Portland Interior Design Blog

I’m a bit under the weather today and not up scoping out Portland. So I thought I’d concentrate more on interior decoration from the perspective of a computer chair. Here’s a very basic crash course on furniture shopping on Craigslist.

If you’ve been hiding in a dingy, unfurnished cave with no electricity, then perhaps you haven’t heard of Craigslist yet. There’s a very basic list of information about it here. For our purposes today, it’s a forum for local Portlanders to post free ads for furniture and other relevant household items for sale.

1. Go to portland.craigslist.com
2. Chose the appropriate category under “for sale.” We’ll be examining the “furniture” section.
3. Scan the list of ads. Useful ads will say exactly what they’re selling, such as a leather couch or full size bed, in decent detail in the title. However, if you’re really patient, you can find interesting items under very vague and useless titles such as “For Sale” or “Needs to Go.” The price of the item should be listed on the very right of the title. But sometimes you need to click on the title of the ad if the price isn’t listed properly.
4. Click on the title of the ad that interests you. That will bring you to the full text of the ad including contact information and specific details. From here you can call or email the seller to express your interest.

Some things to pay attention to!
1. Where is the seller located? The Portland Craigslist is mostly used by people from Portland but also from West Linn, Beaverton, Bend, Vancouver and so on. You may have to travel long distances to get the item you’re looking at.
2. On that note, you will probably have to pick up the item you want. Most sellers on Craigslist do not offer delivery.
3. Act quickly! Craigslist is a very popular with the hip computer literate. If you’re interested in a particularly exciting deal, chances are that many are thinking the exact same thing you are. Contact the seller immediately when you see an item you like. Most sellers go on a first come, first serve basis by making an offer to the first person who responds and so on.
4. Some items are crap. There is no standardized code of quality for Craigslist. People will try to sell or give away all sorts of trash in terrible condition. Make sure you inspect something carefully before you buy it. Ads with pictures are more likely to be honest. If you can see a picture you are less likely to waste your time and money investigating a promising lead that turns out to be unworthy of the dump. There are no protections if you get ripped off by a Craigslist user.

I personally love Craigslist. It’s really the best and fastest place to find awesome deals, much easier than yard sale-ing. You can even find beautiful, practical, and amazing things for free sometimes. You need a lot of patience and flexibility, though. It’s not as clean as ebay. Ads are organized only by date and order of posting so it can take a while to wade through all that information. There is a search option, but it only scans the titles for information, you may miss a poorly phrased ad with a good deal. You will need to wait for the particular item you want to appear. Chances are, someone will have what you need eventually or something like it. There is an option to post an ad requesting a particular item in the “wanted” section. People do read that category and respond. It’s good karma to check it occasionally and respond when you have something that someone else wants.