Sit On It And Rotate

We got a flyer yesterday from the local furniture mart where we bought the girls' mattresses.  As you'd expect, the flyer invites us to a SPECIAL PRIVATE SALE reserved for ONLY OUR BEST CUSTOMERS for a LIMITED! TIME!! ONLY!!!1 so we'd better HURRY IN NOW for the BEST DEALS!!!!  Aaaaand I smiled a rueful smile and shook my head at their foolish, foolish ways. Silly people!  Don't they realize with whom they're dealing here???  Stingy people!!!

For the purposes of discussion, the furniture in our house falls into one of roughly four categories.  These are:

1) Stuff we bought secondhand with our first house, including a white couch that is rapidly turning a dingy grayish-beige (or is it beigeish-gray?), some kitchen chairs, and a sheffelaris (sp?) that grows like it's on crack and needs pruning back once a year lest it take over the house;

2) semi-sorta-crappy furniture from IKEA that looks all enticing in the showroom when you're high on Swedish meatballs and lingonberry sauce, but then when you get it home and set up, you realize that it's juuuuust a little on the flimsy side - as in, things that should be square or flush or level miss the mark by just the slightest margin, not enough to throw it out but enough for the owners to notice;

3) stuff from dead relatives;

4) stuff left over from previous apartments/states/roommates.

There's other subcategories, including "crappy particleboard bookshelves from Target" and "wooden stuff from The Mill Store that we painted ourselves," but those aren't large enough to be stand-alone categories, so this will have to do.

It's not that I wouldn't LIKE to get new furniture.  Believe you me, that white/beige/gray couch is a blight on the face of humanity and I would simply ADORE to replace it with a nice, squashy couch covered in an attractive yet sturdy canvas in a nifty color.  But then Warren points out that with our current couch, we don't care when Celeste decides to color on the couch (against house rules) and then forgets to cap the marker (also against house rules) and then the marker marks up one of the couch cushions (definitely against house rules).  And thus that horrible couch gets another reprieve from being tossed into the transfer station of history (because that's what we call dumps in this section of the world). Gah!  I guess I can always claim we're keeping our second-rate furniture on purpose, as part of a life-long effort to reduce, reuse, and recycle; or I can claim my New England upbringing has left me incapable of purchasing any furniture that costs over $50 or hasn't been through at least two owners before us.  Either way, doesn't look like I'm stopping by that furniture sale any time in the immediate future.

Comments

[Christine]

Welll.....you could get a nice new couch for not that much... The couch we used to have belonged to Sean's great grandparents, it had definitely seen better days. I have some insider information that RAC (rent a center or a similar store if you don't have any in your neck of the woods) will only charge you, something like, what they have left to pay off on the furniture. We got a nicely colored, dark green Ashley couch AND love seat for $360!!! That would be like $200 for the couch and $160 for the loveseat...OR $180 each...OR any way you want to slice or dice it... The trick is to say that you do NOT want to rent it (they'll rip you off) but that you want to buy it OUTRIGHT! And not all of them will be wonderfully priced like ours...but some will...it takes patience and checking back. We got lucky because our insider information came from a friend who constantly checked for us each week. GREAT DEAL for not too much effort though. We could have easily spent 10Xs that going retail.