Your thoughts on "fast furniture"

Totally up to you. I don't do "fast" clothing, and personally have never done "fast" furniture, even with a little one running around. <---- former interior designer if that make a difference.

Just a FYI, there are plenty of great quality coffee tables under 2k. I paid $700 for mine 12 years ago and other than a nick from the movers 7 years ago, it looks new and is a classic style so it doesn't look dated. Rather than a wood table, look for something iron with glass. It'll hold up over time and you won't have to worry about nicks and scratches.

I am a believer in buying used wood furniture - dressers, tables, chairs, headboards, etc. The quality is so much better and a lot of it is in thrift shops or Marketplace. We have picked up many quality items this way.

I swear by my Quatrine sofa.   I purchased it 20 years ago and it was an investment piece.  It is still going strong with just a new slipcover and new cushions last year.  It's got another 20 years left in it at least.  

My dining table is from a resale store, and a lot off my wood furniture is cast off. I don’t buy or take used upholstered furniture because I am weird about that.

Honestly my kids and husband are so clumsy and break so much stuff that I am not willing to buy anything more expensive than Ikea for them so I don’t get mad when they break it.

I have no issues with “fast furniture”. We bought quality furniture 25-30 years ago. We still have them (not the sofas). Honestly, after almost 30 years, I am tired of them. I want to buy something new but the practical person in me says no, they are still good. So, that is one downside of buying quality stuff. And as we start to enter retirement, I feel like I want a change. I think “fast furniture” has it’s place. Especially as SO and I get older, we don’t need furniture that is going to last another 30 years. lol!

We had a lovely solid, custom couch that finally had its upholstery too faded and destroyed after many years. We looked into getting it reupholstered - and that alone cost more than a new decent couch!

You know your kids. I did not invest in anything truly good until my kids were older, as my younger child had a propensity for destruction. (He was dealing with some big stuff.) Now that my kids are still in the house but older, we've gradually replaced furniture with better items as needed. I did find that fast furniture came in a wide range of quality, too. Some of it was actually pretty solid and decent, while some of it simply was crap.

We furnished most of our house with Ikea when we moved in. After almost 25 years, only the couch and one dresser had to be trashed. To be fair to the couch, we are REALLY hard on furniture - we've had at least 2 couches since then (one from Crate & Barrel, the other from a neighbor), and the current one needs replacing!

I have been having a blast on our neighborhood Buy Nothing group. I got a wonderful old dresser with wood inlay decorations to replace the dead Ikea one.

Those of you who are handy, please have a little mercy on those of us who don't have the skills or space to refinish or reupholster old furniture. If I could refinish the above-mentioned old dresser I got for free, it would be stunning - but there's no way. If I win the lotto, I'll send it out and have it done by someone who knows what they're doing! LOL

We tend to pay more for decent quality when it's something that will get heavy use - couches, mattresses, bed frames, etc. That said, I've never yet seen a couch that I wanted to have around for 20+ years. I'm happy with 10 years of use.

For occasional pieces, bookshelves, etc. I will buy "fast furniture" but I'm a stickler about solid wood for most things. I'd rather have inexpensive pine than pressboard and laminate - scratches and marks can be repaired on pine, but you can't do anything with laminate if it gets damaged.

I think I’m doubtful that furniture (even inexpensive) is only going to last 5 years.
I’ve had a lot of IKEA, Target and a lot of West Elm and Anthropologie and nothing ever only lasts 5 years. I’ve never bought higher end than like crate and barrel and west elm.

What you do is teach your kids to respect your things so they don’t get trashed in the first place. I only have one kid who is now a teenager but I’ve also had five different dogs in the time since she was born. All of them have been trained to either be careful (the kid) or stay off of certain things (the dogs). It can be done. Honestly, the person who is hardest on our furniture is DH but that’s simply because he’s a big dude who’s over 300# so the wear and tear is real. I think he’s on his third recliner in almost 40 years. I now own my dad’s easy chair which dates from the 1950’s. It has been reupholstered at least four times and it’s still going strong. I will keep getting that chair recovered as needed until the day I die. We have the same futon couch we bought in the 1990’s. I made one cover for it to replace the one that came on it and also bought one since then.

Now having said that, my SIL/BIL have replaced their living room furniture no less than six times since they had their kids who are now 20 and 22. She refused to buy decent furniture because her kids would ruin anything good. Well yeah, when you let them literally jump on it, climb over the back repeatedly, launch themselves onto it and each other when one is already sitting on it, I think you get the idea. She spent so much money on cheap IKEA junk because her kids wrecked everything they touched. I have never understood why people allow their kids to be hard on stuff like that.

DH and I would watch these kids do that stuff in horror at their house, and said to each other, “NO FREAKING WAY.” So when our kid came along, we simply taught her that that isn’t appropriate behavior either in our house or anyone else’s house and that we treat our possessions with respect because they cost good money to replace. It was definitely a lesson well learned because she has always taken very good care of her toys, books, clothes and other things which has allowed us to turn around and resell a lot of them, and we’d then give her the money to spend on other things she wants. She learned that if you take care of stuff, it lasts and stays nice. Hell, the kid got upset when her stupid cousins came over and broke her crayons!

My hutch and dinning room table are from the early 80s that I got on Craig's List. $200 for both. Solid oak wood. Carved designs. We did replace the chairs as I didn't like the ones it came with.

Our couch and chair are rather new (June purchase) after 7 years with our other set. It was about $1600 for the set. I choose not to do Lazy Boy as I don't want to have to wait weeks for the furniture to come in.

Our only "fast furniture" items are 2 curio cabinets from WalMart that are both 15 or 16 years old. One is a media cabinet, the other stores my cookbooks and ds's formula.

And my grandparents piano I have is from 1930s and still awesome.

Real wood furniture from marketplace or consignment stores is the best option for quality furniture at reasonable prices. However even those pieces aren’t indestructible. My kids have been very good with furniture but I have had some damage over the years from pets.

I think there are good pieces to be found in fast furniture though. I have an ikea Hemnes dresser that I bought over 20 years ago that still looks as good as when I bought it. I also have a dresser I recently paid far too much from Pottery Barn that is terrible quality. I have a Ballard Design console table that is no better quality than the end tables I purchased at Target. I think my point is you have to take care of your stuff but also be discerning with your purchases.

I love vintage tsotchkes and such but I'm not such a fan of vintage furniture, for the most part. I don't want and can't afford actual antiques, and I don't want my decor stuck in the past three decades or whatever.

So, "fast" it is, though that really just means "made in China" or other nowadays. I'm happy to update my furniture about every ten years or so and I'll donate the old stuff to someone who wants it or to the local Humane Society thrift store, or free at the curb, whatever so it's not just going in a landfill.

I did manage to make my 2005 living room work in my basement but in general I'm not going to keep furniture for decades just to have it, other than maybe a few pieces that can be versatile with different decor.

the concept of fast furniture is no different than fast fashion, fast cars, fast tech,  and fast appliances.  it's the manufacturer's way of generating more revenue by shortening the life of their products.  if they built their products to last, no one would be buying as often. software developers create for planned obsolescence within 2-5 years to keep the money coming in.  i think manufacturers build products to last long enough to satisfy the consumer need but not long enough to lose future revenue.  advertisers and "influencers" generate new trends and products to help promote these "fast" items and consumers have been conditioned to desire or need newer versions of products in a far shorter time that they did back "in the good old days".