We figured that even if it didn't last that long, the IKEA was so much cheaper than Serta etc. that it would be OK.

Yeah, that was my logic. The Serta, which cost more than double the IKEA mattress price, fell apart in about four years. If I get four or five years out of this one, I'll feel it's paid for itself.

The best furniture we have would be considered "antiques", but it's really just hand-me-downs, solid woods and sturdy frames.

Same here. We got my grandmother's bedroom set last year, circa 1935ish, and while it needs a little surface work (scratches, etc.) it's solid mahogany. I couldn't afford new stuff like it even if I sold a kidney or two.

We had a Sauer computer desk (I think it was Sauer) that we bought specifically because it was supposed to hold the oversized monitor, and within months the whole thing had buckled under the weight, so that the cabinet doors and drawers wouldn't shut properly. Total crap.

Also, a preference for price over long-term investment. The prevailing myth seems to be that you'll renovate your whole house every 5 yeras anyway, and buy all new stuff! (I don't know anybody who actually does this, FTR.)

My chair is the Poang one. Good to hear a testimonial.

In other news:

A well-known novelist whose name is often accompanied by the word controversial, [vladimir] Sorokin was the subject of official government censure and organized right-wing protest a few years ago after the publication of a book that translates either as "Gay Lard" or "Blue Lard," and that depicts Stalin and Khrushchev getting it on. Mr. Sorokin is often called avant-garde, but he also sounds like a hoot.

Plei! The politician man-love is gaining a following!! Stalin is no Henry Kissinger, but, it's a start.

(That's Manohla Dargis, in the Times, BTW.)

Rising cost of materials.

And from a retailer POV, it's much better for them to sell me a crappy bookcase every year than to sell me a really good bookcase once.

Why do materials cost more? Why do things cost more? Aren't we theoretically getting more efficient at making things, what with all the industrial age automation and cheap out of country labor and such?

Overconsumption?

Plei! The politician man-love is gaining a following!! Stalin is no Henry Kissinger, but, it's a start.

Awesome!

Yeah, this is the bit that's upsetting. I just wonder how much of our disposable culture is vendor driven rather than genuinely demand driven. Like planned obsolescense software, but with far worse environmental consequences.

And from a retailer POV, it's much better for them to sell me a crappy bookcase every year than to sell me a really good bookcase once.

Yeah, I think the producers realized that it was a business-model mistake to sell things that last forever and that the average person can afford.

Well, we're getting more efficient at strip-harvesting old-growth, or even secondary-growth diverse forests and feeding the trees to chip mills that employ (a handful) of local people, then trucking the tons of chips to a port and loading them on a ship and sending them to Japan, where they employ thousands to make chipboard, and fashion Sauer and O'Sullivan "furniture" kits and load them on a boat and ship them back to the US, where they're sold to us in Walmart and KMart. And then the US Forestry Service reforests with fast-growing pine, which doesn't support the variety of dependent wildlife, either plant or animal, but it can be harvested pretty quickly to perpetuate the system in place.

I think the West Elm stuff looks way better than IKEA, but that's just from pictures. As noted, I still haven't been in.

My beds are futons (non-folding) with really great thick mattresses. In fact, the single bed's mattress is better than the one I sleep on every night. I like them much better than boxsprings.