Would you judge a family with very little furntiure/belongings?

[allinsunshine]

Dh and I are in the middle of a 5 year plan to get ahead financially/career wise.

Part of this plan means we are living temporarily for around a year at a time in different locations. We hope to be in our forever home by 2016 :)

We have chosen to live very lightly and simply during this time and not collect many belongings/furniture along the way.

At present we are living in a flat which has plenty of built in shelving/cupboards.

All we have as far as furniture is 2 chairs, one desk, one large bean bag, a toddler chair and table, a toddler flip out sofa, highchair, mattresses for ds (2yr) and ourselves and a tv stand with tv.

We dont mind as even though we could get furniture cheaply (through freecycle etc) we know it would be a chore to get rid of again when we move.

I have got to know a few mothers and their children and have been to a few playdates at their very nice houses/flats of varying sizes/budgets but all nicely furnished and decorated.

Compared to their homes ours is very bare and modest. I would like to reciprocate the invitations but I would worry they would judge us about it.

We are both in our 30s so not in the student lifestyle category either.

So would you judge us if you came for a visit?

Also do you have an interesting way I could explain away/embellish our lifestyle choice without going into the details of our 5 year plan which would be very dull indeed.

True, but very few people put off owning one until they buy their "forever" home

Your child sleeping on a mattress on the floor is grubby and grim. Sorry.

I would think you were very poor and think of ways to try and help you. I'd be offering you my old couch, the chest of drawers in the garage, unwanted cushions, everything! And I would secretly be a bit funny about being offered a bean bag to sit on, sorry.

I couldn't live without some nice things (especially a sofa) even for just a few months. But then again I buy home and design magazines for fun. You clearly don't have the same nesting / decorating urge!

A few very nice, well chosen, design-led items is minimalism. Living with a few odd chairs and a fold-up table is, IMO, grim.

I would furnish the house from freecycle then advertise it all on there a month before you move or offer it free for collection to a local charity shop.
I would at least get a sofa and a single/ toddler bed.
In answer to your question though, no i would never judge anyone on material possessions but I would think you were skint & would be trying to help you!

Your child needs a bed and it would be nice to have a sofa for you and having people round! I would judge the no bed for a child - nothing else. Although it would be nice to sit on a sofa!

I would miss a sofa (I need to sit comfortably) and a table of some sort. Would you make guests sit on the floor or a hard chair?

Other than that, fair dos.

You do realise though, that once you are in your home you will have to buy these things anyway? So a second hand sofa and a couple of beds is nothing.

It's true about the ventilation being needed for a bed. When I was young and in a shared flat my bed broke and I decided to just sleep on the mattress on the floor. At some point (months later?) I had cause to move the mattress and discovered furry mould underneath. I quickly got a new bed!

I'm shocked by some of the responses on this thread. OP, I've also moved a lot internationally in my time, and have lived as minimally as you are now in the US, France, the ME and this country. I would assume you were rolling stones like we were, and would get all reminiscent about our own various bare living spaces. It would never occur to me to think you were poor purely because of a lack of furniture, and the idea that the bailiffs had paid a visit one of the weirder 'judgements' I've ever read on here.

I would think you were living in poverty or the survivors of a house fire.

Ok I thought I quickly check back and have to say I'm surprised at the responses.

It seems half of you would judge us very harshly. The other half not as harshly, or wouldn't care.

That genuinely surprises me but I guess we have never been materialistic. Our forever home is more about being settled for ds and being surrounded by family and friends.

I won't be inviting anyone around :( but I will endeavour to reach out to other families for ds sake and invite them out with us.

I think people overlooked my post about not just being about to move our stuff in a van, our moves involve international/long distances and the freight it expensive.

Ds life and home is far from grim and I know he will appreciate the (small) sacrifice he has made in his first 4 years of living without a sofa and dining setting. We are organising a simple bed frame and bed guards for him.

Doing what we are doing now will pay off for us in the future not just financially but also in regards to being able to get ahead with our careers and being able to work with more flexiblity with regard to hours etc in the future.

At the end of next year we will be moving back to the area where we will settle permanently and will buy sofa, dining table, beds etc as we pay off our mortgage as quick as possible before moving into 'forever' home. So it won't be that long. We will continue to live quite simply though as I do prefer space and the ease of living without clutter.

One thing this thread has made me think about is how we eat! I never thought much about eating as a family as have never done this before, we will have to see if we can start to do this when ds is older.

I admire u for furnishing your home in a way that suits you

Op thought you might enjoy this site

Full of stories of living in an off beat kinda way

offbeathome.com/filed/spaces/offbeat-decor-porn

Half the world (and not just poverty stricken people) sleep on mattresses and eat cross legged sat on the floor-these are cultural differences, but not crucial necessities that will affect your child.

I doubt people will judge much: visitors only go in one room usually -if it's full of toys then they'll just think your furniture is in another room and they probably wont think at all.

However, eating together is something that holds families together all over the world and may well have a detrimental effect on his social/eating skills and your bond as a family if you don't. I'd seriously reconsider that one. Even if you can't manage it every day -what about weekends? There's studies that support the fact that a family who eats together are happier. I don't think you need a table to do that-a picnic rug is fine, but switch the tv off.

Allinsunshine -- your question about eating together as a family makes me wonder a lot about how you were brought up. Your comments about 'investing' in friendship ditto. Same goes for your worries about what people would think of you - you have an ideal way to weed people out so use it. Invite people around. You will know which ones are keepers when they see your home.

To be social beings you need a table to eat off and chairs around it, and you need a couch. That is not materialism. That is furniture that serves a social purpose. Getting those items is well worth the trouble.

If you wanted to gussy up the accommodation you live in now you could hang some of DS's art in cheap frames from a thrift shop.

You speak about this forever home and a completely different life within its walls as if it is going to be possible to switch from a life you have got very used to (and it seems elements of this life are completely familiar to you from your youth too) into a new one as easily as changing knickers. Can you really change from one life to another so easily? I don't know how you can be so cut and dried and completely single minded about this investment of years you are making. Life is about the journey, and not the estination. 'Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans'. Live in the here and now.

So long as your house is clean, no one in their right minds would 'judge' you.

Although, personally I couldn't do without a dining table!

Mattresses on the floor are not 'grim', nor are they 'grubby'. Having lived in rented furnished for years I can also attest that they're a darn sight more cfortable and better for your back than cheap/ancient beds.

My dc love theirs. They aren't scared of falling out of bed and they have lovely bedding. Their beds are made every day and turned and aired every week. Their mattresses are much nicer ones than we could have afforded if we'd bought beds too.

Isn't a very low bed or just a mattress a Montessori thing as well?

And we are pushed for space and money and only have 2 proper chairs, if we have visitors we sit on the floor and blind them with the quality of our cake and hot drinks :)

We did two international moves in six months (once across the Atlantic and then from East to West Coast North America). For the first move we had to wait almost two months for our furniture to arrive from the UK. As we knew everything was on it's way we bought the absolute minimum. Blow up beds, a couple of beanbags and the box the TV came in, plus a couple of kitchen starter sets. It was pretty grim, and we were all very very happy when our container arrived. I would personally never live like that again.

I'm not totally sure where you are living and far through your 'plan' you are, am I right in thinking that you are currently in the UK, and that your next move is to your forever area? In which case you only have one more move to do, so the hassle/cost factor doesn't seem incredibly high to me. Also you do have quite a bit of stuff, so I'm guessing you will either ship or sell/freecycle what you currently have, so adding a bed frame or two and extra seating doesn't seem to be that big a deal for the added comfort/entertainment possibilities.

With regard to invites, I think that if you have been invited to other peoples' houses it is polite to reciprocate, but it's also absolutely fine to say that you don't have much in the way of seating (in fact you would probably need to as some people really would find it awkward/uncomfortable) and then let them choose if that's OK or if they prefer to keep having you to their house (in which case you probably just need to bring along a small something to share of a cake type variety). As a reason I'd just say that you were saving up like crazy for a deposit and leave it at that. Most people will think you are either poor or very careful, but neither are such bad things are they?

We also have a mattress without a bedframe. I love it. DS is perfectly happy, and sleeps beautifully, as do we all.
I'd be happy to be invited round for dinner and be seated on the floor, though perhaps older people would struggle with this.
We're also living in a bit of a nomadic minimalist style, moving regularly, and though we've only moved twice since DS was born (now aged 2.8) I am feeling quite used to having less stuff, being ready to move, making friendships that needn't be forever (how many are, anyway? And the good ones, we keep in contact with via Fb), though still daydreaming of a forever home in maybe ten years. Suits us. In the meantime, we are travelling the world, and trying to be less consumerist.

Refusing to have a sofa or table to eat off is not evidence of your "not being materialistic", fgs!!

Your assertion that your child will appreciate the sacrifice he has made in his first 4 years of living without a sofa sounds barking mad, tbh
Why in the name of all that's holy would he "appreciate" it!?

I thought thatflogging. I'm pretty sure all he'll see is that his friends have sofas to sit on and tables to play at and friends round to their house and he doesn't.

I don't think people missed the bit about you needing a van to move things or to ship them internationally OP. plenty of people suggested buying and selling the items you require locally. You seem to be clinging to that as an excuse.

Lots of people suggested freecycle to resolve the moving internationally issue. However if you're moving to the long term neighbourhood next year then why not start to accumulate a few more items.

You seem to be wearing your current lack of stuff as a badge of honour.

Finally small children don't appreciate sacrifices - they just see they are different to their friends.

Sounds like you have a house but not a home. A home should be comfortable, not sure a bean bag is my idea of comfort.

I like my living environment to be harmonious and restful on the eye, and I suspect most people do, hence matching furniture etc. I do believe you can have ecclectic and be comfortable, but tbh yours sounds more like student mish mash. It may be part of a plan, but you still have to live in it now

When I started reading this thread last night I thought your set up sounded just fine, and that if people judged it would be their problem, and that I would only judge based on personality (after all I have been without a carpet for almost a year as the old one was hideous and having lived with it since we bought here 7 years previously I couldn't stand it any more and think bare floor boards are preferable) but the more of your responses I've read, the more inclined I am to agree with floggingmolly and that you sound an itsy bitsy teeny bit bonkers tbh.

Also, if your next move is to the area you will buy your forever home in, then I assume your five years are almost over? So why not start now to get the stuff that your forever home will need? And if your stint is almost over, then why are you canvassing opinions? Unless you have got to this ooint with some sense of emptiness and loss over lack of friends and are looking for validation of your choices? I also can't understand why moving this much will give your careers a boost? Surely employers look for stability in employees? If someone had four jobs on their CV in four years, I would be asking 1) Why? and 2) Do I want to invest in them (recruiting a new employee costs a lot of money) when they may just bugger off again in a years time? Or save you money? as moving is expensive, regardless of the amount of stuff you need to move, there is still the cost of tickets, deposits for houses etc etc.

And the bit about DS appreciating the sacrifices? sorry, but that sounds absolutely nuts.

Also minimalism is about a select few well designed objects which are placed with thought to give a feeling of space and order.

It isn't about a selection of tatty uncomfortable bits which are make do