I want to share my home furnishing experience as it was very tiring and time-consuming. First of all, I will give you some context: I am a grad student living on a 22K/year stipend which is below average for most US city. I am moving with a roommate into a 2 bedroom apartment that has only the basic utilities for the kitchen. The challenge was to find cheap yet quality items and ASAP.
We looked around a lot (by a lot I mean going to every possible furniture store and checking many used furniture venues or thrift stores) and we decided to go for all new furniture. The reasons:
- We are extremely worried about bedbugs / any kind of pests that can infect our apartment.
- We do not have a truck and every used item (unless you are very lucky) will require you to come and pick it up. And since it is very hard to find a collection of used items that you need on the same day, renting the truck for different days will add up the cost.
- We will probably be moving out after around 4 years so we are not really exigent in terms of the long term quality.
Budget limit: 1200$ (600$ each)
I will breakdown the furniture and the steps for each room in the apartment. (Also important to note that we have a lot of silverware and cookware so we are looking at only major furniture pieces)
Living room:
- Sofa: Probably the most expensive and time-consuming part of this process because we were really picky about the sofa. I mean a great sofa is what makes a great home. We looked a lot and we found that the best deals for new sofas are found in the clearance sections in furniture stores like Value city and Ashley furniture. We bought a good sofa for 300$ that was originally 600$ from Value city. Adding the cost of renting a truck etc we are looking at 350$ all expenses.
Because we do not want to rent more trucks we decided to go for online shopping and we settled for Amazon as it was the most reliable and it makes sense to pool your purchases from one source to reduce shipping costs etc..
- Coffee Table: 42$, a good quality item that had so many reviews and looked nice
- TV stand: 30$ a good stand that is sufficient for our 42" TV and PS4
Dining room:
- We bought 4 chairs for 80$ (for all 4 and they look really nice)
- Table for 104$
Bedrooms: (x2)
- Small computer desk for 60$
- Queen Mattress for 119$
- Platform bed frame for 72$
Total: 1100$ (550$ each)
Before picking an item we carefully read the reviews and only selected those who have MANY and GOOD reviews. Also, online shopping saved us a lot of money due to free shipping (we have amazon prime but if you buy all the items together you won't need it for free shipping). The inconvenience of online shopping is that you don't get to see the item until it is delivered but you can always return it.
Another option for the things that we found in Amazon is Ikea. We did not buy anything from there because the closest one is 200 miles away but it has some really good things with a similar price range (except for sofas).
I know a lot of you prefer going for used items. If you are lucky you can find really good items but since we cannot afford a bit of bad luck we chose not to risk it. We will buy some decoration from thrift stores. Also, we are planning to create some painting by ourselves for cheaper yet beautiful decoration.
For all those who are still in their furnishing journey, I salute you. Stay strong!
July 13, 2019 at 09:33PM
