Do you ever feel as if a room, arranged a certain way, can automatically make you feel more calm and peaceful? I spend a lot of time carefully arranging furniture in order to make my spaces feel like home. Sometimes it takes a lot of shuffling to get things right. Sometimes even tiny changes can make a big difference, like how I changed the position of my yoga mat last December and suddenly loved my practice again.
This summer, we did a bit of rearranging in our house since it was torn apart anyway. We shifted the living room around, bringing the bookshelves down from our room. In the bedroom, we moved my office area to the old book area, and brought our exercise equipment to the old office area. It all seemed like a good idea.
Something didn’t feel right, however. I didn’t really like the way my desk felt in the new location. It worked. It was practical. But it didn’t feel peaceful. Additionally, the exercise equipment area was basically an unusable part of the room. We have three sets of equipment there: an old Nordic Track that Jason keeps even though he only uses it about once every 18 months, a body weight strength training incline machine, and a combo elliptical/recumbent bike. The latter two were mine, but over time I’ve come to realize that my body no longer tolerates heavy strength training (something about PCOS and hormones), and as ever my feet don’t handle ellipticals. No matter what weight I’m at or which elliptical I use, I go numb within ten minutes of using it. This is apparently a common problem for some people and there’s not much you can do about it. In any case, that means that the elliptical/bike never gets used, nor does the incline machine.
We decided to sell off or give away the two pieces of my equipment. No point in having them clutter up our room, right? And that’s when I decided to rearrange. I hauled out the three exercise machines and moved my office area back to where it had been six months ago, then shoved the machines where my desk had been until we can get rid of them. After we clear up that space, we’ll decide what to do with it. In the meantime, I felt an immediate peace on moving my desk back. Instead of being flanked on one side by a filing cabinet, it butts up against a window and allows me a nice view outside. When I type, I look out over my reading area rather than my bed. The electrical lights from the computer are all hidden/lessened at night when I’m trying to sleep. The whole setup just feels right.
I love when you finally snap everything into place, to give a room a feeling of lightness and sense of home. There’s still a lot of work to do in other parts of the house – the living room in particular will have to eventually shift around – but it’s nice to have another little piece of the house feeling good again.
The Zen Leaf 
I love that mug in the picture! It’s awesome it has Tetris on the side.lol. I dig moving stuff around it certainly change the way a room feels. For me it’s the lamps and chairs anytime I love those the whole place seems completely different.
LikeLike
Go a search for “tetris god” and you’ll find a college humor video that still cracks me up to this day. This particular mug reminds me of that video, which is why I had to get it!
LikeLike
Ok I will certainly do that it really takes me back.lol
LikeLike
I 100% agree that arrangement of living space can have an impact on state of mind. For the first three years of having children, I allowed their toys in my living room. It drove me crazy. All the time. I finally moved them all downstairs (we have a tri-level) and it made such a difference. I now allow no toys in my living room. Much better.
LikeLike
Now that my boys are teens, they pretty much leave everything everywhere again. When I tell them I need the downstairs to stay cleaned up, Ambrose argues that he’s happier and feels better when his stuff is all in random places. I tell him good, he can do that (within reason) in his own room, but he doesn’t have to be in the house 24/7 so the downstairs is off-limits for random junk.
LikeLike
We have to maintain space for ourselves. The space we live in so much more than they do.
LikeLike
Organizational peace. It can be difficult to achieve depending on a house’s layout and the furniture you have. Sometimes, you do have to get new furniture. But once you find it, it is such a fantastic feeling.
LikeLike
Especially when you have junk furniture that all needs replacing but you can’t afford to do so, sigh…
LikeLike
Unfortunately our house is so small that we are limited in the rearranging we can do. And all our furniture is all from neighbors and friends. And definitely need replaced.
LikeLike
Nearly all our furniture is “inherited,” by which I mean it came from family castoffs or left behind in the previous house we bought. Most of the rest is thrift store finds. A couple of the beds are newish IKEA things with cheap mattresses. I’m trying to think over the house and yeah we’ve gotten to the point where everything is so old and worn and hand-me-down that a lot of it needs to be replaced, when we just can’t afford to replace it. Oh well. Eventually.
LikeLike