The Best Places to Source Used Stuff

Now that I Have A Place Of My Very Own (yes that was absolute­ly nec­es­sary), I have dis­cov­ered I’m miss­ing some house­hold essen­tials. The stuff I did­n’t have ran the gamut from kitchen uten­sils to fur­ni­ture to clean­ing supplies.

Is it pos­si­ble to have a place of your own with­out an ice cream scoop and piz­za pan? Absolute­ly. Do I want to live some­where that does­n’t have a piz­za pan or ice cream scoop? Absolute­ly not.

Through­out this whole process, I’ve kept exhaus­tive notes on where I’ve sourced things to save myself hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, of dol­lars. I’ve com­piled my notes so you, too, can save hun­dreds of dollars!

Estate Sales

Estate sales are like garage sales, but dif­fer­ent in a few aspects. Peo­ple who are down­siz­ing, mov­ing over­seas, or fam­i­ly mem­bers of a loved one that’s passed away hire a com­pa­ny to come to their house and sell every­thing they can. They’re usu­al­ly held Thurs­day or Fri­day through Sun­day. The first day of the sale is the best time to find the good stuff, but every­thing is full price. The last day of the sale is when you get the best deals as the com­pa­ny switch­es from “get as much as we can” mode to “just get rid of it all” mode.

You can get some real­ly good deals at estate sales, but you can also eas­i­ly pay a lot for some­one’s sec­ond­hand stuff. I like estate sales as you find stuff you actu­al­ly need and can use. I also find it inter­est­ing to look at the stuff that makes up a fam­i­ly’s life. I’m a bit voyeuris­tic that way.

Garage sales are cheap­er, but it’s most­ly stuff peo­ple don’t need any more, so it’s a bit of a crap­shoot (hah!) between junk and use­ful. Estate sales are great for house­hold goods like kitchen uten­sils, linens, and tools. Peo­ple usu­al­ly need those, so they don’t usu­al­ly sell them at garage sales.

At estate sales in the area, I have found the fol­low­ing for my new place:

-set of four drink­ing glasses
‑show­er cur­tain (I had to buy the lin­er and hooks elsewhere)
‑half-used clean­ing supplies
‑sil­ver­ware
‑lamps
‑kitchen uten­sils (knives, wood­en spoons, etc)

*note: the clean­ing sup­plies I did need, but that was more about reduc­ing waste than actu­al need

Thrift Stores

I think we all know how thrift stores work, so I’m not going to get into a detailed descrip­tion. Peo­ple donate things they don’t need any­more to the store in the hopes they can sell it and make some mon­ey. Dona­tions hap­pen when peo­ple Kon-Mari their hous­es, move, have left­over garage sale stuff, or upgrade to nicer stuff. I like going to thrift stores in nicer zip codes, as you can snag brand new stuff for way less than retail.

I usu­al­ly use thrift stores to source clothes, cos­tume options, and kitchen stuff.

I hit up the thrift store last week and got the following:

-loaf pan
‑elec­tric kettle
‑toast­er
‑wood­en spoons
‑big skil­let pan
‑dish rack

I got all that for less than $30! SCORE!!

Personal Network

Your per­son­al net­work ranges from friends, fam­i­ly, cowork­ers and even peo­ple you know in cer­tain online groups. The impor­tant thing about this is to put it out there and let peo­ple know you’re look­ing for things. Peo­ple often accu­mu­late dupli­cates of things and are hap­py to give it to those who don’t have it.

For this apart­ment stock­ing bonan­za, I relied heav­i­ly on my now-for­mer room­mate and her boyfriend for things. They went from 2 house­holds to 1, where I went from 2 peo­ple to 1, so they had a lot of extra things and I had no things. It actu­al­ly worked about pret­ty nice­ly. My cowork­er offered me a couch, but I had already got­ten that (more on that later).

My in-per­son net­work got me:

-craft sup­plies cabinet
‑nice shelf/drawer buf­fet thing?
‑kitchen table and chairs
‑toast­er
‑cur­tains
‑bath­room rug
‑misc kitchen stuff like cook­ing uten­sils, glass­es, mea­sur­ing cups, cut­ting board, etc
‑clean­ing supplies

$150 lat­er, I have things to use and they have space! A win-win for all. Astute read­ers will notice I have toast­ers list­ed in two dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories. Orig­i­nal­ly, my room­mate’s boyfriend gave me his toast­er, but it did­n’t have a bagel option, so I’m pass­ing that on to some­one else and got a Fan­cy Toast­er at the thrift store.

Buy Nothing Project

I first heard of the Buy Noth­ing Project from Mrs. Fru­gal­woods. The Buy Noth­ing Project is a hyper-local group on Face­book that con­nects things that are no longer need­ed with those that can use them. I’ve seen things like bunk beds, craft sup­plies, books, clothes, baby stuff and more pass through the group. At the time I first heard about it, I lived in small-town nowhere that did­n’t have any groups. I attempt­ed to join one in Min­neapo­lis, but it was­n’t in my neigh­bor­hood and I did­n’t have the band­width to start one. I joined the one in North­ern Vir­ginia when I first moved here, but it was­n’t very active. The one I’m in now is incred­i­bly active! I have got­ten a few things from the group so far.

-bag of Reese’s Puffs cereal
‑bag of var­i­ous pic­ture frames for crafts
‑2 huge bags of clothes (which I’m going to keep 5 or 6 items and then pass on to some­one else)
‑cat food feed­er with timer (for when I go away on trips)

For every time I go to some­one’s house, I intend to post some­thing back to the group. Some­one in the group was look­ing for a baby doll, so I offered up one of my unused Cab­bage Patch dolls. I also found some­one who need­ed mov­ing box­es and anoth­er per­son to take my tiedown/ratchet straps. The toast­er is next, and then I need to go through more box­es to find oth­er things to give away. I have some things I could bear to part with.

Craigslist/Offerup/Facebook Marketplace

You can snag some seri­ous­ly great deals from peo­ple get­ting rid of stuff online. I am a big fan of using Craigslist to source the big­ger stuff like fur­ni­ture. I bought two real­ly nice shelves when I first moved to DC for $75. They’re sol­id wood and worth way more than $75! On the oth­er hand, you have to be care­ful peo­ple are sell­ing what they put in the list­ing. My dress­er is an excel­lent exam­ple. It looked nice online, but when I got there the top had been spray­paint­ed to look nice and the rest is cheap press­board that’s slow­ly falling apart on me.

My major score off Craigslist this time around was actu­al­ly my couch! I stayed with friends in NYC that had the Fri­heten couch from Ikea. I was imme­di­ate­ly enam­ored with the con­cept, so when it became clear I was get­ting my own place I start­ed watch­ing Craigslist. I saw they were going any­where from $250–350. For ref­er­ence, they retail for $600. Most peo­ple were sell­ing the grey ver­sion, but I also saw some orange and cream ver­sions. I did­n’t real­ly care what col­or it was as long as it was clean and worked well. I used a Craigslist app to set an alert so I would be noti­fied imme­di­ate­ly when a new one was posted.

The day before I moved, it hap­pened. A Fri­heten couch was post­ed. Since I’d been watch­ing the space for a few weeks, I knew imme­di­ate­ly it was a great deal at $150. I mes­saged them, wran­gled a friend into help­ing me, and bought the couch in the space of a few hours. If you buy one, I rec­om­mend not try­ing to pack the dis­as­sem­bled couch into your car in the mid­dle of an intense thunderstorm.

That expe­ri­ence came in handy as a week lat­er I helped my for­mer room­mate and her boyfriend move their new Fri­heten couch to their new place and assist­ed in assem­bling it!

Everything Else

For every­thing else, there are cheap dis­count big box stores. I still need­ed some things that I could­n’t find sec­ond­hand (or was unwill­ing to buy sec­ond hand…) so I hit up the retail sec­tor. Pic­ture me, incred­i­bly exhaust­ed, wan­der­ing around Wal-Mart at 11 pm try­ing to find every­thing on my list. I end­ed up spend­ing about $60 there on a new kitchen garbage can, garbage bags, show­er lin­er, show­er hooks, paper tow­els, tis­sues, soap, sponges and prob­a­bly oth­er things I for­got in the haze of moving.

OH. I can’t for­get I bought a plunger and toi­let brush.

Pro­tip: Buy those two things BEFORE you need them. Oth­er­wise, you end up in line with just those things and every­one knows exact­ly why you’re there.

So, if you find your­self need­ing to fur­nish (or most­ly fur­nish) a new place, I high­ly rec­om­mend check­ing out the sec­ond­hand scene before you pay retail for any­thing. I saved at least $800 on my new to me things! I’m very grate­ful I was able to get most of this sec­ond­hand, as I would’ve oth­er­wise had to go with­out for a while or maybe not even get them at all.

As always, thanks for read­ing! What are some of the best deals you’ve got­ten in the sec­ond­hand mar­ket? Sound off in the com­ments below!