Tag Archives: pandemic

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.

Will Clutter Accumulation Hit a Wall Soon?

By Claire Posted in Clutter Tagged , , , , ,

Since the pandemic began, we’ve spotted flocks of delivery vehicles in our neighborhood. Whether it’s the bright white and blue FedEx vans, the darker blue Amazon vans, the white USPS vans or the brown UPS vans, they traverse our streets constantly, even on Sunday. All of them bring my neighbors (and me) an increasing variety of goods.

Never has accumulation been so easy! Before the advance of Internet shopping, you had to drive your vehicle to each store to load it up and bring stuff home. That required some work. And if you lived in a walkable city, as I once did, the amount of things you bought was limited by how much you could carry on the train or bus home, or on your walk home. You might see many things you liked, but you were limited by your arm strength.

These days we sit in a comfy chair at home and click on our phones (or tablets or laptops or desktops), and the burden of lifting what we buy is on the delivery people. This makes it so much harder to keep our homes uncluttered when the things that appeal to us are just a click away, and the only limit is our credit limit.

For now, anyways. Reports are everywhere that our supply chains are being greatly affected by the pandemic, by vaccine mandates and by the inability of companies to find workers. As a result, we’re told to expect delays and shortages of consumer goods for the foreseeable future, including the 2021 Christmas season.

That could certainly limit the amount of clutter we accumulate in the coming months.

Learning from Living at Home 24/7

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

Now that most of us have been in isolation at home for a while, we may find that we are developing definite opinions about our abodes.

Most people are used to coming and going, spending more waking hours out than in. So staying in the same place for days on end can make that place’s deficits more noticeable than before.

For instance, now that spring is arriving, you may wish you had a porch or balcony if you don’t already have one. If you have multiple people in your household, you may wish your home had one more bathroom. If your place is large, you may be tired of cleaning it. If it’s small, the isolation may make you wish you had a larger place.

Once this pandemic calms down, and self-isolation becomes just another memory, it would do us good to remember what we thought about our homes while we lived in them for more hours a day than we ever have. Then we can make changes so that our home becomes our haven, more than ever.

Adapting to Self-Isolation

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

Thanks to our current self-isolation, our living room redo has been put on hold. Our chosen businesses for buying new furniture and carpeting are still open, though by appointment only. But with all the economic chaos going on, we hate to order expensive items and then wonder if the American factories we’d be ordering them from will be able to make them and ship them in a reasonable amount of time…or at all. It depends on how they weather the current situation, and how long it lasts.

So we’re living with our current furniture, which is no big deal, but I sure was pumped to get new stuff. Every time I sit down in the living room, I note how the chair creaks, or how the finish on the leather loveseat is kind of beat up. Not that they are in bad shape, really. It’s just that I was so ready for new furniture.

But more important things are going on right now, so it will have to wait. In the meantime, there are a few areas in the house that could use a little straightening. I’m sure I can find a few things that we don’t need anymore. I’ll do those things now, because once we can go about freely again, I’m not going to want to stay inside and declutter, that’s for sure!