What would happen to us if there was no such thing as furniture?

No place to rest your feet
No place to park your beer
We'd have to watch TV standing or lying on the floor
No comfortable place to eat, sleep, sit, work, lie down, or.....dare I say it...go to the bathroom?

Wait a minute...is a toilet a piece of furniture or an appliance?
Neither. It's a fixture. All right, fine, but it's still kind of a hunk of furniture...maybe sorta?

Okay, enough of that blather...

According to the Sofas and Sectionals website, furniture was “first developed as early as 3100-2500 B.C.....The first items created for household use were made of stone, as wood was not readily available during the Neolithic time period. Dressers, cupboards and beds were amongst the first forms of furniture”.

Okay, I'll buy that.

As for furniture stores, it seems they've been around for just about as long – thousands of years. Whether it was an actual shop, someone's house, or barn...someone, somewhere was somehow making, supplying, and selling furniture someplace.

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We've all been in a furniture store...if it's a big mega-store, the salespeople swarm on you like horseflies in your hair. A three-drawer, four-foot tall dresser could cost over $1,000 but you could find the same thing at Goodwill for 20 bucks.

I remember when I was looking for furniture back in the 1970s...a local ad claimed “furnished living room complete: sofa, coffee table, chair, and lamp: $125.” So I went down to see for myself. When I got there, the 'complete set' was stuff that was taken out of a trailer. I left.

In all fairness, there are plenty of reputable furniture shops with really good stuff at decent prices. We all want it, we all need it, we all want better than what we already have.

The gallery below shows a good number of old Michigan furniture shops, from 1900-1950s. Imagine what some of those items would be worth today...

Michigan Furniture Shops: 1900-1950

MORE VINTAGE MICHIGAN STUFF:

Vintage Cereals of The Battle Creek Food Company

Michigan Stagecoaches

Michigan's Vintage Bowling Alleys: 1908-1962

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