Things Just Aren't Made Like They Used to Be

I have heard this said many times in the past, along with 'You get what you pay for.' In light of the condition of our furniture here compaired to the condition of our furniture back home, I would have to agree with the statement in the title, but disagree with the latter one. In the states, we never bought new furniture, mostly because we couldn't afford it. We lived in a college town where it was common for folks to put their unwanted furniture at edge of the street, hoping that someone else would pick it up and take it home. Over the years, we have given away and acquired furniture in this manner. We also shopped in thrift stores. We made a few of our bookshelves ourselves. (I miss Lowe's!) With the exception of the pieces that we made ourselves, all of our furniture was old. Yet, it was *very* durable. In the rare event that something did fall apart, it was no big deal to toss it out.

Here, it's a different story. Since we didn't ship anything over when we moved, we had to buy our furniture when we got here. We shopped as frugally as we could while still trying to get good quality furniture. (Ikea, Home Center, etc) Obviously, we weren't going to buy top of the line pieces for a household of 4 bouncy kids and 2 shedding cats. (sigh) Less than two years later, a tour of our home reveals four wrecked pieces and two wobbly ones. And it's not so easy, mentally, to toss furniture in the dumpster that was brand spanking new just a few months ago. Lucky for us, we have a lot of experience in fixing things. A quick trip to the hardware store for a few brackets, etc. should do the trick.

Computer problems and furniture

Today is the day that my furniture and appliances are supposed to be delivered, but it is 4:00 pm already and still not a peep. Of course, I can't leave to go anywhere until they get here, even if it is midnight, as a co-worker said happened to her when she got here.

So to make the day go even better, my computer caught a virus of some sort or spyware or something that was making it pull up web pages at random, so I had to rebuild it from scratch (fortunately I didn't have much loaded on it yet) but then the new installation got a virus before Windows Update would patch the holes MS has left us with, so I had to start all over. All in all not the best of days so far.

Furniture

So, until my furniture gets here on Thursday, this is my living room suite: