A Room Reimagined

I find a little spring cleaning and furniture rearranging is good for the soul of any house. Too often our homes, like our lives, fall into little ruts because things have always been arranged a certain way. One of my favorite bloggers rearranges the furniture--and sometimes whole rooms--in her house on a seasonal basis in order to keep the creative juices flowing. I always thought that a little eccentric, but now I think she's on to something.

This past weekend, Kevin's parents arrived for their annual three-week visit, and to accommodate them we needed to turn our seldom-used "study" into a guest room. This necessitated moving the trundle bed out of Colin's room, where it has been since we moved into this house, and down to its new home in the guest room. I had always liked having that bed there for those sleepless new-baby nights and because it was home to a beautiful handmade quilt. But Colin is no longer a new baby--in fact, he just turned 16 months old!--and there are lots of ways to showcase a quilt. And come to find out, I love the new space that opened up once we moved all of that heavy furniture out of his tiny room.



Where the bed once stood, I had room for an Ikea armchair, which had never been sat in before because it was tucked inside a a cramped corner, and a kid-sized rocker I picked up for $15 at a rummage sale. Suddenly, I had an airy little reading nook for all of that reading my boy and I are doing these days.

Then I looked around the room for other furniture that had outlived its usefulness and found a bookshelf that we had always used to store extra cloth diapers. But Colin doesn't need as many diapers as he once did, and what he does need easy fits inside the vintage changing table the were intended for. So I emptied the bookshelf, moved it over to the other side of the room, and filled it with the toys that we rotate out of the living room every couple of weeks so that Colin doesn't get bored with them. Come to find out, now that those out-of-rotation toys are no longer jammed on our living room shelves, Colin actually plays with them more--and for the first time, he can play with them in his own bedroom.

I like the new arrangement so much I will probably keep it this way for the whole summer: an open, airy room for an open, airy season. I can always change it back for the winter months when curling up under a quilt with a good book is how you'd want to use the space. And without turning this into one of my massive projects, I may try giving this treatment to other sick rooms in my house and see what kinds of new spaces I can imagine ...