Sometimes it’s good to be cheap. All semester you’ve turned to the Sweeps page to get your Cribs fix and check out the latest and greatest accommodations around. Now it’s time for something completely different. In an effort to be a fair and balanced news source, this is Anti-Cribs.

Rob Scaramella, a senior physical therapy major; Maureen Rampick, a senior marketing major; and Loren McDowell, a sophomore computer networking major at Kishwaukee Community College, all moved into their apartment on Rushmore Street behind Lundeen’s Liquors this past summer without really knowing each other at all. In all likelihood it was probably the quickest move-in ever, considering they really didn’t come with any furniture.

“When we moved in, the walls and the carpet were all messed up,” Scaramella said. “There is a bleach stain in my room; just stuff that’s livable but that doesn’t help you.”

When they arrived at the apartment, the roommates didn’t have any furniture for their living room except for a large, blue inflatable chair.

“For a while it was the only furniture we had in the living room before we got the sofa,” Scaramella said. “It was just a big blue thing in the middle of the room.”

The sofa he speaks of was one of the roommates first great finds and it didn’t cost them a penny. Its only cost was the energy it took for them to drag it across the parking lot.

“We found the sofa out back,” Scaramella said. “It was just sitting in the grass. I saw it while I was walking to my car. It was near the dumpster, not in it, so I dragged it in here.”

The two chairs that flank the foundling sofa were also scavenged.

“I found [the chairs] when I was at home and took them back here,” McDowell said. “They were on a street corner.”

McDowell also contributed to the seating arrangement with a coffee table he pilfered from his home.

“My mom was like, ‘Where’s the coffee table?’ and I told her it was at my place,” he said.

Not everything in the room was found, however. The piece de resistance of the entire apartment is their big screen TV.

“The TV is the only thing that is new/purchased [in the living room],” Scaramella said. “Rampick bought it; the TV stand, too.”

It is quite fortunate for Scaramella that Rampick did purchase the communal television considering that his own set, which he keeps in his room, really doesn’t function well as a television at all.

“The sound works but the video doesn’t so it is really more of a radio than a television,” he said. “It sucks. I can hear movies but I can’t watch them. I do have surround sound though.”

Scaramella’s TV sits at the end of his rather humble bed. Scaramella’s bedroom gives a whole new meaning to the college experience.

The room consists of an air mattress on the floor with a cardboard box, covered in a towel, for a nightstand. His computer sits on top of an upturned Tupperware bin and the printer sits on top of the box it came in.

“I wish I had a bed,” Scaramella said. “It sucks sleeping on [the air mattress]. I’ll blow it up before I go to sleep and I wake up on the floor. There is a hole in it somewhere.”

The only entirely functional thing in the entire room is – and I don’t make this up – Scaramella’s didgeridoo which is, for those who don’t know, a traditional Australian aboriginal instrument. While most are made of wood, Scaramella’s is homemade out of PVC pipe and bees wax. It is still entirely functional.

“I made it out of PVC pipe and bees wax,” he said. “I play it too. I am looking to buy a real one, but I think I would rather buy a mattress than a didgeridoo right now; they run about $150.”