New Year's resolution

Greetings from New Mexico. It's that time of year when we review what we've done over the last 12 months and make a few resolutions about what to avoid in the future. So here goes...

I made a huge decorating mistake this year, and it is a painful one to admit to, because I usually pride myself on avoiding this kind of bonehead move, in my staging business and at home.

So here it is and you can probably relate. I wanted a couch. Our beautiful old suede couch was breaking down a bit and just wasn't right in our new house. I knew exactly what I had in mind ...leather in a buckskin sort of shade with nail head detail. It started out as a notion... I think I'll look around and see if what's on the market like that...and quickly became an Obsession.

I spent weekdays looking at couches. I added hours to my workday by just stopping by to see if this store or that might have the couch I was looking for. I went online and searched the offerings at the store i used to shop in Denver. After all, I told myself, we could just run up there with the truck and haul a sofa back to New Mexico, if they had that perfect one.

This is terrible shopping technique, of course. The more couches I saw, the more I was determined to find just the right one and the more elusive the "right" one seemed to be. Then, a few months into this, I turned a corner in a large furniture store in town and there it was, the perfect leather couch with nail head detail in a soft buttery shade of buckskin. It was The Couch! And it was $1400.

This is where the mistake comes in. To some people, $1400 won't seem like a lot of money to spend on a couch. But I am a fickle decorator and I get easily bored. So it is usually my policy to buy less expensive furniture that I won't feel bad about replacing in a few years. The price of this couch was really pushing my limit. But as I said, I was Obsessed! Here was the perfect couch and I wanted it right now!

So I bought it, and when the store delivered a model that was more chocolate than buckskin, I sent it right back, insisting on the buckskin sofa off the floor. So get this, now I have a floor model for $1400! (less the measly $100 the manager gave me as a discount which is hardly worth mentioning).

At any rate, I did and do still love the couch but there was more pain ahead for me in this particular deal. About two months ago, I saw the same couch at the furniture store's discount center for $700. Not the chocolate one I rejected but another one in the exact shade of buckskin I have at home.

And still more painful: Last week, I saw an almost identical nail head leather couch on craigslist for $300.

So lessons learned: I will never get in a hurry to make a major furniture investment again. If I had had patience, I could have saved at least $700 and maybe even $1100! Taking my time -- on decorating and on other decisions -- is my New Year's resolution!