Furnishing thriftily
Background
When we purchased this property, we had no furniture. We'd been living in furnished apartments in Paris for the last 5 years, and all our furniture had remained in the US since it was hardly worth it to move it into those tiny spaces. We also knew that we did not have a lot of money to spend on furniture.Goal
As we began to live in the space, we had a lot of discussions about what kinds of furniture we wanted, the characteristics that would make or break a purchase decision. We are comfortable with secondhand goods, as long as they are still in good shape, and don't mind re-finishing or repairing things if it meant we could make it be more what we wanted in the space.First of all, living in Paris, you notice people leaving furniture out on the curb for the "encombrant" pick-up service run by the Mairie. If the furniture is even close to decent, "pickers" come and scoop it up to re-sell it elsewhere. If you happen by it first, and have a need, it's best to carry it off then and there. Be careful not to steal people's things, though! If it has truly been abandoned for pick-up, it should have a number taped onto it somewhere.
Second, if your friends are moving or changing family situations, they may have furniture that you could mutually benefit from taking off their hands.
Third, I've been able to make good use of leboncoin.fr, my local brocantes, and resale shops to help my neighbors unload their lightly used goods to our mutual benefit.
Fourth, the local dump/sorting station. Yes, it sounds strange, but a people take old furniture that might need just a little bit of TLC to the dump/sorting station. If your local dump is not a massive landfill, you likely have some sort of sorting station where waste is segregated as much as possible and where you might come across some unexpected finds.
Resources
- Your own eyes
- leboncoin.fr
- I hesitate to even mention it because it is so full of scams, but very occasionally, something good will be true and appear on Craigslist (France).
- Your local publications for upcoming brocantes. Mine is autant.net.
- Resale shops like the one nearest us, La Recyclerie-Ressourcerie : https://aubasdelaisne.wordpress.com/la-boutique-adresse-et-horaires/
Result
We have only had to purchase a few pieces: a bed, our desks, our dressers, office chairs, new extremely energy-efficient appliances, some shelves. Nearly everything else, we sourced for very little money and helped keep still useful items from the landfills.Here are some of our best finds:
