Rearranging the Furniture Compulsion

My mom just did it for fun.

My own room however, was always a giant mess, stuff on the floor everywhere, and when she did the monthly rearrangements, I did the half-yearly cleanup lol. (Though I keep things a lot more tidy now.) All furniture would stay in the same spot, all items however, would fly around the room.
Now I keep things tidy, and whenever I do clean up / sort things out I usually do it on alphabetical order (just for convenience, I do it on my pc as well to a certain degree.)

It was fun though, especially when my mom would check up on my room. "How can you live in this mess?! And everything's one chaotic mess, how can you find anything you need?!"

And I'd be like.
"Oh I know where everything is, this game is on the floor here and my books are there."

Order in Chaos, is what my room was for me.
Chaos in Order, is what I saw my mom's room as (why else rearrange it so often? And she always lost stuff, heh)

As for the color discussion a few pages back, I am a person with a gigantic imagination and amount of creativity but colors don't really bother me, the walls in my home at the moment aren't really white, but they are a shade of gray (which is just a slightly darker white / whiter black). I've got unpainted wood in my ''bedroom'' though. As for furniture, I just got the furniture my mom no longer used, so everything is mostly black / white, which is what she liked.

[edit on 12/6/09 by -0mega-]

reply to post by -0mega-


:-)

Order in Chaos, is what my room was for me.

Chaos in Order, is what I saw my mom's room as (why else rearrange it so often? And she always lost stuff, heh)

that's pretty good

chaos can feel pretty comfortable - because it's not really chaos to you

my sister has a wild garden - it looks untamed and out of control

it's how she likes it - and it is a work of art

she has a neighbor that complains about it (though neither the garden or my sister is harming anybody or anything)

she complains because it looks like a mess to her - her garden is lovely (it really and truly is) but it's different in that it's all in nice rows and organized sections - everything is color coordinated - very formal

she actually sees my sister's garden as a sign of something being terribly wrong - with my sister

the whole thing is funny enough to be a TV show - no kidding

the thing is - my sister sees order in all of it - and it feels balanced - it really is a lovely magical place to be

most people are compelled to stop and talk to her about it - and tell her just how much they like it

so - here's why this is interesting to me - why is order so important for some people?

important enough that they can't just have it for themselves - but they insist on it - for everyone else around them as well?

[edit on 6/12/2009 by Spiramirabilis]

a reply to: Hazelnut
It is very wise to change things up often

I have a few of thoughts on this.

First, those that can rearrange their furniture even once, let alone many times, are blessed and wealthy. They have extra energy (I could never have that much energy, so I am envious), and they have an apartment/house big enough that you can fit the same furniture in several different ways or places without problems.

If you live in a smaller apartment, where every piece of furniture basically only fits in one place, especially after installing the other furniture (an alcove for a couch, for example - I hope 'alcove' is the right word - nothing else would fit the alcove, and the room just wouldn't work if you put something else in there and the couch in another place, since no other place is as good for the alcove, and it would mess up everything - plus, you'd have to think about the outlets and everything if your tables have lots of electronics and such, which is a pain to rearrange), there's really no way you can rearrange everything, especially without messing up the 'flow' of the rooms, and the functionality of your daily life.

So those people that CAN do it, are extremely lucky, blessed, wealthy or something. Good for them, but I hope they appreciate their life situation. Not everyone has been dealt with such merciful cards.

Secondly, compulsive rearranging doesn't sound healthy. It can be a sign of a deep emotional trauma manifesting itself, that the individual is trying to solve by arranging things outside of themselves instead of healing themselves internally. It's like, maybe that's the one thing they -can- control, so it makes them feel temporarily relieved. The motivation for this rearranging is the key - if you do it just for the heck of it, for exercize, for logical, pragmatic or functional reasons (easier to clean or something), or even Feng Shui (although this should not require arranging anything more than once, unless you add or remove things), it's all good.

If you do it because you have an internal compulsion to do so that you can't control, avoid, or stop, then you need help and internal processing/healing.

Thirdly, doing it at a point where things have been stagnating in your life for a long time, and then something happens that forces you to re-evaluate your life, choices, habits, routine, etc. that you are doing, that makes you also want to, let's say, use an unused big monitor with a PC that you didn't think to do before, which then requires you to create some table space, which leads you to switch your overly-big MIDI keyboard to a more compact one, which then gives you an idea to get a keyboard stand so you can put the big keyboard to another room, which.. well, you get the idea -

- one thing can organically lead to another, and in the end, you are suddenly amidst doing an overhaul on your whole external life, while also being inspired to live again by the insight and inspiration you got, so this way, your whole place will soon look almost 'brand new' and at least very different, even though nothing -that- much changed..

..this can seriously help with 'stagnated life', and when the inspiration for such a life-change comes from within, and the 'rearrangement' thus becomes merely a reflection of the overhaul of your life that you are already doing / have already done internally, then it can really be a refreshing change that brings more excitement to your life and makes your life flow again.

The motivation and inspiration are the keys here - if you just do it because you're bored or 'just to do something' - it may change the Feng Shui and energy flow of your place, but it might not really have a big impact on your life in general, or help you in any way in the long run. Then you have to do it again.. and it will be just as useless.

Without the internal rearrangement and insight, the external rearrangement is worthless, unless it suits some purpose.

With internal insight, inspiration and gaining more 'flow', it can be a brilliant and thoroughly necessary change that will let your internal and external lives synchronize in a way that really makes you alive again and destroys the stagnation completely.

So it can be unhealthy, but it can also be healthy - the external has to be a reflection on already-happening internal, otherwise it's useless, worthless or inconsequential at best, and neurotic, psychological condition-worsening, unhealthy, obsessive activity at worst (á la 'hoarders').