Almost entirely because I’m getting married and thinking about what I’d like my life to be like once I am, I think I’m nesting. I know that may be an odd term to use, since it’s primarily used for pregnant women who start remodeling 3 months before their due dates (or whatever – and no, I am not pregnant). But I think what it mostly refers to is trying to prepare one’s home for a big change, and tie up loose ends in one’s life just in general.
I really think that’s what I’ve been doing, at least for the past couple of months. It seems pretty logical to want to definitively close one chapter of my life before I move on to the next (which is why I think I’ve been thinking mroe about past relationships of varying kinds). It seems equally logical that as I think about how the fiancé and I will act as a married couple, and what we will do, that I’m also thinking about the setting.
Part of my focus on household goods is because seriously, a lot of mine are really crappy. They’re breaking, or broken, or were never really all that great in the first place. It’s actually getting kind of amusing that more than one person has told me, when I talk about replacing this or that, that I need to save some of this for wedding presents. Like with the flatware I just got – my old IKEA flatware was breaking, and there was never enough of it to begin with. It sounds like some people are telling me I should keep using broken stuff for 9 months just so I can register for things for my wedding!
But aside from that, I love this stuff. I get geekily excited about flatware, as you all just saw. I think it’s entirely because my home – and its environment – is hugely important to me. Nothing leaves me more depressed than living somewhere that doesn’t feel like a home. And a lot of what makes a place feel like a home to me is at least trying to have nice things that kind of go together.
I also am really hoping to be in a position, someday, of being able to actually have people over and serve them nice food in a nice setting. This requires, of course, having a table that seats more than 4 people, and somewhere to put said table. (It also requires having people to invite over, which isn’t always the case.)
But the other part of that puzzle is having nice plates for people to eat off of and nice utensils for them to eat with. Nice table linens are also good, but they are much easier to acquire. 
(Heck, I’ve got a sewing machine – if I really wanted to, I could make at least napkins and place mats, and possibly even a table cloth.) And then it’s nice to have some sort of table decoration, and you need decent cooking tools so your food tastes good, and serving dishes that you don’t have to hide in the kitchen are pretty nice, and then you need a nice place for everyone to sit after dinner, and it doesn’t hurt if you’ve got some wine glasses and/or nice coffee cups…etc.
But that’s why I’m nesting. I want to make my home nice for my friends and family. I’ve always cared about having a comfortable living space for myself, but it’s been kind of a new thing to want it as much for my potential visitors as for me. Luckily, all the things that I want to do because it would make visitors feel welcome and comfortable are also things that make me happy on a daily basis.
So, next up on my wishlist for household goods are nicer plates than my chipped IKEA ones! I am incorrigible, it would seem.
“I also am really hoping to be in a position, someday, of being able to actually have people over and serve them nice food in a nice setting. This requires, of course, having a table that seats more than 4 people, and somewhere to put said table. (It also requires having people to invite over, which isn’t always the case.)”
Yup. In fact, that last bit (in parentheses) is mostly our problem. We have friends, but not too many (if any) that we would feel comfortable inviting over to our humble abode for a casual dinner.
For me I think I’m *more* motivated by having a nice space for myself, but yes, it’s a new thing to want to be able to host too. I guess this is part of growing up?
That’s the nice thing about wanting a nice home environment for visitors – I’m still the one who gets to enjoy it day in and day out.
But we sometimes have that problem, with not really having anyone we’re comfortable inviting over. Plus, another part of hosting that I still feel a little self-conscious about is cooking. I’m a perfectly adequate cook, but none of my usual repertoire is the type of food that I’d be comfortable serving to a wider audience.
It definitely makes it harder to have people over for dinner when you don’t really know what to serve them.
Oh, I totally get you. As soon as Jesse and I knew we were moving into our own place (without FBIL) I started dreaming of the things we would have. I still remember how totally thrilled I was when I scored our *matching* nice plates from Anthro on sale. All of a sudden eating meals became something I looked forward to and I started spending hours planning dinner parties and thinking about how we would entertain.
We also need a table that seats more than 4 people but I do think we’ll keep our current table for a while, if only because I’m proud of it. It really was the ugliest oak table in the world when it was dumped on us… and now it’s pretty chic, if I do say so myself.
Your table is pretty awesome.
I actually like my small little table, too – it was a fantastic deal, even for IKEA, and it’s a nice table.
But alas, I have no room for a bigger table right now, and it may be a little while before I’ve got both the room and the money to buy one.
Yeah, we really don’t have the room for a larger table either. And even if we did, who would we invite? We don’t really have any foodie friends and this town is… pretty flaky, to say the least. All of our colleagues that we used to have over for dinner have either been laid off or fired and have disappeared from the face of the earth. Maybe one day.
Once you have the room though you might want to seriously look into garage sales and consignment shops. Refinishing furniture is nowhere near as hard as you might think!
I am so jealous of your IKEA table though. I love IKEA and haven’t lived close enough to one for years now. That’s actually a requirement of mine for the next place we live… there must be an IKEA!
I refinished a wooden dresser at one point – it originally belonged to my grandmother, and then my parents took it. They painted it turquoise to match the crib they painted turquoise for my brother. I decided to take it with me, and also decided to refinish it, since the turquoise paint was 25 years old and flaking off in lots of places. Now it’s yellow.
The IKEA table was mostly a good find because it also came with 4 chairs – all for about $120. My whole apartment is furnished with IKEA, despite the fact that the closest one is 2 hours away. It was especially fun to transport my bed frame two hours on the freeway in a Honda Civic!
But I am definitely interested in looking for good furniture to refinish, once I’ve got room to have it and room to refinish it. IKEA is great and all, but it doesn’t really work so well with what I’d really like my home to look like.
I felt the same way as far back as college, but we really couldn’t do anything about it then. When we moved into the house, it hit really hard (and we didn’t really even have people to invite over at that point aside from family).
Most of our household stuff didn’t come from the wedding. We registered, but only three people purchased anything from the registries, so when we found out we were getting the house… Well, we ended up with a new table, new flatware, new bedroom furniture so we could have overnight company, and new dishes (okay, so those were a Christmas gift, but still…). Now if I could just get that dresser refinished so I can move it into the guest bedroom and move the ugly rubbermaid storage thingies out!
I felt this way a little bit when I lived in an apartment in college, actually. But I quickly realized there really wasn’t much point in trying to make my apartment look nice, because I was still living the life of a quasi-nomad.
It’s really only been in my current apartment that I’ve given in to the urge to decorate and such, since I’ve lived here for about 3 years now.
I’m actually not really expecting to get much from my wedding. My grandma has promised me a set of silver, so I know I’ll get that. I’m pretty sure my family will be generous (because they just kind of are in general), but I have no idea what form their generosity will take.
And I have no idea about anyone else. So it wouldn’t surprise me to get household goods for Christmas and birthdays for the next few years, because I didn’t get them at my wedding. 
But if you can afford it, buying a new house is probably the best time to buy stuff like that, anyway. It’s hard to make major purchases of anything if you don’t have a semi-permanent home – what if you move and have nowhere to put it? Or it doesn’t match?