Leather, A Loveseat & Other Things To Be Ashamed Of

A few weeks ago there was a sale. And we’re talking a SALE. A sale of such sale-y-ness that it prompted Alexander to come home and tell me about it. A furniture sale, nonetheless. (You know it’s a good sale when your husband comes home extolling the virtues of a furniture sale).

Having purchased our first house in December, we have since been in the browse-with-the-thought-to-buy-sometime furniture market. We have more rooms now than we ever dreamed of in our walk-through the one bedroom to get to the one bath first apartment days. We’ve come along way baby! But with great space comes great responsibility. The responsibility to fill that space with furniture. Not all of it, mind. But enough to make it look like someone is indeed living in the house. So we’ve been browsing.

Over the course of our browsing, I had determined that leather would really be the best option. It’s more durable than fabric and easier to clean. It would hold up. And it comes in a wide variety of neutral colors. Just what we were looking for. If we didn’t look so much at the price.

As far as price went, we were a little more comfortable in the microfiber family. Fabric, so not as durable, but still relatively easy to clean.

Enter the sale. Leather sofa and loveseat sets on sale for upward of $1000 off sticker, then an extra 10% off the sale price, then a free matching recliner or chair and ottoman. The price was still leather, but definitely now in range. And we’d be getting MORE furniture than we would be able to otherwise. I mean, come on! An ottoman. Never in our wildest did we dream we’d own an ottoman. And so we threw caution to the wind (after hours of debate and making several exhaustive pro/con lists) and got the furniture.

And it was delivered today. We cleared the living room to make way for the furniture. I spent the morning sitting on the floor with the boys: playing, watching DVDs, and waiting for the furniture to arrive. I felt like the peanut on the railroad track. My heart was all a flutter.

Then came the moment (well within the three hour delivery window). Big men arrived, hauling four pieces of leather furniture into my living room. Inventory was taken, papers were signed, the men left. The boys spent the rest of the day exploring the vast new selection of seating options. And what about me? I could hardly bring myself to sit down.

For years we’ve lived in a friendly community of starving students. The young mothers all knew what it was like to feed and clothe a growing family on a shoe-string budget that every once in awhile saw the black. All the young fathers knew what it was like to go to class and work at the same time, only to come home and balance taking the kids for a few hours with doing their homework. We knew this world. We fit in.

But now we’re in the real world. We’re in the gainfully employed world. We’re in the world where one can (and does) buy a home, a car and various pieces of furniture without going into unnecessary and bone-crushing debt. And I feel so out of place.

My heart (and my head most days) is back with those young mothers in Staving-Student-Land. I understand the hand-me-down couches that sag at the edges and have a strange humplike growth in the middle. I understand the double slip covered futons and the wood-encased television sets that are only able to receive five channels. I understand kids dressed in the slightly stained, slightly faded clothes of their older siblings. I understand young mothers who haven’t bought clothes for themselves since they started having kids.

And I find myself a little confused with the concepts of leather, loveseat and matching furniture in general. Granted, our grandfather clock that my dad gave us for a wedding present and the rather large HDTV that Alexander won in a student commercial contest now seem a little less out of place with their new furniture buddies. But I still feel the need to apologize for having them.

So to any of my friends still residing in Starving-Student-Land who might be reading this: I’m sorry. I hope you can forgive me. And I hope when you reach the gainfully employed real world (in the near future, knock on wood) that you won’t suffer as much guilt as I have.