A house is not a home

I'm pretty lowkey, so my previous roommates have always set the tone when it came to what we needed to buy for our apartments. Aside from the foodies I lived with in that came bearing garlic presses and avocado pitters, my flats were pretty bare bones. When I heard a friend was being required by her college roommates to purchase a new, full dinner set, I was happy that my paisley plastic crap from Target was acceptable to the 4 other girls on my lease.

I didn't know how low maintenance you could get. Until now. My future roommate is the most talented bargain shopper I know. Every weekend, I get texts from her that read something like "Scored a $4 microwave." and "Pull-out sofa, free. Yahtzee!"

Before I'd seen any of her merch, I was beginning to think that our apartment might resemble a crack den. I pictured a couch with a slash in it that came with a free knife block with one eerily missing, a table with one leg just a bit shorter than the others that rocked back and forth when you closed a door.

Of course, I should have known better. A protege of her talented garage sale-ing mother, J is bringing her A game to her first-ever apartment furnishing. So far, she's sniped:

• 2 armchairs, a pull-out couch, and a silk tree (somehow, the couch was dependent on taking the tree, God knows why) - $10 total
• Microwave- $4
• Iron- $2
• Blender- $7
• 2 end tables- free
• 2 lamps- free
• Kitchen table w/ chairs- free
• Coffee table- free
• Crock pot- $2 (Bence, I'm looking at you for encouragement on this)
• Vacuum- free
• Pots, pans- less than $6
• Dresser- free

I've put myself in charge of the VERY important task of wrangling up all the frames necessary to create a wall of frames a la Shannon. I thrive on irrational decorating projects.

In all my thrift shore shopping for frames, I hopped unknowingly onto the bargain bandwagon. J called to tell me she bought a $25 bookshelf at Target, and we were both a little 'meh' on it. We're starting to get greedy. I know she had half a mind to say to the clerk, "Look lady. This crappy bookshelf is exactly 2.5x the amount I spent on all the furniture in the rest of my living room. I'll give you 3 bucks for it."

It was probably time to come back to reality a bit. I was extremely excited when my step-grandma offered to buy us new dinnerware, glasses, and Tupperware. If I can at least offer people new plates to eat from, they might still want to come to our apartment after reading this post where I basically admit that we're one step above homelessness.