What To Do BEFORE Rearranging Furniture

When my parents decided to rearrange furniture in our house growing up, Harry would pull out some graph paper and make a scale drawing of our room and then cut out pieces to scale of the furniture they would have in that room. I think the scale he used was one square on the paper equaled one foot in reality.

I remember my dad made a scale drawing of the rooms in my house and all our furniture to scale on little pieces of paper so I could try different arrangements before moving in. It really is a great way to make sure things fit without having to keep re-measuring and without wasting a lot of time and effort moving things back and forth. It was fun trying different arrangements on paper without any effort.

One thing to keep in mind when doing this though is to measure furniture with drawers open and mark on your room drawing where the windows, doors and outlets are located so you can see if your furniture pieces will cover them up or not. This also helps you get an idea of the walk space you will have between the pieces which especially comes into play for small rooms with lots of big pieces, like our bedroom.

I was reminded of this when I came across Housewife Eclectic: Rearrange Your House Virtually. It never ceases to amaze me what things one can find on the Internet. Somehow, I think dad would still get out his graph paper and make his own scaled drawing and furniture pieces. He just enjoyed doing that sort of thing. For me though, I think I’ll bookmark that site and use it the next time I do major furniture rearranging.

(I told you he was smart even though he did not graduate!)

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Are You Decorating This Christmas?

When I was little, my dad always put up the colored lights on our house. After some were stolen, he never did it again. Instead, my parents used to hang the lights inside the house on the mirrors and around the archways. We always had big live Christmas trees.

Later though, as we got older, they quit putting up the lights altogether and they bought an artificial tree--a silver one no less that had two spotlights. A colored plate spun around so the colors projected on the tree would change. After my dad died, I found out that silver tree and those spotlights were an item that the estate liquidator was very interested in getting. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the spotlights anywhere. I guess dad did throw things out sometimes.

After all of us kids grew up, they purchased a smaller artificial 3-4 foot green tree that they decorated with tinsel and ornaments. After Christmas, they kept it decorated and Harry just took it up to the attic and covered it with some plastic bag until next year. Not a bad idea--it certainly made decorating simpler. The other decorating they did at this point was to switch the artificial summer flowers that were in mom's sconces with artificial Pointsettas.

When my mom and dad were in their 70s, even the small tree got replaced with a ceramic table top tree. I always thought it was sad that he didn't decorate for Christmas anymore but as I age, I understand it. It's just so much of a fuss and a lot of extra work. Clearly, dad was just being practical by not decorating.

I myself am not much of a decorator, but I do manage to at least set up my nativity set, sometimes my little village that my parents gave me, and an tree, mostly for my cats' pleasure.