How to furnish your home for free

When I moved here to Asheville from Seattle, I sold everything except my cats, dog, and a few boxes of random belongings. Now that I'm settling into my own home, I have to buy all that stuff I ditched just a couple of short months ago. That could be awfully expensive, but I've discovered a method, quite accidentally, for furnishing my entire home for little or no money.

My expenses for furniture and household items are already pretty low because I buy almost everything off of Craigslist.org and at yard sales. If you're patient, you can get some really nice stuff for cheap. But I also have a bad habit of buying things I don't need in the yard sale frenzy just because "it seemed like such a good deal", or "you never know when one of these will show up again".

For instance, I ended up with one too many coffee tables, food processor blades that don't work with my food processor, a small vacuum, an unusable antique desk, and an extra dresser. I put these items up for sale on Craigslist to get them out of my house. For kicks, I tried listing them for at least twice as much as I paid. Here's the break-down:

item	paid	sold
coffee table	$10	$20
food processor blades	$1.50	$5
vacuum	$5	$10
antique desk	FREE	$40
dresser	FREE	$25

So far, I've spent just over $300, but since I discovered this new trick, I've made back almost $100. My house is about half-way furnished and there isn't a single thing in there that I don't like.

Raw food dish of the week - Eggplant Parmesan

This recipe is awesome. I can't believe how amazingly delicious this is. When I eat meals like this, I don't miss cooked food at all.



Base: Eggplant, sliced and soaked in salted water for 1 hour

Breading: Pine nuts, Celtic sea salt, blended in the food processor

Cheese: Cashews, macadamia nuts, Braggs Liquid Aminos, lemon juice, water

Sauce: Tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, dates, olive oil, garlic, parsley, Celtic sea salt