Rearranging

I'm not sure what it is about January that makes me crazy. Perhaps it's the letdown after the holidays. Maybe it's the weather that keeps me inside and induces a bit of cabin fever. Could be that I'm just a little bit tetched to begin with. Whatever it is, it seems that about this time in January, I can't stand my surroundings. I feel the urge to purge and the itch to rearrange.

And so it was that when my beloved took our children sledding on Saturday, I found myself in an empty house. I turned on the music and started cleaning. While I was moving the furniture in the family room to vacuum, I had the brilliant idea of rearranging it. In no time at all, my house was a mess. Worse than when I had begun because now I had furniture strung out willy-nilly between three rooms.

I moved the loveseat out of the family room and into the living room and replaced it with a chair and ottoman that had been in the living room. I moved tables and lamps. I grunted and shoved and sweated. I am fairly certain that I scared the dog with all of my grunting, shoving and sweating.

Happy with the family room and how it now seemed bigger, I found myself dissatisfied with the living room. It had too much furniture. This, however, was a problem quickly solved because back in early December, I had finally donated our underused formal dining room furniture. The plan is--apparently someday faaaaaaaar into the future when we've tackled the 3,726 other projects in this (not so) old house--to turn the dining room into a den of sorts where we can casually dine, yes, but also where we can study/craft/read. Right now all that is in the room is a desk/table on loan from my parents, two chairs that used to be in my kitchen, and a television that my husband was offered for free and that he couldn't turn down. Grrr...

(To be fair, the t.v. had been located in the loft and was set up for the kids to use for gaming. However, when we enclosed the loft and turned it into Mary's room, the basement wasn't finished--still isn't--and we couldn't put the t.v. there. So it wound up in our dining room along with our formal furniture. Nice.)

I decided that moving the loveseat into the former dining room made sense. My eldest son, James, thought that his own personal genie had granted his wish when he came home and saw the dining room. He didn't say one word. He just looked around the room with his jaw hitting the floor, grinned from ear to ear, and then came over and gave me a bear hug. It's the little things, y'all.

Seeing everybody's reaction after they came home was fabulous. You would have thought that I had completely redecorated using red velvet and black satin instead of just moving a couple pieces of furniture. Change: the thing my family least loves.

After the last couple of days of getting used to it, everyone seems to be taking the new arrangements in stride. And I have to admit, it's nice to actually use the dining room for something more than a warehouse for crap. The family knows, though, that when I get in a mood like this, nothing is sacred, nothing is safe. I will be burrowing into closets and digging in drawers and Goodwill will be seeing me on the donation side of things for a while.

I think they were all a little nervous about going back to school because they can't be sure what they'll find when they get home. And they're right, you never know what will end up in the back of the van.