Apartment Furniture Part 1: Reuse

This year was the first year I moved into an apartment (I lived in dorms before that).  In choosing an apartment, I had lots of choices: upstairs or downstairs, roommates (how many) or by myself, which complex, will I get a pet?, etc.  The hardest decision for me personally, though, was furnished or unfurnished.  When I was deciding, I had a pro list for each side:

Furnished Apartment:

- much easier to move

- cheaper to move (no big bulky items)

- less to worry about the summer before I moved

- could buy furniture when I had money after college and could afford nice stuff

- Cheaper up front cost

Unfurnished Apartment:

- Could bring exactly the items I wanted

- mostly only unfurnished apartments here allow pets (which I wanted)

- Cheaper rent

- Less you can mess up in the apartment and have to pay  for when you move out

- Have these items forever (or until they break)

- Can pick style/colors

- Easier to set up the rooms how you want them (the furniture from apartments is normally really bulky and hard to move)

In the end I chose an Unfurnished Apartment (which I still believe was the best decision!) But, that meant I had to find furniture! And cheap, because I didn't have tons of money to spend on it. 



I checked out Walmart, Target, and Ikea, but even their stuff was too expensive so I had to figure out where the great deals on furniture were. (Note: at Ikea, check out the AS IS section! There are some great deals and normally the "broken" part is easy to fix or not even noticeable!)

I started off with things I had that I was going to reuse.  These were things that were mine back when I lived at home (mostly I bought these for myself in high school when I didn't worry about money - but I count them as free for college because I already owned them) or they were items I had in my dorm the year before that I would be bringing with me.

I had :

a desk with shelves, filing cabinet, and desk chair (ignore the mess)

A small table

 a black ottoman/storage box and a cute stair with a basket 

and a giant metal structure that was over my dorm room bed.

I also had a silver metal thing that went over the toilet in my dorm to hold towels etc.  I didn't use it this year b/c my bathroom is HUGE but it might reappear in my new apartment thanks to a smaller bathroom.

These gave me a good start to furniture but I needed lots more! So I went and checked out one of my favorite websites! Check out what I found in my next post!