Rearranging

I am a chronic rearranger. Furniture is my most common victim -- I switch some around at least every couple months. For a long time, I used to watch Trading Spaces and other home decor/improvement shows hoping to get inspired and come up with the arrangement that would be the one - the one that didn't tempt me to switch it up weeks later.


R was a little flummoxed by this at first, but now has the resigned air of helping me lest I do something really foolish and really injure myself. Case in point? In my house in North Carolina? I actually moved a couch upstairs by myself by first standing it on end and then lowering the seating part over me and inching up the stairs with it until it was again standing on end and I just lowered it down and pushed it into the room. Actually, that's probably my most impressive arranging feat, but I've never tried to repeat it or beat it, either.



I had rearranged T's room a few weeks ago to give him more room to play in there. But since he never really plays in there and he isn't as crazy about change as I am, he asked us this weekend to switch it back. So I did. And since I was in the mood to rearrange, I tackled our room too. Our bedroom is set up oddly to me, so there are limited ways our furniture will fit. And since neither R nor I have moved past the mismatched furniture stage (read: we are too cheap to shell out for new, matching furniture), it's always interesting to try to make the room and different styles work.

We are an interior designer's nightmare. Then again, being military, we move a lot, and there's comfort in dragging the same old pieces from place to place. It makes the new place seem like home a little faster. And there's way less worry on our part about something getting messed up. Isn't that what we have the kids for anyway?

As I was thinking about how to switch the furniture today and how this might make an interesting blog entry, I wondered if my penchant for rearranging furniture is a way to make all the changes in life seem more ordinary. That, maybe, by introducing constant change, the big changes won't seem so overwhelming. Because this life is full of changes. Full. And no amount of rearranging is going to change that.