I love Craigslist!

I've shown you pictures of our old desk before. Here's a shot of it after we moved it out of our room.

We had been thinking that we needed something that would help us organize all of those papers. You know the ones that just seem to pile up and you can't throw them away because there are important things on them. Yep, those papers.

Originally, we went to a couple of yard sales to find a filing cabinet. I'm picky and didn't want a metal one. I wanted something that was made well and made out of wood. We live close to a retirement community and I figured we could find something that would fit my standards. We didn't.

We did, however, find a new chair and ottoman to replace our old recliner. (There's a picture of the recliner on my blog, but I'm not linking to it. It's that yucky). We also found some great classic books for $1 apiece. I'm a sucker for books. Anyway, we had no luck finding a filing cabinet.

When we got home, I decided to check out Craigslist to see if I could find something at a reasonable cost. I didn't want to just go to Walmart and get something that we weren't going to love and would eventually replace. I'm really sick of having that kind of furniture. Now that we're finally out of college, we should have things that are both functional and beautiful. It's not really about acquiring things, it's about not having things that make your home feel crowded and yucky.

For this very reason we got rid of a very large entertainment center we had bought from Walmart while still in school. It crowded our home, it made the television the focus of our living room, and it became a headache keeping Fritter away from it. We moved the TV to a corner of the room on top of an old wooden record player. It's old but nice and has a lot of character, and the best thing is that we didn't buy it.

I also wasn't willing to pay an arm and a leg for a filing cabinet. Right away, I found the desk pictured below. The guy who was selling it made it himself. So it has character, it has drawers for organizing (one of which is a double drawer for filing), it's pretty, and it was a good price. Score! It pays to hold out for something you like. Now if I can just remember this lesson.