Furniture Consignment Gallery Blog

"Hey, Jay!" one of the other dads hollered at me from the other side of the ballpark as our sons were finishing up soccer practice. "Looking forward to the party!" I nodded, grinned and waved back at the guy trying not to look totally confused. "Party?" I thought. "What party?"   

Ten minutes later, I found out. Parked in my driveway was a truck. Two men were hauling a massive inflatable bouncing house into my backyard. Yes, we apparently were having a party. Robbie, our youngest, was turning seven. His buddies were coming to our house to celebrate. All of them.

Inviting 20 seven-year-old boys to a backyard birthday party is sheer lunacy. There are no carrot sticks on the menu, just pure sugar bombs. Add an arsenal of plastic weaponry and you've got an incendiary mix. You'd have less damage from a horde of Mongols.

Other parents - that is, the ones who value their homes - outsource these kinds of events. They rent an indestructible party palace for the afternoon. That's so the joint can be hosed down and, if necessary, rebuilt after the party. 

Whose idea was this wingding anyway? Diana, my wife, looked remarkably cheerful for someone about to be overrun by munchkins with inflatable pickaxes. "Jay," she insisted. "It'll be fun!"  

What actually happened was two hours of utter mayhem.  Like an invading force of troop carriers, SUVs pulled up in front of our house at precisely 4 p.m. Out spilled an army of howling kids. The party instantly devolved into a battle scene. Their parents stood at the perimeter - wine and beer in hand - watching in shock.

Robbie's older brother, Cade, had been enlisted as a kind of bouncer to keep the peace. At 15, he is six feet tall and 190 pounds, but he was no match for a swarm of seven-year-olds. They attacked and beat him into submission with their axes. I could hear muffled cries for help, but I wasn't about to risk the fury of the mob.

Considering the battlefield wounds, we probably should have had a MASH Unit. One boy ran up to his mom with blood running down his lip. "Mom," he said breathlessly. "Can you hold my tooth?" He dropped the tiny pearl into her hand and raced back into action.

Just days before Christmas, the ping pong table went on sale. I couldn't resist. So I bought it and hid it from my wife and boys in the garage.

What fun this will be, I thought, giddy with anticipation. Best gift ever! We'll spend hours playing together, laughing together, hugging, high-fiving our victories. Everyone knows that ping pong is the Elmer's glue of family bonding.

On Christmas Eve, with the boys tucked in bed, I raced to the garage. My wife stood at the front door, skeptical. My last-minute no-list shopping expeditions have been known to be problematic. Every year, I set off like a 17th century explorer: armed, determined and dangerous. She never knew what I would drag home.

As I rolled the table up to the house, it looked more and more like an enormous mastodon. We could hardly squeeze it through the door. Suddenly, I realized with a crushing sense of doom, we'd never wrestle this baby down into the basement.

"Brilliant," my wife snarled.

Fortunately, I've got furniture-moving expertise. And our family room was full of furniture - pretty much all of it unnecessary in my view! I tipped the sofa on its side, rolled a chair around the corner, and flipped the ottoman into another room. When the dust settled, I'd created a sports arena with the table in the center.

Christmas morning arrived, and there were shrieks of joy from the boys. We picked up our paddles and the battle began. Outside, snow flurries whipped around the house. Inside, ping pong balls bounced off the walls.

When grandparents, and uncles arrived, they had to suck in their bellies to squeeze around the furniture stacked by the front door. A crowd gathered around the table. Merrily, we fought for ping pong supremacy. My wife even managed to forgive me - that is, until a ball splashed into the pan of gravy bubbling on the stove.  

And then it hit me. Maybe I wasn't the only fool who brought home a gift so large it required us to empty the house of furniture. So if you, like me, got swept up in the holiday spirit and you need to sell off your furniture to accommodate a new ping pong table ... well, Furniture Consignment Gallery is here to help.

But as for your fuming spouse, you're on your own.

The High Point Furniture Market wrapped up its spring exposition this week. Basically, it’s a six-day party for the interior design industry. Some 80,000 flock to North Carolina for the event every April. Well, it’s a party – and a workout. High Point is the biggest home furnishings trade show in the world. Visitors need a map, a shuttle bus, sensible shoes and a lot of stamina to make their way around hundreds of showrooms full of furniture, rugs, lamps and accessories.

Diana was there, and she came home exhausted but full of insight about the latest trends. Here are her comments:  

This year, the theme is all about “lifestyle.” What does that mean? For one, furniture makers offered clean, crisp, well-organized displays that were so perfect they lulled you into a fantasy. It was like imagining yourself driving your convertible down with the top down on an oceanfront road on a sunny day. You’re living the dream – or at least you can within these displays!

All of it was geared to capture those rare moments when the kids are happy and healthy, and all of life is in perfect harmony. Finally, you don’t have to hold your breath anymore. You can exhale. Isn’t that we all want? We long for those precious, perfect moments to last forever.

Furniture manufacturers spend millions of dollars trying to figure out what you long for in your life. They pay consulting firms wads of cash to try to understand you and your buying habits, so they can help you feather your nest. And if they can’t exactly figure it out, they will dream up a theme.

But there’s a fatal flaw in this manufactured theme. That perfect lifestyle isn’t mine and it likely isn’t yours. My life revolves around three young boys. Yours may include messy teenagers or rambunctious grandchildren. High Point’s elegant mahogany library with the high ceiling and the rolling ladder wouldn’t work for us. My three-year-old would be clinging terrified to the top while his older brothers raced the ladder from one side of the room to the other, shrieking with hilarity. We’d all end up in the emergency room. Disaster!   

Ditto the glass-top dining tables with dove white slipper chairs. That $100-a-yard silk would be covered in peanut butter and jelly within a day. The glass would be smeared with milk. Crumbs would be ground into the $25,000 Aubusson.

  At High Point, the displays are exquisite. The pitch is enticing. Far from the chaos of a house with three growing boys, I’m buying every bit of it. The problem is, the trade show is selling a lifestyle that doesn’t exist for most of us. Maybe even all of us.  

The key to success is to design for the life you live right now – not your fantasy life. We’re practical and pragmatic New Englanders.  We want good jobs, a good education for our children, and communities with good values. We are thrifty and very resourceful. We know quality and we prefer it.

 At Furniture Consignment Gallery, you can design for the life that you live every day. Our showroom is full of furniture and accessories that fit our imperfect – but wonderful – lives.  And you can achieve the look that suits you and your family for less, which leaves more on the budget for the truly important things.