Feng Shui?

Every person who visits my apartment uses one of two words to describe it: homey or cozy.

At first, I didn’t know how to take this. Are those good words? Does a person want to have a homey apartment? True, we have every single nook and cranny filled with stuff, but I try to keep the place as neat as possible.

After asking a few friends to explain their word choice, I was reassured that homey and cozy are good things. Apparently the apartment looks as if Jeff and I enjoy living there and actually use our space. Which we do. All of it.

The downside to living in a cozy apartment is that it’s difficult to be creative with the arrangement of large pieces of furniture. It only makes sense to have our television in one of two places, and we have to make sure the couches are far enough apart to allow space to walk between them.

And in addition to furniture, Jeff and I also own an army of musical equipment. You can’t place a guitar just anywhere, and my piano has to be against a wall. Therefore, our floor plan has remained exactly the same over the past nine months.

But last night, on a whim, we decided to change the setup of our table and our music corner. This switch was initiated by the removal of our Christmas tree. We picked everything up, moved it all around, and came up with an imaginative way to reorganize the space. I’m currently sitting at my desk typing this blog while facing the window, which is something we should have thought of a long time ago.

Our new design doesn’t look particularly glamorous, and I’m sure that it doesn’t meet any feng shui requirement. But we like it, and I doubt our place will be called homey the next time someone walks in.