Furnishing a home requires lots of stuff! Jan 2025 was my first time moving into a totally unfurnished space. In college I either had dorms or lived in apartments that were overfurnished from generations of students past. Seriously, my junior year room had 3 desks and 2 mattresses, and it wasn’t even a big bedroom.

Past bare essentials, adding things into the apartment is a gradual process. I review my spending on the first Saturday of each month (with Actual Budget, RIP Mint) and every month, I end up buying an average of $250 of “house” stuff. This includes appliances as well as general cleaning goods and consumables, excluding food. As much as possible, I try to buy things for life (or on the order of 10 years lifespan). I imagine next year I’ll see a lot less one-off large-ish purchases.

My bigger non-furniture purchases for the house this year:

  • $250 Comfee countertop dishwasher
  • $400 Sebo Airbelt K2 vacuum
  • $100 Cuisinart microwave
  • $130 Brother BW laser printer + scanner (refurb, $180 new)
  • $200 Yamaha P-45 piano (fb marketplace, $450 new)
  • $75 De’longhi space heater (refurb, $110 new)
  • $200 Netgear nighthawk ac1900 modem router combo
  • $130 All-Clad D3 Stainless 3-Ply fry pan with lid, 12 inch
  • $300 projector (smart TV features, nice 94-inch image)

Non-furniture total: $1785

Furniture:

  • $200 ikea 4 drawer dresser
  • $250 ikea kalhall gateleg table
  • $175 ikea 4 folding chairs
  • $100 ikea flintan office chair
  • $180 ikea forhoja kitchen island
  • 1 dresser & 2 nightstands from my parents. They used these when they got their first apartment over 25 years ago, and the furniture has been sitting in storage.
  • Bed, bed frame, dresser, and bookshelf from home (my room). Bed is also my mom’s first from when she came to America.
  • free items (FB Buy Nothing & Marketplace)
    • west elm eddy sofa 74” (retail ~$1000), hired Lugg haul for $80
    • ikea 48 inch wide, 30 inch deep desk, not sit-stand (retail $300)
    • small coffee table, kind of ugly (retail ~$25)
    • ikea kallax organizer (retail $50)

Furniture total: $905

Grand total: $2690. Somehow, it’s simultaneously a lot and not a lot. By raw numbers, this amount of money is definitely significant, but I think about how much non-IKEA furniture costs. If every item was sturdy solid wood, the total would definitely be many times what I actually paid. And of course I saved thousands from lugging from home and getting free stuff from around the city. It’s around the cost of a two-week Asia trip. It’s also the cost of about 4 days of an all-inclusive resort for two, not including transportation. Or at $6 per cup, it would be 450 matcha lattes, which is not even a year’s supply for many. And in SF, it’s a month of rent for a 500 sq ft studio. So it’s a lot and not a lot.

I’d like to call out some specific purchases…

I really didn’t expect getting a countertop dishwasher, but the amount of effort it saves is really worth it. I get back soreness from leaning over the kitchen sink for too long, which I could go to physical therapy to address, but also, why make things harder than they need to be? Dishes has always been my least favorite chore, and it’s great that things don’t pile up in the sink anymore.

I need to talk about the all-clad fry pan. It retains heat so amazingly well and the sizzle that comes from putting food on is the best. It’s worth it and absolutely more fun than working with non-stick pans. The next cookware on my radar is a carbon steel flat-bottom wok for fried rice and general stir-frying, which just… doesn’t really happen right now. We already have non-sticks, which are nice for eggs and pancakes, plus some standard pots. Cast iron is good for meats but it’s a vegetarian household.

The printer probably won’t be often-used for most young people as long as you have a library or workplace to print things at. Unless you’re doing something high-frequency and time-sensitive like printing shipping labels for online orders (which is what I use it for). But also, it’s affordable and durable, so the biggest factor into whether someone should get it is probably where to put it.

I didn’t buy the projector until around November, when I got a $100 bonus at work for a miscellaneous project. For most of the year, the 16-inch laptop screen worked just fine in lieu of a TV / projector. The biggest benefit of a large screen was entirely unexpected: It allowed us to easily follow along with exercise videos. Somehow this was the thing that enabled us to do evening yoga regularly when past attempts failed.

Other useful things in the apartment that I didn’t buy this year, but are absolutely recommended:

  • Rice cooker
  • Air fryer
  • Blender
  • Toaster

Special mention for Swedish dishcloths. Not an appliance but these things are genuinely so nice to use, definitely recommend for countertops.

Unrelated (?) Footnote

I bought all of these before moving out, but here are all my toys and devices:

  • $920 2017 Lenovo Yoga 720-15IKB. This was my laptop throughout college. She has since retired and acts as a dedicated DDR machine, occasionally with a side job of running Windows-exclusive programs.
  • $350 2018 Nintendo Switch
  • $300 2018 iPad 6th gen w/ $100 Apple Pencil
  • $400 2020 iPhone SE 2 64GB
  • $480 2023 Synology 4-Bay DiskStation DS923+ (Diskless), 4-bay; 4GB DDR4. Surprisingly, this model retails for $819 now?
  • 3x$80 2023 Seagate IronWolf 4TB
  • $80 2023 APC UPS 600VA + USB
  • $1500 2023 14-inch M2 Macbook Pro 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM
  • $400 2024 LTEK Dance Pad… Well, the item was $250 with $150 shipping.