After we moved here, we spent hours trying to arrange our huge furniture in our little living room. No matter what we tried, nothing looked right. In the end we only kept a loveseat, two recliners, two end tables and a wooden chair that we put near the front door. In the years since, we moved them around a few times but never found just the right set-up.

Now we’re starting over. We’re planning to buy a small-scale sofa, a smaller recliner (the two we have are huge!) and an occasional chair or two (one of us wants one chair and the other wants two). Of course, we’re also spending time figuring out where everything should go.

One of the few books that survived the Great Purge when we moved here is a book from the 1990s called Use What You Have Decorating by Lauri Ward. I used that book on our large house and loved it. I’m so glad I saved it because it’s still useful: since she recommends arranging your furniture into groupings (as opposed to spreading it apart and pushing it up against the walls as many people do), it works well for this small house as well as our former large one.

Of course, the photos in the book look pretty dated now, but the principles are still good. I highly recommend this book for anyone who feels like their furniture is just not in the right spots.