<p>If your son is getting ready for campus and might be in a suite-type housing, please deflect him (and his new roomies) from buying one of those used couches that dozens of upperclassmen will be selling the first few days of move-in. You REALLY don’t want to know what’s happened to those couches – some guys will even get their women friends to sell them (assuming that women aren’t so slovenly).</p>
<p>Bite the bullet and spend the money or see if there’s something in your house or a quick late-summer garage sale or talk with the roomates’ families.</p>
<p>On campus: Don’t let that son buy that used COUCH!</p>
<p>slipcovers are your friend. I used them in my own house on the sofa that my teenage son inhabited. Much easier to remove and wash that instead of trying to clean the actual cushions. Now that he’s away, off comes the slipcover, hello couch in new condition after 5+ years!</p>
<p>Notice, only son would buy a couch. I have nothing to worry about. </p>
<p>My daughter told me that her guy friends in fraternities are putting up flat screen TVs, and some even with brand new wooden floor. My daughter brought up an orchid plant for her room.</p>
<p>Reminds me of the VW commercial a few years ago where the 2 college aged guys were driving around in their new VW saw an attractive looking stuffed chair being discarded with the garbage, loaded it in their VW (demonstrating the cargo capacity) and then showed the 2 turning up their noses when they got back into the VW. Flash to the chair sitting on the side of the road…</p>
<p>BTW, same advice goes for futons. Used frame OK, spend the $100 and get a new futon.</p>
<p>Thats funny, son just brought home a couch that is now sitting in my garage. it was too big for his new apt. i assume it was used when he got it and then it lived in a house with 6 guys all last year.
Ew</p>
<p>But yes - eew. Though I would love to see a bed bug sniffing dog in action (at someone elses home).</p>
<p>My daughter took her own futon and her room mate took a couch from her house - the apartment had new carpets. I hope there are no bed bugs. eeeeew.</p>
<p>We happen to have a futon and no frame. I suggested to S that he might want to use it since he and roomie have a 3-room suite with a common room to furnish. Found a $75 frame locally on Craig’s List. Cannot get S to stir his stumps to look. He and roomie apparently would prefer to wait until they get there and buy someone else’s old castoff bug-ridden furniture, or spend $80 per quarter renting futon couch…ARGH! (Note: we live within 3 hrs drive of campus, and will be driving him there so that’s not an issue.)</p>
<p>Too late here, too. Son bought used couch last year for dorm room. Now it’s been stored who-knows-where over the summer. When we talked about furnishing his off-campus apt this year he said, “don’t worry. I already have a couch…” So I gave him $400 under the table and begged him to at least buy a NEW mattress/bed, even if there is no other furniture in the apt all year.</p>
<p>S and friends found a discarded futon when moving out of on campus dorm apt last spring,loading it in S’s Jeep with hatch open and friends hanging onto it for dear life and storing it all summer in his storage unit (fortunately climate controlled…maybe prevented the spread of whatever to his other stuff, and the stuff of the two girls he shared the storage unit with? So glad I wasnt there to witness this and only heard about it afterwards.
I suggested I would chip in for the purchase of a new futon cover b/c who knows whats been on that futon,S thought I was crazy.Silly me, I was thinking spilled beer and bodily fluids, not bedbugs.EEEWWWW.
In the interim,this years roomates(some of the same who hung onto the travelling futon last spring) found a discarded couch in the off campus apt complexes discards that matches the other LR furniture…apt complex rents the units furnished (complex was discarding it…I just saw it its honestly not so bad).So,no room for the futon.Another group of friends in an unfurnished apt is taking it.I didnt offer them a new cover LOL.</p>
<p>My brother rented furniture by the month over 20 years ago while he was in graduate school. Hidden in the coach was a needle (the type for injections)! He was lucky enough not have stabbed himself with a dirty needle! Watch out.</p>