5 Tips for Affordable Furniture Shopping That Doesn't Involve Ebay or Craigslist
By energy_linguist, April 7, 2010, Home Services, Shopping Tips
Perhaps it’s because my girlfriend and I are currently in the process of furnishing a larger apartment that the idea for this blog came to me. Regardless, it’s a question that at one point or another that becomes pertinent to us all. How do you furnish a home (no more Tupperware sock drawers for this guy) with dependable furniture that won”t make your bank account weep?
I don’t claim to have all the shopping gurus at my beck and call, but I can offer these 5 simple tips to finding affordable furniture:
- Make a list – Furniture type by room, price range for each, priority (need or want), quantity and so on.
- Look for furniture stores within 20-25 miles max of your location by plugging your address into Google Maps and using the “search nearby” functionality. Scour the reviews and make a list of your top 10 (or at least 5-6) and write them down.
- Research (I don’t mean glaze over while you send your friends chocolate bunnies on Facebook). Dig deep and cross reference locations with the specific brands and furniture products you are looking for, in your price range, and cross off the irrelevant (price = bye bye Ethan Allen and Pottery Barn) stores that do not offer what you are looking for.
- Visit each store’s Website and write down specific products that match your criteria.
- Organize your research by each store, broken down into subsections detailing type of furniture, price ranges and any deals that you discovered online. Enter each store IN PERSON (buying furniture online is very risky from a quality control perspective) armed with notes so that you are prepared and can confidently discuss your needs with sales staff in person.
Sound simple? Who would of thought that thorough research and educating yourself could quite possibly save you time and money when furniture shopping. Now imagine taking these same tactics and applying to car shopping, groceries, etc.
Affordable shopping is a mindset … and a mindset is achieved via preparation. Happy furniture hunting!
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