are you a rearranger?

Ever since I was a kid, I used to enjoy rearranging my furniture every so often. I didn't necessarily feel the need to do so because the previous configuration felt awkward or uncomfortable in any way. I just had a craving for change. As I grew older and had a place of my own, this same desire for change had me moving my family all around the country in search of some new scenery every so often. Sure, I can blame the company that I worked for, since they relocated me several times, but I didn't exactly pitch a fit when the conversation arose. I can also try to convince myself that I was on a spiritual quest for the perfect place, but deep down I have always known that utopia does not exist.

They say that awareness is the first step, and now that I am aware of my obsession for change and new scenery, how can I deal with it? It's obviously not healthy for my children to have to be uprooted every few years, and the last thing that they need is a military style childhood without the benefits of government housing and medical services.

One of the things that I noticed is that whenever we would move, we would always "tread lightly" on our new surroundings, as we always felt that we weren't sure if we would be staying. We didn't hang many pictures, didn't paint many walls. We managed to make our existing furnishings fit into the new place that we were temporarily calling home. Now that I'm tired of moving, and determined to make our new house our home, I have been doing things to make it feel more permanent.

I painted some walls, changed out a number of fixtures, and we've got a shopping list of improvements that we'd like to get to when time and budget allows it. We've also been eyeballing some new Coaster furniture for the living room, and I'm planning on building some built-in bookshelves for all of the books we have managed to collect over the years. If there's one collection that we haven't ditched during our numerous relocations, it is our collection of reading material. I dream of someday having an entire wall of books, like you see in English manor houses and traditional library rooms.

And what will I do when that urge to purge and relocate comes along, and we've already settled ourselves into our home? Well, we can always rearrange the furniture, right?