On the Undesirability of Pink Sofas

Everyone's rummaging

  Well guess what. We've bought a house!  We'd been thinking it might be a good idea to find a little place in Florida we could rent out at first and then eventually spend more time in ourselves. It's supposed to be a good time to buy but we found, wouldn't you know, that in the place we actually wanted to be, a hidden gem neighbourhood of small,  unpretentious cottages a short walk from the beach, houses were selling as soon, even before, they came on the market. If you want to get something in some anonymous, swanky gated community farther inland, you are laughing but not here. Still, we have finally succeeded. Now we've set ourselves a challenge. Furnish and equip our completely empty house elegantly and classily  in just four weeks and from junk shops. Yes, you heard that one right.  Junk shops. We've got a limited budget. Mind you, junk or charity shops, (thrift stores, as they call them here) are rather better in Florida than anywhere else. Wealthy Floridians just love an excuse to redecorate and throw out their old stuff, much of which isn't old at all. Meanwhile, everyone who wants to rent out their beach house is rummaging too, so you have to get lucky.

This is not our car

          We were very excited about our first purchase, a sofa which we got for 60 dollars. It looked pretty well brand new and was in a nice abstract design of pastels - pink, grey, aqua. Rather fetching, I thought. "Very Florida", said hubby.  But our pride soon took a dent. The first rental agent to look at our house swept over the sofa with a supercilious eye. "That will have to go".  A bit awkward since it was the only stick of furniture so far in the place and she was sitting on it. "It's PINK!" she sneered. NO ONE will want to rent a house with anything pink! Pink means OLD. It'll have to go or you'll have to cover it."
  I was mortified. And furious too. I grabbed a bunch of House-and-Garden type magazines and set to studying them.  Eventually I found what I was looking for. "Look!" I shouted to hubby, "It says pink is in! And we" , I added, "are going to get a different rental agent."  The sofa stays in the picture.