I heart Craigslist

My fondness for Craig and all his lists has been increasing over that past year. I first found Craigslist when I was in the process of moving to California and would use it to look for potential apartments from my computer in Idaho. Then when I did move here I then used it find a job, and have successfully found 2 different salon jobs in the past. For those who don't know it's a FREE website where you can find and post just about anything. I use it on the weekends to find garage sales in the area and in the past year we have sold numerous furniture items on it when we were downsizing: a desk, a recliner, a couch, a bed frame, and a pub table just recently. Our rule of thumb: When listing an asking price for whatever it is you're selling, always list if for $20 more then you're willing to settle for. 9 times out of 10 the interested party makes an offer for twenty less then what original price you put on the ad. My two greatest finds have been purchases I made off of Craigslist within the past few months.

First was an ad I saw for maternity clothing. I'd already started looking for pants and found it frightening at how insanely expensive maternity clothing is! Are you kidding me?! So by adding that band of stretchy fabric at the waist or that extra material to a shirt for belly room allows for them to charge a fortune?? And then you only wear it for a few months anyway! So this ad caught my eye because it was for a closet full of clothing from a mom who just had 2 kids in the past 2 years, everything was my size or could be "grown" into, and it was all relatively new and from a bunch of different expensive mommy to be stores that I could only maybe afford to buy a pair of maternity undies from (which I was shocked to find out there is such kind of underwear out there). She said the whole lot cost her around $2000 and she was listing all of it for $350. After discussing with other mothers to see how much I would end up spending if I bought everything individually on my own and realizing it would end up being a lot, I decided to make an offer. I sheepishly offered $150.

And she accepted!!! Yahoo! It was like Christmas morning opening up those boxes when I got home. This picture doesn't even do it justice as to how much clothing was packed in there. I had just started unloading when this pic was taken but I tallied up the total at the end and there were 5 jackets, 15 shirts and blouses, 5 skirts, 30+ pair of pants including khakis, black dress pants, jeans, corduroys, capris, loungepants, etc. some still was the tags left on them! You should see my closet now, it's busting at the seams. I totally one hundred percent scored! I won't have to buy one more clothing item for this pregnancy or any of the future ones for that matter!



Then this morning we just picked up a cradle and a changing table for $40 that I found yesterday on Craigslist. They were from a grandma's house whose grandkids just outgrew the cradle so they are in excellent condition. Luckily I made the call on them early in the morning because she said she had 5 offers after that.

Maybe a baby won't break the bank after all if we can manage to find all these great deals on craigslist for all of it's childhood! God bless all the people out there who buy new and then sell ridiculously cheap to people like us. :) Keep up the good work.