Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994
A picture of most Nomeites’ home interiors will reveal stuff stacked all over the place. Maybe it’s because most of our houses and apartments are so small, or we just like to have piles of stuff close by. Or maybe it’s because we don’t just don’t care to bring a lot of furniture up here.
When you arrive at an apartment or rental house here in Nome, you want to start unpacking your stuff. That’s not easy if there aren’t enough shelves, cupboards, closets, drawers, and tables. Oh, if you’re moving into a furnished place, you’ll find a fair amount of that kind of stuff but there are never enough. Furniture is probably the last thing you think about bringing to Nome but the first thing you want when you get here.
So where do you get some furniture if you don’t want to invest in a set of put-together shelves at The Country Store or coffee tables from the downtown A.C.? Where will you put your books, clothes, boots, and reams of laser printer paper? Should you gather some driftwood from Ft. Davis and hammer together some cockeyed shelf units? No! You look for discarded boxes!
We’re using clean, discarded boxes at my house for a bed frame, three nightstands, ten sets of shelves, home finance files, a sideboard for art supplies, closet shoe shelves, Lego assembly benches, computer book files, a drawing table, three toy containers, and six wastebaskets.
Organized Nomeites also use caselots of canned and packaged goods for furniture. The barge order arrives in June and with it their new furniture for the year. They stack the canned peas in one corner for an end table or arrange the flats of shrimp-flavored Ramen noodles for a kid’s Nintendo center. Throw a square yard of cotton fabric or a round piece of oil cloth over the top and who’s to know? Visitors from Outside might find it a bit odd that your $4,000 PC sits on $100 worth of Chef Boy-ar-dee ravioli cans but, hey, this is Nome. Of course, there is the disadvantage that these creative tables start shrinking as the family eats the furniture’s components. You have to be flexible with your height requirements!
My heart occasionally yearns for my Amish oak linen keep that’s still in storage and I’d love to get some tall, wood bookcases and hutches and entertainment centers. But Nome is a creative, make-do kind of town. Always has been. Martha Stewart might like to come up here and check this out! Besides, who wants to ship all that real furniture out of here if you move? There’s a reason so many places up here are rented furnished.
Give me furniture from Giant Eagle that I can use to build a table and later fill to ship out my Christmas packages. Steer me to the box piles at A.C. or Gold Rush Video and I’ll take what I need. I’m a recycler and a re-user. I’m energized by the challenge of better living through cardboard.
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