Mini-Trend Alert! Cardboard Furniture

A big theme on eatmywords has always been budget friendliness, as young professionals know how quickly the bills tend to add up. I've heard of many of you who might be sleeping on air mattresses until savings let you get that MALM bed from IKEA, or who enjoy your dinner "geisha style"--which is just fancy talk for "on the floor."

Look, I know that if furniture was free, everyone would have it already. But then, why don't you have it already? You see, this site right here called FoldSchool gives you free instructions on how to make your own furniture out of cardboard. Perplexed? So was I. But it really is exactly what it sounds like--free furniture!


Just by following the free step-by-step instructions on the site, you'll find out how to make your own chairs, stools, and even rockers! And they have 3D-visualizations of the stuff as well as stability ratings so you know what you're getting yourself into. It's a really interesting concept.

But FoldSchool isn't the only one making cardboard furniture. A quick search on "cardboard furniture" yeilds tons of results these days.

In a recent NYTimes article in the On The Cheap section, Joyce Walder interviewed a college student at a design school who had made a bedframe out of stacked honeycomb cardboard. Do I sense a mini-trend in the making?


For more inspiration, look here, and godspeed on your cardboard furniture adventures--wherever they may take you!

Red's Dollar Store

Reading about the aftermath of the "most extraordinary 24 hours on Wall Street" I started to wonder just how bad our economy would get before it started to get better. Fed up with my pessimistic train of thought, I instead turned to a new idea. Even with the economy deep in the sewage system--even with the dollar quickly plummeting in value--I was on a mission to find just how much we can still get for a buck of our quickly deteriorating currency.

Well, I'm happy to report that the results aren't too grim! A single dollar (or less!) will buy you any of the following.
These cute tealight holders are just 99 cents at Ikea. I have some that look a lot like this, and they never fail to cast a pretty glow on my walls.


These little Japanese-styled teacups look adorable on a bamboo place mat, and they match my brown teapot! Ringing in at 90 cents a piece, the price tag is much smaller than this pitiful little photo :)




I was pretty shocked to find a whole set of kitchen utensils for a single buck, but even that's still possible! Will they melt if you leave them too close to the pot? Probably. But for just another buck, you can replace them once again!


Last on my list is this pretty glass vase, surprisingly the cheapest item on my list at a shocking 49 cents! Can you imagine putting a few of these lined up on a window sill and sticking single sunflowers into them? The contrasting colors would surely be beautiful, but the flowers would be tons more expensive than the vases themselves! Oh, the irony.

Well friends, there you go. The economy may be in shambles, but we can still afford some pretty things... thank goodness for that!

a lesson on negotiation...

About two weeks ago, I lined up a great copywriting gig with this super cool marketing company. But everything was pretty vague, much of it to-be-determined, and all of it ultra-confidential.

Finally, I got an email this morning saying that things were coming together, but I'd need to get the scoop on what was needed from me and come up with a project estimate by the end of the day. I knew it was coming, and I'm definitely ready to start writing, but I wasn't so sure about the whole negotiating-my-pay thing.

So I prepared to ask for a high figure and negotiate my way down, playing out the conversation in my head:

Me: This is what I was hoping for...
Her: As a recent grad, really??

I got a little nervous. Do people realize you're high-balling when you do something like that? Or will they actually just think you're greedy? I don't want to come off as greedy! But that's totally not what happened. Instead....

Me: So what is your normal pay range?
Her: Well, it depends on the project.
Me (confidently): So what if I ask for this much?
Her (after some consideration): You could probably ask for a bit more.

And that's when I did a happy dance. Inside, of course. The happy dance must always be kept inside.

Lesson learned: Confident individuals make more money. Simple as that. And who knows, maybe my skills are worth more than I'd have guessed!

Now to draft that estimate...