Occupying an apartment from scratch

[dixiehack]

Thanks to some life circumstances I can't detail right now, I am moving into an apartment tomorrow morning with virtually nothing to put in it. I've got some clothes, toiletries, a laptop, a few groceries from where I've been staying. I have been gifted some silverware and a new set of plates. I may or may not get to bring in a spare bed. The new place has a dishwasher, stove and fridge.

Otherwise I'm at zero, and have a small budget to work with. This is my first time living alone and first time to start with so little. I'm trying to wrap my head around everything I need, from washer and dryer to toilet paper and shower curtain, and prioritize accordingly, but I'm overwhelmed. So I'm calling on SportsJournalists.com hive mind to help me think this through.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

It sounds like something's gone bad in your life. I'm sorry Dix.

Obviously, the toliet paper is important. Get a couple pots and pans because cooking is much cheaper than eating out. Otherwise, go to yard sales and garage sales and see what you can find. Sometimes you can find couches or beds for a fraction of a price than if you found new.

Good luck.

 

[Dyno]

Find out if there's an active Freecycle group in your area. People give away all kinds of stuff, including furniture and appliances and smaller things, too, like pots and pans.

Good luck.

 

[Batman]

Sorry to hear of your circumstances, Dixie. Hope things turn around soon.
If you want to learn the ways of living cheaply, I have a feeling you've come to the right place.

A few basic tips off the top of my head:
1) Don't buy a shower curtain, just buy the vinyl liner ($6). That's all you need for now. The liner is what does the job. The curtain is just for show.

2) If your circumstances aren't related to unemployment, you might be able to sneak a few rolls of toilet paper or paper towels from the office. A lot of places stash an extra, unopened roll or two in the stalls.

3) Like Baron said, check garage sales and yard sales for furniture. Check the local thirft shops, too. You can often find things like dressers, tables and chairs for cheap. Also reach out to friends and family and see if anybody has something they're looking to get rid of.

4) When you go grocery shopping, take a calculator with you and add up the total as you go. Keep to a strict budget. When I was a bachelor, I'd put about $20 aside every paycheck and do the "big trip" to the grocery store about every two months. That was when I stocked up on cheap food like mac and cheese, hot dogs, beans and rice, pasta and sauce, canned goods ... all things you can freeze or keep in a pantry. The food groups are boxed, canned, frozen/freezable and refrigerable. Those might not taste great or be the best food for you, but you can get creative with them and endure until things stabilize.
You'll have to supplement those with smaller trips for things like detergent and toilet paper, of course, and the occasional fast food meal.

5) If you use liquid detergent, buy the 100-ounce bottles. Best value for the money.
Does your apartment complex have public washing machines? Or will you have to find a laundromat? Laundromats are damned depressing places, but they are efficient. Thanks to the multiple machines, you can get a week's worth of laundry done in two hours.
In either case, either get a roll of quarters from the bank or save your change each day and put it in a jar for that purpose.

Hope that helps a tiny bit.

 

[DanOregon]

If you do use a laundromat and don't want to pay for dryer sheets, find one left in a dryer. They're good for at least 5 cycles.

One table and one chair is important. It's nice to have a place where you can sit, sort out papers, have a meal etc. And if you are comfortable with it, let your friends and associates know that you are looking for stuff. A lot of people have things in their garage or storage that they don't need but don't want to just throw away or donate. Or perhaps they'll lend it to you for the short term.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

A couple of other thoughts:

1. If funds are short, check out the local food pantry to see what they have. My wife once brought one of our neighbors there, as a favor because the neighbor had car trouble, and walked away with a bag of non-perishable groceries and a gift card to the grocery store for herself, even though she tried to decline. It's not every food pantry, but the one she went to was trying to give away stuff because they had just had a shipment come in. You might be able to save some money there, for now.

2. If you haven't already and live near one, get a library card. Checking out books there is free and you'll want something to keep your mind occupied instead of sitting in an empty apartment by yourself.

3. As silly as it may seem, if you have a couple of bucks saved, see about getting a Beta fish or some other fish and a small bowl, to keep you company on those days and nights when you're by yourself. It'll give you someone to talk to, even if you feel silly talking to a fish.

 

[buckweaver]

Get two trash cans (one for the kitchen, smaller one for the bathroom), and a roll of trash bags.

You'll be amazed at how quickly trash piles up. And it'll take you about a week to discover that plastic grocery bags don't really substitute well for real trash bags.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Email a small group of friends, the people you trust and those who live close, and just tell them what's up and could they spare anything. Maybe concentrate on folks who have been in the same house for a few years and have had a chance to accumulate stuff. Looking around my house, if I got a request like that from a friend I would be able to give him a bed, a couch, a small TV, a DVD player, some wearable clothes and more than a few other household items. Not only to help him out, but he would be doing me a favor by clearing some of the stuff out of my house.

 

[Greenhorn]

Brita pitcher/filters. Always a must for me.

And good call on the library card.

Best of luck.

 

[wicked]

Towel, for the bathroom floor coming out of the shower.

Where you're moving, can you get a wireless card (if you don't already have one)? Would give you more mobility over just a cable install.

Craigslist a lot of stuff. You'll be surprised what's on there for free.

Good luck, dixie.

 

[Buck]

In 1997 I moved from NJ to Guam with a guitar and three suitcases.
I lived in a small studio with a kitchenette for a year.
Although I was homesick, depressed and a barely functioning, raving drunk for most of that year, I look back on it fondly now.

I lived on Guam for another two years, but by that point I had accumulated stuff again - a nicer place, friends, a girlfriend, a reasonable semblance of normalcy and sobriety.
It had really lost all of its romance.

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

Are you a coffee drinker? If so, do you have a coffeemaker with you?

Do you know the distance between your shower rod (assuming you have one) and the floor?

Is your tub the kind that's slick and you fall without a rubberized mat to stand on, or is it the safer kind?

If you're not comfortable answering here, PM me. And as others have said, good luck. Also, you have friends here and elsewhere. You'll get through this.

 

[Starman]

Thanks to some life circumstances I can't detail right now, I am moving into an apartment tomorrow morning with virtually nothing to put in it. I've got some clothes, toiletries, a laptop, a few groceries from where I've been staying. I have been gifted some silverware and a new set of plates. I may or may not get to bring in a spare bed. The new place has a dishwasher, stove and fridge.

Otherwise I'm at zero, and have a small budget to work with. This is my first time living alone and first time to start with so little. I'm trying to wrap my head around everything I need, from washer and dryer to toilet paper and shower curtain, and prioritize accordingly, but I'm overwhelmed. So I'm calling on SportsJournalists.com hive mind to help me think this through.

Been there, and may be there again at some point.

Yard sales and thrift stores are the way to go for your (minimal) furniture needs. Don't load up on a lot of ornamental junk if the chances are you may be moving again in the foreseeable future. Anything and everything you acquire should be with the objective of fitting it in one U-Haul truck when you leave.

Any time and every time you get the notion to buy new furniture, call time out and think it over for a couple of hours at least. If you really need it, go ahead; otherwise you're just cluttering the joint up with junk you will eventually either have to move or let go at a loss.

I'm assuming at this point you have a small 1BDR -- if it's a studio, things change.

In the living room, a couch, end table and small coffee table should be enough.

In the kitchen, get a cheap dinette set with at least 3 chairs. The dinette chairs can be hauled in the living room for all those massive 4-6 person social gatherings you'll be hosting. (Seriously it's pretty unlikely you'll be hosting more than 3-4 people very often, if ever, but at least the capability to do so gives you incentives for other humans to occasionally visit.)

On the subject of the couch, if you ever anticipate having a guest who may want to stay over (and not in YOUR bed, heh heh) a sleeper sofa may be the way to go. They are more expensive than regular couches, even on CL or at the thrift stores, and they are dramatically heavier and more of a PITFA to move, so if you don't seriously expect any stay-over guests, you're probably better off going with a reasonably comfy couch that if worse comes to worse, somebody can stretch out for a night on.

Bedroom: K.I.S.S. Unless you (ahem) have need for a bigger bed, a twin bed should be enough (you can find 'em for $50). If for any unforeseen reason you think you need a bed 2 people can squeeze into, you can still get queen-size beds (mattress, boxsprings and frame) on Craigslist for under $100.

Then you need a couple pillows, blankets and a couple sets of sheets (wash one while the other is on the bed). A nightstand for your lamp and alarm clock, although these days you can probably use your cellie as your alarm clock. Add a small dresser for your duds and your spartan bedroom is all set.

Linens: Aside from the sheet sets described above, you will need 3-4 bath towels, 4 dish/hand towels (the ones about 12 x 24") and a 6-pack of the small (8x8) washcloths or scrub towels you can get at dollar stores (DO NOT get red 'shop rags' -- they have the consistency of sandpaper, the absorbency of plastic and the colors run like hell).

Rotate your bath towels; shower with one, use yesterday's bath towel as today's floor rug, then rotate the 2-day-old floor rug into your laundry hamper. By laundry day you should have 4 dirty towels ready to wash.

As others mentioned, check your bathtub floor surface. If it is slippery porcelain or ceramic, get a roll-up rubber bath mat from the dollar store.

Acquiring a washer/dryer boosts you up into a whole new level of 'domestic engineering.'

Yes, over the course of multiple years it is much cheaper to have your own washer/dryer than to go to the laundromat, not to mention not having to cool your heels for hours with other laundry losers, but even used units will set you back a lump expenditure of a few hundred bills which may not be in your budget.

Plus you need to have some kind of utility room setup in your apartment to hook them up (and many apartments don't). So for the immediate future I'd plan on the laundromat.

One thing to keep in mind about the laundromat is you should try to stagger your dirty laundry to minimize the number of trips to the laundromat (which means you have to have 4-5 days worth of clothes changes on hand). Every load you do at the laundromat should be near-capacity -- don't pay full price to run a half-full washing machine. Plus you have to sit at the laundromat ALMOST (not quite but almost) the same time to do 4 full loads as you do to wash three pairs of underwear and socks.

As far as eating is concerned, actively resist the temptation to stuff the freezer compartment of the fridge with pre-packaged junk food, sammitches, pizzas and stuff, which is 1) very bad for you, 2) very expensive, 3) usually packaged very inefficiently and space-wastingly (wrappers inside boxes inside boxes). Instead pick up frozen veggies and 'family pack' size packages of stuff like hamburger, ground turkey and boneless chicken.

Brown or grill that stuff and stir it into stuff like M&C, ramen noodles and rice, and you get reasonably decent size meals that are not too expensive and not horrifyingly bad for you.

On the topic of TP, buy family-size 24-packs of 'Grade B' stuff -- not the Cadillac ass-wipe but not the Ford Pinto level either. Don't buy 4-packs -- it's twice as expensive or more that way. Toilet paper is one product you can be utterly sure you will eventually use it all up.

A final footnote on TP: Squirrel away a couple rolls in some completely unlikely corner of the apartment, separate from where you usually store your TP reserve. Some late late night when (what you think is) the last roll runs out, you'll remember, and you will be glad you did.

 

[H.L. Mencken]

Freecycle.org -- It's an on-line network of communities where people can list stuff they'd like to part with, but don't want to bother with the hassle of selling. Most of it is better than **** you'd just throw out. You can also list stuff you need. For instance, if you say Wanted: "pots and pans" someone will likely offer some.

See if there is a network in your city. If there is, you can furnish an entire apartment for free.

Better times are ahead.

 

[Mark2010]

I have found quite a bit of good-quality used furniture at Goodwill and other thrift shops over the years. Everything from beds to dressers to electronics (TV, microwave, etc.) and more. Most will even take credit cards, if that is a factor in your case.

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

2) If your circumstances aren't related to unemployment, you might be able to sneak a few rolls of toilet paper or paper towels from the office. A lot of places stash an extra, unopened roll or two in the stalls.

Good grief. Wipe yourself with your bare hands before you resort to this.

 

[BDC99]

Good luck, dix. And my first thought when I saw this was that a washer/dryer is far, far down on the priority list. I did laundry at a laundromat/public apt washers for more than 10 years. All you NEED is a couch/love seat, a small table to sit at and a mattress to sleep on, in addition to the kitchen necessities. You really don't need much to get by, and you can pick stuff up as you go. Garage sales are always a good place to look for good deals.

 

[old_tony]

If you were within a couple of hours of me I'd have a TV for you.

 

[slappy4428]

Find me. Let me know what you need. Might be able to help; Ms. Slappy's aunt's family is going thru her house seeing what they can get rid of.
Worse comes to worse, I might have a day (twin) bed for you.

 

[deskslave]

When you do buy the shower curtain -- and the vinyl liner suggestion was exactly right; it's not as though you're trying to hide from anyone -- don't forget a pack of rings. Just one of those little things.