Anybody rent their furniture?? Pros/Cons advice??
I'm thinking of doing this and would like to be convinced or not.
Overall Rating: votes
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Posted 1 year ago #
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I did when we moved to another city for an undetermined time - which turned out to be 8 months. It made sense in this case, but as for a permanent thing, you'll end up paying a lot more than just buying it.
Posted 1 year ago # -
You can lounge on carpets and cushions, eat on a plastic tablecloth spread out on the floor, and sleep on an inexpensive futon. A few billion people live this way; it's doable.
Posted 1 year ago # -
zora is absolutely right.
i think the west generally gets a bit caught up with how much furniture we think we need.
it is possible to live beautifully with very little furniture.Posted 1 year ago # -
Furniture rental? I don't think I've ever heard about this, at least for individuals. I guess it would make sense to rent furniture if it was temporary and it was too much of a hassle to buy cheap stuff (either second hand or Ikea or whatever) and then to try to sell or give it away when the time is over. I also imagine it would be a cool thing to do for people who love to re-style their place every few months, this way, they could change out furniture and style much more quickly.
I also think that one can live wonderfully without much furniture, but it may make sense to have a table and a chair if the most work you do is e.g. writing by hand or on your computer - even if it's just to be nice to your back :o) If you're moving into a new place and don't have much furniture, I would always recommend to live there for a few weeks without buying anything, just to get to know the place, its light and colours, your habits there and so on and only after that consider pieces of furniture to add.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I've lived without furniture at various points in my life -- a semester in college when all I had was a backpack and a bicycle and slept in a sleeping bag in an empty room; various times in the army when for months at a time I lived much the same way, for example, in an empty grain silo in northern Iraq. It can be done, and I could do it again, if need be, but I do not recommend it :)
Rental furniture works well in the short term but can end up being MUCH more expensive for a longer run. I looked up a local rental company to check prices -- a couch averages $34/month -- they also have a "manager's special," where they pick a whole 1 bedroom apartment of furniture for you, which is about $150/month. If you project this out for a year, you'd be paying more than $1,500. You can buy a lot of furniture for that.
When I've been in situations where it didn't make sense to invest in my own furniture, I tried to get stuff that could be re-purposed. My dining/work table, for many years was a folding card table with a couple of director's chairs and a tablecloth -- under $100, and 30 years later I still use them for a spare table and chairs. My bookshelves were industrial steel shelving that now hold paint in the garage. In the 1980s I bought a futon sofa which is now used for spare guest sleeping. Outdoor chairs can be inexpensive (a plastic lawn chair can be dressed up with some fabric and a pillow) and later, be used outdoors. If you think outside the box you can get what you need, it can look nice, and you would spend a LOT less than renting stuff.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I was wondering about this recently as well. We want to host a dinner party; we have an extensible table that can fit 8 chairs in its fully extended mode (and 4 in its smallest form), but we only have 4 chairs. Debating whether to buy 4 more to use on such occasions (and store the rest of the time) or just rent them whenever we need. Our regular chairs are from IKEA, and pretty cheap, so I'm trying to work out whether renting them each time is worth the hassle.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Maybe I'm just paranoid but...what about bedbugs? Probably wouldn't be an issue with unupholstered chairs or tables, but with a couch it would be. They're making a comeback.
Posted 1 year ago # -
When we rented, it was because we were in a city 1,500 miles from home for medical treatment. As my husband was already sick, I didn't want used stuff. We did have the minimum amount of furniture though. The only things we bought were 2 plastic chairs to sit out on the balcony. THe rental company provided dishes, silverware, glasses, pots and pans. We were able to furnish the rest of the kitchen from a "store" the clinic volunteers ran. You went and got what you needed, and returned it - along with anything else you'd acquired you wanted to leave - when you went home. I got things like an ironing board, a clothes basket, and a blender.
But in college/graduate school and in between, I had minimal furniture, most used or hand-me-down. Even when DH and I were first together we either rented furnished, or made do. The first 6 months we lived here we have a director's chair, 2 thrift store dining chairs, a piece of plywood with legs for a table, and a bed sized piece of foam for a bed. Oh, and lumber and concrete blocks for shelving for clothing, books, whatever. :) New furniture came one piece at a time.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I wouldn't advise renting furniture. You may rent more than you really need just because they package things as a set. And once you have it in the house, it's too easy to just keep paying and paying, and before long you will have spent enough to buy a three-seater La-Z-Boy couch and dining suite for 6.
I'd suggest going to thrift shops and buying only what you absolutely, positively need. Which is pretty minimal, as Zora pointed out. A coffee table so your meals or laptop aren't actually on the floor, maybe a comfortable reading chair, a lamp or two.
For years, I slept on a good-quality cotton futon on the floor. Very comfortable, no hard corners to knock into, hypoallergenic, $100. Ideally, buy this new, also any cushions/pillows - for the hygiene factor.
It might be a fun experiment to see just how long you can go without buying furniture!
Posted 1 year ago # -
I find everyone's posts about living with minimal furniture fascinating. However, from personal experience, I would never want or choose to live with as little furniture as possible.
Growing up, our house was probably slightly over-furnished, but never to the point of being cramped or uncomfortable. Then we moved to Canada with no furniture at all, and our belongings in 4 suitcases (for a family of 3). After 2 nights in a hotel we found an apartment, and the only furniture we had for the first few days were 2 beds -- a double bed for my parents, and a futon for me. We then gradually got a dining table and chairs, a desk, a few bookcases etc.
For the first 1.5 years, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment, and I slept in the living room, on the futon that became more and more uncomfortable; the last few months I basically woke up in the ditch in the middle of the mattress, and had a constant backache. Then we moved into a larger, 3-bedroom house, and had my own real bed which, I can tell you, was an immense relief for my back and my sanity.
This was 6 years ago, and if there is one thing I'm convinced of, is that no vision of minimalism is worth destroying my back for, ever again. Living with the bare minimum out of necessity has made me aware that it's possible, but it's also made me painfully aware that it's not desirable, at least for me. If it works for others, all the more power to you, but I can assure you it's only fun if you try the experiment on purpose, not if you live it out of necessity.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Wow. Just goes to show how everyone thinks a little differently because the first thing I thought of when I saw the post title, was renting furniture for staging a home to sell it!
Posted 1 year ago # -
I'll agree that the cheap foam-filled futons aren't the best for long-term floor sleeping. Cheap foam breaks down quickly. If you're used to a soft, springy mattress, you'll become increasingly unhappy.
But I don't believe that you MUST have a Western-style bed for the sake of your back. Billions of people sleep on nothing more than a mat. They are used to it and find themselves sleepless on soft beds. Some cultures use thick mattresses that can be rolled up and stowed away in cupboards, as is done in Japan, or use string beds (charpoys), as in South Asia.
Myself, I'm fine with a substantial futon or floor mattress, but I don't do well just sleeping on a mat. I didn't grow up that way and I can't change my habits overnight. The nights I spent on mats in Tonga were memorably miserable.
Posted 1 year ago # -
You're totally right Zora. When we slept on the floor, we had a dense foam mat; now we have a foam mattress on top of plywood on top of our dressers! We also have two single-size dense foam pieces (which I covered with flannel) that fit in the back of our pickup for camping, and nicely on the floor for company. My husband had multiple spinal fractures in 1999/2000(in connection with the illness that caused us to go for treatment) and cannot sleep on anything too soft, or as hard as a floor.
Posted 1 year ago # -
If you are looking for an inexpensive way to furnish a house or apartment, you might check and see if any of the furniture rental companies sell furniture. Many people who want to rent furniture only want items that look like new. Once the furniture has been rented a few times, it may have some minor dings and scuffs, but it still has a lot of wear left in it. Many times, the rental companies sell this furniture at a significant discount. It's much faster than searching for used furniture at thrift stores or yard sales, where you might have to search at store after store before you find something you want. (And if you buy at thrift stores or garage sales, you probably have to carry it away yourself - a problem if you have a small car and/or aren't physically able to lift heavy furniture pieces.)
On the negative side, the furniture tends to be kind of generic and blah, and there isn't much selection. But when my Dad moved to an apartment and had no furniture at all, he was able to get it comfortably furnished for not a lot of money that way. And they delivered it. (He bought his own mattress and a few other things that he wanted.)
Posted 1 year ago # -
@Zora -- I know what you mean, and it's mostly about what you're used to. I can't stand soft beds that feel like you're sinking into them. My mattress right now is the firmest I could find, and that's what saved my back after being mangled by the futon mattress. Well, that along with exercise and chiropractic :P
Actually, last month I went to a congress and was put up in a 4-star hotel with one of the softest beds I've been in. The first night was ok, the second night was painful. The third night I slept on the floor (with a thick duvet for a mattress), and it was the best sleep I had that trip.
So yes, I completely agree that too much "comfort" can be a bad thing, but the other extreme is just as damaging, IMO. I'm all about the "just right" middle ground :)
Posted 1 year ago # -
I agree that if you're going to want it for long, probably cheaper to buy (thrift store or rental-place) than to rent it. We've never rented furniture other than renting a furnished apartment that came with its own.
Not sure how I feel about renting and/or buying-used things with cushions, though, because of bedbugs and other vermin.
For the renting-chairs-for-dinner party question, do you have a place to put them away if you do buy them? I might be tempted to rent if I'd have to walk around the newly purchased ones all the time; otherwise I think I'd buy just because it's one more thing to have to do before you host a dinner party and there's enough to remember without having to go pick up the furniture you need!
Posted 1 year ago # -
Re: chairs for part-time use ... there are some very nice-looking, sturdy, wood folding chairs you can get now. Much more formal and substantial than the cheapo plastic or metal folding chairs.
I love our dining table (and its ten chairs) but it all takes up a lot of space!
Posted 1 year ago # -
A local furniture rental company got sued, because the sofa they provided had bedbugs in it. Exterminators came a few times, but to no avail, so the people had to move out of their place, and get rid of everything they owned. It was on the local news about two years ago, so I'd never rent furniture, and I'd think twice now about buying an used sofa from a thrift store or garage sale.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Rather than renting - which is VERY expensive even for a short time - you might want to check out Craigslist or Freecycle. We have found many pieces of very nice furniture for a fraction of their cost. Plus, when you are done with the furniture you post your own sale and maybe recover your costs. We have even sold a couple things at Garage Sales for a profit.
We have only bought wood furniture so bedbugs have not been an issue.
Posted 1 year ago #
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