Showerthought: My plumber buddy called my cabinets 'furniture for your walls'

He was over fixing a sink and just said it offhand, but it made me look at my whole kitchen layout differently, like I'm building a giant, useful puzzle. Anyone else ever get a simple comment that flipped a switch for them?

4 comments

4 Comments

kelly.hannah2mo ago

Honestly that sounds like someone trying way too hard to be deep. Cabinets are cabinets, they hold plates. Calling them "wall furniture" is just a fancy way of saying shelves, which we already have a word for. It doesn't change what they DO.

spencer_owens582mo ago

Funny enough, I used to think the same way. Then I helped a friend build some custom kitchen storage that wasn't a normal cabinet. Calling it all "wall furniture" just made the planning easier for us. Makes you wonder if the name actually changes how we build stuff, right?

marywilson1d ago

Go easy on it. I get that labels can help you think about stuff differently, but at the end of the day a cabinet is still a cabinet whether you call it a "wall chest" or a "cupboard." I painted my kitchen cabinets too and it felt good, but mostly because the old ones were ugly, not because I was suddenly seeing them as furniture. Changing the name didn't help me screw in a new handle any better. It just added an extra step of thinking before doing.

the_lisa2mo ago

My old apartment had these cheap builder-grade cabinets I always hated. After hearing that "wall furniture" idea, I started seeing them as big empty boxes I could actually change. I ended up painting them and adding new handles, which felt more like fixing up a dresser than a kitchen remodel. It really did shift how I saw the whole room.