For those who know me, especially siblings, this is nothing new. I used to rearrange my bedroom all the time growing up. It became almost a game. At school, I am notorious for rearranging the student desks (and my own desk placement, which moved three times during school last year) to the point of driving the custodial staff to madness.
Unable to let my Christmas night thoughts rest, I sneak into the living room and very quietly move the chaise part of the couch. When I wake up, I'll look at it in daylight and decide whether or not I like it. (Case in point, the couch, which is relatively new, has changed sides of the room before now, and the chaise portion has been moved five times back and forth to opposite ends.) When I awaken, I discover that I do like it.
Then, I wonder, as I often do, why I place my couch against the wall. It was fine when the couch was a big futon, but now the couch has a straight fabric back. I don't need to hide any moveable parts against the wall. So, I hitch the couch forward and decide if it cuts into my apartment-sized living room too severely. I let it be for a few hours, looking at it, walking around it, and sitting on the couch to see if I feel too close to the television.
This new placement leaves the wall open, so I start moving bookcases. Yes, even though I sent seven bags of books to the Used Book Super Store last summer, I still have books, books, and more books. This means unloading all of the books that I own. I let the bookcases sit empty for twenty-four hours. After all, now that I've emptied the bookcases, wherever they end up, even if back where they started, books need to be sorted and redisplayed on the shelves.
This arrangement is a go, so I start putting the books onto the shelves. For anyone who has ever tried to reorganize books and shelves, just know that this is an arduous, all-day undertaking. It becomes even more convoluted when shelves need to be readjusted and when the shelf braces snap off. I smartened up the last time I moved bookshelves, so I have plenty of replacement braces, but it still requires pliers to get some of the little plastic tabs out, and a hammer to beat them into the new hole placements.
Finally, the bookshelves are done, so I start moving bedroom furniture around. My bed has to remain along on particular wall because of my neighbors. There is only one wall that doesn't leave me visible to the parking lot and opposite apartment buildings -- not that anyone would be looking into my apartment windows, but I probably am not the most graceful of sleepers. I often awaken completely wound up in the sheets as if there had been an attempted mummification in my private chambers. As the expression goes, ain't nobody need to see that.
Once the furniture is rearranged, including moving my work station back out to the living room area (from whence it came already as it has been moved four times in the last few years), I start on storage benches, which leads to closets, which leads to laundry room shelves, which leads to plants and lamps and knickknacks and pictures and . . .
It's like watching dominoes fall and trying to beat them to the finish line. Actually, it's more than that. It's more like a game of Mousetrap because so many things seem to be happening at once while the wrecking ball moves through the maze. I think I'm at the "plastic man jumps off diving board into empty plastic tub" point of this re-do. I just hope I can pull this place together before I have to go back to work on Monday.
