Transform Your Home: Creative Space Planning Tips

I grew up with the same sofa and recliner in the same spot my whole entire childhood. While my mother got the memo on moving pictures around, the furniture was a different story. When she finally gave me permission to do a little space planning- but only in my own room- I happily drew the floor plan to scale, cut out my graph paper squares to represent the furniture and shoved the bed and dressers around the room going through no less than 4 redesigns during my teenage years. 

A fun Friday night included a book of Southern Living floor plans and dreams of building, furnishing and decorating my own grown up home one day.

Though I’ve moved several times in my adult life, none of those has been to a new build -yet- and I only purchased my first big girl sofa last year. When our son was in school, money was tight. Big improvements or purchases were out of the question. We had yard sales and raided the change jar just to get money to order pizza as a treat.

But even through those leaner times I still decorated and tried to improve our home by swapping furniture with friends, making curtains with sheets or painting some wayward piece of furniture or art.

Rearranging the furniture was my superpower- so much so that my son and husband probably winced every time they came home and knew I had been there alone all day. What relocated chair or cabinet would they be tripping over now? 

In the leaner years when I couldn’t consume, I could always create. 

… For adults, the home décor process has been largely reduced to finding the right products to buy… at heart, design is not an act of consumption. 

It’s an act of creation.

This isn’t to suggest that everyone should be DIYing their homes or that you shouldn’t buy things. Rather, when we view home design as a creative act, we begin from a place of possibility and imagination rather than constraint. ~Ingrid Fetell Lee

Whether you’re rolling in pizza money or not, my most favorite free thing to do is to rearrange the furniture in a space.

What to consider when creating your new furniture layout

♦ I like to start with the clean slate protocol when arranging furniture in a space. It’s easier to do when you first move in but not impossible if you’ve been there a while.

♦ Take down the curtains and the artwork. Corral all the tchotchkes and accessories (even lamps)  in another room temporarily. Roll up the rug and take out end tables to start with as blank a canvas as possible. 

♦ It’s tempting to want to just go buy new furniture and think that will fix the problems in our space, but if we don’t start at the root of it- how a space functions and is laid out, we could just be compounding our problems. 

♦ Facts and numbers figure in like how many people do you need to seat comfortably in the living or dining room? Do you still have little kids at home that need play space on the floor? The memories you want to create there along with how you currently use a space or dream of using it also contribute to making a cozy, inviting space. 

♦ Think of your favorite home or room from childhood. Who was there, what was happening, what was the vibe? What did you feel? Before you resort to consuming- whether it be more inspiration or furniture pieces, what can you create with what you already have?

♦ The way our homes are arranged should support the kind of person we want to be- someone who writes, someone who does Pilates, someone who loves having game nights, someone who hosts a home bible study- what types of furniture arrangements or furnishings lend themselves to those goals? 

Home should work with us, not against us. 

It’s an easier transformation for us to achieve our dreams and goals when our homes become nourishing spaces that support, not derail us. 

What about those pieces we don’t love, but feel we have to work around for the sake of staying married- like your husband’s recliner?? I’d invite you to ponder how you can look at it differently. Maybe the recliner enables him to be the person he wants to be- by providing a spot to relax when he gets home as he transitions to dad mode. It’s a place where he can rock a needy little one and connect. How can you honor that? Is there a possibility for a more stylish version that would meet both of your goals?

If you’ve figured out your interior identity and made your mood board, then comes the heavy lifting (sometimes quite literally) of creating a furniture layout that serves your family. 

Click the graphic below to get my favorite space planning tips and tricks to get you started.

Last year our son got married and after saving for a good while, we’re finally getting around to buying windows for the house. But just because I’ve reached the point of being able to consume, I’ll never stop creating. I can feel a new furniture arrangement coming on strong!

Homes take time and patience and likely are never quite “done”. And that’s the joy of them. What can you change or create in your home today to support the person you want to be? I’d love to know!

“A home is not dead, but living, and like all living things must obey the laws of nature by constantly changing.”

— Carl Larsson

Happy to be featured on the #Homemattersparty!