Furniture Rearrangement - Mini How-To

It's no secret that Smiley and I have roommates - his sister and her husband live with us. Having roommates not because you need them but because you want them there is a great experience. If we're lucky, one of my friends might be staying with us for a few months next year as well.

We have a 3bed, 2bath house, so I know some people might be starting to count rooms and wonder if we're crazy.

I mean, yeah, a little.

But we both grew up in large families and in houses where rooms were occasionally (or always) shared, so having people around is a normal state of life for us.

So in lieu of this arrangement, Smiley and I are trying to rearrange our bedroom in a way that what is currently the computer room can become the guest bedroom/eventual nursery. This involves having to put our computers in our room. This seems like an impossible task at the present, mostly because right now our room is bursting with Stuff.

Basically, the best way to figure this out is to build a scale model. Here are my steps:

How To Rearrange Your Furniture in the Best Possible Way - For Now
This method works great for anyone who has ever sat there and said "no, actually, I want to see how it works with the couch on the other wall."

This method is great to suggest to anyone who will have you moving furniture in the near future. Heck, you can do this for them - it'll still be less effort on your part.

This method is not needed for those who are excellent at rotating 3D objects in their heads. Go clearly picture your room's furniture all rearranged without my help. You disgust me.

Required items: tape measure, paper, pencil. Imagination. 

1: Measure the room, the doors, the windows and any closets. Mark down all measurements on a piece of scrap paper.

2: Make a scale model of your room with those measurements. Depending on the items you have in your room, an inch = a foot scale can work fairly well (so, each foot of room space will be represented by an inch). You can use a large piece of cardboard or poster board to draw your room. Make sure to put in the windows and doors!

3. Measure all of the furniture. Err on the side of too large here; this method will not work if you guesstimate an inch or two short on everything and end up trying to smash a bedframe between two night stands. Personal experience.

4. Make scale models of your furniture out of a separate piece of cardboard or paper. You can be as detailed as you wish, but the only important parts to note are the front and back of an item when it makes a difference (for example, you most likely want the head of your bed against a wall instead of in the open space). (But I won't judge. Do you want you gotta do.)

5. Rearrange it! Now you can easily rearrange your paper model until you come to a design that works for everyone. Again, it might seem like a time consuming way to do things, but unless you REALLY like dragging furniture around, it is worth it.