Buy Furniture for Less using Craigslist

As any student or post-grad can report, money can be tight. With a little imagination and creativity, you can furnish your apartment and still stay on budget.

Here are some tips we used to furnish our 2-br apartment - we had $700 and 2 weeks:

1. New Queen-sized Mattress -$250
2. Bedroom - $100
3. Sofa & Love Seat (gray cloth) - $80
4. Armoire - $30
5. TV(42"CRT Sony) + TV Stand + DVD - $75
6. Kitchen set - $75
7. Other furniture - ~100

The site we used to Search Craigslist for furniture and electronics
The site we used to buy a mattress
The site we used to rent truck

Step 1: Create list of things you need

Do the homework - create the "shopping list" and set priorities.
Start with the bedroom, then kitchen and then the living room

Comments

[CaseyCase]

Saw an awesome episode of Verminators where a lady had a gnarly bed bug infestation from buying a used mattress set and a couch. Just an FYI...

[brain_bomb]

 That's what I was wondering about.  They mention buy the mattress new because of BedBugs but can't you get them from Sofas/Love Seats/Rugs.  Basically anything with a fabric right?  I'm actually not sure so if anyone knows more about bedbugs could they chime in?

[thrila]

Really REALLY late but yeah, you can get them from most furniture, they can even sneak in with books. I had a really bad bedbug problem a few years ago and had to throw out a lot of stuff.

God forbid you get some, aside from chemical sprays and stuff, a good solution my family discovered was to purchase those large plastic containers, pack all your stuff into them, and if you can help it, try not to touch them for about a yeah or year and a half. For whatever reason bedbugs can climb into plastic, but they can't really climb out so they end up dying in the containers.

[aofficefurniture]

Good job!!,

That was awesome! Just to add up check out our site maybe it'll help you save more. and check out my vid, add some tips on the vid I made since you did great on your shopping!

http://arnoldsofficefurniture.com

[grigory]

Awesome result, guys! That photo in the end looks rather cozy. Will have to be doing this soon myself...

Just to help folks out, I've built a little notification service. It sends you SMS text messages whenever new furniture that matches your search query is posted on Craigslist (or kijiji, or any other classifieds website), for example.

Check it out, let me know what you think: Greg's Pulse

cheers, grigory.

[[e-mail]]

i just furnished my studio apartment in Manhattan for almost nothing. I got all the furniture for free off FreeCycle. My only expense was renting an SUV, so if you or a friend have one, it'll be even cheaper for you. I got an Ikea coffee table, an Ikea love-seat, bookshelves and a dresser.

[sapient_gmara]

Good post. Sounds as great alternative to HomeDepot

[spatel1978]

Thanks, that was really useful

[diamonddust1985]

Interesting. Does this $700 total include the movers' services ?

[mstraza]

Well done. I wish you could share more details on the classified sites.

[Satellite]

Good post. Thank you for the useful tips.

[LinuxH4x0r]

Nice. Sometimes you can even get stuff for free.