Welcome to my final post in my minimalist moving series! For now, anyway. 😉 In this article, I'm going to discuss all the budget-friendly and sustainable methods we used to furnish our new apartment.
In case you missed the first two posts, the recap is that a while back, I moved in with my partner to the house that they owned. We had 2 sets of everything. Their style of furniture wasn't really my style, and my furniture was not my style either.
So when we decided to sell their house, we also decided to sell or donate most, if not all, of our existing furniture and downsize the rest of our belongings so that we could start fresh together.
If you want more details, the 2 previous posts are:
Is it minimalist to move to a new home?
4 frugal minimalist tips for moving
As for what's in this post, the information is going to fall into a few categories.
- Why we moved and where we're living now
- How we downsized 2 households into 1
- Budget-friendly and sustainable furnishing of a new home
- Overall costs of furnishing a new home from scratch
1. Why we moved and where we're living now
My partner scrimped and saved every penny starting as a teenager to put a down payment on a house. At age 21, they bought a place they were barely able to afford. They had a roommate to help pay the mortgage at first, but that person unfortunately left and was never replaced, leaving my partner to work 6-7 days per week to make ends meet.
The house is older and had never been updated, which meant that esthetically, it was very dated and worn, as well as mechanically/structurally, it had things that were going to need fixing or replacing very soon. Some things were already in disrepair and were out of my partner's budget to address.
When I moved in, that eased up my partner's finances a bit and with time and a LOT of money, we could have fixed the place up. However, given that it was an attached house (shared wall on 1 side with a neighbor) in a neighborhood that we weren't fond of, it didn't make a lot of sense to do it. Especially when we checked in with a realtor and it seemed like we'd be able to sell it for a modest profit to reinvest in a house that we both liked better.
Well, let's just say nothing turned out exactly as we thought, which was both good and bad. Firstly, the interest in the house was completely overwhelming. It sold for far more than we were asking, which was great.
But the downside was that even with such a large anticipated profit and both of our incomes instead of just one, the market outpaced our buying power and we were never able to find the right place to buy by the time our house sold. Ironically, we would not have been able to buy the house we were living in.
We don't regret selling it for a minute, though. It was what my partner could afford at the time, not their dream home, and it needed more from us financially than we could give it.
The house is about 1200sf and has a one-car garage. We moved into a ~800sf apartment with no garage or extra storage, and a completely different layout from the house. Lots of things had to change.
The apartment is newly renovated with only energy-efficient appliances, its own water heater, and very quiet HVAC equipment. It's nice to not have to speak louder each time the AC or furnace turns on! Each unit has a washer and dryer so we don't have to haul our laundry out to the garage like we used to in the house, or to some laundromat used by hundreds of people.
It's a secured building, so no random strangers or salespeople knocking on our door. And the best part? If something breaks, we call maintenance and they fix it, and we don't pay anything extra to have a fully-functioning home. This is saving us potentially tens of thousands of dollars over the course of the next 12 months versus if we were to stay and tackle the needs of our previous house.
In this current economy with skyrocketing fuel prices and inflated costs for necessities like food, we are closer to my partner's work, and we have 2 reasonably-priced grocery stores within 5 minutes of the apartment.
The last reason why we moved into an apartment is that it leaves us free to make decisions without undue pressure. We found ourselves looking at houses farther and farther away from our target area. It ended up that the houses in a comfortable price range were in locations that we weren't very familiar with. The economy was not as stable and my partner would have to see about switching their job situation around, which might lead to a loss in income. Also, we were uncertain how we would feel about living there, as it was so different from our current city.
We didn't want to make a hasty choice just to own a house because we were afraid of "wasting" money on rent, so we thankfully were able to find this apartment that we really like on short notice. The rent is comparable to our previous mortgage, but now we have no mortgage debt and more money in savings.
In my opinion, paying for housing is never a waste, whether you're renting, owning a house, living in an RV, car, a boat, or jumping from one hotel to another. Having a roof over your head is a necessity, and these days it seems to be a privilege that not everyone has access to. These financial gurus who shame people for housing choices clearly have no idea what it's like to be without a choice. Also, just because you can buy a house also doesn't mean you should. Homeownership is a large responsibility and ties a person to a location in ways that are not always easy to circumvent if you need to move.
In our case, we don't know what the future holds and if we want to be tied to a house at this moment. Our 12-month lease gives us time to regroup and decide what's next. Do we want to try again to buy something locally? Move out of the area? Or do we want to stay here and rent, either in this apartment or a different one?
Right now, I'm really liking apartment living and I definitely appreciate the convenience of our location and all the surrounding amenities. Not to mention the peace of mind of built-in repair and maintenance services. My partner grumbles occasionally about not having a garage, but oh, well.
2. How we downsized 2 households into 1
This was a process we started when we were getting ready for me to move in with my partner. I more so than my partner, because they had their stuff already set up a certain way and didn't want to change it. I was fine with that because I had no emotional attachments to any of my furnishings; I just needed a place to do my work and crafts, which I got. This definitely doesn't work for everybody, though, and should be part of the conversation when people are deciding to move in together or to a new location.
As we planned our next move together, we looked at houses and discussed what kind of floor plan we were looking for, and determined what size house was in our budget. This helped dictate what we would keep from our existing possessions.
But then, when it looked like we might be moving several hours away, paying for a moving truck to haul everything looked very unappealing. Realistically, the houses in our budget were fixer-uppers. We would already have to set aside a renovation budget on top of a disgustingly large down payment and closing costs; did we really want to add (at minimum) a thousand dollars plus fuel costs to that? At this point, we started doing garage sales and Craigslist ads to see what we could sell, especially big items.
We also carefully went through everything we owned and decided what was in the best condition, was the most useful or practical, and was most important to us. My partner did a lot of purging of things that I never thought they would; they wanted a clean slate as well. I like to think I inspired them a bit with my minimalist habits. 😁
When we did a showing of our apartment, we knew we'd have to go even further with our possession overhaul. But that was fine because we were on a roll at that point.
On the weekend before closing, I was busy setting up our new place while my partner held one last sale at the house. They actually started giving whatever was left over away for free and posted an ad to let people know. There was only a small amount of stuff left that we had to donate once the sale was over, and we ended up with almost $3000 in our pocket from all the sales that we did.
And thank goodness we did because we still would have been hard-pressed to fit even one set of our existing furniture in our apartment. The way the space is arranged and the shape of each room is completely different from the house.
I think the key factor that helped us to downsize was having a goal to motivate us that mattered more than holding on to what we owned. We both wanted a fresh start in a new place and the opportunity to decorate it together. And after our first garage sale brought in over $1000, I have to say my partner was hooked on the idea of selling things. 😛 They were happy to keep going with a sale every weekend until we ran out of time.
The last downsizing we did was to offload one of our cars. We're down to just a small SUV now, as my partner's pickup truck was just too gas-guzzling. Since I work from home and we're closer to public transportation, sharing a car has not been a problem.
3. Budget-friendly and sustainable furnishing of a new home
Out of everything we did to move into our new place, there was only one thing that we bought new. That was a bed. Both of our beds were not very comfortable anymore; my partner's bed was older and mine was a cheap mattress that didn't stand up to time very well. So we decided to invest some of our newfound money into a decent bed.
We were pleased to find a company that manufactured locally. You can find eco-friendly mattress companies online, but they are usually much more expensive than non-eco companies. So this was our compromise; by buying local, we were supporting the local economy and also reducing the need for shipping long distances. This is a type of eco-friendly shopping you can incorporate into your life when overtly sustainable options are out of your price range.
Otherwise, everything we acquired for our apartment was pre-owned. Where possible, we got it for free or cheap from the community through Craigslist or local yard sales. A few items came from thrift stores that we weren't going to find easily through a Craigslist ad, like cloth placemats and a cooking utensil holder.
My one complaint about our kitchen is how narrow the drawers are. The top drawer is also so shallow that all you can realistically fit in it is a pair of scissors and a can opener. It didn't make much sense to put all our silverware in an upper or lower cabinet, so we ended up getting a free-standing cabinet that fit a silverware tray and helped us organize some other items as well.
One thing that's easy to find as a giveaway in our area is those cube storage units. You know, the open shelves that have square spaces for those fabric containers? I like them because they come in various heights and widths, so you can use them in just about every room.
We have one in our bedroom closet, a small one in the kitchen, and a large one in the bedroom that our TV sits on.
We already had a few of the fabric containers that we use to store our folded clothes in. But to better organize other stuff, we needed more cubes. Easy fix: I used a bunch of my leftover yarn scraps (and also made some "yarn" out of old clothes that were too worn out to donate) and crocheted myself some baskets. There are all sorts of free patterns on the internet for doing this; you can even coat the basket with a stiffener like corn starch to make the walls stand up better. Plus, you can customize the colors and sizes however you like.
Most of the things we found were in decent shape and didn't need any fixing to be used straight away. However, the one struggle was with finding a dining room set.
I wanted dark wood or shiny black finish, small (square or round), high-top, with 4 chairs. There were choices out there for like $150 used that weren't even really what I wanted. All the cheaper or free stuff was really banged up.
But we finally found a real wood table and chairs for free. It needed some fixing to make it decent, but it's the right size and I'm happy with it.
We've been here for almost 3 months now, and I think we're pretty well finished with the setting up. I will probably do a few decorative items down the road, but for now, we need nothing else to be organized and comfortable.
4. Overall costs of furnishing a home from scratch
I consider this "from scratch" because we got all the essentials for our apartment when we moved in. The things that we brought with us (plates, utensils, cooking supplies, personal items, some art, 2 TVs) were things that we did see being offered for free or very inexpensively in the second-hand arena, so feel free to add on as much as $25 to our total if you want to be picky about it.
I'm also not including the cost of gas, because that was just too variable to keep track of. We tried our best to check ads while we were already doing something else so we wouldn't be using extra fuel. Or, we would set up a time to get something along a route we were already going to take the next day.
OK, so onto the price breakdown. I'm betting many of you will find these details less interesting than I do, so I'll make it quick:
- New bed: $1400
- Small items from thrift stores (place mats, utensil holders, soap dispenser, spice rack): ~$40
- Cabinet with doors for kitchen, three cube storage shelves, sofa, living room TV stand, small bookcases, corner desk, desk chair: free
- Dining table and 4 chairs: free plus ~$30 in refinishing supplies
- Crocheted storage baskets: no additional cost (made from items on hand and acquired for free or bought a long time ago)
I think that's it. So as you can see, we came out well ahead after selling most of our old household stuff plus one car.
I hope the examples I gave you in this series are helpful if you have to move, downsize, or furnish a dwelling during these expensive times. See you next time!