Until now, all the furniture I've had since striking out on my own has been from Target, Ikea, or Craigslist. I still identify with the "poor teacher" mentality, so getting this nicer stuff all of a sudden throws me off. I'm still surprised when I walk into the bedroom, like, "Oh, whose furniture is this? Wait, it's mine?"It's also the largest joint purchase Matt and I have made so far. Sure, I've made bigger purchases on my own (my car, and you could probably count signing a 12-month apartment lease in NoVA, but that's really it). And yes, we will spend much larger amounts in the future (a house and a baby are the most likely in the next few years). But for now, this is it.
What really intimidates me, though, is that this stuff is SOLID. As in, I can't just rearrange the bedroom by myself just because I feel like it anymore. Once it was all set up, I realized that this furniture is what we will have for the rest of our lives, barring any disastrous PCS moves. Our kids will come running to this bed when they have nightmares, and about 10 years after that I will likely lie awake in this bed waiting to hear them come home safely. I hope Matt won't travel for work too too much as time goes on; I'd like to spend more nights together than alone in this bed. I'm almost 30, an age I couldn't even imagine when I was younger, but this furniture will be around for ages I can't begin to imagine now.I suppose what strikes me is that in our modern throwaway culture, this purchase represents a vote of utter confidence in our permanence as a couple and an eventual family. I think getting married in the first place was supposed to do that too, but I'm learning that marriage is really dynamic and it grows and changes a lot over time, while this stuff will remain an unchanging presence in our lives as we go through all those stages.
In other news, I think the furniture knows I'm intimidated. The footboard of the bed gave me this doozy today:
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