My Crazy Mother in Law

My wife and I are fairly reasonable people when it comes to our money. We buy what we want, but only if we have the money to do it. We don’t buy in to those ‘don’t pay for a year’ deals, and we rarely carry a balance on our credit cards. Because of that, we have always said to ourselves that we would buy new bedroom furniture when we could afford it. All good thoughts, but since we are the only ones who ever see our bedroom furniture (except of course when my mother in law goes in there for some reason…..a whole other article to be written on that!), it never seems to be the top priority and our money is spent elsewhere. We have just continued to use the furniture Allison brought from her parents house when we got married. It is a little girly and childish, but what do I care what the drawer that holds my underwear looks like?

Last week, this all changed. We painted our master bedroom and Allison’s parents offered to give us their furniture and they were going to go buy new stuff. Sweet! I thought. That will get Allison off my back about buying new furniture for awhile AND I get some ‘non-girly’ stuff in the process. Again, I really don’t care, but I’m not about to turn down a free upgrade either!

So this is now where things get dumb. You would think that the natural order of events would be:

1. Marie and Frank go buy their new furniture
2. Frank and I bring the old furniture from their house to mine
3. Allison and I move our old furniture out to the garage where we can then give it to a local charity or sell it.

Makes sense right? Well Apparently not to Marie and Frank. Nope! They insisted that we get rid of our furniture first. Wouldn’t be a big deal for me except that it seemed completely illogical! If I take all my clothes out of my dresser, where do I put them? Why would they insist on this? I had fears of having to live out of boxes or laundry baskets for weeks. Sure I could get rid of our furniture fairly fast. One quick phone call to a local charity would make it disappear, but my concern was that I would do that and then Frank would say that they didn’t have the money yet to buy their new furniture. Then what? Our furniture would be gone and I would have no place to put my clothes. I would be at the mercy of their spending habits! ARGH.

Here’s the other thing too. We weren’t allowed to give it away. Oh No. That would be too easy. The furniture wasn’t in terrible condition, but it was far from pristine and it was at least 25 years old. It wasn’t top quality stuff either. It was from Sears and it was made of press-wood with a fake finish. Allison and I thought we would just give it away to some less fortunate family for their little girl, but Marie insisted we sell it. All I heard for days was Can’t you just get $50 for it? So we posted it at the local grocery store bulletin board for $150, assuming we would just take the first offer that came along. It sold the next day. Perfect!

Since I now was in that state that I was dreading (nothing to put my clothes in), I phoned up Frank and asked if we could move the furniture right then. Suprisingly, he said SURE! So I was in my van and on my way to their house before they had a chance to change their minds. When I got there, they had already emptied most of their clothes into boxes. This was the first time I had gotten a really good look at what I was getting. I had been in Marie and Frank’s bedroom before, but usually just to put one of my kids down for a nap or something, so I had never gotten a good look. It was a dark wood faux finish (laminate top). It wasn’t bad. Probably not my first choice, but an upgrade from what we had. Then I noticed how shiny it was. I touched it and realized it was absolutely covered in oil or something. It was as if they had dipped the entire dresser in baby oil. It was so thick I started to write my name in it. I was beginning to wonder how were were going to carry it downstairs without the dresser flying out of our hands like a bar of soap or it staining my clothes. Frank then notices me looking at the mess now on my hands and pipes in and says Marie is just putting a wood preserver on it. We do that a few times a year. It keeps the real wood looking really nice. Real Wood? I thought. I’m not too sure about that, but whatever. I’m not about to argue with them over the construction of their furniture and burst their bubble. Yes the inside is all made of ‘real wood’, but the outside is definitely a fake finish.

How do I know it isn’t real wood? Well, for starters, real wood doesn’t have a pattern that repeats every 18 inches. Even if by absolute fluke it did, it wouldn’t repeat across multiple pieces of furniture. The larger knots on the outside of the furniture would carry through to the inside of the furniture. Also, real wood doesn’t chip the way countertop does. If it WAS real wood, the oil that Marie applied would have absorbed into the wood in a reasonable amount of time, instead of the week it took for Allison to wipe it off.

All in all, I’m grateful for the new (to me) furniture. My clothes are nicely folded in my drawers and I have more ‘adult’ furniture in my bedroom. Three weeks have gone by since and Frank and Marie are still living out of those boxes!