When in doubt rearrange

Last night my friend Kelly made a comment regarding my love for changing things up in my house, although it might have been said with some disdain. It went along the lines of me asking her why she didn't get some object out of the drawer while I was in the shower instead of waiting for me to finish to get it. Her reply was, "I don't know where things are in this house. You're always rearranging things. I can't keep it all straight."

Yes, it was said with disdain and some sarcasm now that I'm looking back on it, but then again the people I live with are always saying the same thing in that very same tone. You'd think that every day they come home they find the rooms have been switched up and what was once Darcy's bedroom is now the kitchen. Please. Every once in awhile I changed things up for variously different reasons and always for the better.

Darcy: "Better for who?"
Me: "Better for whom?"
Darcy: "Not me, that's for sure."

I've always been a change it up for the better kind of gal. In our house growing up our bedrooms were our own domains. We could for the most part do whatever we wanted in our room as long as they were kept clean and tidy. Every six months or so I would move around the furniture for a change in my feng shui as my mood shifted. In between those times I would switch out drawers and rearrange the items in my closet. It was like spring cleaning every three months instead of once a year. My space needed some freshening up just like my life did. I wasn't able to do the same with the rest of the house as it was my mother's domain, but I use to do so in my head.

When I moved to Florida and shared an apartment with my friend Kim I did the same with all of the rooms there except for her bedroom and bathroom. Every few months or so Kim would come home from work to find the living room rearranged, and while it might have bothered her or driven her crazy she usually just shrugged, making a comment every so often about how she had sat down on the bookshelf because that is where the couch use to be. For the most part she let me be, and I happily matched our rooms to my moods or the season or just because.

When I got married and moved into Tom's house I didn't have to do much changing up because I helped him fix up the house after he bought it and we decorated it together. But slowly as time went by and I went from a working woman outside of the home to a SAHM, I got bored with some areas of the house and moved things around to test it. Unlike Kim my family didn't respond as well. Madison, who resists change of any kind, hated it. Darcy always questioned why and Tom would get annoyed when he couldn't find an item that he hadn't bothered to use in years, but that when he had used it it had been in this one place. I ignored all of the whining because the house was my domain. I cleaned it therefore I owned it. Eventually the girls got old enough to bar me from their rooms, although Darcy has shown some signs of inheriting my obsession.

When Madison went off to college I handled it well because I kept rearranging her bedroom in my mind. Unfortunately, she knows me well and made me promise to leave well enough alone, and except for a minor change and a major cleaning job, I have complied. Their bathroom, on the other hand, was not part of the deal.

Two years ago I changed their bathroom. Two years! That's like a lifetime ago. Since Madison has been gone and Darcy showers at the pool every day I have been using that bathroom more. I shower there after the gym and I use the toilet there frequently throughout the day because it is closer than my own bathroom a mere ten steps away. Using that bathroom has made me look at it closer than normal and I started noticing how the rug was stained and how drab the room looked. I decided I would spruce it up some maybe do a holiday theme for Halloween and then Christmas. When my friend needed to go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond I happily followed.

Since I was there in the store I went over to the shower curtains just to see. I spied a shower curtain with birds, something the old shower curtain had, and this bird curtain would match the blues I had in the bathroom and would match the gold of the walls. I put it in my shopping cart just to look at it while I wandered the store, and low and behold, my friend found a rug on clearance that would change the colors, make them pop. So I purchased them along with some towels.

I went home and thoroughly cleaned the bathroom. My husband came home for lunch and noticed me taking down the shower curtain. He inquired if I was going to wash it, and since I was before stuffing it into a closet, I said yes. He left. I decorated. I pulled out the pinks of the curtain and paired it with the blues I already had. The bathroom certainly brightened. I even got to leave up Madison's bird work as it too had pink in it.

A small change, but it made me happy. It livened up my house and it livened up my mood. Needless to say no one else followed that train of thought.

Darcy: "What was wrong with the old way?"
Sydney: "It sure is pink."
Kelly: "I rest my case."

In the meantime there was another rug on clearance that I think I'll buy too just for a time down the road...