When J moved out of his parent’s house, he was starting with nothing. For the first half of a year that he lived alone, all he had was a used mattress (which I scored for him from a friend), some dollar store dishes (which we still have and work great) and an exercise bench.

Since my mom had gone through a divorce and then re-married, and also loves making her home perfect and therefore buys new things all the time, I came with a whole bunch of stuff when I moved in with him.

My mom set us up with dishes, forks, knives, cups, mugs, a microwave, blankets, a TV, shoe & coat racks, and several other things that she had started putting away for me when I was a toddler.

While I don’t see any purpose in replacing our plates and glasses, which are fine being a bit mismatched, there are a few things that J and I would love to replace when/if we get into a new place.

A New Mattress

The first and most urgent of those being a new mattress. Ours was donated to J by a friend of mine. It was clean and rarely used, but in storage under a bunch of boxes for years. We’ve had it for about 4 years now, and it’s horrid.

I wake up every morning feeling so sore. I can’t sleep in on weekends past 6 AM because my back starts to kill me.

I can’t sleep on my right hand side because my lower back gets a dull, aching pain until I roll over.

This isn’t just a back problem. This doesn’t happen at my mom’s house, or at hotels. We’ve been saving change for a new mattress for a little over a year, and have about $700. When we move out of this apartment, we’ll buy a new one. We’ll have to subsidize the money we have saved by about half, but I think it will be worth it.

Many of our prospects are online vendors like Casper, Purple and even Nolah. They’re all pretty affordable and are suppose to be great choices for relief from this type of pain. Might need to pony up a few more dollars for premium versions, but the reviews suggest it’s well worth it.

A Couch

Another thing we desperately need is a couch. Preferably a sectional.

Right before I moved in with J, his landlords were cleaning out their parents garage and they found two couches. They’re hideously ugly, but in relatively good shape. They noticed that he didn’t have any furniture, and donated them to us. That was about four years ago.

These couches are horrible. One didn’t last through the last move, so we have one couch and a Walmart fouton. They’re actually love seats. We’ve tried slipcovers, but they don’t stay on.

I think we’d have to budget about $1700 for a new, good quality lasting sectional. This won’t be happening until I have a steady paying job and we have some savings.

A Dyson

One thing I’ve been dreaming off for years is a Dyson vacuum. I love Dyson. J didn’t have a vacuum for three months after moving out, and I used a Future Shop gift card to buy the cheapest one I could find for him. At $40, the vacuum is a complete piece of crap, but has moved from place to place with us.

A New TV

Finally, we desperately need a new TV. The one that we have is from the early 90’s. It’s unbelievably heavy, and really, really big. I don’t mean big in screen size – I mean big. It’s only a 27″, but it weighs more than I do.

It’s a burden, but it’s a TV. We don’t have cable so it’s pointless to buy one now, so we’ll wait. I dream of a nice, sleek flat screen that we can mount on a wall. That will be about $600.

Especially since I don’t have a permanent job and still have tuition to pay, none of these things are going to be gracing us with their presence, except for the mattress, until I’m done school and find a steady, decent paying job. But a girl can dream, right?

Expensive Things That I “Need” is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.