The Hand-Me-Down Kids: Living Room Edition

When Mr. B and I bought our house a year ago, we fell in love with the open living room. It's a living/dining room combo, and we thought it was charming - and then the furniture moved in and we had no idea what we were thinking.

Here's the living room in it's purest state:


A nice blank slate, huh? And those big windows, we loved them. Moving in I thought I knew exactly what my style was. And to a certain extent, that's been true. I'm anti-clutter and knick knacks. I blame my Grandparents for this - they had about 50 of these Hummels in their house:

They collected dust and constantly had to be taken of a shelf to be dusted and put back. I have been anti-dusting and anti-knick knacks ever since.

This room has been a struggle, though. It's clutter free - except for those magazines that I don't throw away often enough. But, those big windows make TV placement in our only living space a little rough, which in turn limits the options for furniture arrangement. There are other options, like not having a TV in this room, but I'm not about to go without The Biggest Loser for the sake of style, come on now.

Mr. B's amazing brother and sister-in-law held onto a sofa for us for a year until we had a place to move it to. It's a comfy sofa where I spend my productive weekends napping. It's got good lines, but has been jumped on by kids (the world's cutest) and loved well. So we slapped a slip cover on and called it good.

My boss's girlfriend was moving out of her apartment, and asked if we wanted a chair. It's a chair and a half and olive green, and we were moving into a new house, so of course we took everything that was given to us. It's comfy, huge and I can curl up in it for a nap.


So we're definitely the hand-me-down kids, with a little upgrading to do. We've done the best we can with the furniture we've been given, and I have a plan for what I want in the future. The best part of using the hand-me downs is definitely that I've allowed my style to evolve with out an attachment (or forced attachment) to any piece of furniture. We own very few things that we've actually bought for the house, and it's fun to go shopping for our very own furniture.