The sentence that really struck me the most on a personal level in the reading was,”Moving house allows for a kind of critical realignment of persons with their possessions.”Since I’ve been slowly moving out my my home on Long Island, and preparing to move to New Paltz, I’ve felt this realignment that Miller is talking about in the past few months. I’ve realized how many things I own are simply in my room taking up space; they have no actual function nor bring me any sort of happiness. I started feeling overwhelmed by this thought. “Why do I even own this and where did this come from?”, I kept thinking to myself. After filling bags and bags of garbage and stuff to donate I felt more connected to my room and the stuff in it. I became aware of what the things I decided to keep, actually meant to me. Looking back I practically used to Konmari method without even knowing what that was at the time. Everything that was left was either for functional use or what made me happy. While doing this, I also picked out my objects to use for the first day of class, which were my boots and stuffed animals. Connecting these objects to my room now makes a lot of sense. These two things I picked out, specifically my stuffed animals, were my comfort objects and my room has always been a place of refuge and comfort. My room contains now mostly, lots of stuffed animals, memorabilia,pictures of friends, posters; practically everything that makes me feel happy and comfortable. Outside of my room, these objects separated wouldn’t create that same feeling. Yet together, they encompass me as a person. It shows my interests as a person, my background, and what I value. This shows specifically by my stuffed animals Sparkles and Sam. Out of context they’re just stuffed animals, but in my room they have a completely different meaning. They always lay right next to my pillow, being right next to me while I sleep. It shows their importance to my life and the comfort they bring me. The rest of my stuffed animals are shoved underneath my bed or tossed around and the juxtaposition of how I treat them in my room shows the value I put on them.
Millers explanation of accommodation also hit me personally cause I’ve always felt a sort of frustration with the objects in my room, practically the furniture because I’ve been accommodating living within my parents house. I’ve had to keep my brothers and sisters furniture in my room and it’s obvious that it wasn’t my choice. The stark white dresser that had been once been my sisters I attempted to make mine by covering in band stickers, which didn’t make my mom too happy. I tried covering the bright blue walls with millions of posters to personalize that too. Yet they’re was always still the frustration that my room could never fully be mine. I’m super excited to move and finally get furniture of my own that I choose and hope that my room and the objects in it will finally “feel” me.
The Materials of History, Thought, and Art 
Your blog post this week truly resonated with me. I think as college students, we have all become increasingly aware of the issues that surround “moving house”, especially when it comes to our possessions. I understood completely when you mentioned the things in your room simply “taking up space”. As the years have gone by for me as a college student, I think I have downsized more and more in a similar way, each and every time I’ve moved back and forth from my home in Brooklyn. Living in my dorm on campus, it’s been difficult for me to find a comfortable balance between having enough objects to fill up my space so it doesn’t feel so barren, and not having too many things to move at the end of the semester. I thought your post was very insightful, and I know for sure that a lot of us can relate!
I appreciate how, in this post, you explain how at home you took on the challenge of essentially personalizing a room that wasn’t designed with you in mind. I can definitely relate to that because I’ve shared a room my whole life, and I know what it’s like to feel like a visitor in my own room. My brother has always had a very different standard of tidiness than me, which sometimes has at times made me feel like I’m living in someone else’s space (especially when his stuff creeps over to my side of the room, which is not all that uncommon). Like you, I look forward to having a space of my own that I can set up how I like, without having to make considerations for someone else (or in your case, having to settle for other people’s design choices)!
I can relate to your accommodations you have to make while living at home with your parents. I am one of four sisters, which meant either sharing a room with another sister or after years of waiting finally getting your own room. However, in both cases furniture was always passed down. I never had the opportunity to choose the kind of bed/dresser/tv/room color I wanted to have–to the point where when I finally had my own room I was using the same dresser that my sisters and I all used when were babies. I had the same reaction as you–hanging up everything I had to cover up the walls and create some sort of temporary space that represented me. It interesting I found that even after I moved out and into my own place I brought with me such tendency’s of trying to mask everything in posters/ tapestries but slowly yet surely I am ridding myself of these tendencies to live in a more harmonious space.
You’re totally right. No matter how hard we try to personalize things that aren’t ours or weren’t our choice, it still just doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s a matter of agency. The things that are “yours” are yours because you got to employ your own agency in selecting them; and when we select things – like furniture, in your case – we do so with a criterion that the things “feel” us, as you say. A dresser that’s not “yours” covered in sick band stickers is still just, well, not yours; only the stickers covering it are.
I wish you the best of luck in finding furniture that “feels” Sarah.