Coming Home – to new spaces

Total = 22

That’s the number of houses I have lived in my life. I consider myself still ever so young (no comment) so that’s a big number for so few years! 

We moved a lot when I was a kid. My parents had ambitions (which, kudos to them, they realised in abundance) and so as they were working their way to each new stage it tended to involve a new home for us. There was one year we lived in three different houses. And then there were houses we stayed in for a few years. They moved into their current house when I was 21 and have now been there (gulp) decades. Perhaps it was us kids that kept them on the go all the time??? Actually, now that I think about it, they do still technically live in the same house but travel away from home for months on end. Perhaps their need for new spaces and movement hasn’t changed so much after all…

After I left home I went to Uni and lived in college where my world opened up and I found my tribe of like minded people. A revelation! After eighteen months of fabulous eye-opening experience out of home for the first time I moved out and resumed the nomadic lifestyle I had grown up with. I tended to be in share houses for a year at most then we would have a farewell party and go to the next thing. In one home during Uni I slept on a blow up mattress on the floor for six months and thought it the most wonderful adventure. In another I planted daisies from cuttings my nan gave me. I moved house from one end of Lygon St to the other, my possessions walked down the footpath in a few trips, set up and dinner ready on the same afternoon. I had an incredible six months in Sylvia Curley House on Acton Peninsula prior to the National Museum of Australia construction from which central place I learned to hike both inner city paths and Brindabella mountain trails. For years my worldly possessions fit into the boot and backseat of my borrowed car as I moved between homes. My husband and I moved in together after dating for only six months and we have lived in only four houses since then. We’ve been in Ardley for eight years now. Like my parents, we seem to have found a place where we can stay still.

All of this is me trying to collate evidence to try and explain why I adore rearranging the furniture in our homes. Truly, it is a glorious thing to do. It’s like going on an adventure. I will be sitting down, innocently drinking a cup of tea, gazing about my room and BAM! It hits me. I know exactly how this could look if I put the table over in that corner and turned that space into a sewing nook and then … My husband has come to know that look in my eye and just sighs.

“What do you want me to lift?” he asks resignedly.

I rarely need to buy anything new, it’s totally about rearranging and finding a new outlook for the things we already have. Sometimes things find their place and are never moved but there are other items, like the aforementioned sewing machine, that have called nearly every room in each of our houses ‘home’. Currently it’s in my office. Not sure if it will stay there yet, it needs time to settle. 

My daughter shares this love of making a space beautiful. She is frustrated by the limitations placed on her by a single bedroom and will have to wait until she is in her own home to truly let her creative flair burn brightly. Still, I do believe that a single room is the perfect training ground for the budding interior designer. It forces a level of creativity and resourcefulness that will stand her in good stead as she spreads her wings to larger canvases. Her inspiration is fuelled by a riotously lavish Pinterest board and a passion for home improvement reality shows we watch together. We provide highly intuitive critical feedback that the designers on those shows would do well to take on board in future developments. Just sayin..

The increased demands of moving as a family with three children certainly stifled my ability to play with spaces for a bit. Essentially every room became a toy room. We have passed that phase now, in the blink of an eye seemingly, and I am realising the ability to play with spaces again. 

All of this isn’t particularly unusual. I know plenty of others who share this love of rearranging and creating new spaces and looks. My husband isn’t one of my fellow rearrangers. Nor are my other children. They really, really, don’t like change. We have been in our house for eight years and they STILL find reason to reminisce sadly about how we sold their first home ‘without asking them’. What is that is so different about the experience of moving things around, even moving house, that is so different for me??? A quick Google search (highly evidence based reliability!) demonstrated that rearranging spaces is a very, very common love and most of the benefits are actually quite self-evident. 

Rearranging a space according to the wisdom of the internet, does the following:

– increases creativity, productivity, sense of safety, perceived control, and the ability to adapt to change…

– reduces lethargy (and procrastination), stress, and boredom

There is research… but for this one anecdotal plus personal experience is enough for me! All of these speak to me as self-evident truths. But… It makes me wonder. Did all of those house moves when I was a kid contribute to my love of change and teach me how to reap the rewards of rearranging things around me? Moving taught me many things not least of which is that there are some central parts of life (family, books, knowledge) that come with you wherever you go and are the important consistent elements that give solidity and backbone to whatever shape life takes. The additional things like finding the same furniture and belongings in each new place just added to that regularly reiterated experience of continuity and predictability. It wasn’t the place that brought the sense of security, nor the decor, it was the core within ourselves that was with us no matter where we were.

In comparison, my husband and my children have all grown up in families who only moved once or twice. That sense of security is perhaps, as a result, indelibly connected to the place as well as the people and the inner life lived between the walls. Now I’m waxing a bit lyrical here but it does carry for me a kernel of truth, and you know I latch onto that sensation of rightness!!! They rely on the same need for predictability that I do, the difference being that mine is portable whereas theirs has, necessarily, been tethered to place.

Hmmm…. Maybe?

Again, I asked my dear friend who lived in the same house from her birth until she left to marry and start her own home and family. My sample size of one disproves this theory. She enthusiastically nods at the concept and describes rearranging rooms as giving new breath to the space and letting her breathe more deeply as a result. Perhaps it’s a personality thing. A feminine trait? My sample is based on three women who adore moving furniture and three men who really, really do not.

Isn’t it easy to categorise???

I do like staying in one place. It’s grown on me, this experience of sending down roots and allowing shoots to mature that would otherwise have been pruned off in the transition to a new place. It turns out that those branches often blossom and fruit with wondrous rewards I would have missed otherwise. Perhaps 22 is the magic number and this will be my forever home? Whatever the reason behind it all, whatever happens, I do still crave movement, change, adventure and new sights and smells and shapes that pique my interest. We devour travel videos and design campers and plan holidays that we will take at every opportunity. And then we will come home and relax. I also like relaxing. In fact, it might be more comfortable if I changed the study into a music room. It has the perfect window for reading and reflecting. Just need someone to lift the couch. Anyone???