Let me guess. When you walk in your front door, there’s a living room with a couch, a television, a coffee table, and maybe a couple of side tables and armchairs.
Then there’s your bedroom. Bed, two nightstands, dresser (or two or three), mirror …
Kitchen: a table with some chairs around it.
Am I close?
You, my friend, are trapped by convention and don’t even know it.
About three years ago, in desperate need of a change of pace, I sold almost everything I owned and wandered around the country for six months living on friends’ couches. (I’m a nomad at heart.) One night I found myself in Portland, and decided to stay there.
Since I was still traveling 90% of the time (my cat sitter was only half-joking that I put her through college), my new apartment came together very slowly. When I was home for a few days at a time, I needed the area to work best for me. With a clean palette to work on, I was intrigued when I finally took a step back and saw how I had come to use the space versus how I would have set it up traditionally.
For example:
- I put eight dry-erase boards up around the living room area and hung my inboxes on the wall next to them. (It was only later that I read about David Allen’s admiration for a friend who converted his living room into his office.)
- The kitchen counter, which opened into the living room, became the perfect spot for the printer and was the perfect height to work on my laptop.
- Instead of a chair, I use a stability ball, or I stand. (Burns more calories!)
- When I first moved in, I threw a couple of quilts down on the floor as a makeshift bed. It’s just comfortable enough for me to sleep through the night, but it definitely does not encourage lounging in bed in the morning. Perfect!
- I have no furniture in my 2BR apartment in Portland. None, zip, nada.
For comparison’s sake, I keep a second (studio) apartment in Utah. This apartment has a table with four chairs (stools, actually), an armchair, a nightstand with built-in light, a futon, and a garment rack.
Which do you think is easier to keep clean: a small studio or a large two-bedroom?
Answer: the two-bedroom, by far, precisely because I don’t have unnecessary furniture cluttering it up.
Aside from the actual sticker price, factor in all the hidden costs of furniture – the time it takes to clean, walking around the couch instead of walking directly across the room (the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, after all), replacing or tightening a screw, laundering covers, removing stains, spraying Febreze, wondering if the curtains match the bedskirt…
My biggest gripe against furniture is having to vacuum around it. With three long-haired cats, I vacuum every other day. Back when I had an apartment full of furniture (and five long-haired cats), facing the prospect of moving the sofa, tables, chairs, etc. to get underneath them was daunting, and usually meant the task was put off until I couldn’t stand it anymore. All for a set of living room tables I never even put anything on!
Is your furniture helping you or hindering you?
In sum, why furniture is more evil than Google:
- You don’t have to vacuum around Google
- Google makes it faster, not slower, to get from point A to point B
- Google only costs you your soul; furniture costs real money
- Google always matches your curtains
- You don’t need chemicals to keep Google clean (just SafeSearch!)
- Your cats cannot claw Google to death
Disclaimer: I make decent money. I am not slovenly and I clean up well for cocktail parties. I have (really amazing) friends. Sharing that you don’t have furniture is not a cool thing to do. People make assumptions about you. Funny how furniture can be a source of social anxiety.
I’ve now upgraded to a two-story, three-bedroom unit, and I still have no furniture. (I really wanted skylights. Portland thunderstorms + skylights = Marina’s personal heaven.) I may very well cave in and buy a mattress and a couch after moving to the new unit. But when I do, at least I’ll be aware of what it’s costing me.
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I admire your independence … I am a bit more conventional than you … but, my husband and I have made some choices in how to use the space in our home, that causes family and friends to look at us funny. We have an open dining room / living room area. I emptied the dining area and turned it into my mini gym. My treadmill and weightlifting bench are in there, instead of the traditional table and chair combo. It works fantastic for me … I have developed a consistent work-out ethic, that I just couldn’t achieve with the stuff shut away in a closed-off room. We also have choice to set up our computer and printer area in our kitchen. It rocks! If one of us is cooking … the other can be on the web … and we are still able to engage in conversation and shared time together. It’s fun to not follow convention to closely … it’s our individual life … and what works for us is o.k. Even if other people might stick their nose up at it!
Though I agree that less can sometimes be more when it comes to furniture (i.e., who really needs a china cabinet), I found myself doing quite the opposite of what you recommend to great effect. My living room area used to be my office. This was necessary because I worked from home. However, when the working situation changed, I was actually able to make my living space into a living space - NOT a working space. Psychologically this has been a major improvement. It’s not healthy, I believe, to live at work. A kitchen with a computer and a living room with inboxes and whiteboards may make you more productive in the short term, but it will drain your soul way faster than Google could ever dream, and this will ultimately lead to apathy, fatigue and depression - arguably not very productive traits (of course, YMMV).
The state of your mind is, of course, partially a product of your genes at any given point in time. However, just as your body ‘is what you eat’ (despite it being in large measure determined by your genes), so is your mind what you feed it. The environments you immerse yourself in have dramatic psychological impact. Something *too* spartan could have just as many negative consequences as something too cluttered. Or, at the very least (if you don’t buy the prior claim), a *comfortable*, as opposed to spartan, environment will have a greater positive effect.
Ridding house of extra junk right now. Over 800 books, crappy old computers, nuts, bolts, string, pieces of wood, all old clothes, celestron telescope, comic books, front loading 1985 nintendo, all vhs tapes, MSDN collection, old furniture, old tv, all clutter. Google evil…. House improvement and leaky pipes trump furniture for evil.
I can see that if you’re not in your apartment very often, then having a very spartan setup would be nice. But, if you like to entertain (which, while not for everyone, many people do enjoy), you like to lounge in front of the TV on a rainy afternoon and watch a movie with your spouse (or your kids), or you want to not have back problems (which sleeping on the floor can definitely contribute to), then some furniture is good. I have all of the basics as far as furniture goes - living room sets, dining room furniture, nightstands, etc., but my “formal” living room also houses my PC, one of my upstairs bedrooms has been converted into a dressing room (much more relaxing to have no clothes in the bedroom!), and my coffee tables (they’re actually two square tables that we put together) also are used as desks and dining tables.
I think that for anyone who is a homebody, and who enjoys spending time in their home, having comfortable, useful furniture is a must. While not everyone needs a formal dining room, mine is also used for projects that I might want to spread out and leave out for a couple of days. That’s hard to do if the only large surface you have is your floor (and you have pets).
I applaud you for doing what works for you, but realize that it’s definitely not for everyone, especially those who actually spend a significant amount of time in their homes (not including working from home - which I also do).
“Google only costs you your soul; furniture costs real money”
I love that line! Hysterical.
Pray tell, why get larger and larger places if you have no plans for filling the space? I love small spaces (cars, apartments, etc.) because it prevents clutter. It would seem that with larger places comes larger… piles of clutter (due to having no furniture to put things in.)
For me small spaces is a preventative measure.
I live in a big one room loft. With two kids. So, we have a lot of flexibility of design, but not a lot of cleanliness. Kids come with a natural ability to eject things from their “proper spot” at a rate 4x the speed I can put them back. Add to this a lack of interest in putting them back after the third recovery, and you’ve got my home in a nutshell.
But your home sounds dreamy, and the post was really fun! : )
(and I’m a subscriber).
Ahmen Brother, sing it from the roof tops. I came to this realisation after IKEA. WhenI realised that our house was quite a bit like but not quite our friends houses. All our houses looked a little bit like an IKEA catalogue.
I would love a level of minimalism though my better half if she sees a shelf she clutters it end to end with books, nik naks and nuggets. sigh.
As with Chris there is now also the Child Factor which adds a level of , shall we say , random acts of dis organisation.
What even more amazing, as you point out, is we dont actually need all this “STUFF” but we seem to insist on collecting ever more of it.
Thanks for the post and yes I am a subscriber.
Cheers to Chris Brogan for pointing out your post.
Im off to the Dog house. .bye.
How simply fascinating and refreshing! I live in a very small 2 bedroom home with my 16 yr old son. It was built in the 1800’s, before the “closet era”. By that I mean that there isn’t one single closet in this house! There was also only one cabinet in the kitchen, and it supports the large, antiquated porcelain sink. (It’s an exact match to Drew Barrymore’s kitchen sink in “Riding in Cars With Boys). I’m remodeling the house by myself, one room at a time, and I’m doing it according to what suits my personal needs, instead of conventional methods. It’s been an interesting ordeal at times, as I try to maximize the use of a minimum amount of space. I have to applaud your ability to live with such sparse belongings. I can’t help but sit here and think of all the time, money, and backaches I’d save myself if I could do the same. Go You!
Great Post! This is something that we do a lot of in my apartment. Although perhaps for different reasons. You’re right that furniture makes a place harder to clean, and keep clean. For us, it comes down to clutter and usability. We like our spaces to be a usable as possible.
My friends and I share a four-bedroom apartment. My bedroom has a matress on the floor, a LOT of pillows, a small dresser and a small night-table next to the bed in the corner. It’s a big-bedroom, so we have plenty of floor space for slumber parties, yoga, chit-chat, wild-sex, and ritual.
All our bedrooms are like this, and the only furniture we have in the rest of the apartment is a kitchen table with some chairs (primarily for friends who aren’t spry enough to feel comfortable on the floor). Our desks in the study (All of us are involved in non-profit, organizational, and computer work. Our desks vary by our personality, but they’re all pretty spartan. And book cases. LOTS of book cases. (I count eight of them in my head)
Our living room is a ginormous pile of pillows. The TV and DVD player are on the floor in the corner. We pull them into the middle of the room when in use, but the rest of they time they’re out of the way.
It’s a great, simple way to live!
Great thread. Please post a photo of your furniture-less apartment in Portland; some of us need the inspiration.
Did you sell the furniture on feebay or give it away, or something else? Details!
Bravo!
We swapped our dining and livingroom spaces so we could add a home office to the new dining space. We used to be in a 2 bedroom with an office in the 2nd bedroom. We downsized a lot of our stuff and are now saving about $500/month on rent.
My philosophy on saving money — if you economize on the Big Stuff (i.e. less rent, fewer vehicles), you don’t have to sweat the small stuff. I can have my $4.00 starbucks coffee, and the nice walk along the tree-lined street to get it.
Actually my furniture is hindering me, nice post though Bravo
I like furniture's it gives design in home and they are useful. It depends if you know where to place them and if you know how to organize them.
Hi, Marina Martin great thinking….good post and good thread.
Thanks
yup.. showing a picture of your place would have been better. also, it has been proven that using less furniture also helps our eco. no sweat if you have a big place, just try to use less furnitures.
regards,
bedroom furniture
I can see that if you're not in your apartment very often, then having a very spartan setup would be nice.I emptied the dining area and turned it into my mini gym. My treadmill and weightlifting bench are in there, instead of the traditional table and chair combo.