Furniture shopping is one of the most fun and most frustrating parts of getting a new house or apartment. Since Cody and I are literally setting up our first home, we've had to buy a lot of furniture.
It's been a lot of fun but it's also definitely a learning experience. I was talking to someone on facebook about furniture shopping and I realized that the tips I learned would make a great blog post!
1. Take your phone with you. Sure, in this society, we are attached to our phones pretty much all the time so you may think this is obvious. Duh. Of course you'll have your phone. But seriously, this is important when furniture shopping. I spent a lot of time on my phone to compare prices of different stores and looking at stuff I had seen at other stores to remember what exactly they looked like. Don't forget to take pics of your favorite items too. Just don't go too crazy and take pictures of everything. I'd recommend taking a pic of your top two favorite items at each store you go to and then narrow it down from there. (Another thing-try to get the price included in the pic if you can!)
2. Keep your measurements handy. I can't tell you how many times Cody or I said "How many feet is that room again?" I quickly realized that I just needed to have them all on hand instead of trying to remember.
3. Make a list of all the things you'll need. I did this in a word doc. Because I'm an organization freak, I made a table in microsoft word that had these columns: Item, Expected Cost, Actual Cost, Difference. This way, I could track exactly what we needed, even down to the shower curtains. Then, I separated each thing into rooms. For instance, instead of trying to say I needed three lamps, I said I needed two for the living room and one for the bedroom.
4. The last tip lead us to this one. Prioritize. This was something I utilized when we got married and it definitely came in handy for furniture shopping too. We decided to put a lot of our money into the living room/dining room. We already have a decent bed and I know that in a few months, I want to buy super nice bedroom furniture, but that we'd both rather have a nice living room now. (Let's be honest: what man really cares about the state of his bedroom? As long as there's a mattress that's comfortable, they are happy.) This helped save money quite a bit because we weren't trying to spend huge sums on all the rooms, just the main one.
5. This is a no brainer, but keep your colors in mind but don't let them define everything. One of the main things that frustrated me was trying to make sure all my woods matched. Then I got on pinterest and started looking at rooms with mix-matched wood and I realized that it would be okay if everything wasn't perfect. So, try to make sure everything compliments each other but don't go crazy trying to match it all perfectly.
If you're curious about what we bought and how our new apartment looks, be sure to check the blog soon because I'll start posting some pics of all the rooms soon!
I hope these tips are helpful!
What is your top furniture shopping tip?
Have you met this amazing blogger?
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