The Last Furniture Show

You know how old folks (a class I'm approaching faster than I care to admit) discuss buying the "last car" or "last house" or "last washing machine" they'll ever buy before turning toes up? I'm a little creeped-out that my husband and I are having similar discussions.

19 years ago we merged two households, discarding as much as we could in light of having three teenage daughters still at home. In our huge house we stored untold leftovers before drastically downsizing 9 years ago—boy, was that the mother of all garage sales. Culled a lot of His, kept most of Mine (can I help having better taste than his or the late wife's?), and combined it into a tiny little nest for two. The teenagers became women who 1) make more money than we ever did, so who wants all our old crap?; or 2) cannot afford a house large enough to accommodate all the stuff we try to foist on her; or 3) waited till age 32 to settle down, after traveling all over the world, living in world capitols and attending school, just now beginning a career that pays so little she rents a single room from a friend. So much for saving junk "to give the girls a start."

Following the great cruise on the SS $10,000 Disappointment (our first and last) last summer, we're cocooning, spiffing up the only space we care about sightseeing for a while. And so we've come to buying "the last new furniture" we will likely buy before turning toes up.

Out go awful '60's Italian bedroom pieces and in come simple French country pieces, taller, more commodious, finer, far more with-it. Out with the Parsons-style coffee table with the glass top that needed constant cleaning; in with a big round leather-cushioned bench. (We propped our feet on the old table all the time anyway, and now the grandbabies can wantonly crash against this one without requiring ER visits.) Out with the loving-hands-at-home painted end table and in with a stylish English Regency replacement. Out with the double pedestal desk from one of Mother's marriages (the nightmarish one), for which I have no attachment; in with the handsome drop-front "secretaire" Don craved the instant he laid eyes on it. (Changing desks precipitates reorganization of office supplies and important papers, discarding the never-used in each category—why have I kept useless documents from 1991? And a broken souvenir letter opener from a senatorial campaign I worked in 34 years ago?) Down come some of the tattier pictures to make way for a few original, albeit production-line, oil paintings that "speak" to us. Soon the luxe 30-odd-year-old sofa, too low-slung in today's modern high-ceilinged rooms, will have a beefier replacement. The great old upholstered dining room chairs, which encourage lingering conversation long after dessert is finished, will find fresh new fabric faces.

These changes follow closely on the heels of last fall's dismantling of the guestroom in order to create my beloved sewing studio, and the calming of my bedroom's former lively patterns into a minimalist look that I find more soothing. Home décor, like personal appearance, needs periodic tending and updating, and next year it will be kitchen and master bath. But I can't help wondering how many of these current changes in our home are indeed being done "for the last time."