Oh dear, a sickness has entered our home. Thankfully I believe I am the only one who will come down with it. Then maybe it would be better if everyone got it -- it would be an easier and faster healing process. Some people are a little too averse to change around these parts. I've got the fever.....to redecorate the entire house.
Maybe you've had this fever. One day you wake up and perhaps you are reading an inspiring decor blog or looking at a great magazine full of gorgeous images of lovely, tidy, perfectly organized and decorated homes. Suddenly your head starts to spin, your breath becomes shallow and you find yourself pacing around the house. You look at everything that you are tired of, the rumpled pillows and couch cushions and the stuff that just can't seem to find a home. You look at the mantle decor you've had for the past few months and you want to throw it all out the balcony. You want new furniture, new art, new bedding, flooring, and wall paint.
You start moving things around. You find a bookshelf or front entryway that must immediately be torn apart and redone in a new refreshing way. You start moving plants around the house, curated shelves and dresser tops are next. Soon the entire house is a bigger disaster when you started but you start to feel like your lungs are opening up. You stop hating all your belongings and you start seeing things with fresh eyes. You move the couch, flip some chairs to the other side of the room and switch around the large art on the walls. You pile all your tchotchkes on the dining table and start repositioning them in new ways in new groupings and new locations.
Hours later you are healed with a new lease on life. The surface dust and mental dust has all been removed and you sit, exhausted, realizing how much you actually love the things you own. You see your style, the reasons you bought and hang onto those exact belongings. Now there is one last thing to do. Sit back in your lovely arm chair, the one with the now fluffed up cushions, that faces a new and inspiring direction looking out the window and sip on a nice tall lemonade. You've earned it. You're well. All is well with the world again.
Have you ever had one of these days, or weeks? I woke up this morning just desperate to shake up the entire house. I took down everything off the mantle, I cleaned our living room fan (a must-have item to keep things cool), started moving tchotchkes and plants around. I dusted. Nothing is back the way it should be, but I feel a little better and I see a weekend of moving things around coming my way. I know that will drive The Man crazy to have things switched around, he never likes that. But honestly I feel like it's one of those things a man has to concede to a woman if he wants her to stay sane. Kind of like how I endure the loud military and action hero movies blaring through the house late at night, his need for a "real" dinner with meat every night...you know what I mean, right? It's give and take, baby!
So the writing is on the wall. The living room is going to different by Monday morning. I hope the front entry and bedroom will too. The Man is taking a bunch of his military/outdoors and other stuff to storage this weekend (do you see my tears of joy?!). I'd love to reclaim our front entryway which ended up being his dumping spot when he came home from a year away. (Sigh...) The dream of returning this place to a very open, spacious retreat-like oasis, rather than cramped, cluttered living space is becoming more visible. I'm excited!
What do you do when you catch the fever to redecorate? How long does it last? How deep do you go?
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