When I was growing up, my parents purchased our furniture from two places: the Amish and Ikea. Now I understand, at first this seems to be an unusual combination of tastes, but really it makes perfect sense. See, it goes like this: when you're in the market to purchase a bookshelf, you simply ask yourself, "Do I want this to last longer than 24 months?" If the answer if yes, you call your man Jedediah. If the answer is no, a nice Fyersdal will probably suffice.
In 2014, at the ripe old age of 23, I moved to the furniture desert that is Memphis, TN. And for two years, I lived a life of staunch minimalism. Visitors would walk into my sparsely furnished apartment, behold the table (an Amish-built hand-me-down) and the mattress on the floor and ask, timidly, "Uhm. Did you guys just move here?"
After two years of asceticism, I decided that I was going to play grown-up and actually furnish my next apartment.
Stage 1: Cracked-Out on Consumerism
Maybe it was the fact that I'd been exposed to an ungodly amount of HDTV, but all of the sudden, I felt like a young Martha Stewart. I logged on to wayfair.com and began to fill my shopping cart with the trappings of domestic bliss.
Now, for those of you who don't know, Wayfair is essentially the Forever 21 of home goods. My first thought was, "Oh my God. A faux cowhide accent chair for only $125? Yes please!" I think I got a little sweaty after that. I honestly can't remember. It's all just a blur from then on. Before I knew it, my cart was full. An entire apartment furnished for just under 1,500. "Not bad, you sly dog," I thought to myself (and just to myself).
Stage 2: Mystified by Modern Engineering
As my packages began to arrive, I marveled at their size. I felt like I was witnessing the first hover-car hover off the lot. "You're telling me there's an entire couch in this box?" I asked the FedEx deliveryperson, "I demand to know the name of the genius who engineered this futon." He was less than amused.
"Can you believe it?" I asked my best friend, "My entire house is going to spring forth from these seven packages."
"Well. Sort of. It's not like the miracle of life, you know."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean it's not like you just add water. You have to build it."
Stage 3: Baffled by the Intricacy of the Universe
With those four words, my entire world seemed to close in on me. "You have to build it," she'd said. "You have to build it."
With apprehension, I opened the first of the seven boxes. Out tumbled literally hundreds of tiny little pieces, none of which even slightly resembled a bed. At the bottom of the box was a seven-page packet of visual instructions.
Stage 4: Dazed and Confused
Three hours later, I lay on the floor, a mess of hardware lost forever in the shag carpet of my bedroom. I think at one point I cried out to Jedediah. What had I gotten myself into? Why wasn't A2 gliding into B4 with ease as it had in the diagram? What did I do to deserve this? Is it a sin to want an mid-grade platform bed at an affordable price?
Stage 5: Overcome by a Strangely Maternal Pride
At 11:48 p.m., four-and-a-half hours after embarking on my figurative journey, the bed was "finished." And yes, I'm using quotation marks to indicate that it was finished "in a sense." Everything went pretty well until step eighteen of twenty-four. At that point, I decided to go rogue and finish the project sans instructions. What I learned is that building a "Platform Bed with Understoarge" is more like baking a soufflé than making lasagna. In other words, the last minute decision to add an extra dash of oregano is not recommended. But I've never been much for following a recipe.
"Where do these go?" my friend asked, a handful of screws in the palm of her left hand.
"Those? Those are extras," I lied.
We stood back to admire the works of our hands.
"Girl," I said, "Can you believe we just made a friggin' bed together. I feel... I feel kind of like I don't have to have to have kids anymore. Like when other people are showing me pictures of their babies, I'll be like oh yeah? Well I made this. A bed."
She gave me a funny look.
"I love you, precious bed," I whispered.
Stage 6: Exhausted and Underwhelmed
That night I went to sleep on my new bed. The next morning I fell out of my new bed. And a week later, the bed's new-puppy-glow had been all but extinguished. It was just a bed, after all.
If I learned one thing from this experience, it's the same lesson the Grinch taught everyone on Christmas. Yes, it's nice to have a place for people to sit when they come for coffee. But you can make happy memories in a sitting in folding chairs, laying on a floor mattress, eating off miss-matched dishes. Contentment isn't something you buy, it's something you choose.
