A week at Goodwill, shopping!

As we get more and more done around the the house, the list of things we want or need has grown. I suppose I should just say want, since need implies we -have- to have it, when really, we just think we do. ;)

My first stop is usually Goodwill, especially for furniture type items. I would love to fill my house with brand new furniture, but let's face it, that won't work. So instead, it's trips to Goodwill that have fleshed the house out a bit.

Early in the week, I wanted to just poke by and see what they had. On our short list of things we wanted to fullfill soon were at least 1 more bookcase, and a computer desk. See, Nick had a decent desktop given to him by a guy at work, so he wanted  a decent desk for it.

At the first Goodwill, which is in the same town as us, I found a decent desk with a hutch for $6.99- the only problem was that it was missing it's keyboard pullout, but Nick doesn't use those. Sold!

Next, I saw a long large shelf, handmade, and made of real wood, not partical board, or pressboard, or plywood. It was only $8.99, so again, sold! It's not finished, but it's very functional.

Lastly, I found a skinny tall DVD shelf for only $4.99, so I picked that up as well. Nick and I have a massive DVD and book collection, and we want to be able to display them in the den. The bookcase ended up housing every last DVD and the few VHS tapes we still have, with zero room left for books. The DVD case went to housing the video games. Ah well, at least they were used, right?

Later that day, I had to drop Raegan off at a friends house in Lansing, so I stopped by Goodwill, and found nothing of interest. I went next to the Salvation Army down the street and found a nice kitchen table, the kind K-Mart used to sell for $119 with 4 chairs. Nothing fantastic, but only $35, and I've been wanting a small table for the kitchen, so I picked it up. I also found a cute wooden painted castle plaque for Gilly's wall, with a peg on it for only $.30, plus it was half off, so who can say no to a $.15 cute wall peg? Not I!



I went back to Goodwill here in town briefly yesterday, and the only thing I found for the house was a decent pair of curtains for Chris's bedroom, in colors that are both boyish, and complimentary to the dark color of teal he chose for his walls. Price was only $2.50 after being marked half off due to the tag color.

Today, I made 3 trips to the Goodwill in Lansing... yes, 3. The first time we stopped in, it was on a whim, and we had driven the car. Boy am I glad we did, though! I found a sofa for the family room upstairs for $25 (it's ugly, but the kids will beat on it anyway- we bought it thinking it'd be lightweight- boy were we wrong).



I also found a nice sewing desk for me for $10- it's a long desk, looks like it may have been some sort of a desk or vanity from the 60's. It has full sized drawers down one side, and an overly large chair section. The hardware makes me think the 60's, as well as the metal capped peg legs.

The other thing we found was a nice metal and glass patio table set, for 6 people! It has 4 regular chairs, 2 "captains" chairs that swivel, and the long oval table. It did not, sadly, have cushions for it. The going rate? $20 for the whole set! Now, granted, some of the paint is chipped here and there, and the chairs need a scrub down, but it's the type of set that brand new sells for $300-400. It'll last us a few years.



The next two runs to the same Goodwill were spent just picking all that stuff up. We did find a small shelving unit on the last trip- the sides looked like giant pencils, and it was in bright primary colors, but it was rickety and wobbly, so we passed.

You can see on the back of hte chair where they are dirty- that'll come off. The fronts are clean, but there are brown splotches on it- we're not sure if that's old paint wearing off, or what, but it's not dirt or rust. But, those will be covered by the cushions we found at Walmart today- $8 to cover each chair in 2 cushions (they were made as seat cushions, but we improvised, and they work right nicely as a back cushion and a set cushion). The whole patio set cost us a whopping $68 before tax!

All in all, I've spent $120 this week on furniture from Goodwill and the Salvation Army, but I feel I've gotten some darn good deals on items I've been wanting to pick up anyway.