Low Cost vs. Long-Term

In my search for two slipper chairs for my husband's "man cave," I heard a lot of really great things about an inexpensive upholstered slipper chair at Target. The online reviews were great, other folks in the blogosphere seemed to like them, and they looked fabulous in pictures of real room settings.

So when Target offered an additional 15% off all furniture and free shipping on top of that, I thought, what the heck, took the plunge, and purchased two.

When they arrived I excitedly unpacked one from its box...


...And quickly realized it just wasn't going to work. The color was off, and the chair had a weird smell, which made it that much easier to decide to return the pair, instead of trying to find another place for them in the house.

Disappointed, the hubs and I loaded them into my car, and returned them to our local Target store.

Then, later that week, while out and about looking at bedroom furniture, I found a leather slipper chair on sale at Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams. Not only was the floor model on sale, but they had about 20+ chairs available in their warehouse for the same price. So we scooped up two!



I have learned quite a few lessons since we bought our house and began this never-ending decorating and improvement process, including, it's best to buy neutral and think long-term when in the market for big ticket items like furniture.

Buying neutral and thinking long-term may help you increase the likelihood that you'll get your wallet's-worth out of the piece because it will go with much of what you have and are likely to buy in the future, and, you can easily move it around to other rooms when you get the urge to refresh or rethink a space.

In the end, we spent more on the leather slipper chairs, however, because we spent a little more and kept our long-term philosophy in mind, we'll get more use out of them than the Target slipper chairs, in the long run.