Shifting the dust around

Today's muse is about rearranging. Is it simply shifting chaos from one place to another or does it achieve an outcome? Apparently rearranging is an integral part to decluttering. Why I wonder to myself, as my recent 'rearrangment' projects have involved minimal decluttering.(I moved a kitchen bench and transferred a low set of drawers from one wall to another in our entry) One website suggests that we need to put our belongings where they will be used. Another, 'becoming minimalist' suggests that rearranging achieves little, and only in the short-term. A host of others turn up very little on the subject despite google hits on 'rearrange vs declutter'. Which leads me to blog in a fly by the seat of my pants kind of way. Many times I stop my husband from random acts of junk rearranging. He is quite the keen rearranger, he likes to move junk from one room to another. He is especially talented at dumping junk anywhere that isn't currently being used, even if it means out of a cupboard onto an exposed surface. That kind of rearranging seems to be without purpose and unhelpful. Sometimes when you rearrange, you also sort, like going through children's drawers for outgrown clothes, or your own clothes cupboard for things you haven't worn since before the first baby was born. Those kinds of rearranging are productive, especially if after the sorting, the unwanted things are removed from the house immediately, or as soon as possible. Don't be me and end up with enough to supply a market stall for months! And other times, the rearranging is transformational, or practical, without throwing much away. Lets face it, sometimes just moving the couch exposes a mess that really needs a tidy up behind it, and that being cleaned up can only be a good thing! I think my recent rearranging efforts fall into this category - with our centre kitchen bench moved, there is more open space in the kitchen, its an area that is easier to keep clean as it no longer looks like 2 corridors. And before the bench found its new home, my husband mopped the area it HAD been in thoroughly, and gave previously unreached spots a good cleanup. Today's drawers moving gives us unfettered access to the garage from the entry again, and a chance to give a very good tidy up to the area it had been sitting as well as under the rug that I had to move in the proces. Its possible that moving things around can take away from more dramatic clean-up throw out types of organising work, but on the whole, I think that it is a gentle way to keep energy up on the bigger projects. For instance, now that I've moved the drawers (which hold our paper files), I feel more like sorting out the filing isn't such a big job!