Our friends all seem to buying houses. But we have just purchased our first piece of furniture.

That is not to say we didn’t have furniture previously, but we hadn’t actually used money to collect any of the pieces we have so far.

First, there was Clarence the Couch, who was olive green and stuffed with whatever they used to fill couches in the early 70s. He was extremely comfortable and could seat up to 6 people if the people really liked each other. Clarence had previously lived with my college roommate’s grandfather and had been lovingly donated to help us furnish our first non-dorm residence our senior year. It lived with my husband and his roommate the following year, then in my apartment when I lived solo the year before marriage, and it eventually became the first couch Luke and I used in our first apartment after we got married in 2008.

We moved up in the world of furniture when the neighbor of a member of our Sunday school class was giving away a gold-trimmed, cerulean-blue couch that was probably born around 1992. With back cushions removed, it was as wide as a twin bed and long enough for any NBA basketball player to sleep comfortably. This one, we named “The Bernstein Bears Couch” because its hue was reminiscent of the famous bears’ home décor. Albeit cumbersome, it was the perfect solution to accommodate guests in the one-bedroom apartment that housed our second year of marriage. Clarence the Couch, meanwhile, went back to live with family in his old age and currently resides with the younger brother of that college roommate I mentioned earlier. Continue reading Not-So-Newlywed Adventures: A Brief History of Our Hand-Me-Down Furniture →