Just Like My Grandma Used to Do

One of my favorite things to do growing up was to rearrange the furniture in my room. It didn't involve much except shuffling books off of bookshelves (I had three which also served as a backboard to my bed), moving all my ceramic goods into a safe haven, rolling the twin bed and occasionally removing the desk drawer items and clearing the top of the desk in order to move it. My parents never discouraged it, and in fact my mom said I got it from my grandmother who loved rearranging furniture and living spaces as well.

With the upcoming addition to our family, conversations have been floating in the air about how to free up space for the baby's room. Ordinarily, a task such as this would be simple considering we have three bedrooms, but upon consolidation of our stuff after I moved in, we came out with seven couches total. I know that's a lucky number but think about it... SEVEN couches and we only have ONE living room. On the bright side, entertaining was easy and everyone always had a seat-- but on the flip side, our house a walking nightmare of couches galore (couch in the guest room, couch in the study, couch in our bedroom, and four couches in the living room/kitchen).

Unable to sell a set of the couches for a reasonable price on Craig's List (the LA market for couches is pretty lousy considering a ton of dealers are on there selling their new couches for $200), we left everything as was and didn't consider much until the baby's room became a topic of conversation. We knew we had to move some stuff and unload ourselves of some couches, but how we were not sure.

And then upon returning from Utah where we spent Christmas, something came over my husband. Two days after we returned, he awoke from a nap in the afternoon and declared very succinctly his plan to clean the house. I thought this meant tidying things up a bit (having a lot of couches lends to clean laundry sitting there often), but instead he started moving furniture around the rooms. To my disbelief, he was talking about clearing our living space of some couches (which we had been talking about for months but never gotten around to) and using the guest room to store some of our extra stuff. I immediately jumped on board to help but being pregnant, I wasn't able to do much except cheer him on and provide him with my expertise on proper placement of furniture (as I do have years of experience) which meant him moving things back and forth (only twice... maybe?) to get the right position for every item. It was quite a task but in the end, it was an amazing face lift to our living room in mere hours!

And then, to top it off, we found a beautiful dining room set from World Cost Plus Market, where we had $500 bucks of free money (courtesy of our favorite talk show host). We quickly listed our existing dining table on Craig's List, got a response within literally five minutes, and a buyer within another hour and a day later, and a sweaty and handy Andy later, we had ourselves a brand new dining table set!

And I'll tell you a secret, I can't wait to get home now! I always loved our home but now it feels JUST right for the new year. Not too spacious, not too cluttered, but JUST right. Now I'm ready to continue making goals both spiritually and physically, ready to execute on those goals in our new home, ready to host our family for some holidays, and ready for the changes left to update our study into a baby room (a project for another day... small steps...)

It's a great way to start the year and it has made me so deliriously happy to be home! I love our new living room and our new dining room! I can't wait to see what we pull out of our pockets for the baby's room!