Do you have something in your house that you don't know why you bought or keep around? What is the eyesore in your home?

-- Anonymous, September 20, 1999

Answers

I haven't actually bought one, but I have always coveted a hand chair. I even looked at one in the store this weekend, and thought, "If only I could afford to spend $115 on a hand chair." In case you aren't familiar with the phenomenom of the hand chair it's a giant plastic hand shaped so that it can be sat in, and as a bonus the thumb has a cup holder/elbow rest indentation.

-- Anonymous, September 20, 1999

A few years ago, at a church rummage sale I saw it and knew I had to have it. A little chair. I know that doesn't sound very strange or odd, but it truly is a "little chair." It wasn't meant for children, but for a small adult. I am a small adult (5'0") and fit in it perfectly. I haggled with the guy who was selling it and bought it for $5.00. My mother screamed when I brought it home as it is rather ragged and ugly. I had it in my bedroom for years and a few months before my wedding it disappeared. I figured my mother had finally had it and threw it away. I wasn't entirely disappointed as I was caught up with the wedding plans and didn't really have time to be upset. A few days later my parents approached me, "Um, about your little chair..." they began. It turned out that they had taken it to an upholstery guy to have it re-cushioned and to have new fabric put on it as a wedding present for me. Unfortunately, the guy told them that it wasn't worth getting made over and he couldn't guarantee any of his work. I still love that chair and it remains at my parents house in my old bedroom where my family's cat enjoys sleeping in it. I am hoping to one day have a bigger home so I can give it a proper place in my living room.

-- Anonymous, September 20, 1999

my roommate and i had an inflatable chair last year ... it was so comfortable, her best friend would actually sleep in it the nights she stayed in our room because HER roommate was entertaining her skanky ass boyfriend.

-- Anonymous, September 20, 1999

When I was in high school I begged for a water bed. Unfortunately, I got one for my birthday, and it was the biggest pain in the ass ever. Draining it was horrible, because it was a semi-waveless, so you could never really get all the water off the bottom, which made it mega-heavy and very hard to move. Then, my cat punctured it, only I didn't know it because the hole was below the sideboard level, so it slowly leaked into the base. I started to notice a mildewish smell that I never could quite pinpoint because nothing obvious had happened yet, then woke one morning to wetness. It was a miracle the whole thing hadn't caved in on me, because the boards underneath had long been ruined. Getting rid of it was an even bigger pain in the ass, and it turned out the whole time the reason my back had been hurting was because of the damn waterbed. Once I got a regular mattress, I was fine.

My mother once was so excited to get this sofa from my grandmother that had been in her basement/rec room for over a decade. The whole selling point was that it was longer than your average sofa, which didn't seem to matter, since the tallest person in my family was 5'6". Laying on sofas had never been a problem for any of us, but mom just HAD to have the long sofa. The fabric was this woolly, scratchy stuff that had visibly rubbed down to shiny stuff in spots. It smelled exactly like peanuts, strongly. I hated peanuts. Laying on that sofa to watch tv was awful, and I had to sleep on it when company was over. I wish Febreeze had been around back then. Finally me and my dad replaced it in 1986 with a sectional mauve sofa which wasn't much better, but at least it didn't stink.

-- Anonymous, September 20, 1999

Oh, lord, I have a whole house full of ridiculous furniture. Number one is the Victorian sofa and numbers two and three are the Victrolas that take up space but don't serve any useful function -- they'd be fine if they weren't filling space that should be taken up by bookshelves, but since we really need bookshelves, the Victrolas are ridiculous.

We had two terrible bright gold velour overstuffed chairs for a long time. They were ridiculous, too, but at one time they were necessary -- we had nowhere to sit and our entryway was too narrow to get a sofa into the apartment. We still have one of them, but fortunately it just sits in the basement being ridiculous, where it doesn't really bother anyone.

-- Anonymous, September 20, 1999

a few months ago i went to this little hippie head shop (yes they still have those) and there was this blue inflatable couch with glow in the dark stars that i wanted soooo badly and it looked like it was there just so people could sit on it while trying on sandals but it actually was for sale for $34 but i got it for 26$. so then me and my friends deflated it in the store, and then stuffed it in the back seat of the car along with a babysitter. luckily, we got it home before the heat got to it, and then i inflated it.. by blowing it up..by myself... that sucked. but since then it's been my pride and joy.. and my cat's too afraid to go anywhere near it. the only bad thing about it is that if i'm wearing shorts my skin sticks to the plastic.

-- Anonymous, September 20, 1999

Anne and I were coveting the inflatable furniture for a while as well when we first moved into our new place. We were trying to find a futon, but no one had the one we wanted. So we were at Target (More on that later), and we saw the inflatable couch and chair. We both thought, hey, that would be pretty funny, hahaha. But, as we began to realize that none of the furniture stores had a futon that we could afford, we thought more and more seriously about the inflatable furniture. Its cheap, will provide hours of entertainment, and well, its inflatable furniture!! But in the end, we just bought a really really nice futon. . . But in the back of my mind, the inflatable chair still would look great in our living room. But about Target. I have decided that no one actually goes there with the intention of buying anything. It's kind of like going to the mall. Except there, the stuff is much cheaper, so you end up grabbing a cart, putting the Jackson Five cd in it, deciding I really need another polo, I need more playstation games, and well, we need a new board game, and wouldnt that mirror look cool as hell over the couch? and you end up with $150 worth of impulse buys. Whats up with that???

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

I love ridiculous furniture. I have an awesome, huge, lime green velour sofa and an orange leather chair from a hospital(it has a hospital sticker on the back) and an inflatable light blue sofa that is heat-responsive. I made the mistake of thinking that was way cool, but now I know not to ever sit on it no matter what because when I get up there will be a huge pink imprint of my butt. I also have a huge picture of children singing Christmas carols, which is great because all the children are different sizes, shapes and nationalities, and they all are showing different emotions. There is a shy little girl, a loud little girl, a show-off little boy, a little boy looking at everyone like they're stupid, and some more. I have another picture of a man blowing up balloons and another of 7 ice cream cones, all different flavors, lined up in a row.
I can't wait to decorate my new apartment.

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

oh glitterbeam! i am soo jealous!! although, maybe me and you should move in together, our sofas would totally match, you and your lime green, me and my fly gold velevet! hell yeah! wait, well, i dont think my sofas ridiculous, its comfy, if i moved out of my mom's house tomorrow, i'd take my clothes and my sofa. even if it does weigh about two tons, i could sleep on it until i die, so so comfy. although inflatible furniture, is a tad ridiculous, whatever floats your boat

-- Anonymous, September 23, 1999

Well, I left a lot of my more ridiculous furniture at my apartment in college and I still don't know what happened to my Elvis chairs (two matching orange plaid recliners with wood on the sides- last time I saw them they were used as outdoor furniture at an impromptu concert in our backyard). Then my dog pooped on what we called our bear-skin rug, or the yak-pelt, but was really just a flaccoti (sp?) rug; so we had to get rid of that. The main problem in our house is couches. We have two futons being used as couches- one in the living room, one in the kitchen. Neither is sat on all that much since they're not really comfortable, and the dog has pretty much claimed them as hers. Then there's two couches we originally bought when I moved in. We got them at a thrift store, so I can't really complain, but my girlfriend sure can- and does. One is a faux-leather love seat that has these little button things on it; only the button things are falling off, so there's only the little metal button stem there that scratches your legs and ass. Then there's the ugly orange couch. Originally I liked this couch because it was so comfortable-- who cared if it was horribly ugly? Well it proved too comfortable. Now there is an indentation from the curve of my roommate's spine. It smells like a combination of him and the dog, since they both lie on it about 7 hours a day. I almost cried out in horror when my other roommate, who just moved in and hadn't set up his bed yet, was asleep on it with his girlfriend. I mean, the dustmites have built up the dustmite equivalent of the Mayan civilization there. My girlfriend jumped on it once and dirt fell into her shoes. Since then she won't go near it. Finally, after months of pleading, my roommate has agreed that we might need to get rid of it, and after hearing all of these heart-felt testimonials I may just replace it with some inflatable stuff.

-- Anonymous, September 24, 1999

We just bought our first house, so of course we are completely broke and pathetic. One of the big selling points of the house was the ginormous bonus room over the garage. Oh, the plans we had for that room. Unfortunately, after going over our budget for the next two years we have gone from dreams of making it an upstairs den/home theater with surround sound, to using it as a box storage room for a while, and then later we will furnish it with inflatable furniture and bean bags. Do they make inflatable furniture slip covers for the summertime, so you don't peel the skin off the back of your legs when you get up?

-- Anonymous, September 24, 1999

In my first apartment, an efficiency, I had a "day bed" which doubled as my couch. It was really just two flimsy mattresses, one on top of the other, with two L-shaped cushions for a back. Everything was covered in brown corduroy and the whole arrangement was held together by three molded aluminum pipes. Whenever I had a party, the people sitting on the couch would start off fine. Slowly, though, the cushions under them would collapse and my guests would slide onto the floor. It wasn't long before we made it into a competition and would place bets on whose butt would hit the hardwoods first (not necessarily the heaviest person, incidentally). Of course, some of the best parties were those where no one even noticed themselves sliding off until it was time to get up and go to the bathroom.

That couch mysteriously disappeared at about the time I met my wife. Can a 5 foot tall woman singlehandedly carry a couch down three floors to the trash room? I guess so, if she's desperate enough. Come to think of it, she may have done the same thing with my couch- racing friends, because I don't know where they went either.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 1999

My favorite piece of furniture (aside from my bed) is a large (4') round chair covered in crushed orange velvet with darken wooden arms and cream and orange pillows. It's part of the first living room set my parents bought about 25 years ago. When the rest of the set was relegated to the basement, I moved that chair into my bedroom. When I moved out, I took it with me, much to my father's chagrin. Despite the lack of use of the furniture, he was still attached. As a matter of fact, I asked once for the rest of the set, since my roommate and I had no furniture in the living room, and my parents wouldn't part with it.

My husband isn't nearly as fond of the chair as I am. I moved halfway across the country last year and insisted on taking the chair. It's in our living room now, fraying and tattered. I've been considering having it recovered, but I love it's tacky gaudy attraction. My sister wants it. I have friends who want it. But that orange chair is mine!

-- Anonymous, December 28, 1999

Exercise equipment. Every six months or so, my wife finds something new to try--aerobic step, curl bars, mini-trampolines, exercycles, sitting/rowing/pulling on bars kind of things, heavy bag, whatever. At any given time, there are two or three different huge, inert, stub-your-toe-on-them-at-two-in-the-morning useless hunks of metal and plastic in our bedroom, which I always run into because she's always changing what's in the room and where it is.

Oh, and she only uses each one two or three times, then it sits and languishes for a while until she realizes this is getting out of hand and drags one of them out to the curb so our neighbors can haul it off and stub their own toes against it at two in the morning.

-- Anonymous, January 02, 2000

Hee-hee. All my furniture is ridiculous. I have an orange armchair that is wider from arm to arm than it is high or deep (?). And a beige faux-leather loveseat with no cushions. The truly ridiculous thing is that I keep this furniture. I'd have a lot more room in my tiny space if I took it out. But I guess my weirdest piece of furniture is a set of four lockers (you know, like gym lockers) spraypainted gold. They actually make for great storage space, though. And they're metal, so I have a place to put the magnetic poetry!

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2000