So I'm new to this site, and I find that there are a lot of shops that sell house things, but no houses.  Am I missing the link somewhere?  Are these pointless items?  Thanks for any help!

At the moment the only thing you can really do with furniture is collect them and add them to your collection items. To do this just click on collections on the left sidebar and find the correct category for each furniture item. I'm sure other features will be added for them as time goes by.