HOME & GARDEN
JFCS therapist and 1st-Rate thrift store create cozy office on shoestring budget MICHEAL ROMERO AJP INTERN
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ARIZONA JEWISH POST, December 7, 2018
Photos: Micheal Romero/AJP
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isiting counselor Anjulie Pfeifer’s office is like visiting grandma’s house. Or going to a hipster coffee shop. Or seeing Smokey Bear’s cabin. At least that is what her clients at Jewish Family & Children’s Services say when they walk across the threshold of her office. Scenic paintings line the walls, board games are stacked atop the coffee table and an old TV cabinet houses books and a working old-fashioned radio. But it is probably the soft orange sofa with a quilt-like flower pattern design that gives the room its overall feel. “Everything came together around the couch,” Pfeifer says. “To me it looks like it is exactly pulled from the 1970s and nobody ever touched it, like it was in a bubble.” As a new counselor with her own office, Pfeifer wanted to create a space for people to relax and feel comfortable
Anjulie Pfeifer wanted her office at Jewish Family & Children’s Services to feel homey.
opening up in. “When people are sharing their hearts, you want them to be somewhere that
feels warm and cozy,” Pfeifer says. But as comfort level varies among patients, Pfeifer needed the components of
the office to be versatile for patients ranging from age 10 to age 50. “It has to be a place to clear the table and play some board games or do art projects,” Pfeifer says. “And then in another session be a firm place to cry your heart out.” Nearly everything in the office came from the 1st-Rate 2nd-Hand thrift shop and cost Pfeifer less than $100. The orange sofa that anchors the room cost only $10 and even then, it wasn’t her first choice. “We have these beautiful blue walls in all of the offices and I didn’t know if the blue with the orange would be too extreme,” Pfeifer says. Andie Cohn, co-president of the board of directors for 1st-Rate 2nd-Hand, aided Pfeifer throughout her shopping experience and understood the doubt that she had about the success of the couch. “It was definitely a décor risk,” Cohn says. “She wasn’t sure if it would be outrageous or if it would be fabulous.” But after much deliberation she took