With all this preparation to move house, I’ve been looking at how well our furniture fits together. We have a mix of inherited antique and retro, modern ‘federation’, pine shelving and table, modern black office, and even asian furniture. The ‘new’ house has a white french provincial kitchen. Quite a mix.

I’ve started reading the Apartment Therapy blog via Bloglovin’, and they had a post recently called Ten Signs You May Be a Maxamalist. ‘Your Favourite Colour is Everything’ and ‘You see a white wall as a missed opportunity.’ are both so very me. ‘You Have a Collection of Collections’ is Paul, and ‘You worry less about whether things match than if they’ll fit’ is my reaction to most of Paul’s purchases. They should have added ‘Decluttering is a dirty word’ to that list.

So I reckon our style is ‘eclectic maxamalist’ incorporating lots of what Kevin McCloud calls ‘autobiographical clutter’.

Being the control freak I am, I’ve measured up our furniture, drawn a plan of the ‘new’ house to scale (assuming the advert map was correct) and worked out where most of our furniture will go.

I could see straight away we’d have problems getting the bigger, heavier furniture into some areas and that our bookcases won’t fit where I first intended to put them, so it’s been worth doing. And, well, fun.

The challenge is to also group furniture that complements each other. We have pieces that we have inherited and want to keep, some pieces we love, some that are practical, and a few pieces we’re a bit ‘meh’ about. We’d like to avoid buying and replacing as much as possible, too.

I’m not keen on matchymatchy furniture. It’s a bit like wearing garments made of the same fabric all over, or a suit while relaxing at home. Yet I’m also not keen on the current fashion of aiming for all decor in the room to be as different as possible, so your house looks like a second hand furniture showroom – perhaps the equivalent of wearing tracksuit pants with a denim shirt and suit jacket.

Taking cues from the fashion analogies, I grouped furniture together of similar quality and mood. The better quality, fancier furniture went with the antiques in the living room and reading nook. The practical pine and office furniture will go in the craft room and office. The lesser quality, more casual living room furniture is for the family room.

Almost every piece found a new home. However, we do want a new bed and bedside tables, which we don’t like. It’ll will solve the problem of having a set to keep in the old house while it’s on the market, too. My first plan was to buy something french provincial as that’s what the current/previous owners have, but it would clash with the asian camphorwood chest and triangular chest of drawers I want to put in there. The room’s paint and soft furnishings leave it open to all kinds of furniture styles, so I figure we’ll get pieces that work with the asian pieces instead.

As you can see, I’m having a lot of fun planning the decor in my head, and on the computer. Whether it all works when we move in remains to be seen.