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My wife and I recently made another big aquisition - we purchased a changing table and a crib in preparation for our upcoming arrival.
We started our furniture purchase by looking at several major retailers like Babies R Us, Target, USA Baby, Pottery Barn Kids, to get a feel for what was available. It was painful to see how much some people spend just on baby furniture. Ofcourse the furniture looked great, my wife found some pieces she just loved and I agreed they would look great it our home. However, it was quickly apparent that new furniture could easily add up to $1.5k-$2k.
We established we were really looking for 3 pieces for the baby's room: a crib, a changing table, and a glider/rocker. Out of these pieces the glider looked to be the most expensive and the most important to my wife given the anticipated late nights and midnight feedings with the baby.
After shopping the retailers, my wife also started looking online and also looked for furniture on craigslist. There was enough of a local selection that she found a crib and changing table from Pottery Barn Kids that she really liked. Both pieces with several other baby items thrown in for $500. The same pieces went for $800+tax+delivery at Pottery Barn Kids without the baby items. We went and took a look at the furniture and found it to be in near new condition. My wife gave me the "approval" node and I offered the seller $400 cash for everything and they accepted and even offered assistance in delivering the larger changing table that wouldn't fit in our car.
We are both excited about the furniture and how reasonable it was. When we are finished with it I hope we will be able to get out most of the money we put into by selling it off again on craigslist. More importantly I am so proud of my wife. Despite all the grief I have sometimes given her on this blog, our recent purchase, in my mind, shows that we are very financially compatible together.
Now we still need to figure out about choosing a glider. We haven't had as much luck finding one on craigslist, but we are still looking.
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Comments (8)
This isn't related to the post (but congratulations on the purchase!), but I'd like to say that this blog is an outstanding idea, and one that I'll be putting to use in my own life. Thanks for the morning-time inspiration. Expect to see me commenting/asking questions in the future.
Posted by Guillermo | January 12, 2009 10:08 AM
Craigslist is a gold mine for finding great deals. One word of caution is making sure you are buying quality products. Since this is an aftermarket purchase, you never really know what's going on. You should also check out product reviews and consumer reports to make sure you aren't buying a defective crib or something. You'd hate to find out an accident could be avoided by spending a little extra money.
Posted by thomas | January 12, 2009 12:45 PM
You can find affordable gliders off target.com. With shipping, we got ours for under $150 on sale. The only downside is that the cushions are not machine washable.
Posted by Matt | January 12, 2009 5:31 PM
We highly recommend craigslist for baby gear. I agree that you have to know your products well, and what reasonable prices are. I suggest logging on to cpsc.gov and signing up for email alerts on recalls. We also do cloth diapers (which you can resell when done) and buy 75% of our baby/kid clothes from local resale shops. It's always hard to keep in mind that so many of the toys and a lot of the gear only gets a few months' use...
Posted by Margot | January 12, 2009 8:45 PM
I love craigslist, and have found and sold many items. Just be sure to check things over completely so that you know you aren't getting ripped off.
Posted by Amber Jones | January 13, 2009 11:59 AM
You can get a glider and matching gliding ottoman at Toys R Us for $200. We thought it was the most useless piece of furniture though, along with the changing table. We just change the baby anywhere -- on the crib, on our bed, or on a changing pad on the floor. A changing table just takes up space (probably not a problem if you have a big house though). Also, we just used the couch in the living room for late night feedings.. no need for another redundant piece of furniture that just takes up precious floor space.
Posted by Mike | January 14, 2009 8:36 PM
My wife and I just had our first baby late last year and we were able to find all of the baby furniture items we were looking for on craiglist at awesome prices. We've had good luck the quality of the changing table, swing, crib, playpen, bouncy chair, bottle warmer, rocking chair, bathtub, etc.,etc.
Posted by KS | January 17, 2009 12:41 PM
My daughter got the glider with her Craig's List purchase of crib and changing table. She sat in it once. It makes a nice holder for the laundered baby clothes waiting for folding. ha ha
Posted by dicity | January 17, 2009 8:02 PM