Setting the Table

You are a newly minted full-time professional. You have your own place. You finally graduated to a mattress larger than those skinny twins in the corner of your dorm room. You even found some cheap furniture on Craigslist – nothing fancy, but hey, it does the trick. It’s been a long time coming, and this is it: you’re finally out there living on your own!

Then one day your parents announce they are coming to town for a visit, and mom can’t wait to see your place. In fact, she suggests you all have dinner at your place.

Ohhhhh, fuck.

Your place is fine by your standards, but it’s a far cry from those pictures lining the subway car in which smiling young couples enjoy chic urbane living rooms overlooking a sexy cityscape (Starting in the mid-$400’s!). You don’t even much like the idea that your girlfriend / boyfriend / cutekickballfriend has been known to hang out there. Now the ‘rents intend to stop by and size up just how much good taste those four (and a half) years of college tuition dollars were worth. Oh fuck, is right.

Thanks to taxes, you only have $1012.32 deposited into your account every two weeks from your job at the nonprofit, and that two-bedroom basement apartment you share with your college roommate eats up $925 plus utilities every month. And you spend about $50 every weekend on the bars, which means you do not exactly have liquid cash to invest in home décor. Hell, you found your couch on the sidewalk (thank goodness for Fabreze) and none of your dishes match, as you snagged those off a Freecycle poster. Dinner at your place? There’s no way.

If this sounds familiar, relax. We’ve all been there. This reporter once hosted his family, his college friends, and his college professor for Thanksgiving. It all seemed like a good idea until he realized that there were nine people coming to dinner and he only had three plates to his name.

These three names will solve all your problems: Pier 1, Target, and Marshalls.

Pier 1 may be the most yuppified and overpriced of the three, but only if you are paying retail. In fact, Pier 1’s clearance section (there is always a clearance section there) often beats the prices on Craigslist. In the picture above, the plates were $2 each; the wine and water glasses were about $3 as a pair; the placemats were $3 each; the centerpiece bowl was $10 (and not a necessity); and the napkins were 69 cents each. That’s correct: $0.69 each. All were purchased at Pier 1 Imports, and the complete set of silverware (for six place settings) was had for a mere $5 as a red sticker item at Marshalls. So for a table for four, an attractive setting can be had for a mere $41.76 (including the centerpiece), and if you add a runner or a table cloth (to hide or distract from the ugly breakfast/poker table you picked up in the alley ;-), your total will be just over $50, not including sales tax. And yes, we admit it, the table runner was bought at Target; at $15, it is the most expensive item in the setting.

The moral here is good things come to those who head to the clearance section. There are plenty of nice (and matching) sets in there, and places like Pier 1 can't wait to move them out as the new styles arrive.

So when mom suggests dinner at your place, tell her: “Gee willickers, that would be great!” After all, you’ve come a long way, baby, and setting your table is a great way to start proving it (just keep mom away from that couch, Fabreze or not.)

-- Dan Driscoll / AptCouture.com

Welcome to AptCouture!

Welcome to Apt Couture, where the good life meets ingenious good sense!

Apt Couture caters to real-life twentysomethings seeking an unlimited lifestyle on a limited budget. If you count yourself among the many young degree-holders who have also graduated beyond the daily goal of plastering themselves at bars, but who still think paying $12 for an entree is for special occasions only, then you have come to the right place.

We are dedicated to our readers, not vendors. We have no interest in useless profiles of local shops or bars consisting of little more than a few terse lines of PR rhetoric. We have no need for glossy style essays lauding the virtues of a brand that you could only afford if your last name is spelled H-i-l-t-o-n. To the contrary, Apt Couture believes in honest discourse applicable to intelligent young "grown-ups" living on a budget...that is not augmented by a regular "allowance" from mom and dad.

Finally, Apt Couture is NOT a place to find smarmy, self-indulgent rants about why Crest tastes better than Colgate. Frankly, we just don't care. Instead, you'll learn about how to obtain top quality brand-name goods while paying less than retail at JC Penny's. You'll read about how to travel well without breaking the bank, or what it's like to take a second job in order to afford that trip in the first place. In short, Apt Couture is a place for discussing living well, even if you are not "well off" in the financial sense.

So welcome to Apt Couture, a guide to celebrating your good taste and ingenuity.