It all started with a set of dining chairs. One night, back when I was living in Washington, D.C., in my late twenties, my friend Alicia—a fellow thrift enthusiast whom I actually met through Instagram due to our mutual love of design—texted me, alerting me to a set of beautiful burlwood dining chairs listed for sale on Facebook Marketplace. The only problem? They were $800 for a set of eight, which was out of both of our budgets at the time, and as small apartment dwellers, neither of us had space for eight whole chairs, either. However, both of us had long been head over heels for anything burlwood, and we didn’t feel as though we could simply leave these beauties behind. So we did what any pair of design-obsessed friends would do—we decided to go splitsies on the chairs.
The chairs were located about six and a half hours away in Fairfield County, Connecticut, which turned the buying experience into a whole other story! After one very long Saturday round-trip car ride that ended with us dividing up the chairs in a parking lot, we each returned home with four new pieces of seating and couldn’t have been happier.
This certainly wasn’t the only time I’ve gone halfsies with a friend while thrifting. At the end of my time living in D.C., Molly, a friend whom I’d met after purchasing one of her Facebook Marketplace listings (are you sensing a theme here?!), told me she’d come across two gorgeous, oversized plant pots listed as a pair for $200 total. Did I want one? You’d better believe I did! I Venmoed her $100, and she arranged a pickup, which was extremely beneficial given how huge these plants are—I’d estimate each weighs 200 pounds, and if I wanted to, I could fully stand up inside one! Despite its bulk, the plant pot came with me when I moved to New York, and it’s still one of my favorite pieces in my apartment today.
More recently, one of my closest friends and I were attending a designer studio sale in Philadelphia and spotted a stunning set of director-style chairs covered in gorgeous verdure fabric (pictured at top). This time, though, choosing to split them up was less about logistical concerns and more about the fact that we would’ve been fighting over who got to go home with the chairs—we both loved them so much! We now dub these our “friendship chairs,” which makes them all the more special.
No matter the reason, I couldn’t recommend embracing this tactic more. It’s allowed me to save some cash while welcoming amazing pieces into my home, and it’s made certain shopping experiences much more memorable, too. I’ll truly never forget the stories behind these three pieces!
