There are two types of people in the world.
There are those who move into a house, place their furnishings around neatly, and barring the occasional tornado or vacuuming session (after which all furniture is carefully replaced precisely into the exact divots it created) there the furniture stays until the Second Coming.
Then there are the restless souls, people like me who rearrange more often than they dust. Furniture, pictures, lamps, curtains, bedspreads… it’s all fair game. Nothing is sacred.
When we first got married, my constant shuffling bothered my husband. Not only did I cause him to stub his toes in the night on the every-shifting constellation of furniture in our house, I also swiss-cheesed the walls with my constant picture rearranging. He resigned himself to toe-stubbing. But he felt pain each time he’d discovered I’d rehung the pictures, again, and made more holes in the wall. (It made perfect sense to me that moving the couch also necessitated moving the picture above the couch, but that connection was not so clear to him. )
Finally we found a solution for the pictures that pleased us both– well, in our bedroom at least. My husband built a narrow shelf 2/3 of the way up our bedroom wall. It’s really only a ledge, just big enough to rest pictures on. The ledge wraps around three walls in our room. Now when I want to rearrange the photos in our bedroom, all I do is take them off the shelf and put some new ones up. No new holes in the bedroom wall! It looks lovely and gives me the versatility I crave.
Oh, and I’d love to hear which kind of person you are– a furniture leaver or a furniture mover?
That is a great idea. I love it. For those of us that don’t have husbands that can build and install shelves (you lucky, lucky duck) IKEA sells wooden picture ledges for 5 dollars. I think that I might put as many holes in the wall trying to hang the darn thing as I would with pictures but I am going to give it a try….. (this also works in kids rooms, it is out of the way for them to get into but provides an easy space to display the volumes of art they produce…)
Girl, I rearrange our livingroom and bedroom furniture every few months!!! LOL I hate it staying the same! Once its moved and clean, I feel refreshed!!!
Furniture leaver. Down to “carefully replaced precisely into the exact divots it created”! 🙂
Furniture mover. And my husband doesn’t get it either 🙂
I live in such a small house I don’t really have much choice! The living room (with dining table) gets rearranged occasionally, but everything else pretty much has to stay the same.
I’m generally a furniture leaver, once I’m happy with something it generally stays there. I think my husband is more of a furniture mover than me. In the two years we’ve lived where we are we’ve only recently moved the exercise bike downstairs, which meant moving chairs about (so bedroom, living room and spare room changed) but since they they have stayed that way. I’m the kind of person who cleans when I feel motivated…I’m not the most house proud, but when you live in a place bigger than needed it’s easy to find places to put stuff rather than carefully planning…The next place is much smaller, and will require us to be tidier or we won’t be able to move around the place without falling over. Not sure we’ll have much room for rearrangement then, other than swapping which side of the room the sofa is.
I’m a leaver, and my husband is a mover. So we have the exact opposite of your situation in our house. However, we do not own a home and have always been crammed into small suites/apartments with our 2 kids, so generally there is not much room for rearranging. I guess I win for now. 😉
I hate moving furniture. It’s a good thing, because the layout of the rooms in this old house is such that there’s generally only one way to arrange stuff.
Furniture leaver…..once I’ve determined the “bestest” spot for each piece after moving it several times! LOL
The ledge idea is a great tip! 🙂
I rearrange OCCASIONALLY. I have a friend who not only rearranges everything frequently, but she also repaints on frequent whims. I’m just too lazy!
My mother used to refer to me as “the movinest girl she ever knew”. I move everything all the time. I love to rearrange, especially when I am in the hormonal stage. It seems to recharge me and make me like my living space more.
I’m a leaver! Though, it may have to do with the fact that my house is so small that there really isn’t any other way to move the furniture. 🙂
I’m a mover. It’s a good thing too, because we’re military!! A year here, a year there, and I’m as happy as a clam!! Also, we are always having babies to mix things up a bit as well. It’s amazing how much furniture I manage to move around myself when I’m in trimester three!! Got to get it done… you know?
And yes…it makes me so happy to nail holes in the walls. I guess it’s like staking my claim. So what! I just fill ’em in later. No biggie!
Thanks for the great blog.
Leaver – sort of. We’ve been married ten years and lived in five places, so I get my kicks out of moving furniture from state to state and of course when a baby comes into the family or when we are yet again getting ready to sell the house or for the Christmas season! So maybe that makes me a mover. But I don’t move pictures – I am just happy to have them up once we get moved in!
What a great idea (I want to see a picture!) I’m a furniture mover, too.
The picture shelf idea is also good for displaying photos in a hallway.
As for me, I’m not a furniture mover, but since we move frequently due to my husband’s job, I am forced to find new arrangements for our furniture frequently.
I’m a leaver, for sure! Neat idea!
I have a tiny house but keep coming up with new ways to shuffle things around to ‘maximise the the space’. Apart from in my bedroom, which features a ginormous bed that I am physically unable to move, which means that I have to make do with creatively draping bits of fabric over it instead. The dog likes this, as it means that she has lots of stuff to nest in.
Furniture leaver… I’m anal, plus I really don’t want to meet the family of dust bunnies that live under my furniture…
Great idea with the pictures!
I am so a leaver. Once it’s found it’s home, it stays.
Your shelf sounds lovely. Our bedroom is so small, we don’t have for space for something like this.
BTW – we accepted our adoption referral.
Furniture leaver. Don’t mess with my perfectly placed furniture.
Jamie
I am a leaver.
Hubby is a mover.
So once a year or so, things get shifted around.
There are things that in 9 years we have not moved.
By nature I’m a mover. In some rooms I can indulge the rearranging impulses, but in other rooms, space and fixture limitations completely inhibit it. In the living room, for ex., there is exactly one place where the couch will fit, unless of course you count smack dab in the center of the room… which I’ve considered, just for variety!
I am a Mover. I remember my grandmother would rearrange every 4-6 months When you ask her why, she said “So People would know i cleaned”. Hubby has resigned himself to it as long as he does not ahve to be a part of the process. MIL is definitily a leaver. She tells stories of her step Mom moving furniture.
I’m a leaver. Usually. Yet in our tiny house right now I keep having to find new ways to make things work, so I’ve moved things around more in the last year then ever before. My roommate in college was a mover. I would come home from work and she wouhd have our room compeletly rearranged and would apologize about how she had a great idea and couldn’t wait. And I would think “What, I get the benifit of a new layout without the work, and you’re SORRY?” I guess I’m too lazy to move things around.
That’s a great idea! I’m a leaver but my best friend is a mover so understand the type. 🙂
I guess I’m a leaver…once I find a place for the furrniture, I’m not likely to change it much…
A mother of 8, or was I mistaken reading that?? How do you do it?? I only have 2, and right now I am….well I’m a very frustrated Mom….
that’s a great idea. i’m a big time furniture mover. at least i was until we moved into this house. this house leaves little room for a change of heart. my bedroom mostly has to stay the same but the living room gets a regular changing.
OCD housewife! Move it and I won’t sleep for a week!
I leave it, until I have to move one thing, then I must move another and another and another………….
Oh, I’m a leaver. Those divots, they’re there to stay! 🙂
Hehe… I love to rearrange, but then again, we do move every few years (or less). So, I guess we really rearrange things. lol!
I love the idea of the shelves.
I’m a leaver. The only thing I’ve moved (aside from childproofing reasons) is one bookshelf – and that was because we HAD to move it to fit the Christmas tree in, and then I realized it looked better in the new spot so I never moved it back.
We just move, lol. Five moves in seven years – although it often takes a year or so to get the furniture layout just right – and then we move again!
I probably shouldn’t even mention this, but you reminded me of a summer job my brother had several decades ago. He did yard work for a friend of my mother’s. His work mostly consisted of digging up shrubs and various plants and moving them around the yard to a new location. She took being a mover to a whole new height! Tell your husband that I am sorry if I gave you any ideas.
I’m a furniture mover–on a cyber template (search Better Homes and Gardens’ site, http://www.bhg.com, for their “Arrange-a-Room” feature). In the physical world, I’m a furniture leaver. As dad in law always said, work smarter, not harder.
Someday I’ll have a house, and furniture I care about. Maybe it will change. I do shuffle pictures, because I’m a photographer and presentation is everything to me.
Oh, I am for sure a mover! There is little else in life which is within my control. My furniture, however, is one thing I can change and re-arrange to my hearts content. Of course, my husband has also experinced his fare share of stubbed toes… don’t ya think it’s a small price to pay for a happy wife!? 🙂
Twice a year, in the spring and the fall, I move most everything as I purge the house.