Furniture Consignment Gallery Blog

After the big two-day, tax-free furniture sale last weekend, Diana and I were exhausted. We closed up the store, looked at each other and realized we were thinking the same exact thought: Let's go to the beach!

Sunday night offered perfect weather night for a barbecue on the beach. As the sky darkened and dozens of bright meteors streaked overhead, we blackened some burgers on the grill and roasted marshmallows with our three boys. Just as we were settling in for a night of quiet stargazing, four cars roared up. Out poured twenty college kids.

They cranked up the music, opened a cooler of beer and lit a fire. With skills finely honed by spring break, they managed to construct a party scene in seconds - or so it seemed to me. Suddenly, our peaceful evening with the kids seemed in contrast, well, boring.

"How did we get here?" I asked Diana, looking enviously towards the party. "We used to be over there." I mean, it didn't seem that long ago. We were carefree. We had a dozen friends who could dance in the sand all night without worrying about work on Monday. Now, we have a business, a mortgage, three kids. 

Diana glanced at me with an unmistakable expression. It said, wordlessly: "You are such a dumbass."

"They're over there, Jay, trying to figure out how to get over here," she observed, turning to watch our three boys chasing each other across the beach. "And with whom."

I laughed. I knew she was right, but I wanted to yell to them, "Stay over there!"  In a few hours, I would be back to work trying to figure out how to arrange 50 plus deliveries from the weekend sale, answering e-mails, registering kids for fall sports and hollering at them to finish their summer reading.

Then, an older couple strolled by both of our campfires, chuckling at the awkward antics of the teenagers, then nodding genially at us. They looked content. Our stage in life is a lot of work, but as the kids ran back to our fire, shivering with beach towels, I know that we will remember these times as the good old days.

Closing up the other night, I checked every corner of the store. As always, our showroom has seen a lot of traffic, and I've found everything from balled-up tissues to my own business card - with trample marks - on the floor.  But I can always count on finding at least one item that will make me smile.

After a busy day, I always find remnants of lollipops scattered around the store. A blue wrapper in one corner. A red one under a dresser. Here, a well-gnawed white stick. You wouldn't think I'd like picking up trash every night. The truth is, I'm O.K. with it.

That's because lollipops changed this business.

Seven years ago, Diana and I bought Furniture Consignment Gallery from the couple who started the business. They'd had some good years, but they had grown weary of the grind of moving furniture, and they wanted to move onto the next phase in their life. To us, it seemed, they'd also tired of the challenges of retail.

The showroom was littered with signs, none of them friendly. "Don't Touch Me" was stuck on a topiary. "No Strollers" greeted shoppers at the bottom of the stairs. "Keep Children in Hand" was taped to the front door. Tacked in the stairwell: "No Food or Drink."

On our first day as new owners, Diana gathered up all the signs. Stopping in to say goodbye, the former owners were appalled. "What if someone spills coffee on a white sofa?" the woman demanded. "What if someone trips on the stairs carrying a stroller?" her husband asked.

"Well," I offered, a bit hesitantly. "We think you were missing a market."

"Really?" the woman huffed. "Which one?"

"Moms with kids," I said.  

The next day, Diana filled a bowl with lollipops for our customers. By the end of the week, it was empty. We filled it again. A few weeks later, we got a bigger bowl.

After seven years, I can offer the Federal Reserve a reliable new indicator of business growth: lollipops. The faster we go through candy, the higher our sales.

As it turns out, moms with kids aren't the only ones who love a sweet treat while shopping. So do newlyweds. And twentysomethings furnishing their first apartment, "empty nesters" outfitting the new townhouse. And even the seasoned business man who was unraveling a root beer flavored pop. He was asking me why we seemed to be doing well in this difficult economy.

I gave him a dum dum answer.

So, stop by anytime. We promise to keep the showroom stocked with quality furniture - and the candy bowl filled with lollipops. Try to throw your wrappers away, but if one sifts through your fingers and hits the floor while you are admiring a glistening mahogany chest of drawers; I won't mind picking it up at the end of the day. Really.

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.

Sitting at the breakfast table slurping my last spoonful of Honey Bunches of Oats, I felt a breeze behind me, then heard the screech of wheels rounding the corner. Based on the fraction of a second between the breeze and the screech, whatever it was that just blasted through the kitchen was moving fast. I whipped my head around to see my nine-year-old son, Collin, racing down the hallway on his roller blades. "Whoa, whoa, no, no, NO!" I hollered after him. "Not in the house!"  

Collin spent a lot of time over school vacation week this holiday with a friend who lives around the corner. Their home is different from ours. They're a hockey family, and we're not talking just tickets to the Bruins. Their house is a rink - with furniture. The kids' rollerblades have worn a groove into the hardwood floors. Doors and walls have weathered more than a few collisions. There might even be some blood. To their credit, our neighbors have raised a brood of great hockey players, but most families choose to put a limit on the amount of fun allowed in the home.

Raising kids to enjoy - but also to respect -- your home and its furnishings is a challenge. We've seen the gamut in our clients' homes. Some couples spend thousands on a mahogany dining room set, then let their children race toy cars on its gleaming finish. Conversely, one newlywed couple is wrestling with the decision of how to furnish the living room for this, their second marriage. He doesn't have children; she has three. He wants formal and fancy; she knows the carnage kids can inflict on furniture. If not managed with care, that situation has disaster written all over it.

So where is the happy medium? How can you satisfy an adult's need for beauty with a kid's desire for fun? It is not easy, but here are some ideas that may help you figure out a solution:

• Give the kids a few areas in the house where they can be kids. We, as parents, should encourage playtime. Even some roughhousing is healthy. Big or small, some part of your home should be dedicated to fun. And when things get a bit out of hand, as my Mother used to holler to us: "Take it out to the front yard!"

• Create a warm, cozy place in your home where you can come together as a family. A place where everybody is comfortable.  A place where you won't trip over toys. A place where kids can snuggle up with Mom and Dad.

• And, yes, your home should have some special items that are meaningful to your family. Maybe they are costly new pieces that create a certain look. Maybe they are treasured heirlooms passed down from parents or grandparents. One of the responsibilities of parenting is teaching kids to treat special possessions - their own and others' - with respect. My Dad would drive me crazy when he would knock my feet off the coffee table. Somehow he could see the fresh scratch on the wall before entering the home from work. We put our dents in our home, but my brothers and I also learned the valuable lesson of respecting the family's hard earned assets.

And here's one last tip. New furniture can be very costly. But there's an alternative for those who value quality furniture -- while also understanding that indoor rollerblading on rare occasions (and snow days) might be necessary. Shop smart. Shop consignment. If you don't mind a tiny scratch or two, you'll find a great selection of quality pieces at Furniture Consignment Gallery in Hanover and now in Chestnut Hill. They didn't have consignment stores like ours when I was growing up. If there had been, I'm sure my family would have been regular visitors.