When we were ready to move to France we confronted the challenge faced by every ex-pat: to ship or to sell everything before leaving and start all over again once you arrive. Having just spent a year rescuing and cleaning what family heirlooms and books survived our house fire, we were not about to leave them behind, and most were not valuable to anyone but us. Our insurance covered house and furniture rental while we decided whether to “repair or replace” the house, and it turned out that we could buy that rented furniture for a ridiculously attractive price at the end of the lease. We had to purchase beds, linens, clothes, and the things that help to restore sanity like a music system and Christmas decorations.
So when we decided to “replace” in France, we rented two containers and shipped it all. We literally shipped everything that did not go into the 24 dumpsters it took to strip the house — even garden furniture, a BBQ grill, and pic-nic ware. Most of it was the books we had been able to salvage and a baby grand piano, but also family china and glassware that nobody had room to take or the bandwidth to sell.
And to answer the question that always follows “we shipped,” we do not regret a single thing we bought with us. I can’t express the comfort that came from being able to get to work on the garden right away without having to go out and buy garden tools, or to curl up on my favorite garden chair with my coffee and read an only slightly discolored book. My husband says the same about having all his tools at hand to repair things in the house. Aside from the cost and inconvenience of buying everything again, most of what we bought with us could not be easily — or ever — replaced. The piano. The books. Family china. And the rest just made settling in so much easier.
But once the boxes were unpacked and the books and bookcases in place (if still not organized) we did also have to shop for larger items, especially for the two studios. I love the opportunity to mix old French furnishings, fabrics, and bric-a-brac with the mostly American things we bought with us. Hands down my favorite is the armoires because, of course, a house with two foot thick stone walls has no built in cupboards. We had to wait until the perfect ones showed up in our favorite brocante (which is only open on Thursdays). And this is one of them. It was actually probably made for a newly married couple, and includes a lovely mix of delicate carvings and solid frame.
There are no screws, just wooden dowels, but aside from a little woodworm (which I will treat once the weather gets warm enough to leave windows open), it is sturdy and does the trick with space to hang clothes on one side and shelves on the other. This one is in the guest studio, but the other less “romantic” one is in the bedroom, for my clothes.
This second armoire is more solid, but while plainer it has an elegance I really like and because it is less fancy it looks smaller (I am assured it is not) so fits better into a more compact space. Look at the floor tiles, by the way. Each room has different tiles, painted cement and mostly in very good shape.
A word about the brocante. While they are not exclusively French, and not as embedded in culture (to my mind) as Swedish flea markets, the principle is the same, as is the celebration of the previously owned. And there are a lot of them, both small treasure houses in villages and town and barns housing everything you could imagine like the one we prefer on the road to Albi. A 2020 study recorded approximately 15,000 brocante and flea markets in France (Statista) and I love the history and craftsmanship you can find there, in addition to the decorative and funky.
