Idle Thoughts

I’ve mentioned several times the issues with furninshing a house in Spain. If you’re not near to a large city there’s very little choice of shop and anything you get made by one of the local carpenters will be expensive. Always assuming your communication is excellent and they understand (and are capable of building) precisely what you ask for. Also, being away from “civilisation” means you are outside most shops’ delivery radius, so even if they have the items you want, you’ll either have to own, hire or borrow the means of getting it home.

For these reasons, a lot of people decide to bring furniture over from the UK. If they are moving lock-stock and barrel then they’ll just bring the furniture they already have. If it’s to furnish a second home then some pieces will have to be bought - either as replacements for furniture from the main house (using the second home as an excuse for a shopping trip) or to go directly into the new place. There are a lot of ways to get your furniture from the UK to your house in Spain: ranging from commercial removals to “man in a van” outfits. Quotes I got for the former’s charges seem to start at about £5k for a house-full while the latter are around £100 per cubic metre of payload.

On past trips I had used my van to transport a UK-sized double bed and sofa (plus nick-nacks) and my telescopes to Spain. I had also made a couple of trips to IKEA in Murcia as the only supplier of “takeaway” furniture inthe region. This all resulted in me having the basics at my house: beds, dining table+chairs, a couple of armchairs and a sofa. However, what I wanted was to move from a “basic” to a ”comforts of home” situation. Preferably without paying an arm and a leg to furnish a house that I was only planning on spending a small proportion of my time at.

The internet to the rescue
As I’ve already mentioned I’m a buyer, not an orderer. So the prospect of taking the retail route of visiting furniture stores, selecting items and than waiting at home for days and weeks just in case a delivery van turns up is not how I choose to spend my time. It can also be hellishly expensive. My solution was to go online. eBay is the obvious starting point and has a lot of private sellers (the eBay shops have the same disadvantages so far as delivery goes and often similar prices to their highstreet couterparts ) either having a clear-out, moving house or emigrating and getting rid of everything. There is another source which is quite handy too, Freecycle. I was not aware of this operation until a friend pointed it out to me. Briefly, it’s meant for people to give away stuff that’s unwanted, but is too good to throw away. Items are offered free-of-charge via a mailing list that is set up to serve a local area, say 10-20 miles radius. You sign-up to receive emails and then respond directly to the offerer who has the right to select which responder gets the goods. You are expected to contribute as well as take, but this is left very much up to you and your conscience as to how much and how often.

Wherever you obtain your stuff, you will have two obstacles to overcome. First of all, you will have to provide a your own means of transporting items (with eBay the seller often offers, or requires, carriage at an extra charge - kinda high on a washing machine or set of cabinets, while with freecycle you are expected to collect in person). The second thing to think about is: once you’ve got it, where do you store it?

My personal experience is that larger items (like the aforementioned washing machine) are harder for people to dispose of, and therefore available at a lower price to those who can collect them. I’m not planning to start a gloat about the scale of some of the savings I have made, but on average it seems that large items: tables, chairs etc. can be got off eBay at one-fifth to one-quarter of their retail price. The disadvantage of eBay being that you do have to wait for auctions to end, as very few private sellers go for the “buy it now” option.

So over the summer of 2007 I was haunting my local freecycle list, on the lookout for a series of pieces and at the same time scanning eBay. I also took the opportunity to get rid of some items I had accumulated over the years, but never got around to disposing of. By the end of the summer, I had a conservatory full (remember what I said about having somewhere to keep your swag?) of things to take to Spain and a rapidly diminishing list of “wants” still outstanding.