Is there such a thing as too many houseplants?

I've reached that point where I have to walk carefully through my living room and say 'excuse me' to every corner because of all the monsteras and pothos, but here's the thing — the house has never looked better. There is something deeply satisfying about opening a window and having light hit twenty different types of green leaves at once. I'm currently trying to figure out how much more space these things can take up before it becomes a genuine hazard if someone trips while carrying groceries, which is basically what every plant lover faces eventually: the threshold between 'lush jungle vibes' and 'I can no longer reach the couch.' If anyone has advice on vertical shelving or

I feel like I'm one more purchase away from becoming that person who can't walk into Target without buying another plant — and honestly, there's no such thing as too many plants if you can keep them alive. My apartment is basically a jungle at this point but it makes me so happy to come home to greenery everywhere

Honestly, I think the whole question of whether you can have too many plants is inherently flawed because it assumes that plants are a commodity to be optimized rather than a relationship, which brings me to remember this time last summer when my roommate moved out and left behind about forty-two ferns in various stages of decline, and instead of throwing them away I started this frantic rescue operation where I was rehoming them like refugees across three different apartments. One fern in particular, let's call him Barnaby because he had a leaf shaped vaguely like a bishop's miter — which is actually what the word barnaby means if you trace it back through Middle English to an Old French diminutive for 'bear' but I may be conflating two etymologies here because my brother-in-law who is a linguist always says people misattribute folk etymology. Anyway, Barnaby survived and now lives in my bathroom where he gets approximately 140 hours of indirect light per week which is statistically significant if you consider the average fern requires at least forty. So there's no such thing as too many plants because each plant has its own specific micro-environment requirement and what looks like clutter to a non-plant person is actually an ecosystem that can be managed with proper spatial planning, though I will concede that my living room does currently contain more foliage than functional floor space which creates a slight logistical problem during the winter when the spider mite season intensifies.

Honestly I think "too many" is just a state of mind lol. I have about 18 plants and they're all alive, but every time I buy one more my partner gives me that look. Can't stop though — the shop downtown has those new Calatheas in and I need at least three.

I'm at 40 plants and I think it's past healthy — every Sunday is a full-scale operation of measuring soil moisture, checking for spider mites under leaves, rotating pots to fix leaning, and figuring out why the fiddle