Living On The Floor

TRENDSPOTTING | by MOLLY MARTIN

MY HUSBAND AND I STARTED LIVING ON THE FLOOR more than 25 years ago, when the small, squishy bed where we were house-sitting prompted us to try the thick Chinese rug alongside it ― and we quickly realized the rug was way more comfortable (and roomy) than the bed.

CELL OCCASIONAL TABLES BY SpHAUS

So when the house-sitting gig ended, we moved into a studio apartment, eschewed the Murphy bed and settled in with a comforter atop the carpet. Then we figured out that a 36-inch fiberboard round fit nicely atop our mini-trampoline; topped off with a standard 52-inch square tablecloth, it’s still our dining table.

For seating we tend to go with the basics, mainly the canvas-covered metal frame BackJack chair that I saw marketed first as a “TV chair”, then “video-game chair”, “meditation chair” and now as a “go-anywhere chair”.

Though the grandchildren like to tease us about having no furniture, they don’t yet know that if you do anything long enough, you’re likely to be trendy for a few minutes at least. So sure enough, “living on the floor” has been rebranded of late as “low-profile furnishings”, and upscale tables, for example, for floor-huggers are popping up from Italy to Australia.

You can almost hear them rolling their eyes in Japan, where centuries of floor living has resulted in a plethora of zaisu floor chairs, from practical to stylish. Solid wooden folding zaisu can even be a bit formal. But I’m partial to the bentwood zaisu, perhaps atop a tatami mat.