Which furniture to replace when moving?

amother

Tue, Jun 15 2021, 10:17 am

I am so torn about which furniture to replace when we move.

We are moving to a new neighborhood about 2 hours away. I know it costs money to move stuff, but buying new costs more (I would imagine). Until now, we have never really bought furniture. We've lived very frugally using other people's hand me downs. We've been living pay check to pay check, so there hasn't been extra money for furniture, but now that we have stimulus money, and I hope to get a job in our new neighborhood, we might be able to afford something new.

Here are some examples of furniture we might want to replace:

We have some fairly good dining room chairs, but they are from 3 different sets, all hand me downs. We can't afford to buy nice chairs, but we could get all new matching stackable chairs maybe. But should we throw out good dining room chairs in order to have cheap matching chairs?

Also, beds: I love my bed, but dh finds his very uncomfortable. Also, they are twin beds which makes it difficult to sleep when kids come in at night. We have 2 bunkbeds for the kids. Some of our kids are really too old for a bunkbed, but we could separate it and just continue to use it, or we could give our beds to the kids and get new bigger beds for ourselves.

Our couch is comfortable and not ripped or anything (maybe a couple of tiny catches), but it is a cheap hand me down. I think it would be perfect to put in a playroom for the kids to jump on, but not so presentable for a living room.

Our kitchen table is okay, but one leg has fallen off a couple of times and I put it back on.

If money is tight but we can set aside some for furniture (especially if it would make the moving cheaper), what should we spend on? What would you spend on if it was you?

amother

Sunflower

Tue, Jun 15 2021, 11:10 am

If it's a case of money, price up the cost of buying new, and the cost of moving the current furniture.
Personally, I prefer having cheap, non matching furniture over paying more and getting upset each time things get spoiled (as they do with small children). When my kids poked holes in my chairs, I was upset but I would have been much more upset if I had paid a lot of money for each chair.
If you're anyway having to hire movers, chances are it won't make much difference to move the furniture as well. When we moved, the most difficult furniture was the wardrobes as they were too big and had to be dismantled and then rebuilt, which was much more costly.