by Ashley
We lucked out this weekend!
One of my very good friends recently moved out-of-state. She owned a home here and, although she took most of her furniture, she left a few key pieces in her home for staging purposes. Her mom lives in town so she’s been helping maintain the property while its been on the market.
Well, the house has sold and passed inspection and with the closing date coming up quickly, her Mom reached out to me to ask if I was interested in any of the stuff in the house. My friend’s Mom is a little older and has no interest in trying to sell the stuff through craiglist or something similar. She doesn’t need the money and doesn’t want to deal with the hassle.
So as soon as hubs had a day off we loaded up and headed over with both vehicles (hubs’ work truck & my Explorer). I was expecting mostly artwork and wall hangings. What we ended up with was enough to furnish a small apartment!
We got a new leather sofa, 2 end tables, a nice leather chair, a queen bed and bed frame, some mature potted plants, a big utility shelf for the garage, a couple lamps, some patio furniture, and about a million throw pillows and pieces of artwork.
I was absolutely over the moon!
Right now we’ve got everything moved into our house. We already threw away our old guest bed (truly too old/gross to even donate, as our dog has eaten a hole in the mattress that we have done a make-shift “patch” job, but is not adequate even for donation), we have the couch in the guest room, and we’ve scattered other pieces of furniture and artwork throughout our house (patio furniture in the backyard). We’ve debated possibly selling some of the nicer furniture pieces (like couch and leather chair), but want to keep it for the time being in the case that we end up moving to a larger place that we may be able to furnish with some of this stuff next year. But it’s nice to know we’ve got possibilities, too, because I do think we’d be able to get a few hundred for the furniture if we were to list it for sale.
These types of scores are few and far between given that we live out-of-state from any family members and from the majority of our friends. But I feel very grateful for these items and it’s also made me appreciate the things we already own that much more. After the “move” (It really felt like we were moving!!! There was so much stuff!) we spent the rest of the afternoon doing a pretty thorough cleaning of our current stuff. It’s been a long time since the couches got a really good scrubbing, cushions removed for vacuuming, etc. Taking care of our possessions is one of the reasons why we’ve been able to make our things last as long as they have. And with any luck we’ll have these new things for years to come also!
Who needs new? Hand-me-downs are good as new, if you ask me (not to mention a heck of a lot cheaper!). Oh, how far we’ve come from the days of financed king-sized beds (remember that???) Never again, my friends! Never again!
Hi, I’m Ashley! Arizonan on paper, Texan at heart. Lover of running, blogging, and all things cheeeeese. Freshly 40, married mother of two, working in academia. Trying to finally (finally!) pay off that ridiculous 6-digit student loan debt!
That is fantastic. I love hand me down home furnishings. Especially from people that have no animals or small children. The stuff is like new. Ours on the other hand has been through 2 dogs and 3 older children and now 3 younger children. We have just resigned ourselves to the fact that we can’t have it unless we get it from someone else.
I think it’s tacky to sell for profit something that someone gave you for free, unless you give the person who gave it to you some or all of the proceeds.