Wabi-Sabi: Finding the Beauty and Peace in Ordinary Things

By Robyn Griggs Lawrence
Published on January 31, 2011
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Through the lens of wabi-sabi, everything in a home — from a makeshift vase to the attic windows — presents an opportunity to see beauty, because beauty is ordinary.
Through the lens of wabi-sabi, everything in a home — from a makeshift vase to the attic windows — presents an opportunity to see beauty, because beauty is ordinary.
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Enjoy the beauty of a work in progress, such as this wagon of potted plants waiting to be places.
Enjoy the beauty of a work in progress, such as this wagon of potted plants waiting to be places.
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Wabi-sabi honors clean, minimalist spaces as well as organic materials and nature.
Wabi-sabi honors clean, minimalist spaces as well as organic materials and nature.
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Kate NaDeau’s cozy Maine home epitomizes the literally down-to-earth style of wabi-sabi. 
Kate NaDeau’s cozy Maine home epitomizes the literally down-to-earth style of wabi-sabi. 
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Wabi-sabi is design that appreciates and purposefully seeks out simple, well-loved additions.
Wabi-sabi is design that appreciates and purposefully seeks out simple, well-loved additions.
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These speckled quail eggs are beautiful in their simplicity.
These speckled quail eggs are beautiful in their simplicity.
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Well-trod floorboards and worn furniture are perfect examples of beauty in the everyday.
Well-trod floorboards and worn furniture are perfect examples of beauty in the everyday.
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Embrace wabi-sabi with items that honor history.
Embrace wabi-sabi with items that honor history.
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Enjoy the feel of cupping a well-shaped mug.
Enjoy the feel of cupping a well-shaped mug.

I arrived at Kate NaDeau’s sweet, rustic stone house on a hillside near Belfast, Maine, while scouting houses to feature in Natural Home magazine (a sister magazine of MOTHER EARTH NEWS), which I led for 11 years. That day I had gone to see Kate’s gardens, bountiful with vegetables, flowers and herbs that she sells at the farmers market, but found I couldn’t stop asking about her stone cottage.

Kate and her former husband, both disciples of back-to-the-landers Scott and Helen Nearing, had placed every stone with their own hands over the course of five years. The home was appointed with cozy, flea market furniture and dumpster finds. Kate’s 1930s stove had narrow rust rivulets in its chipped and yellowing enamel, but it worked well enough for regular meals as well as some heavy canning and preserving. The wooden dining chairs didn’t match, and an armchair near the woodstove had seen better days. Herbs and flowers hung drying from beams overhead. I wanted to sit down and spend the rest of the afternoon at the kitchen table, helping Kate snap beans. I loved her casual, frugal decorating style. Nothing was new, and everything had a story and a reason for being in her home. I asked about a rusty grate hanging on the wall.

“Oh,” she said, “that is so wabi-sabi.”

Wobby What?

Kate described wabi-sabi as the Japanese philosophy of appreciating things that are imperfect, primitive and incomplete. This ancient concept of revering gracefully weathered, rusty things exactly matched my own proclivities. Finally, I would have a word I could use when my mother asked whether I was going to paint those old wooden French doors or replace the 1940s enamel table I work on as a desk. I delved more deeply and found that décor was wabi-sabi’s surface — just one facet of a philosophy that promotes attention, generosity, respect and reverence.

Intimately tied to Zen Buddhism and the Japanese Way of Tea, wabi-sabi is a subtly spiritual philosophy that sees home as a sanctuary — a simple place devoid of clutter, disturbance and distraction. Through wabi-sabi’s lens, everything in a home — from the breakfast table to the attic windows — presents an opportunity to see beauty, because beauty is ordinary.

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