I am a serial furniture rearranger. Whenever I get the urge to make a change, the first thing I do is change up my space. It’s a free way to make things feel new and fresh. It is sorta like taking your home and shaking it up like an Etch-a-Sketch, creating a new canvas to live in each time.
As I have gotten older, I also am coming more to terms with the fact that just because everyone else has/does something, doesn’t mean it necessarily fits my own lifestyle. Case in point, my apartment dining room. In every place I’ve lived, the dining table/area has been the least used space in my home. I just don’t eat at the table, preferring to use the coffee table or my lap on the couch. Partially that stems from growing up, where we never really ate at the table all together often, more on special occasions. Good or bad, that’s what we did, and so a dining table has never been a huge thing for me to use.
I do have a nice dining table that my dad made for me back in high school (where it was used as a desk). And once I moved out of the dorms and into a house in college, that table moved with me to multiple states and living situations. But, it was mostly just a flat surface to pile things on.
The other week, in a fit of “it’s summer and too hot to go outside and I need something to do,” I finally decided that more than a dining area, I needed a dedicated office space that was not my desk in my bedroom or the corner of the living room. Or my laptop on the coffee table. I needed desk/office space more than dining space. So, I took the legs off my dining table and then stored the top under my bed. The legs were attached to flat wood tops that had been anchored to the larger table surface, so I was able to repurpose them as mini side tables for the living and bedroom. And my former dining area was turned into an office/library space. If I ever need a dining table int he future, I can easily put it back together.
To cover the screw holes on the back of the IKEA desk that I have, I found some extra contact paper that I had leftover from lining my kitchen cabinets and stuck that to the back to make it more decorative, since that is the side that faces the living area. I love that I have a huge window in this area to the side for natural light and that my view is now across the living space toward to giant sliding door to the patio, where I can see trees and generally a much nicer view than my bedroom wall (which is where it had been facing before). This also lets me keep my bedroom just for sleeping and relaxing, and not forcing it to do double duty. And cramming the desk in the living area (which I have also tried), just makes things feel too cramped and multi-use. This new arrangement gives everything its’ own space and makes me feel less anxious and overwhelmed when I’m at home. It gives me space to get work done in a dedicated area, without having to always find a library space or coffee shop to feel productive (I still use those on occasion, but don’t feel like I HAVE to get out of my home to do good work).
scijessreads 
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