New furniture

As I’ve posted before, Daniel and I love old things, especially furniture.  We’ve always had hand-me-down furniture or things we’ve found abandoned in random garages or by the side of the road or at thrift stores.  But most of it has been passed on to us.  And a huge THANK YOU to all you wonderful people who have shared your things with us.  But the phrase “Beggars can’t be choosers” applies in cases like this; when you’re given something (whether it’s free furniture or free food), you really have no place to complain, and I propose you shouldn’t.  We never have, and we’ve never been in a place of want or need when it comes to furnishing our home, but we’re at a point now that we want to start replacing some of these things with items that better reflect our personal taste and style.  I started shopping at estate sales a few summers ago; it’s weird at first, rifling through the possessions of those gone before us, but it’s like a really big treasure hunt, and now it’s one of my favorite things to do on a Sunday afternoon.  Recently Daniel learned about a local auction house from our friend, Roxie, and we fell in love immediately with the idea of attending and bidding old crap.  So, we’re having loads of fun learning about this market, plus the people-watching is pretty rock-n-roll.

A few weeks ago I found a dresser at the auction house that I really, really, really wanted (surprising because I don’t like dressers and tend to think they are a huge waste of space).  It’s low, with 3 deep drawers and a beautiful wood grain on top.  Clean lines, curved edges and no drawer handles sealed the deal (plus drawer 3 held about 16 truly hideous purple curtains–bonus).  I stayed home with the kids, and Daniel won the dresser for me with a $10 bid.  Now, the dresser Daniel has used since we got married is one my mom gave us; it’s a lovely antique, but not our style.  The dresser I’ve been using is one I got for $20 at a garage sale, intendeding to put it in Grey’s bedroom; it’s in terrible shape, but would look nice if I ever got around to fixing it up.  When we looked at our current bedroom set up and realized that neither of us had cycled our summer clothes into storage last fall, we were convinced we’d be able to fit all our clothes together into this new dresser and put the other two somewhere else (until we figure out what to permanently do with them).

I was out when Daniel called me to say that he’d started going through his dresser, pulling out all his clothes.  “I can throw away like 5 or 6 pairs of underwear,” he told me.  I joked back to him, “Well, I’ll bet I’ve got 5 or 6 thongs I could get rid of.”  Looooong pause.  It’s no secret that Daniel loves my butt, especially when more than necessary is showing . . . which is why he waited so long to say, “Well, it’s not like thongs take up that much room.”  I never, ever wear thong underwear, which is why I’d have absolutely no problem getting rid of a few (or all) of them.  So when I got home I started going through my own drawers, pulling out shorts and tank tops that can be stored until April.  I got to my bottom drawer, the one I only dig around in to find yoga pants or a sports bra, and I felt something silky, something thin and lacy.  What the what?!  I pulled out the whole drawer, and under that pair of yoga pants was a Victoria’s Secret long-lost storage room.

A friend of mine got married this past fall, and we had a sleepover in her honor.  A giggling circle of mostly-tipsy girls sat around teasing and smoking until she asked, “What’s the point of lingerie, anyway?”  After the initial laugh, someone else answered, “It’s just a way to show him when you’re in the mood.”  Well, by virtue of that definition, I’m never in the mood.  I started pulling out loose thongs, trying to match them to the larger half of the set, and Daniel’s face was priceless.  “Where’d all that come from?  I’ve never seen it before.”  Right.  I told him he’d seen it all at least once, however briefly.  All I could think was, What if I died and my dresser ended up at the auction? Instead of hideous purple curtains, this would be someone else’s big laugh.

We managed to get all our clothes into the one dresser; I moved my stash of see-through silkies into a much more compact location (with the intention of cycling through it all at least once more).  But, like with any project around our house, trying to simplify and reduce actually creates a huge mess and a lot more work at the get-go.  One of these days I’ll go through the box of other random stuff that came out of my dresser . . . and the box of stuff that was already waiting next to the bed for me to organize . . . and the bag of kids’ shoes I need to sort through . . . .  In fact, I should probably just stop writing and go do that stuff now.