Furnishing a dream dorm with curbside couches, leftover lamps

When I drew a single last year for the first time, I realized there were a lot of things I'd taken for granted my first three years at Princeton that I would now have to start thinking about. With room draw deadlines set for early next month, hopefully my story will help some other poor soul who has always mooched off the furnishings of others.

My new single would need a telephone, a bookshelf maybe, and extra lighting would be nice. There wasn't even going to be a convenient computer next to the bed to check e-mail anytime I felt like it. I'd always used my roommates' things, and had very few of my own possessions. If I didn't do anything, I realized my future room could end up totally bare.

Not used to or entirely comfortable with the idea of buying things, I thought that I'd try my old trick of collecting "junk." If that failed, I would have to surrender either to minimalism or consumerism.

Little did I know it then, but I was in for a bonanza. First I e-mailed the 2 Dickinson co-op's e-mail list to let the seniors know that, for no price at all, I would be the willing recipient of anything they didn't need in the upcoming months. Phones would be especially appreciated. In response to that e-mail I immediately got an offer for two phones. I picked the most attractive — a fancy speakerphone. After that I got a promise of a carpet. All I had to do was store it and it would be mine for the following year. Okay, so it's a little stained. But my warm toes don't seem to mind that.

Later, after most of the campus had frantically packed and left, I scavenged the deserted rooms and junk-filled hallways of the dorms and got a hold of a bookcase, multiple mirrors, and a large green bean bag, which is absolutely heaven to sit in.

Last year I stayed on to work during Reunions as an usher, and wow, I could have furnished 100 rooms with all the stuff that was lying around. It was an overload for my brain, which has always worked to hoard rejected waste. I had to walk past multiple light-bulb stands, hair dryers, and say to myself over and over, "No, I don't need that. Don't pick that up." It comforted me that some of the furniture was being donated or re-sold by student and community groups.

However, rain often ruined or damaged things put outside before the groups could get to or sell them. I watched someone struggling with an armchair down the stairs and thought to myself that it would be great if such an armchair could be waiting for me in my room next year.

All this collecting of goods and watching people struggle to move things away, just so that nearly identical items could be moved into those same rooms made me philosophize about modern life. Isn't there a better way to do things, to organize material goods so that we create less waste? I mean, what if people furnished a room, and then just left all the furniture there for the next person who moved in? Wouldn't that be a better way for everyone?

Excited with my new vision, I told all my friends about it, but they quickly came up with objections: "Not everyone is so non-picky as you — People like to keep the same furniture sometimes — I'd rather get something new or at least something that I picked out myself."

"But what about the waste?" I asked.

"Well, things get old — All the really good stuff probably won't be thrown away — There's always more — We won't run out."

Still, I get by on other people's discarded belongings. This is my fourth year at Princeton and I've always used the Mathey computer cluster to type my papers. But hey, this semester I've had two offers for computer loans by friends who are studying abroad.

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I'm a visionary, and my vision for the future includes a fully furnished single — thanks to your throw-aways. Catherine Archibald is an ecology and evolutionary biology major from New Rochelle, N.Y. She can be reached at archibld@princeton.edu.