JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: As I mentioned a couple days ago, this past Monday, the Maine Millennial (formerly known as the Smithie) signed the papers on her first house, purchased entirely on her own. Hurrah! We’ve spent a lot of this week driving her stuff to her new place, an hour away, and in the process, she’s realizing the original driving force behind wedding gifts - when a couple starts a household after living in their parents’ homes, they’re missing a lot of day-to-day necessities.
Or even when you have been on your own. I moved out of my folks’ house when I started college, and never lived there again. But despite the dorms, flats, apartments and houses I rented, when Ross and I got to his “luxury townhome apartment” (the luxury was two dedicated parking spaces) we had a post-wedding mismash - Royal Doulton service for eight and a stack of mismatched plates from my grandmothers. There was a kitchen table but no chairs, a TV but no console, and a mattress/boxsprings combo, but, of course, no bedframe. We put the TV on boxes filled with books and watched while sitting on two directors chairs (remember those?) Our coffee table and end table were more boxes of books, which I stylishly disguised by wrapping them in my old bedroom curtains. (The one item I have never, ever been short on? Books.)
The Maine Millennial is better off than that, because the seller - the daughter of the elderly woman who had lived in the house - is conveying most of the furniture. While the pieces may not be exactly to her taste, it means she’s only had to buy a sectional sofa. (The Redheaded Boyfriend is paying for a new, made-in Maine mattress.) That still leaves a lot of must-haves, though. Bedding. Plates. Draperies. Shower curtain (I’m passing along a stack of towels and facecloths.) Cleaning supplies. And she has nothing for the kitchen other than a coffee maker!
I did suggest that since she and TRB are already talking forever-after, if they move up the timeline, she could kit out her house with the proceeds from the shower and wedding. Yes, dear readers, I have virtually no shame.
So, Reds, let’s reminisce. What did you have when you moved into your first, real adult home? What were you missing? And did you have better ideas for coping than folding old drapes around boxes?
LUCY BURDETTE: Congrat to the MM, and yes, Julia, you are shameless but oh so practical! I remember a few things–an ugly faux leather couch that a psychologist friend paid for (I sent him lots of referrals over the years), another “couch” and chair made out of barn wood that were supremely uncomfortable, and some wooden orange crates for book storage. I don’t have a natural decorating flair so my best advice is to go to local art shows and purchase some real paintings–we’ve found lovely but not expensive watercolors over the years and still enjoy them.
JENN McKINLAY: Do you remember the Speigel catalog and the Betty Crocker catalog? I am not even kiddings when I say I outfitted my first “grown-up” apartment kitchen with Betty Crocker points and some of my furniture with Spiegel discounts. The Spiegel desk I bought in 1992 is now in my son’s apartment and I still have the baking accouterments that I bought with my points. Good times!
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: My first real adult home. Hmm. A pretty great two story two-bedroom two-bathroom LR DR kitchen garage driveway 40’s era house in a fun Indianapolis neighborhood–I shared with a roommate, Sharon, :-) , and the rent was 100 a month.
I will let that sink in.
We had our beds from somewhere, a couch, I think Sharon’s Mom gave us, and my Mom gave us a gorgeous original cobalt blue Eames chair that I WISH I STILL HAD BUT MY SISTER TOOK IT. We built amazing bookshelves, wall-to-wall in the living room, and shared the purchase of a VERY exciting and VERY glam and VERY VERY impractical wall-to-wall white shag rug for the living room. We were hot stuff, and it was wonderful.
Did we have a coffeemaker? Or pans? I have no memory at all of that. We definitely had a fondue pot. :-)
HALLIE EPHRON: What we had, just married in our 1-bedroom rent-controlled apartment on West End Ave in Manhattan (which btw I could not afford to live in now) included, for sure, a fondue pot (wedding present). And a food processor (ditto). A cramped table gate-leg for eating at with chairs from the breakfast set I grew up with. The kitchen had no counters (we moved a small bookcase in there and I chopped on top of it.) The living room had a twin bed with bolsters - we couldn’t afford a couch. Then we “acquired” stuff. Dragged in a Singer sewing machine table that someone on 98th St was throwing out. A coffee table my parents were getting rid of. We were on our way!
Cookware mismatched, but included were a treasured set of Descoware (orange enamel coated cast iron) pots. Most of them have bitten the dust but I still have a frying pan and a dutch oven.
A coffeemaker? I remember a little espresso pot (the water went in the bottom and when it boiled it gushed UP through the coffee to the top) that I don’t think I’d know how to use today.
RHYS BOWEN: After College I shared a flat with friends, furnished with items borrowed from my parents. (It was very glam, just behind Oxford Street and two minutes from the BBC where I worked, so I could get up at 8:30 and be in the studio by 9 ). When I went to Australia I shared a flat for a while, furnished. Then I married John and sailed for California. Again we rented a furnished flat until we had saved that down-payment (it took six months. Think about that too!) So we moved into our first home–a dear little 1903 cottage in Marin County. We had enough money for the downpayment but none for furniture, and we were thousands of miles from the nearest relative.We managed to buy a bed, china, cutlery with wedding presents but…
It was the time of hippie love-ins so we decided to hold a ‘move-in’. We invited everyone we knew to come for a barbecue and bring any item they no longer wanted. It worked brilliantly. People brought appliances, a TV, coffee table and also said, “If you can rent a truck I’ve got a fridge, couch, etc.”
We had no dining table so John chatted to friends who still worked for Qantas and obtained spreader boards (they use for airline cargo). With these he MADE a table and two benches. Also book shelves. It is the last creative thing he ever did.
In many ways I enjoyed this piece-meal furnishing. It was a challenge and we upgraded whenever we could later. My daughter Jane married into a well-established San Francisco family and started married life with a fully furnished and equipped home. I wonder if she found that as satisfying?
DEBORAH CROMBIE: It was fun, wasn't it, that first piecing together a home from bits and bobs. My first experience with that was the garage apartment I lived in during my last couple of years in college. (The rent was $75 a month, Hank!) My parents and my aunt and uncle helped me paint and furnish it. A cast iron/glass topped cafe table with two matching chairs in the kitchen, from Goodwill, I think. The carpet was an offcut from a carpet store. A hand-me-down chair and reading lamp, plank and cinder block bookshelves. I inherited the mosaic tile coffee table that my uncle designed and the whole family had helped make a few years earlier. The bedroom furniture we found abandoned in the garage below the apartment and we painted it Chinese red. It was all so cozy and I adored it. It broke my heart to give it up after I graduated.
I accumulated more hand-me-downs over the years, including quite a bit of my parents' mid-century modern stuff, which has since been passed on to other people. It wasn't until we moved into the current house that we started investing in some real "grown up" furniture, but most of that is suitably loved and battered now.
JULIA: How about you, dear reader? What do you remember about your first grown-up home? And did you make out (with wedding loot) or make do?
