Change It Up!

Why all that stuff in the hallway? It’s Winter Change Day! Back when I lived in my first little apartment, I learned the satisfaction of refreshing my surroundings by simply moving the furniture around. (I lived on the second floor of a girls’ dorm at a boarding school in Colorado, where I was a dorm parent as well as teacher. Imagine that!) Now we do a switch seasonally in our Little House bedroom.

Back in the olden days, seasonal cleaning, fluffing, and rearranging was an important part of home keeping. While I do enjoy using a straw broom for daily neatening up (rather necessary in a little house with two big, shedding dogs), I see no nostalgic charm in taking carpets outdoors and beating them. My Little House husband Todd is a whiz with a vacuum cleaner (he wears the same hearing-protection ear muffs that he uses with his chain saw and his tractor), so we’ve got that covered. (Yeah, he’s a great guy!)

I do find, though, that making seasonal changes is not only ritualistic in a pleasing way — “hello, winter!” — but it livens things up, giving us a mood boost as our daylight hours diminish. (For us at this time of year, the sun sets behind Mount Israel before 4:00pm.)  Overall, we change things up on a relatively small scale, including rotating art work, but we do a major shift in our bedroom. (That’s a photo of our main living room fall/winter painting. Notice the painting in the above hallway photo. That’s a Sally Wolf original, and it will make its way downstairs in the summer!)

Summer bedroom

Here’s our bedroom in spring/summer mode. The bed is facing the windows and our beautiful view of Mount Chocorua. At that time of year we see vibrant sunrises and enjoy the view into the evening hours. We keep most of the floor bare as we track in sand from the beach. (Hard to imagine right now.) My brother Peter milled those lovely wide pine boards from trees that he felled on our property and dragged out of the woods with his draft horses. Those are special boards!

For winter, we flip the bed around so it’s up against the windows, and we lay a carpet that covers most of the floor. (The dogs approve of the carpet!) To the discerning reader, this may seem counter-intuitive as the position change takes the bed away from the internal brick chimney and up against chilly windows, but those of you who heat with wood will understand how hot a small house can get, even when it’s sub-zero outside. Nice dry firewood in an efficient wood stove can really pour out the BTUs! The carpet also helps keep the bedroom cool (ironically) as our second floor is warmed entirely by heat that makes its way up between the floorboards. In winter, the dogs get the place of honor next to the chimney. This suits them just fine.

So, on Winter Change Day, furniture, including dog beds, either goes out into the hall or is rearranged in the bedroom. Pulling out the dressers is particularly exciting as enormous dog-hair bunnies emerge from behind. Watching them be sucked up by the vacuum is reminiscent of an arcade game. Very fun!

The mattress comes off the bed and the carpet is brought up from the basement. (Todd devised a genius way of hanging the rolled carpet from the ceiling to keep it out of the way during the off season.)  We move the bed frame, unfurl the rug, and put it all back together, changing the orientation of the mattress for even wear. Then the rest of the furniture is put into place and the bed is made with a different quilt and sheets. (A down comforter and flannel sheets only come out when it’s seriously cold.)

Winter bedroom

Voila! Our winter bedroom is ready. Yesterday morning I woke up with the sun, flipped over on my stomach, and looked out the window at the snowy scene. At just that moment an owl flew by and landed in a tree right next to the house. Wow!

About those windows: they have nifty cellular shades that we pull down at night when baby, it’s cold outside. (There are also some very hot summer days that call for blinds to keep the heat out. They work both ways.)

So, why not give it try? Choose a room in your house and change it around. Keep an open mind and experiment. It’s fun! (And even if you end up putting it back the way it was, it won’t be all for naught: you will have taken care of those sneaky dust bunnies!)

Todd vacuuming — there’s the internal chimney

The view from our bedroom window