People are curious as to how we live without furniture, or rather, as little furniture as possible, so I thought I’d clarify how that works.
WE STAY IN HOTEL APARTMENTS
We do always live in hotels but they are like apartments and they already come with beds, a sofa and all this furniture I wish they did not come with.
We would have SO MUCH MORE SPACE if there wasn’t a sofa, beds, random dressers… oh the humanity of it all!
Anyway, we stay in these apartment hotels only because it has a separate bedroom, larger closets and the kitchen.
If we could find one WITHOUT furniture (unfurnished), it would be perfect because we would bring our futon anyway and sleep on the floor and we do not sit on sofas and so on.
WE ONLY REALLY NEED AT A BARE MINIMUM THE FOLLOWING:
- Table
- Chairs (one for each person)
- (this is our bed and I guess it counts as “furniture”)
- A chair a stool of sorts near the front door so that people can sit down on it to take their shoes on/off
P.S. You can buy an , free shipping worldwide with a few country restrictions, or here if you want an all-cotton one made in the U.S. instead.
We use this work area to work, and when it comes time to eat, we clear our work off the table and eat.
Even better is that some kitchens come with a bar area where you can sit at the counter and eat there, so the table and chairs are free to be a pseudo-office.
Look, even in China they eat in the alleyway outside of their home on some crates and stools:
As for our clothes, there are built-in closets here in every apartment and hotel (it’s just the size that varies), so we just bring hangers and hang up our clothing.
We do not need dressers (that’s for stuff you fold, and I hate folding), and we just use our suitcases to hold things. I don’t really see a problem using suitcases to hold clothes but then again, we do shift a lot.
The alternative to a suitcase is we have a box or a bag that holds everything that can’t be hung up — underwear and socks for instance.
If you don’t have 8 drawerfuls of lingerie, underwear and socks, everything fits into a box pretty nicely, and you don’t need to dig far to find what you need.
MAJOR PIECES OF FURNITURE WE DON’T HAVE AND THE REASONS WHY
Here are pieces of furniture that people own that I have no desire to:
Wardrobes/Dressers
This is solved by those built-in closets with rods / racks that you can hang your clothes on
Sofas/Couches
I hate sofas in my home because they’re big, bulky and annoying. In other people’s homes? Why not.
“So how do you watch TV without a sofa!?“, you might ask…
Well first of all we don’t have a TV in the first place so there goes THAT first world problem, but if we are in an apartment hotel that comes with a TV, we just lie down on the futon and look up at the screen which in a way, is better for your back.
What we do have is a large blank wall where we project movies from our laptops and have a mini, rather portable movie theater.
Otherwise we just watch movies on laptops on the bed (we have one of those pantry/dish racks that you put the laptop on so that it doesn’t overheat and catch on fire while being laid on the bed).
Like this:
Night Tables / Bedside Tables
Whatever for? We just put down whatever we need beside our futon.
Coffee Tables
This is the one, sole piece of furniture I HATE THE MOST. I can deal with the rest, but not a coffee table.
I will NEVER, EVER in my life buy a coffee table. I hate these stupid things.
I always bump my knee on one, or my toe, or have to maneuver around them when I visit people to get to the sofa to sit down.
They’re never at a good height for doing anything unless you are sitting on the floor (then what’s the point!?), and even leaning over to get your cup of tea from the table annoys me slightly because I have to bend down and over to reach it (yes I know, I am quite picky).
I would much rather be sitting at a proper table on a proper chair, and have everything at my chest height that is easily reached for and can be used.
WHAT ABOUT GUESTS?!
“Oh the horror!“, you are imagining. What about when guests come over? WHERE IS THE DAMN SOFA? Don’t you care about other human beings?
Of course I do, that’s why I invited them over to begin with, but that doesn’t mean I need to buy a sofa or kit out a room just for a guest when they stay over and visit on occasion rather than every single day!
For guest beds, I keep a spare rolled up in a closet.
When they visit, I roll it out, put them in the living room with some linens and a pillow, and there you have it.
Instant guest bedroom.
P.S. You can buy an , free shipping worldwide with a few country restrictions, or here if you want an all-cotton one made in the U.S. instead.
The way I see it, if they’re staying with me, they’re not expecting a 5-star hotel treatment because more than likely they’re staying with me to save on the cost of visiting my fair city, and if they cared about comfort and luxury as much as they did, they’d go to a hotel and pay for a private place to sleep instead (this is what my brother does, he never stays with me because he doesn’t want to impose and he doesn’t want to sleep on the floor).
As for guests who come over for dinner, we sit at the dinner table and eat there. If we have tea and coffee afterwards, it’s still at the dinner table.
I wouldn’t be moving to a couch at this point because… well…for one thing, I loathe COFFEE TABLES with a vengeance.
It is also much more efficient and cleaner to eat a dessert at a table with your cup of tea than it is to try and balance all of this on a sofa without getting crumbs onto the sofa or in between the cushions or spilling coffee all over yourself.
WHAT ABOUT WHEN YOU GO TO BUY A HOME?
I concede that we WILL buy some furniture (we only own a futon right now), but it’ll be practical and useful stuff.
What I would buy as the main piece of furniture for my home is a very large, solid wooden table with chairs, and that chair I mentioned for the front entry area for people to take off and put on their shoes.
As for everything else?
The only other furniture I’d let into my house is this wonderful rosewood dresser my mother has promised to give me.
It is really heavy, ornately carved, and bulky but it is sentimental to me, and beautiful. It is the only piece of unnecessary I’d allow in my home and only if we had a home that was permanent.
Oh, and a piano, but does that really count as “furniture”?
