A number of years ago, an old climbing buddy of mine graduated from college, got a job, and bought a couch. At the time his best friend, who was more attuned to sleeping under the stars than on a sofa, berated him for purchasing something that would tie him down, force him to have a home base, and prevent him from picking up and moving on. It was only the first step; it wasn't long before my friend had purchased a house that stuck him smack in the middle of settled.
My husband I lived in four different places in the five years before we moved to Australia. We were anything but settled; we were living frugally (him more so than me) and most of our furniture was what we had scavenged from home or found at garage sales, that emblem of grad school economy. Some of it was nice enough that it almost made the move to Australia (generally the stuff pilfered from my parent's house), but most of it was junk: old desks with rings from water glasses, shelves constructed from bricks and boards, and cheap pine furniture that we had constructed or stained ourselves. It was never meant to be permanent, just to satisfy a need until we moved on.
When we relocated to Australia we sold virtually all of our furniture to other frugal grad students and co-workers and bought new things in our new country. We were settling now, intending to stay here long enough to build our careers, buy a house, and have a few kids. Following the bed, our first purchase was a couch.Being unemployed at the time, I spent ages looking for the couch. I went to every furniture store I could find, from the upscale Tailor Made sofa shop to the very pedestrian Sydney's package shop. I ended up finding a suitable couch at a middle of the road shop, where I mulled over upholstery for ages before picking a virtually solid pattern in a pleasing color called basil. Six weeks later, the new couch arrived at our rental. It looked just fine with the tan carpeting and the brown curtains, and fit quite well in our rather compact living room.
Ten months later we moved into the first house we owned. The couch was relocated to the middle of our new living room, where it also looked just fine with the tan carpeting and putty colored walls. However, not long after the move, we decided to take advantage of our newly acquired home owner freedom to paint the walls of our abode a buttery yellow color. Then we decided we needed more seating in the living room.
Suddenly our existing couch became a liability; the dusty green color didn't match anything, the living room was more suited to two smaller couches, and the style was no longer available. Three things saved it from a garage sale: 1) it was the most comfortable couch we could find; 2) we are too parsimonious to replace it; and 3) garage sales are a pain.
In actual fact, one more thing saved the couch from a garage sale: people in the inner east suburbs of Melbourne don't go to garage sales (do they even have them here?); they go to Ikea. I've never found any furniture from Ikea that I find terribly appealing; it seems to be made either of cheap materials or with cheap design (which is pretty much their mantra, though I'm sure they prefer the word inexpensive). The surprising thing is that it is not poor grad students who shop there. It is parents of young children, some of them not so young, and not terribly poor. And the things they sell are deceptively expensive, as if they make the stuff look cheap so you think you're getting a deal.
The philosophy behind shopping at Ikea, as one friend explained to me, was that they needed something now, but didn't want to spend money on something they'd want to get rid of in the future. Buying something that quickly falls apart releases you from any obligation to keep it when you want to update the decor. But it also shackles you to a piece of junk until that time arrives.
To be fair, it's not just about the decor. For almost two and a half years my son slept in the same crib that I slept in 30 years earlier and that my father slept in nearly 30 years before that. In the crib's 68 year history, it has been in storage for roughly 55 years. The mattress height cannot be adjusted, the side that lowers squeaks, and it doesn't satisfy the latest Australian safety standards, but it looks nice, and is sturdy and safe (in my opinion). The crib, which was made by my great-grandfather, was shipped to Australia at great expense. In fact, for the price of the shipping (which did include a few other small items) we could have bought a crib at Ikea that does have an adjustable mattress height, does not have a squeaky side, and would be so worn out after two kids that it could go straight to the junk yard. And when I consider that, I get a little bit envious of the people who did not have a 68 year old crib that was built to last.
If we had spent half as much on the couch we might have just given it to the Salvos, but I suspect that we would have kept it anyway, since as long as we can still sit on it why should we write it off? Part of me wishes that we had gone the Ikea path so we could replace our furniture when it no longer suited the decor, but I know that regardless of what furniture we chose we would still be stuck with
it, so it may as well have been a quality design made with quality materials.
