Furniture Free Living

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ertyu
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Furniture Free Living

Post by ertyu »

A new to me subset of minimalism influencer category, but i find myself really into it. If I ever repair Trash Place, my awful former hoarder home apartment, I am definitely instituting this. The gist of it seems to be what Japan, Korea, etc. have traditionally done for a long time: sleep on a futon on the middle of the floor that gets put away during the day, sit and eat on the floor using low tables and legless chairs, etc. Improves one's ability to live using little space, preserves mobility, and is good for one's back. The only disadvantage would be that in my country of origin, the floor might get cold in the winter so I might need to devise solutions.

Does anyone have either experience with living this way, tales of traditional communities living this way, or any resources with inspiration, ideas etc?

jacob
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by jacob »


M
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by M »

I did this for a while at first. Sleeping and eating on the floor is actually pretty easy and comfortable.

Over time, other people gave me old furniture they did not want...dressers, tables, book shelves, computer desks, tv stands, couches, beds...now my 5 bedroom house is fully furnished and I did not buy anything.

So this is an example of how this might fail...other people may feel sorry for you and give you their old 'trash' furniture because people need to upgrade furniture to match colors, styles, etc. People are absurdly wasteful in America, so much that an ere person can basically live off the waste of others.

What is interesting is I never asked for free furniture...the furniture simply showed up as my other family members have to constantly upgrade and they're not always sure how to dispose of their old furniture.

On a few occasions I helped people move, and wound up with several pieces of furniture they did not want. Fun times.

bostonimproper
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by bostonimproper »

I sit on the floor in our home office, using an adjustable coffee table height rolling table (really a preschooler desk) day to day. It has been great for my back since regular furniture is always wonky for me due to my height.

Floor hardness is a factor— we have softwood floors (pine)— but even then I usually like having a cushioning layer between me and the ground. For me that looks like either a yoga mat, one inch pile wool rug, or a bench cushion that I plop down on the floor during working hours. I think if you’re starting with tile or a thin laminate over concrete, you might want to consider a thick rug to insulate from the hardness and cold. Also socks, blankets (esp electric blankets), and setting up something akin to a kotatsu are some options to keep you warm.

I’ve considered changing from a traditional bed setup to a shikibuton or mattress directly on the floor, especially as we want to set up a floor bed for the baby. The big issue there is you need some amount of circulation between the mattress and the floor, especially in more humid environments, or you can run into mold and mildew issues. Alternatively, or in addition, you should air out a floor mattress regularly, which can be cumbersome.

Dave
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by Dave »

@bostonimproper

Very interesting!

So what is your sitting setup/posture like? Are you sitting cross-legged on the floor with your arms/elbow at a 90 degre angle to keyboard? And elevated monitor to eye level? Back mostly straight? Did this take a while to get acclimated to?

I'm curious re. your comment about regular furniture always being wonky for you beause of height, I'm guessing you're tall? Part of my curiosity here is the same - always really struggled to find a comfortable work setup and I've been on a continuous quest for a better work setup and I need to look elsewhere beyond standard setups.

Been interested in floor bed setups for a while now too, but there hasn't been a good reason to change anything as we like our bed. But I'd consider this, appreciate you sharing your thoughs on that. Especially as DW & I are considering floor bed setups for the coming baby!

OutOfTheBlue
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by OutOfTheBlue »

What I do already:
- Sleeping on the floor (with a minimal 3-4 cm mattress, or above a blanket or mat)
- Working from a standing position (laptop on a box and laptop stand sitting on the fridge) or from the floor (with the laptop on a lap table and the stand to have the display sit higher), etc.
- Meditation with a pillow or on a slightly elevated surface to help with sitting cross-legged
- Sitting on the floor around a low table for eating

From what I've seen so far, in countryside South East Asia, furniture can be very minimal, even cooking is often done from the floor or a very low stool (with some log cutting board, etc.).

I am amazed by how most people can cross their legs easily here. Now, if they weren't wearing fucking flip flops that are screwing their foot/leg biomechanics and promoting duck walk...

Western Red Cedar
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by Western Red Cedar »

ertyu wrote:
Mon Jan 23, 2023 3:10 am
Does anyone have either experience with living this way, tales of traditional communities living this way, or any resources with inspiration, ideas etc?
Furniture free living is gaining momentum in the minimalist shoe/barefoot/holistic health arena. @AxelHeyst recommended Katy Bowman to me, who was really helpful in terms of understanding movement, biomechanics, and mobility issues. She applies a systems theory to her life, but with movement (and health) as a central node of her system. A lot of her focus on furniture-free living is focused on families and working households. Here is one link, but it will give you some ideas and take you down that rabbit hole:

https://www.nutritiousmovement.com/your ... ture-free/

Tony Riddle is pushing a furniture-free lifestyle and represents more of the ultra-endurance athlete perspective (but also the UK family man):

https://www.tonyriddle.com/the-philosophy

I've been slowly transitioning to a furniture-free philosophy. For me, this mostly includes choosing to sit on the floor instead of the couch when we are hanging out or watching tv, and making sure the living room is clear so I can stretch or hang and loosen up my body whenever I feel like it. We talked about not replacing our junky old couch and setting up an inviting nook with floor pillows, but we ended up picking up a pretty nice sofa from a neighbor who was moving across the country for free.

bostonimproper
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by bostonimproper »

Dave wrote:
Mon Jan 23, 2023 10:40 am
So what is your sitting setup/posture like? Are you sitting cross-legged on the floor with your arms/elbow at a 90 degre angle to keyboard? And elevated monitor to eye level? Back mostly straight? Did this take a while to get acclimated to?
In our office we have a built in wood bench, so usually that’s my backrest with a pillow tucked behind my lower back if I need it, though most of the time I’m leaning forward on my sit bones. Sometimes I’m cross legged, sometimes both legs stretched out, sometimes one tucked. I think one of the nice things about floor sitting is you aren’t confined to one sitting position and are able to move around based on whatever feels comfortable at the moment.

I tried out a few different heights for my desk since it is adjustable. What ended up being most comfortable for me was having it a couple inches below my armpits and having my arms (including elbows) mostly resting on the desk (so my elbows are out like I’m doing a chicken wing flap and supported by the desk).

I use a laptop stand so that my head is tilted slightly up and neck isn’t hunched over. I’ve considered also getting one or two external monitors and putting them on a monitor arm, but the laptop on stand is good enough for the work I’m doing now. In general would recommend going with options that give you a few inches of flexibility for any part of your setup so you can tune it to your needs.

I think it took me maybe a couple weeks to tweak and get acclimated to the setup? (It’s been a couple years now so it’s hard to remember for sure.) I vaguely recall it being more like a worn but not painful muscle fatigue in my back, which for me was an upgrade from the tight neck and knee pain as well as headaches I’d developed in most office environments.
I'm curious re. your comment about regular furniture always being wonky for you because of height, I'm guessing you're tall? Part of my curiosity here is the same - always really struggled to find a comfortable work setup and I've been on a continuous quest for a better work setup and I need to look elsewhere beyond standard setups.
I’m actually on the short side (5’1”) so I can’t really speak to the tall person experience, but my husband (5’9”) tends to sit on the floor a lot in our living room (on a wool rug, using the couch as a backrest and the coffee table for eating, etc) even though we have both a comfortable couch and dining area. So yeah, I’d say try it out and see how you like it? If you already have a couch and coffee table, you can do a trial run without making any real investment and it really just adds more options for sitting configurations in your existing space.
Been interested in floor bed setups for a while now too, but there hasn't been a good reason to change anything as we like our bed. But I'd consider this, appreciate you sharing your thoughs on that. Especially as DW & I are considering floor bed setups for the coming baby!
For sure! There’s a lot of material on floor beds on various Montessori blogs— the ones I tend to like have slats that provide under bed circulation but are still low enough for a toddler to crawl into and out of, but obviously lots of upcharge for being “Montessori.” So still trying to figure out what option (floor bed frame, shikibuton on tatami, or just throw a mattress on the ground and monitor how gross it gets) we will ultimately go with.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I've lived in my current tiny apartment for over a year with no furniture besides my mattress on the floor, a folding picnic table which I use as a shelf rather than a surface, and two fairly uncomfortable bar stools that came with the kitchen eating counter. I usually work at my computer on the floor, sitting on my legs as in child's pose with the laptop on a banker's box. I also have a raised tray that I sometimes use instead of a banker's box for other tasks. No tv or anyting like that either.

This is not my ideal. I want to remain free to move very easily, and there are 4 narrow set of stairs I would have to drag furniture up and down. Biggest downside would be that it somewhat limits my ability to extend hospitality. However, as one of my in-his-late-60s visitors recently noted, the mattress is a comfort upgrade from my previous pile of 8 down comforters purchased at $1 Goodwill store :lol:

ZAFCorrection
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by ZAFCorrection »

My friend did this in the olden days before college. The thing they found surprising is how quickly you can adapt to sleeping on most any surface despite the fact that it can be rough for a night or two. If your floor is particularly cold, you will need some kind of insulating barrier. As mentioned, the no-furniture lifestyle can make it hard to host. No furniture combined with general minimalism can result in your room being pretty much empty, which can be problematic from an aesthetic standpoint for you as well as people who come over.
Last edited by ZAFCorrection on Thu Mar 30, 2023 5:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.

ertyu
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by ertyu »

ZAFCorrection wrote:
Mon Jan 23, 2023 9:23 pm
your room being pretty much empty ... can be problematic from an aesthetic standpoint for you
my immediate thought was, make your room small, have a big window

stepping back, though, i think if one's space doesn't vibe right for one, one shouldn't force "minimalism" just because a youtuber with a clean-looking video said so, or just because it's "ideologically pure" to live with few things. If one introspects and finds aesthetics important, they should be on one's wog together with any other need that is to be met in an ERE lifestyle. Whether you will meet your aesthetics goal by choosing one quality piece, or by physically making your own world and having your objects of art and objects of utility be one, or whether you just enjoy a clean minimal space, if aesthetics genuinely contributes to happiness, it should be explicitly considered and included in lifestyle design.

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unemployable
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by unemployable »

Boy you guys sound like so much fun.

This coming from someone who routinely sleeps in his car. Hard to fit an ottoman in there.

I'm all for getting my furniture expense down to zero. As others have intimated, with enough social networking you get tapped into this furniture spigot that can't be shut off. People moving, upgrading, downsizing, thinking they're doing you a favor by doing themselves a favor. Here, take my couch, now get it the fuck out of my house. Used furniture basically has negative value — there's no liquid market for it and it takes some combination of money and labor to get rid of. It took a few hours and a friend to get my mom's couch torn down and out to the street; that's a labor expense, and destroyed the value of the couch for anything other than firewood.

I don't necessarily seek to get my furniture stock down to zero, although between renting furnished half the year and traveling the other half, it's pretty much there. Furniture-free? Try going house-free. One Wheaton level above you, nyah nyah nyah.

Or maybe try minimalizing minimalism itself. The more I do this, the more I realize I do in fact like nice things.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by mountainFrugal »

We have lived the entire range from minimalist in a studio to Van to small camper to our current house to maximalist furniture when renting a room in a fully furnished house. In one of the studios, we lived with just a coffee table (also used as dinner table), a few straw cushions, and tatami mats for sleeping on. It was a good 9 month experiment. You do get used to sleeping on whatever surface, but I might suggest prototyping this before making a switch, especially if you are a side sleeper. Our experiment ended when a teenager moved into the downstairs apartment directly below our studio. He had developmental issues and would play video games and scream all night while his mom worked the night shift. No amount of social capital could fix the situation. Sleeping directly on the floor without being interrupted became impossible until we moved the small van mattress inside to act as a sound buffer. Our current house is too cold for most of the year to make the tatami mats work so we gave them to our friends when we moved in. We recently acquired the chairs pictured in the cozy spaces thread. I wish I could build something half as quality as these (some day!). Before the current setup it was camping chairs and the straw cushions and a coffee table. Practically this worked fine, but we would huddle around the fire because the floor was so cold all the time in the winter keeping the heating cost down. So we got a rug and some chairs that matched our personal and room aesthetics we were trying to cultivate. I have 0 regrets for any of the above iterations for living arrangements. I am legitimately grateful when I sit on these chairs every day in our current iteration.

My point of all of this is there is likely some point between the extremes and that is going to depend on a number of other factors that are within or not within your control for your WOG. This can also change really quickly when an external constraint (teenager example above), comes into the picture. There is nothing wrong with owning quality built things that you cannot make yourself with current skill levels that you use daily and take good care of. A handful of these items can become a delight to be savored and become part of a personal aesthetic. If you are going to acquire things at all, do it slowly, and make sure you will use them at least weekly (more ideally daily). I think @jacob has a part about this in his book. Calculate depreciation schedules for your furniture in number of times used or duty cycle or some other similar metric.
unemployable wrote:
Mon Jan 23, 2023 11:23 pm
Or maybe try minimalizing minimalism itself. The more I do this, the more I realize I do in fact like nice things.
Yes!

(Note: this post is partially a response to the other cozy thread as well, but thought it was more relevant here)
viewtopic.php?p=268534#p268534

Dave
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by Dave »

@bostonimproper

Really appreciate that response, lots of good things to think about!

I'm staying in a short-term rental with a couch-coffee table setup that should allow me to test that out. To the lab!

If you think to, I'd be interested in hearing where you land with the floor mattress setup.
7Wannabe5 wrote:
Mon Jan 23, 2023 3:55 pm
I've lived in my current tiny apartment for over a year with no furniture besides my mattress on the floor, a folding picnic table which I use as a shelf rather than a surface, and two fairly uncomfortable bar stools that came with the kitchen eating counter. I usually work at my computer on the floor, sitting on my legs as in child's pose with the laptop on a banker's box. I also have a raised tray that I sometimes use instead of a banker's box for other tasks. No tv or anyting like that either.
Quite an ascetic aesthetic :D. Would need to improve my flexibility a bit to sit like that...

@unemployable

Hahah, we're a blast here at ERE, aren't we?

7Wannabe5
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Dave wrote:Quite an ascetic aesthetic
I am definitely not ascetic in my practices. Much more like the opposite. I have very little furniture, and I prefer to sit on the floor, because I have noticed that it is better for my chubby old lady back, and I read somewhere that how easily you can rise up from the floor is marker of nearness to death. But, I also have brightly colored art work and curtains, knitting and art projects, plants and flowers, stacks of books, and quite frequently something like freshly baked muffins on my counter or soup simmering on tiny stove. My folding picnic table is big enough that I could theoretically hostess a Bring Your Own Chair dinner party for 6. Although, currently I mostly only hostess grouchy old men stopping by on their way to go skiing or lumber-jacking.

Also, one of my factors in selecting the tiny apartment in which I dwell is that it has good architechtural bones and details, adequate and well-placed windows, interesting layout, etc. There is even a chandelier of 1960s vintage hanging in the stairwell from my second floor tiny room to my third floor tiny rooms. And all the tiny little appliances are cute, like my Smart car. So, it's kind of like a human who looks good naked. I would be utterly depressed if I was living in some kind of cheaply constructed cookie cutter low rent apartment complex unit with poor lighting and no furniture or decor of any kind.

mathiverse
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by mathiverse »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Thu Jan 26, 2023 8:50 am
I read somewhere that how easily you can rise up from the floor is marker of nearness to death.
I heard about that too. This is related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting-rising_test

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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by jacob »

mathiverse wrote:
Thu Jan 26, 2023 11:42 am
I heard about that too. This is related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting-rising_test
Since it wasn't mentioned, one starts sitting cross legged. Maybe that goes without saying? It's practically required to get a perfect score.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jacob: So, if you move fluidly from cross-legged to beginner's pose and then rise without using your arms at all, would that be two point deduction for knees? I'm pigeon-toed, so my hips and all of my musculature prefers beginner's pose to cross-legged, even when I am in good shape as opposed to the terrible shape I am in now. I'm just banking on the fact that one of my grandfathers showed up for his WWII enlistment exam at 5'5" 240 lbs, and then lived to be almost 90, and my mother seems to be on same track. :lol:

In my case, furniture free living also serves as one of the events in the "don't make it too easy" obstacle course that every heterosexual female must construct if she hopes to maintain good behavior in her sexual partner(s.) Since the conventional relationship ladder obstacle course no longer appeals to me, I have to be more creative with challenges such as "you must drive into a pretty dangerous neighborhood to pick me up, because I do not own a car" or "get up and down from mattress on the floor with your old guy ex-athlete knees."

Dave
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by Dave »

@7

I like your style, seems really cozy. Perhaps ascetic from the furniture perspective, but still very homey from the other nice touches...especially warm muffins!

PhoneticNachos
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Re: Furniture Free Living

Post by PhoneticNachos »

Six years and counting, all I have is a chair for computer, bed, table and chairs for entertaining, a futon as a couch, so yes, my house is not the designated Super Bowl spot lol.

I live a unique minimalist hybrid lifestyle that maximizes utilization and cost of long term ownership over conspicuous consumer consumption and not a member of the hedonistic treadmill.

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