I love craigslist. It works because it's just so darn simple. If you haven't made craigslist a part of your life yet, go find your city and spend some time perusing the listings. Or better yet, start searching for something you need.
When I was apartment hunting before starting grad school, I searched for apartments exclusively on craigslist. We found plenty of listings and ended up with a great, affordable apartment. We also made it a goal to spend less than $100 on furniture for our apartment by using craigslist. We ended up spending nothing. The trick with craigslist is that the in-demand items go fast-- whether it's an awesome apartment in August or free beer. Free things go especially fast, so you have to be ready to act quickly.
Assuming that you have better things to do with your time than check compulsively for a Wii under $300 in Houston, you should use RSS feeds to find things on craigslist as they're added, just like you (probably) do with blogs. Craigslist is probably the single best use for RSS that I've ever heard of. Craigslist is perfect for things that you would like to have but don't need immediately, and getting things second hand can save you a lot of money.
Here are some examples:
You would really like to replace your couch that is older than you are. You're willing to spend up to $100 for the right couch. You search Lexington craigslist for couches up to $100. It also never hurts to check for free couches. At the bottom of any search, you'll see a little orange RSS icon. Click on it, and it will take you to the feed page for that search. You can subscribe using whatever you use for blogs, or you can bookmark the page. All of my RSS feeds are in my Safari toolbar so I can easily see whenever something new is posted for one of my searches. It works similarly in Firefox, but I think Safari is better.
For big cities, you can search a specific part of the city. For example, if you live in Washington, DC you can restrict searches to the District of Columbia rather than the whole Washington metro area. Let's say you're looking for a cheap desk, but you live in Georgetown without a car. You have some strong car-free friends who could carry a desk for a few blocks if someone nearby was getting rid of one. So, you search for desks in Georgetown under $50 and free desks in Georgetown and then RSS them. This is the kind of thing that won't come up very often, but when the right one does you'll want to know about it. Also, you'll get some posts that aren't offering what you're looking for, such as the "free desk" in Georgetown right now!
Scoring free or cheap furniture on craiglist can be a real deal. The biggest problem is usually figuring out how to get it home (especially if you don't have a car). If you are moving and renting a moving truck anyways, it might be a good idea to plan your move so that you have an extra day or afternoon with the moving truck so that you can go right away to pick up free furniture (which you have found out about right away from your RSS feed). This is what we did because we had the moving truck for up to 4 days at no extra cost (we used three for moving). We were able to pick up two large bookcases.
It also might be worthwhile to keep tabs on free things in your neighborhood by searching for your town/neighborhood name in the free section of your city (eg. Lakewood, OH). This is a way to get things that wouldn't be worth it if you had to go across town, but if someone nearby was giving away pink flamingo lawn ornaments...
Remember you can also use craigslist to sell or give away your own things! This could be a source of extra cash if you find there are some things you just no longer need (or perhaps never even needed in the first place).
One final note about craigslist etiquette: If you've told someone you're going to pick something up, you should actually do it when you said you will, or be sure to tell them otherwise. It is really annoying to wait around for people who never show up. This is why many listings say they won't hold items for anyone and it goes to the first person who shows up. Be sure to heed the scam warnings as well.
Happy Craigslisting! What have you found?
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When I lived in DC I scored about a carton and a half of beautiful vintage French novels and non-fiction. My favorite is the illustrated dictionary. They were a trick to get home though. I took 2 different buses to get there, expecting only enough to fill my backpack. It really helped me when I moved from DC to grad school town. Not having a car was not an issue in DC, but I was moving to a new place, with virtually no public transport (there is now a shuttle bus on campus, but that's it.) I knew I would need furniture for my apartment and wouldn't know anyone in the beginning. I planned the pickups around moving time and got 2 floor lamps, a futon, and a coffee table for $40.
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