Furniture re-arranging

The next step in my living room was to get the main pieces of furniture arranged. The largest is our couch, and it does have a certain amount of presence or style to it--which is important in the Cozy Minimalist method.

We've always had the couch against the longest wall, but it is the darkest place in the room, and that placement doesn't work well for either everyday life or for parties. One of my goals was to have a more focused seating area for conversation, so I moved the couch away from the wall and toward the main focal point in the room, the fireplace, and toward the brightest lamp in the room.

With the addition of two armchairs, voila, a place to read or converse!

Right away, I started using both the couch and the chairs a lot more. I discovered that having the couch away from the wall means that I can get the toys out from under it by just shoving them through...which is wonderfully easy compared to how it was before.

I left the computer table where it was, but neatened it a bit.

We still have our Christmas tree up, so I have been working around it, but it is a thing that we have every year, so I need to include it in my planning for this room.

For the smaller furniture, mostly bookshelves, I experimented with putting them in different locations, but they ended up where they were before.

Our little stump table went by one of the armchairs.

The coffee table is behind the couch now.  It is too big and too rectangular to go in the conversation area, so I am planning on making a sort of round ottoman to go in that spot. The couch being out in the middle of the room acts as almost a room divider, creating two distinct areas; the room is long--and almost twice the size of our previous house's living room.