Here’s the story. Since my husband and I got together in 2006, we’ve moved more than a dozen times. This includes the time we shifted three blocks, and the two times we moved abroad — to New Zealand, and later, Australia — or about as far as it’s possible to go before you start circumnavigating.

Which is how you get to be 33 and own only a couple of boxes of books and novelty coffee mugs. I could never say which was the chicken and which the egg; we didn’t own much because we’d moved so many times, while not owning much was what allowed us to keep moving.

When, in March of 2015, we finally bought a place — a modestly priced, 1,500 square foot house in our hometown that we planned to use as a permanent crash pad — we had to furnish it from scratch. Either that, or we’d be camping inside our own house forever.

Furniture can be eye-wateringly expensive. But the expense wasn’t even the most daunting thing. I dreaded spending Saturday mornings examining upholstery under florescent lights. I couldn’t face all the tedious deciding, or the depressing comfortable footwear (furniture stores have the hardest floors in the world, a millimeter of carpet over three feet of concrete) or the desperately chipper salespeople treating me like a real adult, like my own mother. I’d rather stay in my sleeping bag.