I'm going to be driving recent college graduate and proud owner of first real-life job down to Georgetown to help her move into her first apartment! She found and rented the apartment, organized the paperwork for the new job (with health care--yay!!!) and has started to pack. Her job/internship is for one year only because she'll be applying to grad schools for the following year, so she found a furnished apartment with utilities included to avoid the trouble of setting everything up from scratch.
Weeeeelllll. Remember Murphy's Law? Being understandably inexperienced, she mistook the photos of the beautifully and fully outfitted apartment as evidence that it was being rented beautifully and fully furnished. Not quite the case. It's an empty shell. Cupboards bare, windows naked. You get the picture. This wouldn't be such a problem if she were staying longer. Or if she hadn't already splurged on a higher rent so she would feel safe alone in a new city and be near her place of employment. We need to outfit her from can opener to curtains in a hurry and on a shoestring. Since she won't have a car until her boyfriend arrives in the fall, we'll probably have to do most of it while I'm there.
The frustrating thing is, I've been carefully saving extra quilts, blankets, dishes, etc. for years for just this kind of occasion. But
because we are ourselves in a period of transition, having just made a cross country move, our belongings are ---say it with me---in long term storage.
Life doesn't always have perfect timing.
Any tips? It's been sooooo long since I've done this. The thought of hunting down a mattress and boxspring in DC in July is making me break out in hives.
But just look at the rooftop terrace!
There's got to be an IKEA close to DC.
ReplyDeleteTarget also tends to have some stuff. I ended up buying bookshelves from there to provide more book space in my apartment at school as well as lots of other stuff. Also, I found that my little shark vacuum was a total savior in keeping an apartment livable.
ReplyDeleteGood luck. It sounds super exciting.
<3 Darby
Cathy---Ikea would be good. I wasn't thinking about it because I hate putting the bulky stuff together with that stupid allen wrench, but their smaller stuff might be good. I'm hoping to find a place that delivers for anything big since she's on the 6th floor.
ReplyDeleteDarby---Definitely the vacuum!
I love my ikea dishes- very cheap and resilient.
ReplyDeleteRooms to Go!
ReplyDelete---Dad/Grandpa
Definitely Ikea for pretty much everything and anything! For a very reasonable fee, they will deliver the furniture and set it all up for you. A friend of mine did that when she moved back to Canada a couple years ago. She ordered everything online and set up a delivery time for a week or so before her arrival. Her sister opened up the apartment for the delivery crew and by the time she arrived, her apartment was ready for her and completely furnished!
ReplyDeleteLouise---when did Ikea start offering the service of putting together their stuff? I had no idea. That would be so worth it, we'll definitely check into it, thanks! I can't tell you how many Ikea things we've had over the years that just fell apart due to our poor assembly skills :)
ReplyDelete