Elefant's graveyard

Although is quite true that my veneration for Ikea is bordering dependency, not all my furnitures were made in Sweden.

When I arrived in Belgium I was simply broke so nonetheless that my first furniture was bought ( the couch) for everything else I had to find somewhere else.

In Belgium, as much of the rest of Europe ( except Italy) a solid tradition of flea market and second hand shop is well established. Just as an example almost all I used to have in the kitchen, chairs included, was second hand material and if I did not buy them, the street itself lended me a hand.

How?

Easy, remember the old TV rolling table?

Help yourself

Once I built the new furnitures, the old one was simply useless. Not even parking it in the cellar would have helped.

Here in Matonge you simply put whatever you do not need anymore on the street with a label "Help yourself".

All of my furnitures in the living room arrived like that and the old closet as well. In fact this is the second table I find for my living room.

As such arrived all of my first furnitures and that is because in our society, we get rid of things not because they are broken, but because we do not need or like them anymore.

That said, if I do not like them anymore, it does not mean that someone else could not use them. Thus many put their former belongings on the street this way.

Do not believe that they get wasted though, at worst one hour after everything is gone and someone is placing its new furniture in his or her house.

After all, if you do not need it, why not share it?