apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

i'd advise anyone looking for furniture....sofa beds, desks, shelves to go to walmart.com. they have several shelve units that are exactly like the expensive ones at West Elm and several sofa/loungers that are great space savers in small places that can transition from extra sleeping space for guests and half the cost of what IKEA or West Elm have them for.

No thanks, Little Rock - We don't need anymore half-price discount-crap that your company doesn't know/care where it came from:

"Assembled in Country of Origin: USA and/or Imported
Origin of Components: USA and/or Imported"

well, if you're a student and you have to live in a dorm, probably you don't have enough money to rent a studio... therefore, probably the budget for dorm stuff is $100 for EvERYTHING..... So LittleRock's idea isn't that bad at all, with proper care of things it can look very nice and save the $$ for real furniture after you graduate.

I second the YUCK to Walmart.

look i was just making a suggestion....i don't know about you but when i was in college and trying to furnish an apartment I was on a budget. Have you actually looked at the walmart.com stuff on-line? It's not terrible...but you can take your diva attitude and keep wasting your money at West Elm and the sort....that stuff is not much higher quality I hate to inform you. I could make better cabinets for a third of the cost. Which is pretty much what I do or salvage old furniture and restore it.

$99 for a bookcase or almost $40 for a table lamp? And I'd hardly call the docker an 'essential'. Convenient maybe, but definitely no necessity. For the same $200 on craigslist you could nearly furnish a bedroom (and not too badly either if you're savvy) and sell it all back for about the same when you move out.

Even if the furniture looks nice, I don't like using my money to support companies that are anti-worker. I think we're all better off if we choose to spend money at stores that care for their workers, or go without.

I like the lamp muchos!

These prices are only affordable if parents with plenty of money are doing the paying.

I know I couldn't have bought these items when I was a student trying to pay my own expenses.

$40 lamp?
$80 duvet cover?
$60 pillow?!?!

Crazy. Definitely not an average student budget.

I'm surprised at the number of Wal-Mart snobs.

I could never fit shelves into my dorm, nor could I attach anything to the concrete block walls...and I still haven't spent $80 on a bedding set even though I have a full size now.

People are not being "snobs." The comments so far have merely indicated valid reasons for choosing to not patronize a corporation. That is not being a snob - it is being a responsible consumer. Surely the anti-Wal-Mart comments could have been a little less personal, however.

That said, the cheapest, greenest, and most fun way to furnish an apartment at almost any stage of life (and particularly in college) is through Craigslist, the classifieds, family members, and yard sales. Reuse, people. Reuse.

Free market economy...it's a beautiful thing.

If you don't want to purchase stuff from Wal-mart, fine. But the comments were juvenile. Walmart's stuff is no more better in quality than Ikea or any other trendy place that this place fluffs and everyone raves about. They all have the same junk...some just rig up the price more than others. In fact, I found the same exact couch at Wal-mart that Ikea had. Its all cheap crap....but forgive me for making suggestions to those out there that Daddy doesn't foot the bill for.

My wife and I bought a great sleigh bed for our toddler at walmart. It was 1/2 to a 1/3 the cost of comparable sleigh beds we were looking at from other places and I would recommend it to others in a a heartbeat. Anyway... it was our first time really buying furniture from walmart and we were pleasantly surprised. Definitely will not rule it out in the future.

Beware the Bauhaus CB2 lamp- it's HUGE, I'm sure not an issue for some, but it's broader than any of the furniture I had in my dorm room. In fact it's footprint is so huge it looked ridiculous on all the tables in my house! And is spendy to return...

Not to jump in on the Wal-mart bashing, but I'm not seeing much in the realm of cheap furniture on the website. Comparable items (with the exception of a sofa or two) seem to be cheaper at Ikea, in fact.

If you really think all of those companies that make your elite furniture have better business practices than Wal-Mart, then think again.
People who shop at Wal-Mart are not evil or inconsiderate to human rights. In college, it is very difficult to justify spending more than $100 on ANYTHING, let alone a piece of furniture your roommate will probably spill something all over.

Littlerock, you rock.

Differing opinions are fine and all, but the way a few people here do that is with a huge portion of attitude and snobbery. To hell with them.

But yeah, Craigslist is a GREAT resource. Thanks for bringing that up, tessahessa.

ikea's no angel either... and designs shipped from sweden to china to conshohocken are not really the best use of resources if you're monitoring that sort of thing (caveat: i do own my fair share of ikeaware).

i s'pose moderation in all things is again key: something from craigslist, a tad from walmart, a touch from westelm... it depends, too, on the angle you're coming it at from: worker's rights, quality, green-ness... and when you dig in your heels and take that stance, look around your life. you can't spell "irony" without "i". i used to work in corp. comm for a "major san francisco fashion retailer". we'd have protests in front of our building by people wearing nikes and drinking starbucks lattes.

(as a tangent) more than anything, the "real-simple-ization" of apartment therapy as of late is a bit disconcerting. seems almost like product placement when i read an entry about the "10 best outdoor items from DWR". i don't mind ads, but i do get bent when they're disguised as editorial content.

During college I relied on Martha Stewart's Kmart line for linens and Target for cute accessories.

This is a ridiculously expensive list. Maybe these are essential for the student that's loaded with cash, but when I was in college my friends and I didn't have the money to blow on things like this. Hell, even now I'm not willing to spend this much on most of these items. $7 on a magazine file? HELL NO. That shower caddy - I don't see how its any better than what I could get at a dollar store. $60 pillow? $100 for that bookshelf? In college??? I'd have gone the $5 pillow and $20 bookshelf route and saved the last $135 for beer.

Thank you redmeck modern!

Where does West Elm stuff get made? DWR? How about IKEA? CB2? You guys are dreaming if you think it isn't next door to the smoke choking factory you were just disparaging.