How Rearranging Your Furniture Can Make You Love Your Home Again

Even if your home is full of lovely things, you might, occasionally, feel the urge for newness. It’s only human to crave a little variety. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s time to buy new things. You can get the feeling of a new home, without buying anything at all, by mixing up the things you already have. Here are seven ways to do just that.

1. Pull your furniture away from the wall.
There’s no rule that says every piece of furniture in your home has to hug the wall like a shy kid at a junior high dance. A lot of times furniture, especially seating groupings, wants to come towards the center of the room. Doing this can open up a lot more possibilities for your space, and often make the room seem larger, too.

2. Make your seating face each other.
Right now I’m really into the look of two sofas right across from each other. (You can see an example from Domino here.) Often people arrange their living room furniture in a U or L shape, either because they’re working around a television or because they’re lining up the furniture with the walls (see #1). If you’re craving a bit of a change, why not rotate your second couch (or group of seating) so it faces the first? It could lead to an interesting layout that you might not have thought of.

3. Turn everything around.
I know it sounds crazy, but, if you have help of a cooperative sort, try taking all the furniture in one room and turning it 90 or 180 degrees. (If you don’t have help, you could just try picturing it in your head, although that’s not nearly as much fun.) Once you’ve finished there may be some rejiggering required, or you may decide you hate it and decide you hate it and move everything back, but you might be surprised at how moving pieces that have been in the same place for a long time makes you see your home in an entirely different way.

4. Take just one piece out.
You know that old adage about getting dressed in the morning and then looking in the mirror and removing one accessory? Try that in your home. More people tend to err on the side of too much stuff, rather than too little.

5. Move just accessories from room to room.
Have you ever thought about how your bedroom rug would look in the living room? Maybe that art that’s in the bathroom right now would be perfect for the kitchen. The longer an item stays in a particular place, the more we tend to think that’s the only place it could possibly go. But moving things around can give you new ideas, and give your home new life.

6. Switch entire rooms.
This is another one that will require a little bit of help — but if you’re lucky enough to live in a home that does have distinct rooms, try switching say, the living room and the dining room, or the living room and the bedroom. I’ve noticed that in a lot of homes that have especially clever layouts, it’s because the homeowners have put the bedroom or the living room in a place you wouldn’t expect. It can open up all kinds of potential you didn’t know your home had.

7. Do a chair switcheroo.
Do you have a dining chair that could also function as a desk chair? An accent chair that could be pulled into service in the dining room? Mix it up! Maybe the new home you’re craving is buried somewhere inside the one you already have.