I have bought and sold a ton of stuff on Craigslist.
Past roommates have even been found with it and that is a whole different story.
In fact, I furnished my entire dining and living room in DC with Craigslist items for under $400.
Below are two Craigslist tables currently hanging in our living room.
You can even find love on Craigslist and not in the Missed Connections section. My cousin met his now-wife through it because he bought her couch. Crazy, right?
Right now, I am searching Craigslist for a TV stand and dining table, but seriously you never know what you might find, which I think is the most fun part!
Since I do most of my shopping lately on Craigslist, I thought I would put together a handy little list of tips for those who are new to finding and snatching deals on the platform.
1. How to Search Through Craigslist Crap Like a Boss
Search Terms
As I said before, I am looking for a TV stand, but I pretty much never just search “TV stand.”
So many different items can hold your TV. Some of the search terms I use include: “buffet,” “credenza,” “sideboard,” “dresser,” and “media console.”
When looking for my kitchen table I either use just “table” to capture every kind or “kitchen table” and “dining table.”
Additionally, you can use the pipe key “|” to include an “or” in your search.
The Map Function
I find this most useful when looking for apartments, or when I am feeling particularly lazy and am wondering what people nearby me are selling.
Check “Posted Today”
If you are looking for something common, such as the kitchen table I am looking for, Craigslist is inundated with these items all day long.
And if you spend any significant amount of time searching for something, you will notice the same posts you saw yesterday after a couple pages. To see what is newest, you can check the box for what was posted today.
Knowing How to Filter
I also like to filter my results by newest posts instead of by relevance and price. The faster you can reply to a new post, the more chance you have to score that deal.
There are a couple other ways to filter out unrelated posts too. To remove spam, you can filter the price to a minimum of $2.00. I also like to only search posts that have images and to bundle duplicate posts.
2. Timing Is Everything: When to Search
Obviously, you can check Craigslist anytime you want, but there are certain times of the year that will yield more results.
- When people move: at the end of the school year or the end of the month
- After holidays: people get new stuff and need to make room for it
- Weekends: for when people need to sell stuff ASAP
3. Location Matters
Some geographic areas are just going to have better goods than others.
Chicago being a major metropolitan area provides a lot more opportunities for there to be a bedroom set you are into and a lot more people to buy that weird coffee table you have been trying to get rid of.
For instance, I have a friend who was in the market for a vintage Coleman cooler like ours below.
He lives in Michigan and Craigslist did not have any listings for these type of coolers, but when I searched in Chicago, there were at least 5 available. I ended up getting the cooler for him here in Chicago and he picked it up the next time they were in town.
Stay tuned for my next post on selling on Craigslist!
Additional Resources:
waste not want not 