Furnishing of your home?

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i only like black and white, spartan to say the least. I think it is G O R G E O U S ! !! !! ! I'm all for not cleaning around a bunch of stuff. I couldn't care less if anyone else likes it, I love it.

fabtastic house, extra tech geeked to the max

Well, I live with my boyfriend, and he's a (fairly) high end interior designer - so the place looks like it belongs in a magazine spread. It's a fairly small place - 1200 sq ft - but we can have dinner for 8, and have hosted parties for 25 or 30 entirely inside. If the weather cooperates, we also have a poolhouse (2 car garage that's been finished out inside) and a great backyard. We did Easter here for about 100 a couple years ago, and a few years ago, he had a party with 150 attendees - there were 200 invitees, but not everybody showed up.

Before I moved here, however, I had my own place and it was . . . let's just say the decor was aesthetically challenged. Very minimal furniture, poorly arranged, and I could not keep the place clean - partly due to Executive Dysfunction and partly because I had way too many dogs. I could have easily had 12 or 15 people over, with adequate seating for all, and it was on 2 acres. Theoretically I could have hosted huge parties, but during the 3 years I was there, I never had more than 2 people (brother and his girlfriend) over at one time. The total guest list for those 3 years was, I think, 6 people.

I'm very neat. Most people are impressed by that, because they don't expect it from a teenage girl. My roommates have always driven me crazy with their piles of clothes on the floor and crap cluttering every surface.

I don't have my own home or apartment, but my bedroom and dorm can speak pretty well. I like storage and keeping things organized, especially if it's hidden in a particularly cool manner (like those shelves inside of the steps in a staircase - do want!). My color scheme is largely purple, silver, grey and black, and pretty much all my decorations are part of that theme. IKEA is my favorite furniture store. I'd buy everything there if I could. I also don't like to change things. Once something is in a particular place or there's a particular color on the walls, it takes Herculean effort to get me to chance it changed. It drives my mom nuts becauseh I have been actively resisting her attempts to change my room around for two years now... I did kind of compromise on that and got some new furniture, but the paint and bedsheets remain the same.

When I get my own place, I can see doing nature-y and spartan stuff. Light woods, whites, greens, very little clutter... Color is all about relaxing to me and cutting down on sensory input. Either that or dive deeper into my obsession with fantasy Medieval-y stuff and go to dark woods, reds, golds and deep browns, with lots of stone accents.

I have an odd mix of furniture. Nothing from IKEA, but a few similar items from Wal-Mart. Similar in that they are inexpensive and require us to build them ourselves.

Currently, I have a bed, desk chair, end table (just one), coffee table that I don't use and which sits in the bedroom, and kitchen table and 2 chairs that my parents gave to me as they no longer used. I have a desk, nightstand, bookshelf, coffee table, dresser, and entertainment stand I bought from Wal-Mart. The bookcase was supposed to be six feet tall, but I didn't want one that tall and they didn't sell any shorter ones at the time, so I only used some of the pieces and it is about 3 feet tall and propped up by the pieces I didn't use. I used the top half such that what was supposed to be the top of the bookcase actually is the top piece, this way it would not look odd. The middle, though, is actually the bottom of my bookcase and thus it didn't sit level and I had to prop it up.

I also have a couch I bought from a friend, and a mirror and a large table that I managed to salvage when other people were throwing them out.

I don't really care when people come over that I have, by their standards, lousy furniture. I've only ever had 4 other people in my apartment other than my family so this is not really a concern, and if they don't like it they know where the door is. I really don't like spending money and don't see any need to buy expensive furniture. This is the main reason I have the furniture that I have.

I really have trouble keeping my apartment clean, too. I don't like cleaning (I even wrote a song about it) and tend to put it off as long as possible. I always seem to have moldy old food, dust bunnies, and trash on my table and desk that only gets thrown out when I really need the space. The thing is, it really doesn't bother me.

hiya shoebox, and welcome to WP
i know where you're coming from, as i am an incurable slob. i have an old [circa 1968] loveseat which is supremely uncomfortable in that it has no support so i never sit on it, it just serves as a platform for some of my stuff, as it overflows with old magazines and boxes and such. an old stenographer's chair serves as a table for my living room lamp. an old lamptable with the lamp removed serves as a computer monitor platform. my bureau is overflowing with old bills and such, to the point where i can't close it. i have my late mother's dining room table which also overflows with old magazines and bills and boxes and empty aluminum pop cans and such. that is where my laptop sits as i type this on it, sitting on a computer chair. at least most of my foodstuffs are in cabinets but a lot of it is in the grocery store sacks on the floor because the meager shelf space is full.

my window "curtains" are old operating room plastic sterile boundary drapes, held in place with clothespins atop the railings. an old 1970s gulbransen "theatrum" organ holds my audio system and HD radio tuner. i play with it every now and then [the organ, that is]. the organ's bench holds 2 boxes of stuff i moved from my parents' old house that i never bothered to unpack because i can't find any spare space for the stuff in my little tin can. 2 of my late parents' old bedstands serve as a table to put my tv on. the kitchen stove is covered with empty bottles/cans/boxes of consumed food, napkins in various states of hygienic readiness, slightly soiled dishes and such, and i carve out an empty space atop it to serve as a place to prepare my food. needless to say, i never cook with it. the kitchen sink is full of dishes on one side, and the other is used for washing now and then. the floor is covered with boxes of various stuff, with "goat trails" enabling me to get around inside. my bed is an air mattress on the floor, and the rest of the bedroom is full of moving boxes i just can't bring myself to unpack and find places for the things inside of 'em.

My tiny 624 sq ft apartment looks more like a warehouse than a home. I sleep on an air mattress (originally with the idea of easy portability in mind, but it is great for the back), sit in a very comfy aluminum frame easy chair I got from Sears in 1985 for $50, have an incredibly uncomfortable futon that only serves as a clean laundry repository and have a folding card table that i used to eat on but now only serves to collect items for ready use. The computer sits in an unoccupied corner on another 5 foot table. All empty wall space is lined with stacks of cardboard boxes (my version of file cabinets) and there is enough stuff crammed into this small space to fill a small house. The carpet has not been steam cleaned in 5 years since the time when the last landlord promised to send the cleaners around four times as a freebie to go with my lease renewal but the cleaners never did show up at all. These days the carpet is hopeless and looks like it has a permanent case or carpet cancer. There is no good reason to clean things up beyond what is needed to be able to find things because nobody ever visits me at all... aside from my sister and her family every few years... and the last time she was the only one of them who would dare venture inside. It is a real Aspie hole in the wall. Someday I will get a house and be able to spread out a bit.

Sorry about the duplicate... it must have happened during editing. This copy should be deleted if possible.

My tiny 624 sq ft apartment looks more like a warehouse than a home. I sleep on an air mattress (originally with the idea of easy portability in mind, but it is great for the back), sit in a very comfy aluminum frame easy chair I got from Sears in 1985 for $50, have an incredibly uncomfortable futon that only serves as a clean laundry repository and have a folding card table that i used to eat on but now only serves to collect items for ready use. The computer sits in an unoccupied corner on another 5 foot table. All empty wall space is lined with stacks of cardboard boxes (my version of file cabinets) and there is enough stuff crammed into this small space to fill a small house. The carpet has not been steam cleaned in 5 years since the time when the last landlord promised to send the cleaners around four times as a freebie to go with my lease renewal but the cleaners never did show up at all. These days the carpet is hopeless and looks like it has a permanent case or carpet cancer. There is no good reason to clean things up beyond what is needed to be able to find things because nobody ever visits me at all... aside from my sister and her family every few years... and the last time she was the only one of them who would dare venture inside. It is a real Aspie hole in the wall. Someday I will get a house and be able to spread out a bit. If anyone has seen the movie " Mozart and the Whale", the guy's apartment in that movie with all of the stacks of newspapers looks similar to my apartment... only much more spacious and much more tidy.

I have a mix. I have a chest of drawers and a computer desk from 2005 when my parents built their house and splurged on furniture from a place no longer in business, they had a scratch and dent store for floor models and such, and the furniture was half off. I have a nightstand that I've always had, since I was a baby, I can see it in my baby pics, I don't know where my parents got it.

My "workbench" (I'm into computers) is an old, old oak dining table from the Victorian era that I got out of a dumpster in 1993 when I first moved out. I also have a kitchen table (that I eat at) that was a castoff from my parents when they moved out of their old house. I have a three drawer nightstand that's solid birchwood, my parents bought it for me when I lived in San Francisco and needed a telephone stand. I no longer have a land line, but I store stuff in the drawers.

I have a 1950s nightstand that the people who used to live a couple doors down gave me when they cleaned out the house after some relatives died. I at first gave it to my grandma, who was sick and needed a bedside stand, then when my grandparents died I took it and used it to support the fan I have blowing on me at night. I have a nightstand from my parents' first bedroom set, bought when my mom was still pregnant in 1974. I use it as a printer stand.

I have two Art Deco style nightstands, one was bought at a SF thrift store for $15 in 1994 because I needed a typewriter stand. The typewriter has changed a couple times, but it still sits on that stand. I have another one that holds vital documents and stuff from when I was born, and which has a radio controlled clock on top. I got that one when I lived in downtown Sacramento in 2002 and a woman was moving, she sold it to me for $3.

I have a 1950s Lane chest that I bought in 2007 for $60 that holds mementos, mainly of HS and college. That stays in the closet. I have several bookshelves, two bought by my parents in 2005, one cast off from them that stays in the closet. I also have a plastic floor standing cabinet that holds supplies.

I rarely have anybody over, so nobody really sees that nothing matches and is all mixed up. It works for me. I also have several small tables in the garage that I no longer use, including two nightstands that I got from trash piles, one of which is all metal. I have a small 1950s TV table that I've had since I was a kid, and another TV table that swivels that belonged to my great grandfather. I have no use for them anymore, so I will eventually get rid of them.