Sure, we don’t all have six grand lying about to be spent on a cabinet. On the other hand, this cabinet isn’t for just anyone.

The Crepax Kadhorna cabinet from Italian furniture maker Ennezero is a comic strip balck and white beauty you won’t want to push against a wall — this thing needs front and center placement to showcase the adornments of Guido Crepax that cover every inch, including the back.

Crepax was a graphic artist who influenced European comic art in the latter half of the 20th century. This cabinet features his most famous creation, Valentina, and incorporates the eroticism and dream-like psychdelica he was best known for.

$5,930.00 at moss

I am of the class of human that likes to lean back on the legs of a chair in an attempt to create a lounger out of anything. Apparently, I am not alone in this pastime, because at least one designer thinks that four legs on a single chair is simply not enough.

Paulius Vitkauskas’s Ku Dir Ka Rocking Chair looks like any other start-backed red wooden chair until you look underneath and find its ten individual legs looking back at you. The legs are positioned so that you can simply rock back and forth, point-to-point, and never worry about getting your toes caught under the rails.

$549.00 at Generate

Rugs are all the rage. Is it because everyone wants those bare wood floors and then they find out they’re both cold and hard, or is it because wall to wall carpeting is just so boring (unless you live in a movie theatre)? Whatever the reason, the available designs and color schemes are virtually unlimited.

Take, for example, Thomas Paul’s new line of 100% New Zealand wool rugs. Not content to create elaborate abstract designs, they are instead creating vibrant, simple but eye-catching designs that take familiar patterns and blow them up, so that their damask (shown above) is anything but subtle, even in such muted colors as ebony, cream and powder blue.

From $270.00 at Velocity Art And Design

You know what your place needs? A lamp created by a French designer made out of a recycled Electrolux cannister vacuum. Am I right or am I right?

Engele Riguidel has some time on her hands, and rather than being like you or me and sitting in front of a big screen TV playing Gears of War endlessly, she’s making what she calls “unidentified luminous objects” by inserting big fat lights into old vacuum cleaners, resulting in one of the most unique lighting options available. Want to have a conversation piece? This would be it. Comes in two colors.

$350.00 at Uncommon Goods

A big lamp isn’t always the answer for a dark corner. Frankly, a big lamp is rarely the answer for anything at all, unless you’re lighting a play or planning on a long winter in the Antarctic.

The Hip-Hop Lightchain from Germany’s Illu Stration is made up of 30 little red (or white) asterisks with low watt LED bulbs inside. It’s nearly 10 feet long and you can hang it, bunch it up, or even lay it on the floor and pretend you’re living in the coolest movie theatre ever!

$188.00 at Branch: Sustainable Design for Living

If you’re a fan of Cocteau’s “Le Belle et la Bête,” you’ll probably want to grab (heh) one of these subtle but effective “Bestow” wall-mounted vase/candleholders designed by Harry Allen.

I’ve seen a slew of these hand-based usable sculptures before used as coat hooks and key holders, but this one seems particularly apt and charming. A hand and forearm juts out of your wall and grasps either a flower bud in a glass vase or a taper candle. One supposes you could also paint the polyester resin limb to match your wall for that added touch of weird perfection.

$95.00 at ELSEWARES

Turns out you don’t necessarily need to spend a buttload of money to furnish your place of residence with handsome, sturdy and conversation-worthy pieces of furniture, like this Doca Autunno Flatpack Coffee Table from Brazilian designer RS Miranda.

Everyone’s going green, and this table does so literally and figuratively. It’s made of cardboard and comes all flattened and you put it together yourself like something from Ikea, only it’s sexier than Ikea because it’s Brazilian!

$65.00 at A+R Store

“Oh how beautiful you are! You are charming. You look gorgeous! It’s fantastic. You are infinitely attractive! I think you are fabulous, just fabulous….”

Remember when you used to feel that way? A little reinforcement of your personal worth is never a bad thing, even when it comes from inanimate objects. The Oh How Beautiful You Are Mirror designed by Joop Steenkamer can make you feel so much better about yourself than any other mirror, the kind that just shows you that your hair looks funny.

Measures 11.8” square, or get more positive feedback with the large version at 17.2” square for $189.00.

$96.00 at retromodern.

There’s a drawback to owning a big open space to live in rather than a floorplan with distinct rooms with walls and so forth. Where’s your privacy? On the other hand, one of the reasons you live in a non-walled space is maybe because walls annoy you for some reason, so what’s the solution?

Extremis designers Hsu-Li Teo and Stefan Kaiser embedded wood or fiberglass sticks into heavy bases to create “Sticks,” a modular space divider that looks like reed forests sprouting out of your polished concrete floors. The sticks rise to a height of 70.9” (about 6’ tall) or even higher for a little more cash, and come in modules of 20” or 24” wide. Buy a few and line ‘em up, or if you’ve got lots of office space to plant some in, you can order 40 sets in the color of your own choosing!

$154.00 - $705.00 at Unica Home

Area rugs are so passé, don’t you think? You can spend obscene amounts of cash on something that looks like woolly worms have infested your floorspace, and your living room ends up looking like last month’s DWR catalog.

If you want to really make an impression, why not get a made-to-order Footprint Floor Canvas from San Francisco-based artist Jim Winters? He’ll work with you to create a bespoke silkscreened art piece you can walk all over, to fit whatever space you need to cover (as long as it fits in his silkscreening rig, of course). They’re made of heavy weight cotton duck canvas or linen and they’re so lovely you may regret setting foot to yours at all.

Price on request from jimwinters

LEDs are all the rage, or aren’t you keeping up with lighting trends, lately? Incandescents are horribly out of date and waste electricity, and compact fluorescents make your skin look pasty and all your artwork look dull. Light Emitting Diodes, baby!

And here we have Sven Adolph’s Sven Light. He loved it so much, he named it after himself. This spun aluminum table lamp in black or white (and coming soon: red!) has 16 LEDs shining up and 24 LEDs shining down, so you’re offered direct and indirect lighting at the same time! A switch on the base makes a satisfying click when you turn it on. It’s 14” high so it;ll fit anywhere, and its midriff slit shows its sexy side.

$475 at Lumens

It’s getting harder and harder to have something original in your living room that no one else has. Eames Lounger? That’s so Frazier. And Target is gobbling up every good designer left and right to provide cheap knock-offs of their own stuff, so where does that leave you and me?

I’ll tell you: it leaves you and me paying even more for some interesting and beautiful furniture like the Damasco coffee table from Patricia Urquiola. She takes a slice of wood, pretties it up and then inlays an Asian-inspired silkscreen pattern in white or gray. The result is a unique piece of furniture you’ll be happy to ruin with water rings if your guests aren’t careful.

$1,920 at Unica Home

It’s nice to have options. Sometimes we’re forced into someone else’s idea of the perfect shelving system, and sometimes it works. But not always.

The Flexo Shelving Units are simply L-shaped wooden spaces you can stack in any way you want to — or, at least, any way that would not cause them to fall down and possibly destroy all the stuff you’re stacking into them. Work outside the box by working within it.

$389.00 for 2 units at SCHD

Walls are all getting sexy on you ass! Sure, sure, you can paint them with, you know, paint and such, or you can love your walls and put up more interesting and conversation-worthy things to add some interest to the things holding your windows up.

Inhabit’s Embossed Wall Flats have some new styles out including these “Braille” panels that, I guess, would have you feel the giant non-sense words locked inside your abode. Ten panels per box will cover 22.5 square feet of wall. And you can still paint them if truly must.

$84.00 at design public

It’s not always necessary to use a piece of furniture in the manner for which it was intended. I’m not saying that it’s wise to use a rocking chair for a dinner table, but every now and then you see something meant for a specific room that would work just as well in any other room.

Case in point, Nurseryworks’ Storytime Double Bookcase. Shown here in cotton candy, its combination of light birch and lovely soft internal colors provides a beautiful piece of furniture no matter where you place it, baby or no baby. I also love the internal shelves and their built-in higgledy piggledy dividers.

$1,190.00 at Velocity Art And Design

You know what’s fun? Showing stuff off! All that stuff you pick up all over the place and regret having when you move and you have to pack it all up? Those Hummel figurines? The Revell plastic car models? Small owls made out of corncobs? Show your stuff!

And rather than buy one of those ordinary wooden shelves at Pottery Barn, grab a few of these baroque shelves made out of environmentally unfriendly plastic in shiny colors like fuschia and orange (and black and white, yawn).

$8.00 at Rose and Radish

Chandeliers are becoming chic again — or perhaps they never turned un-chic and it was just I who considered them dowdy and ready for the dustbin. But recent designs by Murano in colored glass and this version from Droog could change my mind.

Made up of 85 110 volt bulbs suspended from their own cords, the Chandelier ‘85 Bulbs is an art piece disguised as lighting. Designed in 1993 by Rody Graumans, it joins the more famous (infamous) Milk Bottle Chandelier as the one to spend yuor hard-earned Googlebucks on.

$1,700.00 at Fitzsu.com

Interior lighting can be problematic. Finding the right balance of providing the light you need and looking good when it’s just sitting there can be a headache, unless you’ve found the perfect solution for youspace, regardless of how much space you actually have.

The ogusdesign Table Lamp consists of a base of solid machined aircraft aluminum with a recessed halogen bulb within. There’s a simple slot cut into the base and you can slide its frosted glass shade in vertically or horizontally, so it wrks whether your space is wide or high (or both!) — and each one comes with its own serial number, for that added touch of exclusivity.

$300.00 at 2modern

I was reminded the other evening of the pleasure to be had simply by sitting in a rocking chair and doing absolutely nothing but leisurely rocking to one’s own silent internal beat. It is said that President Kennedy values his rocker to alleviate chronic back pain, but I’ll wager it also relieved a bit of chronic Cuba pain, too.

At any rate, if you’re in the mood for some simple relaxation but can’t imagine some old rocking chair sitting in your living space, I suggest you take a look at Blu Dot’s new Buttercup Rocker. Its bent plywood seat willingly accepts even the largest buttocks, and the metal struts will support you even when you feel like all other support is gone.

$649.00 at Design Public

Not everyone needs a hulking brute of a desk to feel complete. Me, I have a huge metal Steelcase job with lots of drawers to hide the crap I should really toss out, as well as slide-out shelves and a lovely formica top in faux marble. But that’s me.

Maybe all you need is a charming, elegant space with colorful accents and softly swayed legs in gleaming polished aluminum. Plus you love mid-century furniture design. Lucky you! Herman Miller has just re-issued the Nelson Swag Leg desk, designed by George Nelson. Won’t this look spectacular with your Aluminum Group management chair? You know it will!

$1,745.00 at highbrowfurniture.com

I don’t care if you’re gay, straight or somewhere in-between, if you’re a guy you throw your clothes on the floor. This is what guys do. Whether it’s the end of the day and you can’t wait to get out of that button-down, or you’re back from the gym and everything smells like hell, or it’s laundry day and time to sort the whites from the colors, we like our clothes on the floor.

Now you can dress up your floor with underwear all the time! Convenient, non? The Undie Rug comes with a red or yellow “elastic waistband” and is made of 100% environment unfriendly Acrylic, suitable for bathrooms as well as kitchens, because we all like seeing our underwear on the kitchen floor now and again. Paints us as ‘kinky,’ when really we’re more like ‘tidy.’ Or is it ‘tighty?’

$30.00 at Orange Skin.

Like many city dwellers, I don’t have a lot of space to live in, nor do I have a lot of money to fill that space up with furniture. Like many San Francisco dwellers, the ceilings in my small apartment are, like, 100 feet high, not to mention trying to reach stuff on the upper shelves in the kitchen.

That’s why I like this chair that turns into a ladder. Unlike some designs, it’s useful as both, so you don’t have to find someplace to hide the ladder, and you can actually sit in it when it’s just a chair. Benjamin Franklin designed it, so you know it’s logical and practical. And since it’s at SmartBargains, it’s also cheap!

$49.98 at SmartBargains.

Maybe it’s just me (again), but I tend to take my time in the shower, especially in the morning. I’m not very wide awake until, like, 10AM-ish so the hot water helps me be less, you know, annoying and angry.

But when you have a nine-to-five, spending overlong under the running hot is not good, career-wise. Enter this water-resistent battery operated palm-sized clock with suction cups on the back. Stick it up in your shower so you’ll know you’ve only got 5 more minutes of dilly-dally left before you miss your train!

$14.95 at cb2.com.

A chair is an important purchase for your environment. You may think it’s “just something to sit on,” but with the vast array of styles, fabrics and sizes available — not to mention the hours of your life you’ll spend sitting in it reading or watching telly — your chair of choice should be something that’s not only comfortable but attractive and sturdy as well.

The Berg chair at Room & Board is a copy of a 1950’s Italian design from Arflex. It’s got that retro spaceage Jetsons quality that evokes an instant feeling of whimsy and nostaligia, retaining its clean lines with ease. You can choose from a variety of fabrics to upholster yours in, all modeled on textures that match its mid-century parentage.

$899.00 at Room & Board.

Ever have one of those parties when you have more people than chairs? At some point in any party, people are going to want to depart the comfort of the kitchen and find someplace to take a load off and enjoy their Merlot and a little quiet conversation.

The answer is: cushions! They stack, they provide either a nice soft seat or something to hug while watching the telly from the floor whilst munching buttered popcorn. These Chroma Cushions are 6 inches thick and come with machine-washable (cold water) removeable covers. Three different designs available.

$190.00 each at Edge Modern.

You know how it is — you’re outside on the patio, it’s dusk, the air grows cool, a breeze comes up, you’re enjoying a frozen Margarita and discussing last night’s South Park, it’s getting too dark to see, but you don’t want to go in, yet, and you don’t want the harsh lights to attract bugs. Now what?

The Mathmos Tumbler is a 7” long, 4” wide, 2” high glass brick with a soft light inside. The reason they call it the Tumbler is that every time you flip it to sit on a new side, it changes color. When you find one you like, leave it alone, or pass it around for someone else to play with. It’s for indoor or outdoor use, is splash resistent and holds a charge for five hours.

$85.00 at Generate.

Aren’t DVD players free, nowadays? Seems like you can walk into Wal-Mart and they have gumball dispensers at the front door and you put in a quarter and out pops a DVD player. But you’re not that type of shopper, are you? You don’t want just any DVD player, you want one that says, “Hey, look at me! I’m special and pretty and taste like yummy!”

The Hello Kitty TV-DVD Combo is, as one would expect, bubblegum pink. It has a 13” screen and a matching hot pink remote that you’ll never lose because, oh my freakin’ God it’s hot pink. And being that it’s made in Japan, they had the good sense to include front-accessible plugs for your camcorder or PlayStation, so you can frag the ass of some alien commando while Hello Kitty looks on with admiration.

$264.99 at Sanrio Store.

In my small (well-appointed) studio apartment, I can see what time it is from everywhere. There’s a clock on the cable box, one on the microwave, the alarm clock next to my bed, the kitchen clock/timer by the stove, a small clock mounted above the TV… but I saved the biggest, most humungousoid clock for the bathroom.

I found the Bravur clock at IKEA and knew I had to have one in the smallest room in my house. For one thing, I can easily see what time it is without wearing my contacts from inside the shower in the morning. For another, it’s hilarious. This thing is about 2-feet across. It’s got a classic design, it’s easy to read (obviously) and when you want a giant clock, there’s just no more affordable way to go.

$49.99 at IKEA.

By the time you’ve got him home, it’s probably already clear that you haven’t invited him over just because you want a new friend. But in case he hasn’t quite gotten the message yet, this less-than-subtle bedroom-based hint will undoubtedly do the trick — and I do mean trick.

UniqueItems “Boy Boy” duvet cover and pillow shams come in 100% cotton from Australia, where they know a lot about boy-boy action. This queen cover is 84” by 84” with an all-important thread count of 250. If you’re the type, like me, who tends not to make his bed in the morning, maybe this will give you a reason?

$251.00 at fitzsu.

Also available: Boy Girl and Boy Boy king size for $276.00.

Straight outta Brooklyn comes the Mutant Vase from Benza. As you can see, what we have here is basically a really big Slinky that you can mold and shape to your heart’s content — it just won’t walk down stairs (alone or in pairs).

Made of an anodized aluminum vase inside a galvanized steel coil, the silvery vase stands 8½ inches high and will surely be one of those things you can’t keep your hands off of.

$76.00 at ELSEWARES.