The Art of Furniture Foraging: An Ode to Thrifty Tenants!

The off-campus home of your dreams is possible with some second-hand scavenging.

By: Grace Dempsey

Moving off-campus at BU can be tricky, to say the least. I was one of the many students who experienced the canon Sept. 1 move-in for the first time this year, and describing it as anxiety-inducing would be an understatement; however, on the other side of mustering every ounce of patience I had to sit through hours of traffic in a U-Haul was my very own home that my roommates and I had complete creative liberty to make our own. 

Visions of my first apartment started coming to me since I had put my name on the lease last winter. I had dreams of the perfect living room and a Pinterest-worthy bedroom. One look at the price of a sectional couch on Wayfair made me realize that dream might be pricier to achieve than I thought. 

With my housemate Julia as Facebook Marketplace point man and liaison, we made it our mission to get as much furniture for our apartment second-hand. Many students at BU do the same, including Clara Delcamino-Yang (CAS ‘28) and her roommates. Their apartment is lovingly called “Coop” by their friend group. 

Clara says she didn’t have a specific vision for her place before moving in, but found inspiration by scrolling Pinterest and Facebook Marketplace, where she purchased an electric bass, Coop’s TV console and even a mini pool table. She also found the shelf that holds her record player second-hand at Goodwill. 

“For a college apartment, you're not staying there for more than like two or three years, so why waste the money on buying everything new,” she says. “You can repurpose and recycle other people's furniture that would otherwise go to the trash.”

By foraging for your furniture, you not only save money, but you give an apartment a homeiness that can’t be recreated. Every perfect — but unexpected — Marketplace find that you wouldn’t have even thought to look for adds to the character.

When I take a look around my own kitchen, with our antique dining set we got for free, the chairs we reupholstered by hand, and the living room, it’s a cozy sanctuary from an otherwise packed schedule of classes and work. Our little house in Allston feels like a real home even after just a month. All of the trips we made in the U-Haul, from Cambridge all the way to Mission Hill, and the hours spent trying to figure out the best way to get our gigantic sectional to fit through the tiniest of spiral staircases were worth it in the end.