Making the Cut: No Lack of LACKs

Making the Cut is a series on the smart and simple solutions that have (or have not) earned a place in our home.

Executive summary: I’ve been a playing a bit of “musical chairs” with my furniture as I figure out what’s been working in our new home and what purpose each piece should serve. Because when you’ve got multifunctional furniture, you’ve got options!

It never takes me long to start changing things up in our home … even one that we just moved into. Or maybe, especially one that we just moved into. I know my husband certainly wishes that everything would stay static in here, but I’ve got too many ideas and too many opinions! And it takes a few months of living in a space to know if it’s working out or not, so the original design is bound to morph as I discover what could be improved. In the case of our living room, I made two small changes this summer: (1) swapping out the garden stools that I’ve been using as side tables for slim drink tables; (2) swapping out the bench that I’ve been using as a kids desk for larger LACK tables.

No drastic changes in here, just the new drink tables (instead of garden stools to serve as sofa side tables) and LACK tables (instead of a bench to serve as the kids’ desk), but I think we’re making better use of the space now and adding functionality to the room that we spend the most time in.

I liked our ceramic garden stools (which can be seen in our original living room tour here) because they were versatile (in theory) and looked nice. I’ve used them in place of a coffee table (two homes ago, back in New Jersey) and as bed or sofa side tables (in our last place and this one). I appreciated the fact that they could be treated as seating or as surfaces! However, having purchased them online, I didn’t know that the top was slightly curved, so they bow out a little. That feature renders them somewhat less usable as tables. It’s fine for books or things that aren’t harmed if they slide off, but not a good idea for drinks or anything that needs more stability. In truth, we rarely ever used the stools as seating (they’re super hard on the tush, no surprise), and it seemed silly to employ them as side tables when we can’t put so many things on them. The other factor that helped me make up my mind is that, because they are stools and not too tall, the kids would sometimes try to climb up on them. Not a good idea for a ceramic stool on hardwood floor — I could practically hear in my mind the sound of them tipping over and rolling on the ground with a heart-stopping crunch, followed by a child’s shriek. So I gave in and swapped the stools out for a drink table that is actually a table (and thus not susceptible to being part of a jungle gym for the kids). I picked up a pair of these tiny tables (~10” diameter) to flank the sofa and thought that we could perhaps even someday use them as our bedside tables when hubby and I move into the flex space/ tiny bedroom and only have 15” of clearance on either side of the bed. Thinking (way too far) ahead, that’s my specialty … but that’s also how I make sure my furniture acquisitions stay flexible, by imagining them in different possible scenarios over time.

Now, for the reasoning behind the kids table swap: there was a time when I set up a kids table for my son (and then daughter), but it was mostly just a prop. Well, those days are gone, and my 6yo son now spends a decent amount of time at the table, doing workbooks or folding paper airplanes while watching YouTube tutorials. His little sister likes to copy whatever he’s doing, so we’ve set out papers and stickers for her, so she has something to do when she imitates him sitting at the table. We had a small 20”x30” kids table initially, but I exchanged it for my favorite acacia bench in our last home (full explanation here). When we moved into this condo, I found a space for the narrow bench (47” long, but <14” deep) in front of the living room windows and thought it was a nice spot for working, full of natural light and views outside. That is still true, but the bench was getting tight now that my son uses it so much, and especially cramped when little sis wanted to join in. I didn’t want to buy another small kids table, so I thought of the LACK — one 21”x21” side table for each child to treat as a desk. You can see how much I like to repurpose furniture for uses outside of their original design. Getting these deeper tables (which offer 40% more surface area for the kids to work on!) did mean that I had to move them to the other side of the room, by our pony wall instead of the windows, which LACKed space (haha). The living room is truthfully better utilized this way, because there was a lot of wasted square footage in front of the pony wall before, due to the layout of the room. And our unit is wonderfully bright throughout the day, so there’s plenty of natural light even away from the windows, so I at least don’t have to worry about that.

*These side tables provide the kids with more space to draw, play with stickers, make origami, whatever their hearts desire! Little sis just wants to be like big bro.*

So what did we do with the ceramic stools and acacia bench? We gave away the former (our neighborhood has a robust “free furniture trade”), and I’ve employed the latter as a bench outside our front door. Gasp, the bench is back to being used for seating! Grandma made a comment one of the times she visited about needing a place to put on her shoes, but my 2yo also loves perching on a bench to do the same. I had to make one more cut to pull off the new entryway setup: my beloved Yamazaki Home console table also had to go to a neighbor’s home. The wall in front of our door juuust barely fits the shoe rack with the bench beside it, and the console table, as compact as it was, would’ve pushed the bench into the common walkway by an inch. It was like choosing between my furniture children, sob, but I decided the bench would be more functional in this spot. So there we go: cuts made, problem(s) solved, musical furniture game over!

Let There Be Light(s)