Member-only story
How Not to Buy a Bed
Rearranging the furniture and the mood
I’ve ditched chairs with no regrets. I once separated from a wool rug just because I wanted to see something else. And when a vintage dinette set, so charming during our first five years together, began to bore me, I threw it in the back of the station wagon, drove out to a charitable donation center, and left it without so much as a backward glance.
So why was I struggling with the idea of tossing our old four-poster bed?
It’s not like it was a family heirloom, or an antique, or even particularly good quality. I bought it some twenty years earlier on deep discount at a nondescript furniture store. My husband wanted to take it back. I refused.
It wasn’t because I was so madly in love with this particular bed but because I was tired of sleeping on a mattress on the floor like aging college roommates. I was also tired of shopping for a bed. We’d spent countless hours shopping for more than two years without a purchase!
Honestly, maybe more than two years. We were the worst combination of consumers; persnickety about design and rather vague on money. I think furniture sales people hid in back rooms when we showed up.
