It starts with a few sofas.

You place them down, and make sure they’re aligned. Is the color right? you ask yourself. Should they go here? But why not a bar counter and some stools? Does this look like a living room? I hope not because it’s supposed to look like an outdoor market omg what have I done…

Before you know it, you’ve found yourself in what I like to call a furniture nightmare. It happens to the best of us!

This month at our venue (and home of The Babbler) Nophica’s Spring, we’ve decided to take our usual weekly performance out on the road. And since the doors to the venue proper will be closed for a while, I figured this would be as good a time as any to redecorate.

It has been. But it’s also been a nightmare.

Furniture Nightmares are something I’ve dealt with many, many times, but in the end things usually seem to come together. While I can’t give you any specific advice for whatever you might be working on right now, I do have a few small tips I’ve gathered from my own experiences. Hopefully they help you out if you’ve been having decorating trouble!

So, if you ever find yourself in the midst of a terrible furniture nightmare…

1. Focus On Your Goal

Whether you’re decorating a living space or a place of business, before you do anything else you really should take a step back and ask yourself, “What do I want?” What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want a nice place to hang out? Somewhere people can jump and dance? Play games? Lounge around? Do you want visitors to sit quietly and read, or do you want to encourage conversations and interaction?

The answers to these questions will absolutely guide your design. If you’re struggling for ideas, start with your goal!

2. Consider Your Theme

My personal furniture nightmares usually begin with one section of the room or estate not quite matching up with the rest. One area might be amazing, but that boxy corner over there with the sofa and blank walls - I don’t know what to do with it! It might be okay when you first set it up, but something in the back of your mind eats at you until you just can’t take it anymore.

Maybe it’s the sofas. Next thing you know, you’re suddenly adding galleas wheels and trying out an aquatic theme. But that’s not what you wanted. What are you doing?! Stop! Just stop it!

Take another step back and remember your original theme. Coordinate. Get rid of anything that doesn’t fit. Make sure the colors match, and aren’t random combinations of turquoise, yellow, and cherry pink (there’s a time and a place for that, but your brown carpeted basement with gold padded walls is not it).

3. Know Your Limits!

The fact of the matter is that home designers only have so much to work with, be it space or variety of furniture. But use this to your advantage! A lot of creativity springs from working within limits, and problem solving to figure out how to do a lot with only a little. Having infinite item slots would not guarantee perfect designs, after all, and could in fact cause even more problems. So don’t let those limitations get you down, and instead think outside the box!

In a similar vein, however, don’t try to do something that just won’t work in the space you have. If you’re working with a large estate, trying to make use of every inch of space will invariably mean less overall detail. On the other hand, a smaller estate or apartment means you just might not have enough room for certain grand ideas. Sometimes it just isn’t meant to be, so align your goal with what’s realistically achievable!

4. Recruit A Friend!

Sometimes what you really need is a new perspective. I’m not sure I have to explain this one, but it’s easy to become blind to new ideas if you’re just by yourself staring at blank partitions and floating stage panels all day. You might need someone else to take a fresh look at the space, someone who hasn’t yet themselves become immersed in your ongoing furniture nightmare. Let them play with it for a while!

5. Explode Everything And Start Over.

Occasionally, you might discover the hard truth that your current idea isn’t working at all, or just doesn’t fit with the rest of your theme. And when that happens (and in my experience, it happens a lot), the best course of action is to blow up the whole thing and start over. This could be either your entire estate or apartment, or the specific area that’s giving you trouble.

Leaving everything up while you tweak and adjust often clouds your thinking, like some kind of furniture mind interference. It’s much easier, instead, to start with a blank slate and a clear mind!

There’s no guarantee that any of these tips will help - everyone’s own furniture nightmares are personal and everyone deals with them in a different way. The best advice might be to just leave things alone for a while and do something else.

Of course, even once you’re through the nightmare and things are the way you want them to be, that feeling doesn’t last forever. Eventually, the furniture will call out to you, and you’ll notice something that could be better…

And the nightmare begins again.

Good luck!