Original post here.
Since 2010, I've lived as a tourist-in-residence in nine places:
- Caucasus Georgia
- Alamogordo, New Mexico
- Lafayette, Louisiana
- Opelousas, Louisiana
- El Paso, Texas
- Ferguson, Missouri
- Tucson, Arizona
- Birmingham, Alabama
- Mobile, Alabama
My furnishings are significantly more bare-boned than they were 10 years ago. The only piece of furniture I buy now, when relocating, is a folding chair for the table that serves as my office, dining table, and entertainment center. I made this decision in Mobile. At $24 or so, it was money well spent for a year's worth of use, and I felt fine about just giving it away when I left.
I use a backcamping chair as my "easy chair" for reading or looking out a window.
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| My living room furniture since 2020. Birmingham, Alabama. Credit: Mzuriana. |
I sleep on the same airbed model that I used in the original post. Thus far, my current one has survived for three years. In Birmingham, I acquired a new electric mattress pad and a new electric throw to keep warm on cold winter nights. I bought a pretty quilt for my top cover at a thrift store in Birmingham.
In Mobile, I bought a tallish folding camp table to serve as a side table by the camp chair.
But below were my learnings from 2013.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Rootless Relocation: Lessons Learned About Furnishing Temporary Home
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| Most of the stuff I brought with me to Alamogordo |
I'll be moving again at the end of this month and all my stuff has to fit in my car.
I've got to dispose of some things:
- I accumulated while in New Mexico;
- I brought with me from Missouri that I no longer need; and
- That I could still use, but have to unload because there are two large items from NM that I will take with me.
Lessons learned
Now that the process of furnishing and un-furnishing my temporary home is almost complete, I've learned some things.
Beds
Although I think my nursing-home beds are cool, they're kind of a pain to sell. Remember that airbed I liked so much? It lasted me six months of almost-daily use and it only cost about $35. It takes standard-size sheets and it is almost as tall as a real bed. And it's comfortable. In my new place, I believe I'll buy another one. If it goes kablooey in six months, then I'll just replace it. Taking into account price, portability, and labor to hunt/find/discard a real bed, the air bed is the more economical choice.
For a guest bed, a local friend gave me this very cool, dark red, accordion-like chair that makes into a twin bed. Somehow I will fit this into my car and I'll use it in my new place for a living room chair and guest bed.
At the point I have two guests at once, I'll get a second air bed. Ta da.
Table and chairs
These are easy to find, cheap to buy, and easy to re-sell. No problems here.
Plants/pots
I liked having my tiny herb garden and flowers in three pots. These were easy to sell, and I will likely have another little container garden again if I've got outdoor space in my new home.
Bird feeder and shepherd's crook
I bought these here in Alamogordo. I won't do this again. Although I loved watching the visiting birds while I worked, birdseed is damned expensive. I've discovered that the after-market for bird feeders and shepherd's crooks is very poor, taking too long to sell them for an abysmal price. Also, feeding the birds is really all about my entertainment; it doesn't necessarily do any good for the birds. I might as well be feeding feral cats.
The volume of space
As my apartment empties, I appreciate again the volume of space, the lack of stuff. I was very circumspect about the visual bulk I added to my apartment here, so there's not a whole lot I can do to better that in my new place. The beds are one, and if I have a breakfast counter, I won't need a table.
I'm not much of an in-home entertainer, so I don't worry about guest seating - that's what cafés are for.
Relocation cost
This is what it cost me to relocate from Missouri to New Mexico last year. The total was ~ $2070, of which $950 was for the first and last month's rent. So now that I've consumed those two months as the cost of living, the net relocation cost $1120.
I don't know yet how much I'll recoup in the resale of stuff before I go. I'll factor that in when I calculate my next relocation costs.
There'll be some economy of scale, as I will bring the vacuum cleaner I bought in Alamogordo with me, along with the accordion chair-bed, and a desk lamp. Plus the printer and scanner.
(In regard to doing things differently for the actual moving process, I think my process was as tight a ship as it could have been.)
On buying new versus second-hand
I thought I'd buy more things second-hand in Alamogordo than I did. And certainly there is no dearth of second-hand stores in Alamogordo. However, I hate to shop, and I found it to be not-fun to schlep from one second-hand shop to another in search of what I needed. The opportunity costs in time, gas, and things I could have been doing that were more fun became too high for some items.
My preference is still to buy second-hand, so maybe before I go to Lafayette, I'll try to identify the largest and best second-hand place for household goods in that area.
On apartment choices
This is a little outside the focus on furnishing a place, but:
Upstairs or downstairs. Boy, am I glad I listened to the apartment manager when he steered me to a ground-floor apartment instead of the second-floor place I said I preferred. Ch-ching. He told me it would cost less to cool my place in the summer if I were on the ground floor. And this has proven to be the case, as my upstairs neighbors and I have compared our energy bills.
This will be doubly true in Louisiana, where it's got the double whammy of heat and humidity. (On the other hand, I've got a hankering for a place in the midst of the city, so in that case, I'd prefer something above street level. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)
Amount of space. At 832 square feet, I have more space than I need. I've had visitors, but most of my time here, I haven't. A dedicated space for guests, i.e. a 2nd bedroom (or the den I have here), isn't essential.
