Facebook Got My Mattress Off the Floor

One of the perks of being young is that you can sleep with your mattress on the floor without waking up sore in the morning and without struggling too much to stand back up. But you can only do it for so long before the convenience of being able to literally fall into bed every night is outweighed by the fact that it’s kind of peasant-y (IMHO).

I made it five months before I caved and got a real boxed-up mattress to replace my air bed, and I made it three more months before I totally gave in and got a bed frame. But I only cracked so soon because I discovered Facebook's newly re-launched Marketplace.

Marketplace is not the first of its kind. Estate sales, garage sales, second-hand furniture stores, Craigslist, and many other such things have been around approximately since we’ve had possessions. But estate sales, garage sales, and brick-and-mortar stores require you to actually go out and visit them, probably get lost on your way there, walk around for a while and get tired, and then probably not find something you like. All that time and effort wasted when you could’ve been napping working.

Thankfully we have the internet. I’ve never used Craigslist or similar things because they seem like the sketchiest thing ever. I have friends who have been successfully using it for years without any weird situations, but I’ve been skeptical. The skepticism was killing me as I watched my friends find ridiculous deals on furniture but I refused to budge. So when I discovered that Facebook has essentially the same thing but with the obvious ability to see if the sellers were real people (that is the point of Facebook, after all), I was all in. At last I could buy expensive furniture for peanuts without being afraid of being hit over the head with whatever I was theoretically buying.

I thought it would be limited to college futons, but Marketplace has a surprising range of stuff: Furniture, of course, but also appliances, tools, media, clothing, shoes, luggage, instruments, cars, roommates, pets needing to be re-homed, actual houses ... in other words, pretty much everything legal you’d get on Craigslist. But with the added ability to go to the sellers’ Facebook profiles right there in-app.

And that is how I found my solid cherry wood bed frame and nightstand for $250 instead of the $1200 the previous owner paid for it. No going out before I knew I wanted it, no lines of customers, no dealings with sketchy people, no ridiculous prices, and no more sleeping like a Dickensian street urchin. Just me taking an unwanted bed off someone’s hands and getting myself off the floor.