My apartment is full of furniture, none of it bought. The couch came from a family who donated it to our church, but the church had no room for it. Same with the easy chair. Maybe we bought the folding table and the plastic porch chairs, but that's, what, twenty dollars? I have two lamps from who-knows-where. My filing cabinet was thrown away by someone in the Science Department. I use a nightstand that I built in a summer camp woodworking course. I stole a second filing cabinet from my parents. A small cabinet was found in a little-used closet. My father helped me grab a bookshelf/entertainment center from a neighbor's garbage one Christmas; it covers one full wall of my bedroom. In turn, I helped him rescue a large, metal teacher's desk from the scrap heap. Until recently I had a set of video shelves thrown together with some old wooden boards and empty shoe boxes. And how could I forget the green table besides me, a twenty-five-year-old reject from an ill-fated shop class? (I made the trim out of a roll of packaging tape. Someone threw away the tape as well.)