“Small Room

The argument that keeps coming back in this office isn’t really about the chair. It’s about what kind of person folds a chair away the second they’re finished with it, and what kind of person leaves it leaning against the wall for four days because putting it away feels like admitting the sunny afternoon is over. Half the team is the first kind. The other half owns three of these chairs and can currently locate one of them.

What nobody argues about is the actual point of the thing, which is that a balcony the size of a bath mat can suddenly seat two adults and a bottle of wine, and then, twenty minutes later, seat nobody and go back to being a bath mat sized balcony again. That trick, room that appears and disappears on command, is the whole reason half of us bought one in the first place, usually after a flat move that took eleven square feet away and gave us opinions instead.

The other camp bought theirs because they like the idea of extra seating existing somewhere in the flat even if it never gets used, which is its own kind of lifestyle, the “just in case” lifestyle, and honestly we respect it even while making fun of it.

Where it gets tested properly is the hour mark, not the first five minutes when everyone’s delighted and taking photos of their tiny outdoor setup like they’ve built a conservatory. An hour in is when you find out if the slats dig into the back of your knee, if the arm height is wrong for resting a mug, if your spine has quietly started composing a letter of complaint. The good ones still feel like a chair at minute sixty. The bad ones start feeling like a decision you regret, politely, while still smiling for the group photo.

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One person on the team insists on the metal frame because plastic ones have, in her words, betrayed her twice, and refuses to elaborate further than that. Another has a wooden one that’s lovely to look at and agony after forty minutes, and keeps buying a new cushion for it instead of admitting the chair itself is the problem.

Nobody has fully won the argument about folding it away versus leaving it out, and we suspect nobody’s going to. What we do agree on, grudgingly, from both sides of the balcony, is that the whole appeal of this chair is honesty. It takes up almost no room and gives almost all of it back, on command, which is more than most furniture manages to say for itself. Small room, big feelings, and apparently strong ones about what happens to a chair between uses.