Random Acts of Rearranging

I've been buggin' about my family room arrangement for awhile now.  Yup...buggin'.  And Illin'. It was wiggity whack, I tell ya. Child of the 80's here.  My room consists of a GIGANTIC sectional that I agreed to get whilst I was pregnant.  Sonny really wanted a couch that everyone could stretch out on...and we got one that I think everyone on our street could stretch out on...at the same time.  Seriously, I lost all sense of decision making abilities when I was pregnant.  And just for that....I'm never getting pregnant again.  Although I have the couch that can house all the kiddos.

Anyway, it literally took up the ENTIRE side of my family room and the space was just so unbalanced.  And BROWN.  Which just made everything twice as bad.  Not only was it heavy on one side because of the couch that could hold all the Gosselin's and maybe half of the Duggar's....but it was so dark and gross and blah.  Just blah.  I'm actually all for brown....but this makes me....well....blah.  Check it.

SOOOOO big!!!  And brown.  That's really all you can say to describe it.  I want chic, exciting, fresh, cool!  Not big and brown.  Sounds like you're describing what awaits me every morning in my son's pants.  Not really conducive for a cozy family room.  I don't think I even ever got a good pic of the entire room...but it's seriously not much bigger than this.  Our TV is housed in an armoire on the opposite wall of our couch, so we had this huge heavy thing on one side and a little TV cabinet on the other.  So out of whack.  So with Nate Berkus coaching me along...and Heather on Skype watching me struggle with the furniture...I managed to turn the above into this!!

OK WHAAAAATTTT!!!!! It's the same amount of furniture...but the room feels so much more spacious, and definitely more balanced!!  Just for reference...the right side of the sectional went to about halfway where the armoire is now.  One good insight that we had when we bought this sectional was to get one that could be split up at any time...so all the sides are finished and work pretty well by themselves.  I was able to pull the long couch on one end, and the love seat and chaise on the other end.  Then I moved the armoire to the center of the long wall, which is actually where the cable outlet is.  There are a few bonuses to this particular arrangement: 1) I can see the tv while I cook...the kitchen is directly opposite the TV and 2) no more babies eating wires because they are all hidden behind the furniture.  Yeah...I'm not a very good baby proofer...

You can see that there are things that are still "wrong" with this arrangement...one being that the chaise is useless for TV watching.  Another being that the edge of the love seat hangs over the wall a bit.  My ultimate plan is to get 2 cute chairs and a nice table over there...and to switch out the armoire with a cute buffet or dresser and bring our flat screen TV upstairs (or get a new one!!).  I'd also like to either recover the brown ottoman (it IS functional with all that storage underneath), or to get a large oval or round one.  We're also going to paint the beeeeiiiiigggeee soon (notice the swatches on the right, above).  There are also extreme benefits to this arrangement.  Toy storage behind the pulled-away-from-the-wall-couch:

I'll probably get some nice over sized basket for these bad boys.  And the other advantage is nobody can lounge on the couch and use the small ledge as a coffee table

I'm guilty of that.  It's really not anyone else but me.  But now I can't even be tempted to do it.  In the 4 days or so that our living room has been rearranged, it not only feels more balanced and spacious, but neater because toys are hidden, safer with wires hidden, and less cluttered because its doesn't tempt it.  I RATHER enjoy it! It makes for a happy mom!!  The room isn't going to live this way forever...but it's great like this for now.  We are going to do some immediate cosmetic changes like painting, redoing the lame-o wall decor, and adding curtains....while we wait a bit on the big furniture changes.  This little change really gets our gears going and I feel a renewed sense of motivation!!  No more is our house whack, wigged out, or, as my BF Heather would say...a bummer dude!