First you go everywhere local that does not sell new furniture. Does not. New furniture is the pits. It's like a new car. You spend years worrying about the damage you're doing to it, the money you've lost, the depreciation, the interest you're paying on that depreciation, etc. New furniture tortures you like anything that's new. Then you set a budget and start selectively buying used furniture. I give you a 100% guarantee that you will love this process. You get to see your furniture in real life, you get sit in it and see how comfortable it is, you get to know that it's had real life behind it. Once you find that one unique sofa, that one table, that one thing that really speaks to your heart, build your furniture stable around that one piece at a time and it will be uniquely you, composed entirely of previously owned stuff, will have cost you anywhere from nothing to far, far less than Pottery Barn, and you'll get some fun out of it too.

This living room is uniquely me. This is the furniture I chose for myself because I liked it when I saw it, I liked it when I sat in it, because it speaks to me. I bought this sofa from this chick who got it from this dude over here, and you wouldn't believe what you told me about how she got it into her 10th floor apt.

This is not $5,000 of furniture that I have to “get used to sitting in” because it makes a statement about who I think I'm supposed to be, because Pottery Barn told me style looks like $5,000 of furniture I don't need.

F** that. Hit the garage sales, hit the thrift stores, hit the estate sales, especially in wealthy areas, have some fun.

If you make something that's you, you can keep the picture of the Pottery Barn setup and paste it on your refrigerator with a magnet. Each time you pass by it you can snicker at it, how you almost made the worst possible choice: new furniture.

If you can afford Pottery Barn, you can afford someone to pick it up and bring it to your place. Don't worry about shipping/moving yourself. Just pay for it.

Just be aware of that what you pay for shipping now, you will pay again when you move and again and again and again as many times as you move.