Caring

• Caring for your furniture is important. Whether new or old, you want it to last a long time and look good. Consider getting protective fabric spray for upholstery -- it helps to guard against stains. If you have small children or pets, slipcovers can do wonders for keeping hair off couches and chairs. Using furniture polish on wood on a regular basis keeps it dust free and shiny.
  
  

Combining

• If you're combining households (for instance, getting married when each of you has a complete set of furniture), decide on a theme for the rooms in your home. This will help weed out what furniture to keep and what to discard (or donate), rather than squabbling over it.
  
  

Arranging

• When deciding how to arrange furniture in a new home, measure the items you already have, and cut out newspaper sheets (or tape them together) with the dimensions of the items. Arrange the sheets on the floor of the rooms where the furniture will go. This helps give you an impression of what the room will look like fully furnished.
  
  

Changing

• When changing over the furniture in a child's room (for instance, going from kid furniture to teen furniture), let the children help select the items -- if they're old enough to do so. This prevents any arguments over whether the decor is to the child's liking. Also, children are apt to take better care of furniture they helped pick out.
  
  

Pets

• It's not only pet hair you must worry about when you have cats or dogs -- scratching furniture can also be a major problem for pet owners. If your animal tends to scratch on the corners of couches or chairs (as if often the case with cats) hard, clear plastic covers are available to attach to the furniture and prevent this nuisance.
  
  

Planning

• When planning for new storage furniture, such as bookshelves and entertainment centers, don't forget to consider how many of the storage items you will acquire in the future. Often, people purchase storage only for the items they have, forgetting to buy extra space for future acquisitions.