We just moved into a new place and so far I have managed to manifest almost everything we need for under €300. So I am going to tell you how we did it. We are starting from scratch.  Over a year ago we gave up our home in Berlin and started traveling long term. We have gone through the work of letting go of almost all of our material possessions. And after decluttering our last apartment where we lived for 7 years, we really came to appreciate minimalism and traveling with only a few pieces of luggage for our family of 4 for nine months. (click here to watch a video of our crazy decluttering process).

We are getting our own place again for the first time in 13 months! So our wish is to have our new apartment furnished in a beautiful, functional and minimalist way. And we want to spend as little money as possible. Now of course I will tell you manifesting things for free is all about being in alignment, visualizing and feeling good. But as you probably know that already, I will let you know the concrete action steps that helped me in this alignment process. Knowing what we want. Minimalism helped us to be very clear about what we want. We don't have an "we will take anything that's free" approach, but rather a very clear list of things that would make our life awesome.

Getting free Furniture.

We got great furniture completely free of charge from two online sources. 1. Facebook group: Verschenkts Konstanz This is a local facebook group, where people post a picture of things they want to give away for free. It is extremely popular, many things are being offered daily and they are often gone within minutes. Many cities have such a group. If yours doesn't I recommend starting one yourself. When we didn't have an apartment yet, I would occasionally browse through the posts and simply enjoy the abundance of great things that were offered. Sometimes I caught myself being disappointed or discouraged, because the good things were already claimed by someone within minutes. So I made a conscious decision to enjoy the whole concept, wish the people well with their great things and trust that we will get things at the right time. Once we had the keys to our new place, I spent a lot of time checking for updates in this group. The key is to be fast and friendly. To make requests in whole sentences and to comment as well as send a private message to the people. 2. Ebay Classifieds In ebay classifieds there is also a section for free things. The pace here is not as fast as on the facebook group, yet generally the same tips apply as above.

The offline sources for our new things are very simple: 3. The Streets I literally mean picking up things from the street, that others have put out for free. Being at the right place at the right time is of course complete luck. Here the whole being in alignment thing helped us out a great deal. Especially with things we thought would be nice to have, yet had no immediate need for, so there was not much resistance or attachment. For example, after mentioning to my wife that I think Stand Up Paddle Surfing would be something I would love to start doing, two days later we found a surfboard on our street, that was for free! 4. Friends and Family. We don't have many friends here locally, but the ones we do have are awesome and generous. We have gotten some nice thing such as pillows, silverware, dishes. Getting cheap, but awesome furniture. We were willing to spend some money on great things. Ebay classifieds was a good source for kids shelves, and we got some basic inventory at a community thrift store. Luckily the weekend before we moved there was the annual 24 hour flea market happening in town.  We went towards the end and people were happy to give us many great things, such as tools, kids toys, mirrors, wooden boxes, for free or just a few euros. The one "large" investment we made was into the children's mattresses. Yet again, our wish for minimalism and thinking outside the box let us to a very affordable and awesome option. We really didn't want a large bed to take up space in the kids room, we wanted them to have space to play, to rough house, to dance or do gymnastics. All this is is provided by our two new foldable thai mattresses, which we bought at 80€ each. These mattresses are filled with a natural material called kapok. Because it is resistant to mold and mites,and because it has good insulation capacities, it can easily be used directly on the floor. So now we have a very flexible system. During the day the kids use their mattresses as sofas or sport mats, and at night we cover them with sheets and have a firm bed, that their chiropractor highly approves of.

Things to consider You don't pay money, yet it requires time as a valuable resource. Constantly checking facebook for updates on free stuff, messaging people and making 30 minute trips for some small items takes time. Coordinating with friends who have cars to pick up things with you, takes even more time. I highly value time as a resource, and getting things for free instead of paying money is only worth it if it really fits your lifestyle. I invested two weeks into moving and organizing the furniture for our apartment. Besides that as a family we have found ways to integrate it into things we do anyways. The most fun example is picking up a mirror and some table legs a few towns away from us. We all went there together, as I figured I wouldn't be able to get both back on the bus by myself. Not the most fun trip as a family, yet as it had just stopped raining we spontaneously chose to walk back home. It took us 3 hours in total, and yet that is exactly how we love spending our time together. Being out in nature, walking, and being on an adventure.

You have time to get clear on what you want. We moved in with the essentials, such as a place to sleep and a way to prepare and eat food. From there on we build upon our minimalist list of things we need. Instead of trying to make existing furniture and stuff fit into our new place, it is more of a process of finding out how we use the space and what would support us with that. We noticed where the kids like spending time, how we spread out in a specific room or the kitchen, where we as grown ups enjoy working. This led us to actually switch rooms again after two weeks, and enabled us to get specific about items we want to manifest for us in this arrangement. Condition of things. Now I expect that many of you wonder whether the things we got for free are actually in good shape. I am happy to say that the majority of the things are great. Sure there are a few items, where I think they were not worth being picked up, but those were really the exceptions. I must say though that after 13 months of not having our own furniture and always hoping that the kids take well enough care of things that are not ours, I prefer to have things that are well used, instead of new. So here we might have our own specific standard, yet I think this is another great example of alignment and being clear what you ask for. Things in our home now. Here is an unsorted and incomplete list of things we got for free in the past four weeks (i added just few items to the list for which we paid 1-5€) :

I am very grateful for all the amazing people who helped us declutter in Berlin, for the people who have supported us in our journey, and the people who now generously give their things away for free. I hope you enjoyed this manifesting story.  I hope it encourages you to let go of things you no longer need and to trust that you can manifest everything you want and need at the right time.