I love accent tables.
You can put them anywhere. They’re small. They’re cute. They can match your decor. Or not, because they are so functional, they can stand on their own. No pun intended.
The accent tables in my house run the gamut from pricier ones from furniture stores to the ones that belonged to John’s Mom, Diane. And the ones that belonged to John’s Mom are my favorite.
The one in the water closet came all the way from Michigan in the 1970s when John and his family moved to Arizona. It has short wooden legs and a tile tabletop reminiscent of the Southwest.
It’s not exactly the table you would picture in Michigan, so it’s almost fitting that it would end up in the Southwest.
The table is small and perfect in the master bathroom water closet where it holds the tissue box and – if I am being honest – my coffee cup and cell phone during morning visits.
The other accent table from Diane sits next to John’s chair in the living room. He uses it to place his coffee on weekend mornings. It’s a newer piece Diane picked up here in Arizona. It too does not match my decor but I love it all the same.
But what makes these pieces so special is how I came to acquire them.
Diane spent the last 15 months of her life in a nursing home. When it came time to collect her belongings, John let me pick the items I wanted before donating the rest. The tables were among her belongings. I grabbed them immediately.
From there, the tables went from the nursing home to my condo, to my storage unit while the new house was being built, to the new house.
Actually, the table from Michigan had a layover at my parents’ own water closet between the condo and the new house. My Dad needed a place for his own coffee cup during morning visits. So I brought the table over from storage on the condition I would take it back once the new house was ready.
Dad loved that table. Almost to the point of threatening to hide it from me so that I would never take it away.
Who would have thought that an accent table would make its way into so many lives and bring function into so many houses?
Designing Goldilocks 