Monday, February 2, 2009

Freetail Therapy


























With my husband out interviewing for jobs and the idea of unemployment still settling in, I learned somethng about myself--this is when I normally shop. And its not for the reasons that others might seek retail therapy--I'm not looking to spend money or buy some wonderful thing that will make me feel good about myself. This is when I go into super-bargain-hunting mode, because when I find that incredible deal or two I feel like I've regained a measure of control. Well, I'm glad for the opportunity to understand that part of myself, but it still didn't keep my hands busy while hubby was interviewing and the little one was napping. So I focused my attention on something in the house that has always bothered me--our family room. This room is not terrible, but it has never been what we want. Its a hodgepodge of styles--the traditional style entertainment center that had gone so well in a different house, the oversized contemporary furniture and art that we bought when we moved in and were trying out a different style that we turned out not to like--LOL. So the room isn't awful, but its always been "off" and its always bugged me. What we really needed in there was some smaller furniture, like what's in the formal living room. And something traditional, like what's in the formal living room. So finally, after 4 years, I got the brilliant idea--why don't I just move what's in the formal living room into here?? So move I did. And I'm finally, finally happy with that room. As I seem to be continually saying since I started this blog and this new way of "shopping at home", I don't know why I didn't do this a long time ago! My daughter came home and said she felt like she was in a completely different house. And somehow, that's how I wanted it to feel. Its too bad the pictures don't show the extent of the change! And after moving the other furniture into the formal living room, hubby and I were struck with a thought--why do we even have a formal living room, anyway? We never use it. We don't want to mess it up! It is a large area of our home devoted to no actual purpose. So we started thinking of better uses for it. The ideal thing would be to make it into a library. We are a family of avid readers with tons of books and no space devoted to them, so this would make the space usable and create efficient storage of the books that are currently all over the house. We can accomplish this by culling furniture and other items from throughout the house, so we can actually just put that oversized furniture that never worked for us on craigslist and be done with it. So we'll get working on that next.
Again, why didn't we do this a long time ago??

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

looks great! So homey!!! I am always rearranging something - it is fun to try new things!
I am totally with you on the shopping for a bargain thing. I struggle with that!! :)

2simplify said...

Thanks Kimberly! I'm having fun with all the rearranging. And still doing everything I can to stay away from the "bargains"!!