Seriously - I love rearranging the furniture in my house.
Now, to be clear, I don't really love the moving-everything-around part, but I love the rush I get when I get to see and feel a room in a new way. I love it so much that at this point, I think I've rearranged each room in my home that has moveable furniture at least once (much to my husband's chagrin, although he usually comes around once he sees the final change).
The first major rearrangement that happened in our current house happened out of necessity (as rearrangements so often do): our used kitchen table finally reached its wobbly limit and we had to replace it with another table that had been sitting in our small living room/formal-ish dining room ("-ish" because my house is in no way big enough to have anything close to what would be considered a "formal" dining room).
That first rearrangement promptly led to next (as they so often do) because now we had a big unused space in the combo room. We decided--well, I decided and my husband went along with it--to move all of the furniture into the various corners of the room and place a rug in the middle next to our large stretch of windows. All of a sudden, our cramped living room area turned into one large living room. Now, we had a wide-open space where our two kids could play and I had space for my keyboard that had been collecting dust in the basement. Now, the room that location-wise is the heart of our house started beating with a rhythm that was closer to the rhythm of how we wanted to live in our home.
But I wasn't done with the living room yet. About a year after I made that initial major change, I realized that pushing all the furniture to the corners of this huge room was making me feel like I was retreating into a corner when I wanted to relax or take time for myself. Not cool. So, I moved everything away from the walls and into the center of the room. Immediately, the room felt cozier and more inviting, and even though my kids' big play space wasn't there anymore, they found new joy in hiding and playing behind the furniture.
Some of the smallest changes have made the biggest difference (as they so often do - I promise that's my last one of those). For instance, one day I got it in my head to rotate our bed and side tables ninety-degrees from one wall to another. That's it, that's all we did. And to say that it was earth-shattering isn't too much of a stretch. Beforehand, my husband and I had to zig and zag to walk around, and more than once the foot of our bed became what we affectionately called a "shin-destroyer." Now, the room felt bigger, we could move around freely (and safely), and we finally--after a year of living in the house--felt like we could put things up on our walls. It became a space we wanted to be in.
The process of actually changing these room is hard. Moving large furniture takes time and effort and I come out of it sweaty with a sore back. Sometimes (because I do not have a degree in interior design), the changes don't work and I end up moving the furniture back a week--or a day--later, which leads to more sweat and more soreness; but it also leads to me better understanding what works for us and what doesn't. In that sense, the process of change is rarely wasted time - even if I can't see that right away because I'm hot and sore and annoyed.
The changes that do work, though, end up being worth the sweat and the pain. They give me a rush because they make the house even more ours, even more reflective of how we want to live and be. And really, what more can you ask from a change like that?
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