Getting out of bed this morning, I let out a deep yawn, and reached my arms to the ceiling which turned into a painful stretch. Ah, why am I so sore? A shock wave of good pain went from my fingers all the way up my arms and down my shoulder blades. The morning get-up was a little bit harder with a sore body looking back at a warm bed. The sun peaked through my curtains as I got ready to go, bouncing off the mirror and slightly illuminating a dark bedroom. A muffled grunt from under the covers was James’ way of telling me to fix the curtains so he could return to his slumber.
Checking my phone – 6:46 am. Shoot, I thought, I have to go! Quickly opening up the metro app, I saw my bus was approximately 4 minutes away, but it takes me 6 minutes to walk there. Throwing my gym bag behind my shoulder, I ran into the bedroom to give James a sleepy kiss goodbye before dashing out the door. Dodging the neighbors sprinklers, I sprinted down the sidewalk, took a quick right turn, and caught a glimpse of the bus zooming past. “Not today” I thought to myself as I ran down the street. Luckily the driver saw my flailing arms and stopped to pick me up.
On the 42 minute ride into downtown I reflected on the weekend that had just come to an abrupt halt. Amazing weather, time spent laughing with friends, quality time with James, how lucky was I? I straightened up in my bus seat and a deep pain went through my shoulder blades, ugh. I know why I’m so sore! Yesterday James and I decided to take a walk through our neighborhood and to the local park. In between laughing and talking about ideas, I spotted a beautiful white dresser on the side of the road. I stopped in my tracks and pointed it out to James. We looked at each other, then at the orphaned furniture.
Since moving to our new apartment, we haven’t had a good clothes storage solution. In the beginning we tried to just hang everything in the closet. Then we tried baskets, then for a while we got lazy and just kept it in the laundry bags (which just led to an even more unorganized life). A few months back I almost pulled the trigger and bought a dresser from Living Spaces, but couldn’t come to terms with the $400 price tag.
My eyes widened as I inspected the dresser. A yellow sticky note with the letters “FREE” sat atop and my gaze shifted over to James. He looked at me with weary eyes – “do we really want a dresser from the side of the road” – he said to me telepathically. Mine shouted back “yes!” and before we knew it we were stretching on the side of the road getting ready to carry this back to our apartment 2 blocks away.
Fueled by the excitement of free furniture, I was able to help carry it no problem about half a block before reality struck. Holy cow this thing weighs like 200 lbs what the heck are we doing. I shot a fake smile over at James, there was no way this thing wasn’t coming home with us. We stopped at least 10 times over the next block and a half so I wouldn’t collapse under the weight of the dresser. We eventually made it home with some pretty sore muscles and a solution to our organization problem.
I’m so grateful that James appreciates my crazy thrifty ways. Anyone else would have thought I was crazy and told me to just buy a new one. James goes along with my unconventional ways, and we have fun in the process. Not only did we get a beautiful, perfect condition piece of free furniture, but now years from now we can look back and laugh about that time we carried a dresser all the way home and had to stop a million times because it was too heavy.
take two 