Have you ever noticed how hard it is to keep nice things nice? I'm starting to realize, it might just be a losing battle. When we got married Tim and I pretty much had nothing. He had a water bed and dresser from his childhood, and I had a dresser from mine. We were given a table as a wedding present from my dad's side of the family, and everything else we owned were hand me downs, really really really poor hand me downs! We kept those hand me downs for years. We finally got rid of all of them, except the table and Tim's dresser, when we moved to Japan. There, we used government furniture that had sustained it's own abuses from countless other families that used it for years before us.

Now that we're back, and have purchased new furniture for our family, I'm realizing what a pain nice stuff is. Take, for example, my new table and chairs. Corben, for some unknown reason, decided to take a pencil, and SCRATCH the word Lake into the back of the chair. I noticed this as I was trying to wipe all the sticky hand prints off the chair. I have to wash the chairs down top to bottom at least once a week, unless I want them to end up so sticky that the dog would stick to them.

Or how about my nice new couch, that has sticking hand prints on it, even though the kids aren't allowed to have food in that room at all? I have to wash the couch down with a damp rag at least once a week to remove all the crud and snot that Davin leaves on it just by walking by.

Or my beautiful oriental rug. Even though everyone is required to remove shoes before coming in, and we've been sticklers about it, there are still spots and I've already had to shampoo the thing once!

So here's the rub. Do I slave away at keeping these nice things nice, or should we just avoid nice things?