While reading chapter 3 of Daniel Millers, “Stuff” I identified with the the idea of accommodating oneself in a space through movement and change. Our bedroom, living room, kitchen, etc. and the objects that exist within them not only represent our connection to others around us/ world but, their arrangement demarcate periods of time in our lives. For this post I will be exclusively talking about my bedroom. By providing personal anecdote I seek to contribute to the notion of how the movement of objects can ultimately create change the transcends the physical domain and reconfigure our outlook on life as mentioned in the reading (pg.98-99).
In the space between objects I have displayed in my room and the orientation of the furniture I have live the experiences I have gone through, although silent and not physical they dwell within the crevices of my room. Every time I come home and sit on my bed, there is a release of this emotional energy and without my control they find their space in my room and settle. I bring to my room the happenings of each day, whether a good day or bad. But, what I find for me is that negative energy takes up more room than positive. The positive feels light and airy and the negative feels dark and dense. After a while the dark and dense builds up and the my space reaches a point of stagnation. I usually prefer to live in a space where I feel movement, leading me in a direction where I will eventually find relaxation, motivation, and most importantly clarity. The stagnation the begins to manifest itself in my room is a direct reflection of where I am in my life, stuck. Stuck in a particular mode of thinking, stuck in a routine, and so on. For sometime I will live in a space like that because I don’t have the ability yet to lead myself out of it. Additionally, I have the feeling like Miller was saying that “things are never going to change”. While this is all going on my objects remain in the same spot, in a way observing every move I make or lack thereof.
Nonetheless, the day will arrive where I throw my bags down and begin to rearrange everything. This day usually happens every couple of months for me and for a while I thought I was just being neurotic. I needed control over something because everything around me and within me felt out of control. What better way to do that then through picking up and moving things that you have complete agency over? (Also what I explained above was not apparent to me when I first began this habit of rearranging my room every couple of months. I wasn’t think about the dwelling of my emotional energy overtime, I was just thinking about reclaiming control.) My friends would always make fun of me–”There she goes again” or point out this habit I have and call me crazy and to be honest during this process I do feel kinda crazy–but I realized it’s part of the overall catharsis of rearranging your bedroom. Moving my furniture/objects begins to break up the shear build up of emotional energy over, in this case, a couple of months. After hours of moving things around I finally sit back down on my bed and I can feel that lightness, I can feel the openness between my objects. It is a feeling that language doesn’t seem to do justice. I feel invigorated afterwards–I may not have figured out how to exactly fix whats going on in my life, but I have a regained a sense of agency that I thought I was lost. In my current apartment I have gone through this process two or three times now for different reasoning. When I look back now and reflect on the emotional fluxes I have gone through, they are indefinitely attached to the orientation of my bedroom during that time.
The Materials of History, Thought, and Art 
I love this idea! My grandma does this, too. I think more because she’s bored than because she needs to break up all the energy stored in her space, but every few weeks she’ll paint her walls a new color or switch out furniture and completely change things. We always laugh about it too. But what I think is really interesting about this post is that you’re not JUST focusing on the objects in your space and how they interact with you, but how both you and the objects in your space exchange something less tangible than either of you. I never really thought about the energy in a room being stored in between the objects and in the free space that we leave in our rooms, but it honestly makes perfect sense!
I absolutely do this as well, not as much this year as opposed to others. When I was living in Madrid a year ago, I had this unfathomably tiny room in an apartment in the center of the city. Basically, all that could fit in it was a full size bed and a small desk and a chair. Even though I only had those few small things in my room, whenever I became depressed or anxious (especially because I was living in a different country) I would rearrange things just to feel as if I had some control. I’d rearrange my make-up and trinkets as well, and buy candles and flowers so that it felt like I had control over the aura that my room gave off. So doing this might not be as crazy as you think!