Moving Furniture

Today L asked me if he could move the furniture around in his room. I was so proud. Let me tell you why…

I grew up with a mom that moved the furniture around in every room at least once a month (or so it seemed, it may not have been that often…). I LOVED moving my room around. I would get out a piece of paper and play “architect” - sketching out my room to scale and determining the optimum configuration. When I moved into dorm rooms and apartments in college, I thrilled at the opportunity to set up my space. Moving things around made my old stuff seem fresh and exciting.

Then I met my husband. He’d grown up in a house where things never changed. The first time I moved something around in our shared apartment, he could not comprehend why I’d want to do such a thing. He said, “I want to be able to walk through my house in the dark and know where everything is all the time.” Hmph. And so, with a few exceptions, my “moving around” days came to an end.

Now, you can imagine how ecstatic I was when my son - out of the blue - gets a piece of paper and starts drawing his furniture and asking to move his room around. We spent the afternoon moving, re-organizing and cleaning. When we were done, we were both beaming with satisfaction. So perhaps this is a genetic trait?