[inspired by a conversation with Cha]: antiques. They save money. I mean, our house is filled with family pieces for which we did not pay a dime, and which are part of our family's story. We'd never replace them. We regularly gather around the same table where Cindi's grandmother used to serve delicious meals, as did her mother before her. The sideboard goes with the table and has held pies and cakes and assorted goodies for over a hundred years. In Cindi's scrapbooking room, she works on the long two-planked table that used to sit on my grandparent's back porch where we ate many a Sunday meal in the summer time - and the bench that goes with it, we still pull out to use when we have too many bodies for chairs at dinner. By my bed there's a wash stand made by my great great grandfather. Replace it? Never! An old rocking chair found in my grandparent's barn, refinished by Tom, and strengthened by Dave, sits next to the washstand. Bekah's room has my mother's old marble top table - part of a bedroom set that my sister has the rest of. In our living room there's a desk from by aunt's bedroom - rosewood, I think. In the study, there's the secretary from Cindi's side of the family. Our family altar came from the old Richardsville Methodist Church where my family worshipped - it's pushing 150 years now. The point is, all this stuff came to us and cost us absolutely nada, and it's all furniture we'd never replace. Value antiques, folks, and save some bucks - and enjoy that eclectic look that tells a story!
P.S. I should also add that antiques work for decorating too. Again, for nothing when they are family pieces. We have jugs, a milk crock, old medicine bottles, Ladies Home Journals from the teens - they are a hoot!, books galore, pictures and daguerreotypes, an old 5 lb iron, and numerous other such like. They're different from the usual stuff - a bit more interesting and fun!
Yes! Love old antiques and the eclectic look. Not the luxury antiques popular here in the South but the ordinary stuff from the ordinary home. Our house is similarily appointed...a family piece here, an auction find there, and even a 10 foot long wooden coat rack with shelf and brass hooks (that now holds old clocks, baskets, an old brass auto horn and other treasures) from the old Washington Lutheran School in St. Louis where our son attended for one year.
ReplyDeleteSaving money is a good thing but not my primary motive. I just love to live with the things that once lived with other families. Imagine the conversations that took place over the old Sears catalogue dinner table...the laughter and the tears. I value this tangible connection with the past.
Living now in a one bedroom apt. I have kept the "antiques of the future" ... a bed and chest of magnificently carved teak from Thailand and walnut bookcases purchased from a "raw wood" shop quite a long time ago.
ReplyDeleteWalnut is unaffordable and Thai teak unavailable in today's market. My son is a wood worker (avocation) so appreciates these pieces and will get them. I hope someone in the family will want them, after him.
The sort of thing you describe, my mother's and grandmother's things, went with my daughter to Illinois. She grew up with and values them.
Helen,
ReplyDeleteRight on. We hope to give the antiques to the kids (with the stories that attach) as they get settled.
Dixie,
Amen! The joy of the antiques is living with the folks who have gone before us. Some of my favorites are a whole pile of old school books from the 1800's - many pre-War of Northern Aggression.