Furnishings

So, I have to say. 1700 square feet is a lot of space to fill, especially when you've arrived with absolutely no furniture, and most of your worldly possessions consist of small trinkety decorations and cats. I knew that this process could be really daunting, and that going in without some idea of how to tackle the issue would just make us anxious. Where the heck do you start with that much space? In our case we focused on the practical first, mixed with solid dose of more fun and luxury items.

When we arrived, we knew we had three goals for the first 24 hours. Priority number one was a bed, as we definitely needed something to sleep on. We had tried going without a bed once, the day we arrived in Boston, and just made a few piles and clothes with pillows on top. Needless to say, this was not something I ever wanted to repeat and so a bed was a must. We managed to purchase one and have it delivered before 5 pm the first day, which was a great success.

Number two was an air conditioner. The midwest just went through a nasty heat wave, and we caught the tail end of it. Our first stop was Lowes, thinking they must have something available. Usually there are rows and rows of air conditioners at these places! This was not something we thought through especially well (re: the second sentence of the paragraph), and Lowes only had one (very) expensive machine left. Home Depot had zero, so we bought a fan and hoped that would be good enough. After turning it on at home for a while, it was clearly not adequate, and we luckily found a fairly cheap one on craigslist that we ran out and bought immediately. Score for number two.

The third major thing we purchased quickly was our "fun luxury" item. In the weeks leading up to our move, I spent many hours scouring craigslist and other websites for interesting items or places to visit when we got to Champaign. Copasetic Consignments was one of the shops I discovered, and upon scanning their website for deals I fell head over heels in love with this dining room table.

It was part of their summer sale, and cost only $175 for the table and six chairs. But it was late May, and I wasn't arriving until early August. I sighed over what might have been, and kept looking, checking in every once in a while to see if it was still there. A few weeks passed and it still didn't have "sold" tagged to it. And then we were moving, and the store posted that they were hosting a moving sale, and anyone could come in and make them an offer. I was so excited that we visited the store the first day we were in town, and as luck would have it my treasure was still there. As the bed was our priority we waited until our second day in town, and made our move.

My husband offered $125 and they accepted it on the spot. He's pretty sure they would have taken $100 if he'd started there. They delivered for $25, and a few hours later I had my fabulous dining room table.

The lesson today, of course, is that researching ahead of time and being persistent can pay off. Or maybe sometimes, if you just wish hard enough, you might get lucky.

- Cait