Shopping For Furniture

Are you excited about finally getting out of your parents place? Are you planning on moving out for this upcoming fall semester? Are you tight on cash? Do you want to find a cheap way to fill up your new place with furniture? Are you sick of expensive furniture pricing that you find?

You don’t want to bring over a lady friend only to inform her that she needs to stand up or sit on the floor while you attempt to romance her. Good luck getting her to stay around for the night. Good luck on getting any of your buddies to visit you if there’s nowhere to sit.

The good news is that you came to the right place. We know how expensive it can be when you’re trying to move out and fill up a place with furniture. I remember visiting my buddy out of town and being told to bring my own air mattress. This sucked. Luckily the next semester he found a fully furnished place and now when I visit I have my own bed at least.

Today I wanted to get into buying furniture for your new place. Let’s look at the best ways to find furniture on the cheap for your new pad:

Ask your parents before you check furniture pricing.

You want to put together your dream pad without breaking the bank. What I did before moving out was I asked my parents to see if they wanted to get rid of anything. Luckily for me they let me take a futon and a comfy little sofa we had in the basement. TheseĀ  few items allowed me to save a few hundred dollars on furniture. It’s important that you ask your parents to see if they want to give you anything. Chances are that they’re so happy to finally get rid of you that they might even throw in a car.

Keep your ears open.

One day I overheard a friend talking about how he wanted to throw out his mattress. This was around the same time that my buddy was moving in with me for the summer. Instead of going out to buy a new mattress, we picked up this guy’s mattress for free. Just by keeping my ears open I was able to save us some decent cash.

Shop online for used furniture.

A very common way to buy used furniture is to check out one of the many auction sites on the internet. I would recommend starting off with your local Craigslist or Kijiji ads. I don’t have to explain how this works for you guys because I’m sure you’ve used it a hundred times. Just remember that you inspect the furniture to ensure that there’s no love stains or disgusting marks on it. You just can’t clean some things out.

Post a note on Facebook.

A couple of years ago I saw an interesting note on my Facebook feed. One of my old friends was moving downtown and he was absolutely dead broke. He had no money to spend on furniture. He probably spent all of his money on beer. He posted a note on Facebook kindly asking his friends if they had any furniture that they no longer needed and were willing to give away for free. The idea worked really well actually. We all have a couch or a chair that we want to get rid off but don’t want to see go in the garbage. My friend was able to accumulate enough stuff to have an apartment full of furniture. Another reason that this worked so well is that by using Facebook he was able to reach out to his network and the network of his friends. He had random people donating furniture to him. Not bad. Free furniture means more money for a house warming party.

See what others are throwing out.

Nobody has to know where you found your furniture. Every year at the end of the semester tons of students (rich kids) throw out perfectly find furniture just because they don’t want to deal with moving it. Imagine finding a perfectly usable lamp stand in the garbage? That could save you some money while filing up your place with some aesthetically pleasing items.

There are many ways you can avoid expensive furniture pricing and still fill up your place with plenty of decent furniture. You want to have a comfortable place without breaking the bank. The points above show that this is possible. You just might have to work a little.

(photo credit: drukelly)

Martin Dasko

Martin Dasko