I recently wrote about our decoration philosophy, and that our new apartment we are going to buy everything we can on second hand markets. So, now we are in our new place. It is time for a little analyze what did we buy and how did we succeed in our project.
Our budget for home décor was 1300 euros. This is the money we got when we sold our old stuff in our home in Spain before we moved to Finland. What did we get with this money? A lot, in the end we didn’t even use all. Before going through the list, I have to say that some of the home decoration stuff we brought from Spain to Finland by car, for example lamps, home textiles and some of the most important kitchen devices.
So here is the list:
This is what we got for free from our friends or found from dumpster:
rattan sofa + baskets
ktchen table and chairs
mattresses
two bureau
rack for shoes
stool
three chairs
pot
coffee machine
Bought as used:
child’s bed 40 e
couch 50 e
terrace sofa and cushions 165 e
plates 20 e
other moving expense 30 e
rocking chair 65 e
cottage table 70 e
bureau 50 e
children’s armchair 30 e
bedcover 2 e
in total 522 e
Purchased as new:
Kitchen’s side table 99 e
Junior chair 50 e
Wooden step 10 e
Slatted bed place 60 e
Two houseplants and pots 30 e
Two floor pillows 32 e
In total 271 e
All together 793 e
How did it go?
I have to say, that most of the home decoration you can find in used and in good conditions, but this demand time and energy to be alert all the time. Also, there are some miscalculations, too. We bought some furniture really upmarket price, like that used terrace table and sofa with pillows. That was actually the most expensive piece of furniture that we bought! We got them from the former tenant. The same goes to the plates that we bought from him. We thought that he would leave in the apartment all the plates that he showed, but when we moved in there were only a half of them, and all the normal plates (that we actually needed) were missing. So that was too a shopping that was annoying afterwards, and I should have trusted my instinct that said no. Luckily, I cancelled all the other furniture that he wanted to sell us.
Otherwise I found really easy to buy home decoration from Facebook’s second hand markets and other online marketplaces. But this I did learn: you need to act immediately, check often what is available, and most of all, picking up the furniture you often needed a car. In many occasion, without a car, we couldn’t have bought the furniture that we wanted and as fast as we needed them. Also, we did face some logistics problems, like how to get that big cottage table from one place to a top of the car and then again to carry it to the sixth floor. Well in the end we found help from the place we bought the table and when we got to our place, I asked help from the street from two teenager boys who wanted to earn ten euros.
However, I found it tiring to hang in Facebook to find that special piece of furniture, but at time that was rewarding. For example I was the first one to book a rocking chair, that 200 people were asking after me. Also, we found two bureaux for free, and when we went to pick them, we found in the same trip, by accident, from a dumpster a bureau for my husband.
I tried to avoid buying new things, but in the end, we needed to buy some necessary things, that were helping every day life. In our new kitchen there is hardly any cooking place, so a little side table was obligatory, the same goes to the junior chair. In our Airbnb place we had one and our daughter got used to it and we found it practical. And lets face it; it wasn’t nice to construct a chair for our girl by adding a carton box on top of the kitchen chair every day.
As you go through my list, you can notice that not all things were so necessary, like those plants or floor pillows, but I found them useful and they give comfortable atmosphere to our home. If we really wanted to go more zero waste what comes to our home, we could have do it, but so far, I found that we did a pretty good job.
I think for me, after packing and moving, I have started to let go on material things. All the ownership and buying new things make me uncomfortable. Our place I wanted to get to together fast, so we could actually start living here. For me, my decoration philosophy was to make a cozy home, and that is what I hope for our friends and family will experience too when they come for a visit.
Read more:
Zero waste lifestyle on the road
