Tag Archives: furniture

The Loveseat Saga Ends, Finally

By Claire Posted in downsizing, Personal, Small-House Living Tagged , , , ,

You may remember that just before the pandemic started, we made the decision to replace our large old furniture with smaller pieces, because our old furniture was too big for our little living room. It just didn’t look right.

We started with the tv stand. We had been using our old sofa table as a tv stand, and it looked large and messy, with lots of cords hanging down the back. So we replaced it with small tv stand from Wayfair.com that holds all of our DVDs (though you can’t see them), and we’re very happy with it.

Then the pandemic hit, and for a while furniture stores closed, and then they were only open for limited hours, and furniture was limited because the factories were closed. So we gave up for a while, though I was looking at loveseats and small sofas online the entire time.

A month ago we replaced our living room carpet. Out with the old brown wool, in with a bright cream nylon. What a difference it made! But we needed a temporary parking spot for the giant loveseat to get it out of the living room before the carpet guys arrived. We soon discovered it wouldn’t even fit in our little kitchen! So my husband and son squeezed it through the front door and put it in the garage. Once the carpet was installed, we decided not to squeeze the loveseat back in through the front door, but to sell it instead. So off we went, furniture shopping for its replacement.                                                                                   

Two days and four stores later, we were depressed. We didn’t find a single thing we liked. Everything was big and bloated and made out of cheap fabric, even if the price tag was high. One store was a sea of light gray; boring! So many pieces were uncomfortable. Online reviews often said the same thing so buying a loveseat online was out.

My husband then came up with a great idea; why not get a bench instead of a loveseat? It would be smaller, but would provide extra seating when visitors are here. We both began looking online and it wasn’t long before we agreed that we’d found the perfect bench.

It arrived in less than a week and now it sits in our living room and we love it. Next step: new, smaller recliners and a small chair for the spot by the window.

One Hazard of a Small House

By Claire Posted in Clutter, downsizing, Retirement, Small-House Living Tagged , , ,

An elderly couple I know has lived in the same little house for over 50 years. They raised their kids there and it has served them very well, until now.

The problem is that there’s not a lot of room to move around in their house, and they both use walkers. So “traffic jams” are not unusual.

There is one solution: remove some of their furniture to make more room for them to get around. But they’re very attached to their belongings and don’t want to allow any changes to be made (their offspring are willing to do the heavy work).

This actually reflects a common problem that keeps people of all ages from decluttering: they hate change, so they would rather live with belongings that no longer serve them than to give them up. That’s how they end up living in cluttered houses.

In a large house this might not be such a problem (unless even the hallways are full of clutter). But in a small house, it takes very little for the halls and traffic patterns to become blocked. Only someone who is committed to keeping their home livable would be willing to get rid of possessions if that’s what it would take to keep them in their home.

I’ve thought that about my own small house. The living areas have some spare space, but the bedrooms do not. They’re pretty small. If we live here until we’re elderly, we’ll have to get rid of some furniture in order to move around safely if one or both of us end up using walkers. We have several tall bookshelves that are full of our treasured books and hobby materials. They would probably be the first to go.

What Was I Thinking?

By Claire Posted in Clutter, downsizing, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , , , , ,

I have two sewing areas. One is in the little sewing room on the main floor, where I sew clothes and piece quilts on one of two vintage sewing machines, and also have a serger squeezed in there. The other is in the basement, where my high-speed sewing machine sits on two large tables so I have lots of room to spread out whatever it is I’m quilting.

Nearby on an old dresser sits a basket full of thread for that machine, and a dish tub filled with extra parts and feet for it, along with other related items. That dresser was supposed to have been given to a relative 18 months ago, but then the pandemic came along.

I got to thinking that I would like a cabinet to replace that dresser once it goes; that way I’d have somewhere to park the thread, extra parts, feet, etc. I’d want something with cubbies up high, because I have a bum knee and have trouble reaching things in lower cabinets. I began looking at freestanding cupboards and cabinets online, trying to find just the right thing.

And then it occurred to me: I have no business adding furniture to this house! It’s got enough furniture in it. So I looked at the furniture we do have, thinking something could be repurposed as my new sewing cabinet. But nothing would work.

What to do…..as with so many other things in life, I realized I should just wait until an idea came to me. Within a few days it did. If I reorganize the storage under the big counter where I cut fabric (it was our kitchen island in the big house we gave up) I should be able to easily fit in the stuff that currently sits on the old dresser.

And here I was looking at new furniture. What was I thinking?

Keeping the Huge Chairs in the Small Living Room

By Claire Posted in Personal, Small-House Living Tagged , , ,

Before the pandemic began, we had begun buying smaller furniture for our living room. Our old furniture was scaled for a 26’ long room, so it was clearly too big for this living room.

For quite a while, we’ve lived with just fewer pieces of furniture in the room. But they are clearly too big in scale and I wanted to replace them with smaller scale furniture. The pandemic goofed that up as many stores and manufacturers closed down temporarily (some permanently). Now that they’re open again, there are supply chain problems so there are delivery dates out (sometimes way out) in the future.

Now there’s another stumbling block. My husband doesn’t want to give up his recliner. I should point out that our recliners are over 20 years olds, well made and still very comfy. Unfortunately they are still very LARGE. I’m willing to give up mine for a smaller model. But he has his worn to just the way he likes it, and he doesn’t want to give it up.

I get it. I’m not thrilled about it, but I get it. If you’ve ever seen the sitcom “Frasier,” you know that Frasier’s luxury condo contained a very hip modern set of furniture plus his father’s old, duct-tape-repaired recliner. His dad didn’t want to give up his chair either.

Since I haven’t been able to find a small sofa I really like anyways, I’ve decided to give up the hunt for now. One of those recliners will break at some point, and then we can start the furniture hunt again.