertisers.

When you realize how small a change is really necessary, it frees you from thinking a state of interior well-being is out of reach.

Here's how I know. Two years ago, I was visiting one of my favourite dealers, Atomic Design, and became riveted by a mid-century side table. It had a compact hexagonal top made of white marble – a seductive start – but the legs were what truly floored me: six muscular iron strands, each making a hairpin turn, then meeting at the centre of the base with a decorative flourish:

I couldn't take my eyes off that meeting point. Not only did the strands bend outwards again, there was a seventh pointing straight up. The form reminded me of the exuberant spray of a fountain or the childhood thrill of a fistful of licorice.

In the days and weeks that followed, the table kept reappearing in my head like an especially persistent pop song. Finally, I just had to know if it was still available and I rushed to Atomic to find out. And it was.

Something had held me back when I first saw it. It was too glam for my place, I probably thought, too beguiling, too unattainable. But it waited for me until I was ready to say yes.

On a whim, I named her Georgie Girl. And in the two years she's been a presence in my living room, she's challenged me to be the kind of person who owns a table like this. She's delighted visitors. She's slowly remade the interior she inhabits into something I couldn't have expected or imagined.

The great thing about the interior version of microdosing is that it doesn't even have to involve acquiring anything new. It can simply be the reconfiguring of what you already have.

We'll look at more of those design moves in the weeks to come.