A less known part of homemaking

As much as people who actually stay at home can tell you that this is a definite part of the process, it usually isn't listed on the various tellings of what a homemaker does! Keeping the furniture in working order is definitely important, especially in this family where most of our stuff is hand-me-down. In fact, I'd have to say that every single bit of furniture we own was given to us.

There's a rip in the arm cloth of a lovely comfortable plush chair in the living room. A simple rip I could sew back, but this material is stretched tight and it's opened up over the foam-padded chair arm. My solution was to wait for an opportune sale, which opened up at Ocean State Job Lot (surplus store) this week, and buy a slipcover. Slipcovers are a good way to freshen up a piece of furniture. Unfortunately, they tend to be expensive. Even the one I found in that great sale was all of $20.

Little Bernie, my son aged 4, spilled milk some time ago into the loveseat cushion in the living room. As much as my husband rinsed out the block foam cushion, it just didn't ever get properly clean again. So I took all the covers off the cushions to wash, only to find a little dark dry spot on the other bottom cushion. I sniffed at it. It appears that our son has graced the loveseat in another way as well.

There is a way to fix this, but it isn't cheap! I put one of the cushions in the back of the station wagon and took it down to a place that sells foam. There are places like these. Look under "foam" in the Yellow Pages. I tried already looking under "furniture" and "refurbish" and such. It's under "foam", trust me! It costs $55 to replace a single bottom cushion, about 6 inches thick and I don't quite remember how wide. Anyways, he measured it, said he had to order it, and it will be in tomorrow morning to pick up. So I will be making another trip out tomorrow.

A kitchen how-to site says that you can freshen up your kitchen cabinets with some furniture polish. I do know that furniture polish works wonders on a tired-looking bit of wood furniture. I'm going to try it with the cabinets and see how it does.

Our downstairs couch was hand-me-down, and it has had a musty scent clinging to it even after a few weeks in it's new home. I bought some carpet-and-furniture spray from the carpet-cleaning part of the supermarket and I'm going to try that. We'll see how it goes.

Someday I'm going to learn how to build some simple furniture pieces. The stuff is expensive, and it can't be all that hard to do, as long as you don't mind Shaker-style, which I love.