Furniture and Things at Home
Learn 20 easy A1 English words for furniture and everyday things at home - sofa, cupboard, fridge, mirror - with examples, a story and a quiz.
You know the rooms of a house. Now you need the things inside them. These 20 words are the ones you will use every single day at home, and most of them appear in the first lesson of any English course – so learn them well. Read the words, then join one family on a very long Saturday morning.
20 words to learn
The 20 words
/ˈteɪbl/
A flat piece of furniture with legs. You eat or work on it.
We eat dinner at the table together.
/tʃeə(r)/
You sit on it. It has a back and usually four legs.
Please take a chair and sit down.
/bed/
You sleep in it.
I go to bed at eleven.
/ˈsəʊfə/
A long soft seat for two or three people.
My father is sleeping on the sofa.
/ˈkʌbəd/
A piece of furniture with doors and shelves inside. The p is silent.
The plates are in the kitchen cupboard.
/frɪdʒ/
The cold machine that keeps your food fresh.
Put the milk in the fridge.
/ˈkʊkə(r)/
The machine you cook on. Americans say stove.
Be careful – the cooker is very hot.
/læmp/
A small light that stands on a table or on the floor.
I read with the lamp next to my bed.
/ˈmɪrə(r)/
Glass where you can see yourself.
She looked at herself in the mirror.
/ˈkɑːpɪt/
A thick soft cover for the floor.
There is a beautiful red carpet in the living room.
/ˈkɜːtnz/
The cloth in front of a window. You open and close them.
Close the curtains – the sun is too strong.
/ʃelf/
A flat board on a wall for books or things. Plural: shelves.
My books are on the top shelf.
/klɒk/
It shows the time on a wall or a table.
The clock in the kitchen is five minutes fast.
/kʌp/
A small container for tea or coffee.
Would you like a cup of tea?
/pleɪt/
The flat round thing you put your food on.
There is rice on my plate.
/naɪf/
You cut food with it. The k is silent. Plural: knives.
Can you pass me a knife, please?
/ˈtelɪvɪʒn/
The screen you watch programmes and films on. Short form: TV.
Turn off the television and come to eat.
/ˈwɒʃɪŋ məˈʃiːn/
The machine that washes your clothes.
My shirt is in the washing machine.
/ˈpɪləʊ/
The soft thing you put your head on in bed.
This pillow is too soft for me.
/drɔː(r)/
A box inside a desk or a cupboard that you pull out.
The forks are in the second drawer.
Now read the story
Story · all 20 words
Saturday Morning
Every Saturday my mother cleans the house, and every Saturday she wakes me up. This morning the clock next to my bed said seven, and she was already standing at the door with a box of yellow cloths. I put my head under the pillow. It did not help.
We started in my room. I took everything off the shelf – old books, a football, two dead plants – and my mother opened every drawer in the small brown cupboard by the window. “Why do you have twelve pens and no paper?” she asked. I looked at myself in the mirror and said nothing.
Then the living room. We moved the sofa and found a cup under it, a plate under the cup, and one sock. My father says the carpet is a hundred years old; my mother says it is thirty. Nobody really knows. I opened the curtains, my sister cleaned the television, and my brother changed the light in the tall lamp in the corner.
In the kitchen my mother stood in front of the open fridge for a long time. “This cheese is from May,” she said quietly. She cleaned the cooker, I washed the big knife and everything else in the sink, and the washing machine made a terrible noise in the corner for two hours.
At one o’clock we all sat down at the table. My father brought a fifth chair in from the garden. The house was clean, the food was hot, and for twenty minutes nobody said anything at all. That was the best part of the day.
English hides letters that you must not say:
- cupboard – the p is silent. Say KUB-erd, not cup-board.
- knife – the k is silent. Say NIFE. The same happens in know and knee.
Also practise the /dʒ/ at the end of fridge. It is the same sound as the letter j: frij.
And one word to be careful with: furniture is uncountable. Never say furnitures or a furniture. Say some furniture or a piece of furniture.
Keep these words in the room where you use them:
Bedroom: bed, pillow, cupboard, drawer, mirror, lamp.
Living room: sofa, table, chair, carpet, curtains, shelf, television, clock.
Kitchen: fridge, cooker, cup, plate, knife, washing machine.
Walk around your own home tonight and say the English word for ten things you can see. If you cannot remember one, look at it again tomorrow.
Now practise with the questions below.
Check your understanding
Answer the questions below. You will see instantly if you are right.
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