Do you currently live with an item you hate(no MIL jokes here )
I have this chair. Just had to have it. Oh, 10-12 years ago.
I always sat in one corner of the loveseat in my LR. By the lamp and table. The loveseat was ratty. I didnt mind. My various pets and fosters joined me. Kids clamored allover it.
It had to be replaced. A pretty disastrous birthing by a foster cat caused a problem I couldn’t clean.
So…I go and find this chair. A double sized comfy cozy seat for me and ME.
The fabric is some durable twill. The print in odd French-like cursive lettering. An occasional butterfly.
Yeah, I could’ve chosen khaki with navy print. But, noooooooo I wanted the cream with black print. Had to have the graphic looking hit in my life.
It’s horrible. There’s no way to remove a stain. Will not clean. I’ve tried everything. Even bleach. Made a bigger problem. Too expensive to reupholster. Plus, I’d have to choose a fabric. I choose emotionally. So, no go.
It’s not comfy. (Funny it felt comfy in the store) Oh, it’s cozy. With 2 grandkids a dog and a cat sitting with you. Really cozy.
Territory is claimed. It gets really fun when borders are crossed.
I usually had to just get up and walk. The peace negotiations were more than I could deal with.
It’s finally moved out of the LR, a few years ago when I bought all new LR furniture. And, another terrible chair, a Camo recliner because Mr.Wrekker wanted it. I hate that too. But I don’t sit in it.
Reminds me of my grandfather’s chair. It was his favorite easy chair in the living room, and nobody else could sit in it. Now, I don’t mean that nobody else was allowed to sit in it: Granpap wasn’t like that. I mean that nobody else could sit in it. The chair was so old and broken-down that if anyone else tried to sit in it, it’d dump them out. But Granpap loved that chair, and he made my grandmother promise that she would keep it as long as he lived (even though for the last several months, he couldn’t use any furniture other than a bed).
Gramma kept her promise, and kept the chair as long as he lived. And then, the day of the funeral, we carried the chair down to the gravel lot, soaked it in kerosene, and burned it, while we stood around and sang songs.
I’m not gonna mention that. Son-of-a-wrek likes a good excuse to have a party.
His 4th soirree’ didn’t quite meet his high standards. I kiboshed a bunch of his plans to invite folks that are his “friends”. You have to know, if he met you while standing and pumping gas, you are now his “friend for life”. Just how he rolls…
We don’t do boom boom fireworks. Too many nervous nellies. (Pets, babies, and Moms) The kids got poppers and sparklers.
I bailed early for “reasons”.
They were good reasons, I thought.
I had a compressor. Needed it. Built an addition among other things with it. It was an absolute pain in the ass to carry/move. No wheels, and the base would always catch you in the leg. The way the handle was mounted meant that you had to carry it with one hand. And two people just didn’t work.
It finally died. The two tanks where mounted such that the vibration caused one tank to wear a hole in the other tank. I’m surprised the thing didn’t blow up and kill me. Did I mention that it was poorly designed?
I may be buying a new compressor today. It. Will. Have. WHEELS.
I know this is an awful thing for me to say, but no one in my family comes to the Dope, so it’s my safe zone.
When my husband was a kid, his mom copied a picture of Santa in his workshop on a large canvas (or something similar.) It changed hands over the years but the cousin who had it sent it to my MIL shortly before she died. Now it’s ours.
I know it means a lot to FCD but I don’t like it at all. It will go to our daughter and her kids, but for now, it’s at our house. I know it has a lot of sentimental value to him and I will never tell him what I think of it.
And FWIW, I have a “collectible” vase that belonged to my grandmother. Each of my 3 sisters and I got one. No one else wants mine. I almost wish the cat would knock it over. Damn Franklin Mint and their stupid collectibles! My daughter doesn’t want it either. I can’t just toss it. And I hate it. As an aside, I have something from my grandparents’ home that means a lot to me, so I’m not heartless. I just hate the vase.
I usually get rid of things I hate pretty quickly, but I have some things I only sorta like still in my house. One is a giant painting I bought in Mexico for my one year wedding anniversary. It’s not a bad painting, but it’s not great. I just feel like maybe something better could go in its place. But it has history, see.
I also agreed to have framed Marvel posters in the living room and kinda regret that. My husband keeps his action figures on two or three shelves only, but it still feels cluttered to me. I don’t like stuff out everywhere. I’ve tried to convince him to get a display case.
But he tolerates my tentacled creatures including a giant-ass framed print of Octopus Contessa in our foyer, so I guess it’s a wash.
My husband and I bought a big Albert Dubout poster of the French movie Marius. Dubout was a French illustrator known for doing big comic crowd scenes in Provencal locales, often to promote a movie. We had it matted and framed and it hangs in our hallway.
Only after we had it for a month or two did I notice that buried in the crowd scene, a guy is surreptitiously groping a nearby woman’s tit and pretending that he’s not doing it. I’m sure it was funny in 1930 whatever, but it irritates me and I can’t pass by the print without feeling annoyed. But I can’t jettison it, as Mr. brown loves it and it looks great in our hallway.
Thankfully, one of my sisters lurves Hummels and she got our grandmother’s entire collection, including the display cabinet.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the incomplete set of Wedgwood that belonged to MIL. She could have gotten rid of it before we moved her from Florida, but it’s it’s in 3 boxes in my basement. No one wants china - not even thrift stores. I couldn’t even get a reply from the company that sells replacement pieces of china. I’d gladly give it to them…
No kidding no one wants china. I inherited a bunch from my mom that came from her sister that had lived in Japan in the 50’s. Gold plated (around the flat part of the outside, don’t know what to call it). Nope, keep it away. They do NOT want this stuff. So we donated it.
My mom thought it was worth a small fortune. So did I.
I keep getting this picture of a very poor family living in a hovel, eating off of gold plated china, and it makes me smile.
I don’t live with it yet, but I’m destined to. About 50 years ago, my great aunt and uncle gifted my parents a pair of figurines doing judo, complete with a glass case. It’s ugly, but since my dad, brother, and I were active practitioners of judo, the relatives thoughtfully bought it and gave it to us. The family deal was that whichever of the two of us (my brother and I) was the last to move out had to take it. I moved out first. My brother conveniently forgot to take the figures and case when he moved out a couple of years later. When my parents moved, they took it with them. Fast forward a few decades and my brother finds a loophole in the agreement: he died at 57. A couple of years later, our dad died. Mom is 89, and although she’s in relatively good health, she’s not going to last forever. I’m doomed to have the ugly judo figures eventually.
If it turns out to be worth a lot of money, I’ll probably have to keep it. I sure hope it’s worthless.
I hate my refrigerator! Our house was built in 1936. The kitchen is small and has what I call a refrigerator cave. The spot the fridge slides into. There are cabinets above it and on the right side of it. On the left side is a wall that has the basement stairs on the other side. So we are very limited in the kind/size of fridge that we buy. We would have to completely gut, redo, and expand the kitchen to get a larger fridge. That ain’t happening any time soon. We were in need of a new fridge 2 years ago. The only one we could find that would fit has the freezer on the top. Oh how I hate that setup.
To reach into the fridge I have to contort my body so head is looking skyward and I blindly reach into the depths. If I stick my whole head inside, I will invariably smack the top of my head on the bottom of the freezer door as I retreat. I guess I could kneel on the floor instead.
My wife had an incredibly ugly cotton nightgown that she brought over from China. It looked like something an inept mother would sew for her child, with patches representing a crude sun, a creepy clown, and some “A, B, C” letters. I think she paid the equivalent of a dollar or two for it, but she claimed that it was very comfortable.
I think it eventually got too ragged to wear, so at least I don’t have to look at it anymore.
I truly hate the kitchen cabinet companies that sell the built in look to unsuspecting homeowners. Or that 3 station triangle bullshit.
That set up in their showroom will never fit any space you happen to have. So to custom size them they do a bunch of carving up. You end up with short runs and holes or caves for appliances.
Then when your new appliances crap out and you have to replace them. No dice.
You(we) have to live in our spaces. Its prudent to think before you settle on cabinets. Think hard.
If you bought or inherited a bad design it won’t get better on its own.
I’ve made peace with my kitchen over the years and fixed little issues where I could, the best I could without ripping the whole thing out.
I always think of that when I see big fancy kitchens with top of the line appliances. When they (the appliances) die, they’ll never find anything that will fit in that space.
My situation is not because of designers, I think my issue is because back in the 30s no one was imagining the giant refrigerators that are used today. My living room is set up with a window on all three exterior walls and on the interior wall is the kitchen doorway and the stairway. We are limited in there too for TV placement. I have a very small space that I can fit a tv stand. The only wall that a tv could be mounted on is not at a good angle to the furniture. They weren’t thinking of big screen TVs back then either. But I love my house. Like you said, you just make peace with it.
My wife is a hoarder. Not to the extent that those people on TV are, but we have way too much stuff. And by “we” I mean “she.” She We could get rid of 80% of our stuff and I’d be happy. So does this ::gestures to whole house:: count?
No?
Samsies. I hate our fridge, and it’s fairly new We could trade!
Our kitchen is original to the house, ca. 1967. So the fridge alcove is just a tiny bit too small for modern fridges. When the fridge we had died – it came with the house when we bought it and was one of those tall but narrow dorm fridges – finding a new one was a nightmare. My wife wanted the French-door-on-top style, which I hate with the fire of a thousand suns. Since we had to find one that was smaller than average we ended up with one that looks good – if you like that style – but functionally is disappointing in almost every way. We ended up with one similar to this model.
Cons:
It has a stainless steel exterior. I don’t like stainless steel. I’m a traditionalist, I prefer white.
The freezer is just a big tub that pulls out, so it’s basically a chest freezer on slides. I hate chest freezers. Everything gets buried under other stuff.
The fridge has an ice maker in the door. These are prone to early failure and cannot be easily repaired. They also take up valuable space that could be used for shelving.
There’s another ice maker in the freezer proper. For whatever reason the ice usually freezes into one big clump. And the tub it dumps into takes up a lot of room. And ice tends to fall under the drawer, which is impossible to get out – we have to let it melt then wipe it up.
The door ice dispenser has a water dispenser function. Handy, but the little alcove where you stick your glass in isn’t very tall so filling a tea kettle, which we do multiple times per day especially in the winter, is a PITA.
Because the door ice maker is thick, the regular proper fridge shelves are pretty shallow. There just isn’t a lot of room in it.
The shelves are adjustable but there’s such a significant height difference between each index that the only real way to get more height between shelves is to completely remove one. So you lose space either way.
Because the door shelves are deep stuff gets crammed behind other stuff, which gets crammed behind even more stuff because there isn’t a lot of storage space on the regular shelves so the first instinct is to put them in the door… yeah. It becomes a problem.
The door that doesn’t have the ice maker has deep shelves in it, to match the depth of the ice maker in the other door, but they aren’t height adjustable so tall things like full-size condiment bottles or milk jugs don’t fit without a bit of finagling.
In addition to the regular crisper drawers, which are too shallow to be of much use, there’s a deep drawer under those crisper drawers. Deep as in, it has depth front to back. It is not tall, only about 4" tall. Too short to put much in because about the only ting that fits in it is blocks of cheese. We like our cheese but there’s a lot of wasted space in that stupid thing. And it only pulls out half way, so getting stuff out from the back is a pain.
The fridge doors are wide enough – somehow – that both doors need to be opened to pull one crisper drawer out. So you can’t open one door and then pull out one drawer.
The top mounting structure for the door is this weird misshaped bar that runs across the top of the unit, so storing stuff on top (which we have to do, because the kitchen is small with shitty storage options) is problematic.
Pros:
I’m a tall guy. Having the fridge stuff at chest level rather than knee level is handy, I gotta admit.
The filtered water dispenser is very nice to have. If we didn’t have that I’d have installed a filtration system under the sink with its own tap. Which I still might do eventually because of the tea kettle issue.
My wife likes it. Happy wife, happy life and all that.
Sigh.
If I had my way I’d have purchased a fridge-only unit and installed a sink-mounted water filter. We have a full-size stand-up freezer in the garage so other than having ice on demand I have no use for a freezer in the kitchen. But that idea was immediately vetoed so here we are.
We now have two different battery-powered kitchen floor “mops” that fail at their job. A Tineco, and I forget the other. They both are terrible and I hate them. There is no way to get them completely clean after use, and the little corners and crevices turn into a gross smelly catch-all for muck. All of the advertised convenience from them is cancelled by the time spent to dismantle and clean them by hand constantly.
Nothing beats a proper old-school mop-- a simple squeeze-sponge on a long stick. And a bucket, so much easier to rinse out a bucket than disassemble and clean the hellish smart-gadgets.
)
We could trade!