You’ve heard me wax poetic about how fulfilling it is to get rid of home furnishings and other belongings via Craigslist and Freecycle. Well in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, I’m quoted in an article about giving new life for old furniture–i.e. shopping via consignment shops, yards sales and the like to furnish a home. I think writer (and friend) Jen Miller did a terrific job with the piece.
FYI, currently we have a number of pieces of furniture in our house that are old but which we’ve given new life to:
* a denim covered armchair (where I’m sitting right now) that started life as my father-in-law’s favorite chair when my husband was young. Originally, it was covered in scratchy green-plaid wool, and went off to college with my husband, then to his series of post-college apartments, where it often sat in the apartment, full of memories but too scratchy to actually sit on. A few years into our marriage I surprised him by having the chair and its foot rest recovered in denim. Now I have to fight him to sit in the chair.
* a wood, floor lamp, with a tripod-like footing, that originally sat in my grandparents living room in their Maine home. After my grandparents died, my mother assumed ownership of the lamp, then gave it to me.
* a wooden bench/storage seat that used to hold board games, also at my grandparents’ house in Maine. Now I have it in my dining room, tucked into a bow window, and it holds all of our table linens. When we have extra guests for dinner, we pull the bench up to the table as seating.
* two camel-colored leather couches that my father-in-law had in the living room of his East End, Long Island home. We he moved to Florida, he didn’t want to pay to move the couches, so my husband and I took them. Now those couches, worn almost threadbare-thin, sit at right angles to one another in my kids’ playroom. They’re perfect for each girl to stretch out on when they want to chill out and watch TV.
* five dressers and two nightstands in our bedrooms upstairs. All of these are used or hand-me downs, including a painted-green maple dresser that was my childhood dresser but which my teenager daughter now uses.
You really can give new life to old furniture. What do you have hanging around your house, as far as furnishing go, that used to live somewhere else?



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