I’m not sure how everyone else grew up, but I loved the days I’d come home from school to find my mom in the middle of a cleaning-and-rearranging spree. She’d have our huge rust-colored velour sectional in pieces, cleaning behind everything. The oak coffee table, matching side tables, the “behind-the-couch” table, and my dad’s corduroy lounge chair would all be in new spots, lamps shifted too. And yet—everything still faced our massive wooden box of a TV.
I loved helping move things into their new homes, from living room to den and back again. Over and over, the same furniture became entirely different living spaces.
In Feng Shui, there’s a simple ritual: move 27 things to spark something new. You can even move them (almost) back to the same spots and still feel a shift. Once upon a time (aka the 1980s) people experimented with their homes. Furniture lasted for years, often passed down from family. To have style, you had to be creative.
Now, we live in a social-media-driven world of fast furniture, where “creativity” often means cheap seasonal décor and another set of throw pillows.
But our homes can be so much more. They hold us. They nurture us. Let’s invest the time to move the pieces we love, those we’ve inherited and those we aren;t sure how to use into functional spots. Design isn’t about scrapping everything for a new aesthetic. It’s about digging deep, figuring out what works, and letting go of what doesn’t.
Sometimes, that means rolling up your sleeves and moving the furniture—figuratively or IRL.
xo,
Abby
What you’re describing in the first paragraph is basically what my son comes home to every single weekend. I love doing this when a space starts to feel stagnant and heavy.