A co-worker found a name for my home decor. Isn't that clever? And fitting. I was telling her that Jeff and I have NEVER bought an entire room full of real, matching furniture. Most notably, we have never bought bedroom furniture for our room.
Jeff has been sleeping on the couch at least once a week lately, since he had an alteration to his health. When we slept in a hotel bed last weekend and both woke up refreshed and rested saying, "Wow, what a comfortable bed!" I think he reached a breaking point. He announced that we absolutely were getting a new bed. I pointed out that we would probably need nightstands as well, as our headboard that, no lie, Jeff's dad made in the 70's, has shelves in it. I thought that was rather sly of me, since Jeff then agreed that we could buy an entire bedroom set!
We've been furniture shopping to the point of exhaustion. We have been to every furniture store in Syracuse. We have tried out countless mattresses. We settled on "plush/firm" to satisfy both of our tastes. Anything has to be better than what we have now. Another truth: our parents decline to sleep in our bed when they visit and choose the futon. My dad had back surgery last spring and would rather sleep on a futon than our mattress.
Once we saw the American-made solid oak and cherry furniture at Adirondack Furniture, there was no going back to the wood veneers. We were in love. And thinking about financing. At another furniture store, we saw a lovely solid wood set that was a little less expensive and asked if it was American-made. The salesman said the company was located in China, but moved to Vietnam because they could keep costs down even more there. He had no idea what affect that was going to have on me. He might as well have held up pictures of 8 year old Vietnamese children with missing fingers and said, "This is who made your bed, working for 5 cents a day." I think I literally turned on my heel, grabbed my children, and headed toward the exit leaving Jeff trying to gracefully extricate us from the situation.
When we got home, Jeff said, "Is it really us to be all matchy-matchy?" Well, it hasn't been to this point. That doesn't mean it couldn't be. But after all of this time, he and I sync almost automatically, and I naturally followed his train of thought to the next point: "And is it us to be financing furniture? That we don't need?" We need a new mattress and bed, maybe some new nightstands. We smiled at each other as we saw glimpses of the old Jeff and Tiff again and sighed with relief. We can still be them.
The solid oak, American made bedroom set is lovely and we might someday down the road get it. Or not. We ordered a new mattress and headboard. We found an interesting dresser/buffet/who-know-what-it-is thing for one side, and will eventually find something for the other. We're keeping our same old hand-me-down dresser. We don't feel the need to paint our bedroom or get new carpet. I hope that means we are one step closer to that simplicity that somehow has eluded us in the past few years. I miss it.
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