Junk Drawer

This piece of furniture probably once looked appealing, advertised in a catalog as a computer desk, or some such thing. It probably looked like a very solid product for your home. But this is the type of cheap, crappy furniture that is way too prevalent these days.
And once something like this begins to fall apart, there’s no way of saving it. I know because I used to have something like it. Mine was a cheap stereo cabinet from a garage sale. I like buying things second hand, but cheap furniture usually has a short lifespan. Whether you have a preassembled, or a put together job, a cheap piece of furniture is not meant to be moved around. It is designed to remain perfectly still, and once you exert force on it any other way, such as trying to slide it a few inches up to the wall, the joints begin to loosen. You can feel the whole thing swaying, like some tall ship that’s about to capsize. And don’t attempt to stabilize it by nailing the boards together. These are not wood. They do contain some distant remnants of wood, but they turn to sawdust when you try to treat them as wood. I don’t know if furniture like this saves any trees, but nonetheless it is just sad.
A good, old bookcase, for example, has some integrity. Even if it is worn, you can work with it—refinish it, paint it, or nail it back together. And if you leave it in a slightly worn state, it will hold together, and still look great, with plenty of character. Now there is so much throw-away furniture it’s hard to find anything decent.
It looks like the piece of cheap furniture I found this week just barely made it to the alley in one piece. The owner was most likely happy to be rid of it, before it toppled over on somebody.