One winter morning, I found myself sitting on my bedroom floor putting on socks and wondering how I had managed to do this gracefully for so many months. Turns out you can’t, so I bought a chair. Living in a shoebox flat has its challenges.
Namely, there are surfaces that feel like they should be used as furniture, but in reality are only meant for their intended purpose: your bed, the top of your dresser, and perhaps the floor. Each winter I attempt to psychically navigate my way into socks and tights while balancing on my bed, but this year I realised it was time to admit defeat. My small bedroom needed a chair.
Chair shopping is stressful, no matter how much space you have to work with. Between worrying about size, finding furniture that fits your style and your budget, and then figuring out how you’ll ever get it into your home without a truck, it can make you want to live on the floor like a hippie.
In retrospect I should’ve started there.
My search began, as many do these days, on Instagram. Living in NYC you quickly realise that most people live in small spaces because their rent is less than a small country’s GDP. They seem to have got really good at making these places feel like home on a budget, so I followed a bunch of interior design profiles and started scrolling.
Pro-tip #1: Invest in a good tape measure. Trust me. Every square inch of your tiny flat will be measured multiple times during this process.
Mine was sad and warped from travelling from drawer to toolkit to drawer again, and should have busted before I spent money on the wrong furniture. Trust. My space was…limited.
As I’ve previously mentioned, I live in a shoebox flat and my chair had to go in the corner. After measuring, I found I had exactly 28” of width and 30” of depth. Not the widest canvas to work with.
Depth was even more important to me since my flat has these weird slim closet doors that opened into the corner. It didn’t leave me with a lot of options on aesthetics either: Most accent chairs I was seeing online were either giant blobs of colour online that somehow turned into these fake-angle-to-make-it-look-smaller pictures where a La-Z-Boy looked like a reading chair for Barbie. Once I got over how tiny my corner actually was, I tried ordering a chair.
Spoiler alert: It was a bust. I went to one of those home goods stores that starts with a “C” and ends with “osterkit” and ordered what they advertised as a petite velvet reading chair. Sure enough, it was advertised at 26” wide.
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Measured it myself when it came. Sure enough. Twenty-six inches of pure sadness.
Every chair photo I’d seen made it look like a cute little stool with armrests, but it was not breathable enough to actually sit on without wanting to curl up in a ball. And let’s not even talk about how velvet catches every fibre of your clothing known to mankind. Back it went.
Round two was local. I found a simple wooden chair with straight lines at my local furniture consignment shop. It was hiding behind this large floral print love seat that gave it rage eyes, but understood my struggle.
The chair itself was beautiful. Simple wood frame with clean lines, upholstered in this beautiful dark greyish fabric. It was firm, but didn’t scream eat-right-off-the-floor!
Like the velvet, it hid dust wonderfully but showed cat hair effortlessly. Bonus cat hair requires twice the vacuuming, which means my vacuum gets used twice as often. Everyone wins!
I actually love the upholstery and it’s held up remarkably well to 6 months of daily use, multiple wine spills (both red.
Because of course) and Brutus’ killer kitty clawings. It took me all of two seconds to assemble.
Literally just placed it on the corner after it arrived and I was set. Probably should’ve listed that first. Here’s the part where I tell you how to measure for your space.
Actual helpful information I wish I knew before shopping: Pros: Cons: Questions to ask yourself: Chair Stats: Price: $180 (probably would’ve paid more if I knew the backstory) Where to buy: Furniture consignment shop down the street! Bonus points because the hotel actually replaced all of these chairs with new styles/endless carts decided hotels were out when COVID hit. Lesson Learned: One bonus takeaway that I hadn’t even considered when shopping: When you place furniture in an unused corner, you’ll likely use that corner more.
When the corner of my room was just wasted space I didn’t think twice about tossing my jacket there. Now that it’s furniture I’m actually more conscious about keeping it neat. Plus, nothing kills the vibe of a cute chair like a pair of muddy boots.
