Frugal Finds Weekend (4/11/09): Free furniture doesn’t have to get ugly

On April 11, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Frugal Living

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Welcome to the Frugal Finds Weekend edition! The Blawgirl dishes out tips every Saturday morning on how she tries to be a smarter shopper.

Be sure to check back 11:30 (ish) Monday through Friday when The Blawgirl crawls the Interwebz to find steals and deals for the frugal law student and the competitive bargain shopper.

There was a commercial a couple years back that showed two college-age guys, we’ll call them Harold and Kumar, riding around the streets of a city when they happen upon a free couch on the sidewalk. I don’t remember what the commercial was about, or what it was selling, all I remember is this couch.

The guys load the couch into their car, and are like “Dude! Free couch. Score!” for a while until they get these looks on their faces that say something is not right. Kinda like the look I gave this when I first saw it. Sniff, sniff. Sniff, sniff. The guys take a look at each other with a “Dude? Whiskey tango foxtrot?” when it suddenly dawns on them that the eau d’gym socks and hummus is not a result of their over indulgence in Chipotle burritos and Activia yogurt earlier in the day: It’s that friggin’ couch. So the couch gets left on another sidewalk for another bargain hunter to pick up and get the same fun surprise.

dinosaurs1 Thanks to the crazy magic that kept humans and dinosaurs from eating each other dinosaurs from obliterating humans thousands of years ago, which also happened to create the Interwebz, we now have Craigslist to keep us from suffering Harold and Kumar’s fate. Confetti!

Craigslist is a great resource for the frugal shopper because it’s a great resource for that other great “F” word (not THAT F-word, although some people get that too if you believe 60 Minutes). I mean “Free” stuff, you sick, sick people.

You can pretty much furnish any room in your home with the things offered through Craigslist. You just need to be willing to drive somewhere, have enough room in your ride to haul whatever you need away, and be patient enough to put in a little bit of work to get your new furniture looking decent.

For wooden furniture, you may need to pick up some sandpaper and some paint or wood stain to give pieces new life and to help them fit into your decor.

For couches, you can pick up a fitted slip cover at discount prices from brick and mortar stores like Big Lots and Ross, or from online stores like Amazon.com or Overstock.com. And just to be safe, maybe some Febreze.

If you’re super lucky, you may even find people giving away big appliances like washing machines, dryers, refrigerators and microwaves.

Here are some stuff I found looking in the Orange County free section this morning: