Lesson 2: Making A Hovel Into A Home

Hello again, everyone! Socially awkward first year here! Many apologies for the long absence. I would blame my lack of attentiveness on the rigorous requirements of my tertiary education... but, the more truthful answer would be "I get drunk a lot and forget to do things." Sorry about that.

This is pretty much what every weekend for the last month has looked like for me.

But all apologies aside, welcome to the second lesson from your favorite incapable mess of a uni student- how to inexpensively make your new uni student hovel into a habitable home (by uni students standards anyway, it's still likely no one else in their right mind will want to live there). As always, I learned all these lessons in the most entertaining way possible- by completely fucking up, and then scrambling to fix my many mistakes. Remember, kids, I make the mistakes so you don't have to!

Welcome to Phoebe's life, where everything is made up at the last minute
and the  price of wine doesn't matter!

So, silly pictures and dated pop-culture references aside, here are a few Socially Awkward First Year approved tips to aid you in making your transition into Awesome Independent Student Life a little easier.

Tip #1: Always Remember Your Cutlery

I'll admit it, I'm not the most practical of people, but there's one person who definitely has me beaten when it comes to being stunningly useless in real world situations. This, of course, is my dear mother, and while I love her a lot, I also know that she's really not good at thinking ahead. It's kind of a genetic thing.

We're also both terrible at being dignified during formal occasions.

To her credit, she did try really hard to set me up for moving out, in her own funny little way. At this stage, I'd pretty much thrown most of my personal belongings into boxes, ready to shift them up to Brisbane, so she thought it'd be a nice idea to toddle up to my impromptu moving van (read: my dear friend Erik's car) with a tray of various kitchen items she didn't particularly need any more. Of course, I took these with great jubilation, as if there's anything I love, it's not having to pay to get my own stuff. However, I could have been a little more vigilant with checking exactly what she supplied me with, as I found out later during my first cold and lonely night in my new apartment.

To understand what exactly happened, you have to understand that my Mother and I both have a very special type of brain. You see, we both have incredibly good memories... half of the time. The other half of the time, we forget our own birthdays and lose our sunglasses on our heads. So Mum remembered to supply me with plates, a few cups and even a couple of knives and spoons... 

However, it's really hard to eat cold spaghetti with a knife and a spoon. 

In the words of King Richard III when he came to a banquet half an hour late,
"A fork, a fork! My kingdom for a fork!"

Having said that, don't try and cook for yourself on your first night in a new place. Just get some take-out. Everyone does it, and to be honest, after a long and awful day moving boxes, you are not going to feel like cooking anyway. My moving buddies were lucky enough to swing by Maccas on their way back home, whereas I was grumpily trying to spoon a lukewarm cheesy tomato pasta concoction in my mouth because like a dumbass, I had forgotten both a can-opener and a frying pan as well.

Of course, this was all solved by a trip to Kmart the next day with one of my new neighbors, which brings me to my next point....

Tip #2: Kmart, Kmart, Kmart. 

As a student with little to no money who subsides mostly on a diet of cheap wine and Cup 'O Soups, I really love not having to spend much on household goods. While a lot of people who are older and wealthier than I am will preach about flicking out a little extra dough from their wads of cash to invest in quality goods, I am all about taking the shittiest and cheapest option I can. There is a time for thinking about the future, and that time is when I don't have to sponge off the government to make ends meet. 

Just so you know, I pretty much owe my life to these guys and am pretty sure they own my soul as collateral.

Moving to Brisbane started my love affair with Kmart- a mecca of cheap but okayish-quality goods that have enabled me to live a reasonably comfortable existence without selling my body on the street. In particular, there is a special place in my heart for the Kmart home brand. I remember after the whole debacle with the forks the night I moved in, the first thing I picked up was a sixteen piece cutlery set. It cost me a grand total of three bucks. I was in penniless student heaven.

When my eyes fell upon these, I heard angels singing. It was glorious.

Chuck in a frypan for eight dollars, a  cheap can-opener and a few more useful bits and pieces here and there, and my whole kitchen was ready for action without me having to fork out more than the twenty in my pockets. However, that said, I was lucky enough to move in with someone whose parents pretty much gave them everything a student chef could ever need.... but of course, she didn't technically move in until I'd been there for three weeks on my own. So thank you, homebrand, for making sure I didn't starve to death in my own filth!

Want an easier way of keeping track of what you'll need? I'd highly recommend writing a list of anything you already have and then seeing what's missing. If you have room mates, check out your pooled resources and then you can all work out an affordable way to make sure you have all the basic necessities covered. It'll save time, money and a lot of arguments down the line over who should be fiscally responsible for providing the household with a working vacuum cleaner.

Tip #3: Get Extremely Good At Spotting Bargain Furniture (And By "Bargain", I Mean Pick It Up From the Side of the Road)

This is what I like to call the Holy Grail of free stuff.

Aaaah, Australia. One of my favorite things about this country is that rather than put things into storage or take them to the dump, you Aussies just love putting things you don't want on the side of the road. Sure, the surface reason may be that you just want that ugly 1970s reject of an armchair out of your home, but we all know that deep down, you're just waiting to bestow your rattiest used furniture on the hoards of impoverished uni students looking to sit on something mildly more comfortable than a splintered wooden crate.

When I had a car, I was kind of a bit of a nut for collecting other people's furniture. Many a time I'd be cruising down the long and windy roads of my rural surroundings and quickly pull over to chuck a set of rain-damaged bar stools in the back seat. As I've said before, I am all about not paying for things, and scouting out other peoples' front lawns for their old stuff is a great way to pick up a lot of free stuff.

However, if you're not lucky enough to stumble across the motherload of all nature collections, do not despair. There's always op shops, because hey, no one expects people to pay a hefty price for a chair someone else has died in. Unless they're psychic... and then, really, it's kind of just exploiting someone who finds it morally acceptable to exploit the bereft, so fuck them. 

My mother volunteers in a huge charity shop warehouse and a lucky consequence of this is we can always get our hands on pretty decent furniture for next to nothing. The woman once found me the most comfortable king-sized bed I've ever slept in for under sixty dollars. We used to have a different couch every three months. The point is, there's a surplus of these everyday items in places like Vinnies, so it's more than possible to get everything you need for a very, very low price.

So don't head out to Harvey Normans with a sad sigh and the knowledge that your wallet is about to get a whole lot lighter. Put all your snobbery aside and get ready to delve into the wonderful adventure of collecting second-hand furniture. Trust me, apart from a slightly higher risk of household pests and bloodstains, it's practically as good as getting your stuff brand new. Okay, maybe not, but come on people, we're on a budget here!

Trust me, all blood comes out if you just scrub hard enough!

Tip #4: Don't Be Afraid of Spending Money Where You Have To

Okay. You know how I just said all that shit about saving money by cutting corners practically everywhere? Yeah, just pretend you didn't read that so I can give the following advice without sounding completely hypocritical. Or just acknowledged that like every human being, I can't string more than two sentences together without contradicting myself. Whatever floats your boat.

#dealwithit

Here's the sad truth of life: if you don't want things to absolutely suck, you are occasionally going to have to spend money. Probably more money than you would like. That's just the way things go. Some things you can't just buy second hand, and buying them cheaply is just asking for trouble down along the line. The tricky part is discerning what you need to spend your money on and what you can go without, and fucking this up can really take its toll on your finances.

For example, I know I personally spend quite a bit of money on both clothes and make up. To a lot of people, that would seem oddly frivolous. However, it makes perfect sense for a 19 year old girl that goes to uni with a lot of well-equipped, stylish and upper-class young adults. When I go to university or attend university functions, I don't want to feel like shit because everyone else spend several hundred dollars on looking good and I'm standing there in a ratty dress I've had since I was fifteen with my face caked in ten dollar foundation. For me, a large part of my confidence comes from looking good, and that is a pursuit well worth investing a few extra dollars into. Of course, I still can't afford a spray tan, or eyebrow waxing, or a pair of jeans worth more than twenty bucks, but goddamn it, at least I'm making a bit of an effort. And the more presentable I look, the easier it is going to be for me to network and hopefully eventually haul my way up the vicious corporate ladder.

The same goes for household appliances. If you need something like a vacuum cleaner, take the plunge and buy it new, because odds are, you're going to need a functioning one for many years. If you're going to invest in a laptop, it may as well be something fairly decent that won't crap out on you in less than a year's time. Just know your limits and try not to spend more than you can afford. You may not end up with the top of the range, but you'll at least be better off than some poor fucker with an antique vacuum cleaner that spits out more dirt than it sucks up.

Tip #5: Some Useful Links

That just about concludes today's post from Socially Awkward First Year, as I have a lot of exams quickly approaching and probably shouldn't have spent an hour writing this out. However, because I am extremely lazy (or, as my university lecturers like to put it, "I like to encourage independent learning"), here are a few handy links to aid you in setting yourself up without blowing your entire bank balance to smithereens:

• r/Frugal
• A handy checklist of all the things to remember before and during moving
• My Student Kitchen, for some easy, cheap and yummy recipes to try when you first start cooking out of home.
• A neat wikihow article which pretty much reiterates everything I've already discussed, but with less dick jokes
• Something for the more crafty among you, because making things look awesome can be very affordable.

As always, I hope you learned something from my mistakes, and stay tuned for the next installment of Socially Awkward First Year- due whenever I'm sober enough to write it!

Penniless and poverty-stricken,

The Socially Awkward First Year

Lesson 1: House Hunting For The Horribly Hopeless

Pictured here: the horribly hopeless. Look, she's so hopeless, she thinks a box of tea is a hat!

So far, in my first semester of university, I've met maybe a handful of people who live independently. The big trend in first year seems to be either living at home with your parents or staying on campus, because either way, someone else is doing your laundry, making your food and taking care of your bills. To a impoverished uni student, this is like manna from Heaven. Oh, how lovely it must be to come home to a pile of clean laundry! To be forced to eat filling, nutritionally balanced meals! To have the added risk of a parental figure bursting in on you every time you bring home some sweet university booty!

However, not all of us live in close vicinity of our chosen place of study and even less of us can afford to shell out seven grand a semester to live on campus (and subject ourselves to severe alcohol poisoning every other day. Jesus, college kids, your livers remind me of a boxer's knuckles- they're all tough, scarred and leathery). That leaves a couple of options. One, subject yourself to the extreme financial buggery that is Uni Lodge (seriously, you're paying around $350 a week for one bedroom. Who the fuck can afford to spend that much on one goddamn bedroom?). Two, move into a share house. As you're probably guessing from my extreme negativity towards Uni Lodge, I chose the second option, and for the most part, it worked out pretty well. However, having said that, I made a few pretty big rookie errors.

Probably my first error was underestimating how much paperwork I would have to do, and how important it was that I understood it and could fill it all in correctly. Let me drum this into you now- house hunting is not a leisure activity. It is a highly competitive sport. If you are trying to find a place close to a university, be prepared to battle it out with the thousands of other students who want exactly the same thing and are probably a lot more prepared than you. I remember when I went to view one house, there was a girl there who actually had a signed letter from her father's lawyer giving an extra advantage over the billions of others making an application. Furthermore  if you're anything like me and have little to no parental support when it comes to these things, it's going to be even more difficult because honestly, you will have no idea what you're doing.

Get used to seeing a lot of these fucking things.

But here's the thing, these forms are fucking crucial to you even having the faintest chance of finding a place. It's not like handing in a piece of homework a few days late. For the best possible chance of just being considered, you need to have your forms into the real estate agent the day of your inspection, and everything needs to be filled out correctly. If you're not sure what you need to put in your application, go to your local real estate agent and ask them before you look at any places. Generally, I found that the forms didn't exactly specify the finer details of what I'd need to hand up along with my forms, which consisted of things like proof of my parents' income, a guarantor's signature and my bank account details. In fact, I think it took one kind real estate agent to point this out to me, and even then, I still didn't get anywhere for quite awhile.

On that note, if you're applying with a group, every single person has to take responsibility. Here's a a small hint: if you can't trust a person to complete their forms on time and hand them up with the rest of the group, they are probably not someone you are going to want to live with. I had an experience where I politely asked someone to leave the group I was house hunting with because every time we went to apply, she held us up by either filling in her forms late or not making sure the information was correct before she submitted them. After the third or fourth time this happened, my group realized we really didn't want to live with someone that unreliable. If whoever you've decided to house hunt with is already revealing themselves to be a little slack and selfish, then those problems are only going to get worse when they're responsible for helping you pay the bills. Paying your own share is hard enough, let alone being responsible for someone else's.

Before I ever went to check out a house, I got into the habit of printing out the forms and filling them out prior to the inspection. I'm going to be completely honest and say filling out that many forms was an activity that I would rate as having similar levels of pleasure and enjoyment to pouring hot wax onto your exposed anus. It was getting to the stage where every evening I was sitting at my desk until the wee hours of the morning surrounded by mountains of important documents and crumpled tissues (which was way too similar to my end of school exams for me to be remotely comfortable). Unfortunately, at the time I did not have any epiphany regarding a way to make filling out these forms a lot easier for myself. Luckily, my friend Mel (from the wonderful blog My Student Kitchen) and her boyfriend did, and kindly allowed me to repeat this advice to future house-hunters. You see, when these two were house hunting, they made up what Mel affectionately refers to as a "Stupid Number Book". Basically, it's a small book or notepad where you keep a copy of all the important numbers you need for real estate applications- things like your passport number, the phone numbers of your referees, how many zombie children you can take on in a fight (mine is 24). It's a really handy way to keep everything in one place and it means that you won't spend a lot of your night swearing and cursing because you lost your passport under an avalanche of photocopies of your birth certificate.

.... heeeeelp... meeee....

There's another important point- you're going to want about twenty copies of all your official documents. Usually for real estate applications, you require about 110 points of I.D, which usually means copies of things like your birth certificate, passport, driver's license (if you have one), bank statements and centrelink documents. Pro tip, if you think you have enough copies, you probably don't. Also, while it isn't mandatory to get copies of everything in colour, it's wise to anyway, because every little bit of effort really helps. Real estate agents generally will be more inclined to consider applications that are neat, well-presented and have a comprehensive level of required documents stapled to the back of them. So if you hand up something that's missing things, filled out in the wrong order and looks like it's been puked on by your pet dog, they probably won't be too eager to get you to sign a lease.

When it comes to the act of house hunting itself, you're going to want to carefully consider a few things. A really important one is your budget. Do you have a realistic idea of what you're able to pay in rent each week? If you're on centrelink payments like me, you're looking at about $488 a fortnight. In my situation, the maximum amount of rent I can pay without being in extreme poverty is around $150. That leaves me with about $188 a fortnight to spend on food, electricity bills and internet. Plus booze. Lots of booze. In fact, have fun getting used to drinking cheap. I always swore to myself that I would drink with great dignity and style. Then I learned how to drink five dollar wine. Never looked back.

Gossips: A cheap wine for an even cheaper student.

My blood is probably 70% Sweet Lips now.

Other things you might want to consider include:

• How close you are to your university/public transport and other amenities. This is definitely a must if you can't afford to run a car and also if you'd like to minimize your risk of having a really shitty commute.
• How much space you need in proportion to how much money you can spend. Even if you end up paying a ridiculously low rent, no one is going to happy if you're crammed together like a tin of sardines.
• The lowest standard of living conditions you can happily put up with. My place came with some warped floorboards, mold behind the sink, some broken oven fans and dim lights. It doesn't bother me, but I know it could really get to some people.
• Whether you want somewhere furnished or unfurnished. Furnished does cost more, but it can end up saving you a lot in regards to moving your own furniture and buying your own stuff. However, if you're particularly resourceful, you can get most household items for next to nothing. I'll elaborate more on this in my next blog, where I teach you all about furnishing your new digs for next to nothing.

Thinking about these things sooner rather than later can prevent you from making a lot of mistakes. Unfortunately, because I'm not the most financially-minded person in the world, I ended up moving to a place that has a much higher rent than I can comfortably afford. However, because I'm in walking distance from my university and the nearest shopping centre , it's not as terrible as it could be. I just have to be a bit more careful with my money than I'd prefer.

No more burning money to stay warm for this uni student!

In regards to the physical act of house hunting itself, do not underestimate how stressful it is, especially if you have some distance to travel to do it. I drove to Brisbane probably about ten times in the course of a month to try and find somewhere to live. Every single fucking time, I felt like I was on a journey to hell. Driving for two hours or more straight in summer inside a car that has no air conditioning does not put you in a great mood. Add in trying to drive around a strange city where no one knows how to adhere to road rules with a faulty navigation system plus three dehydrated teenage girls and it clusters together into a veritable fuckload of stress. While you won't be able to completely avoid thoughts of destroying all of humanity (especially Queenslander drivers), here are some tips that may make your miserable experience a little more bearable:

•  Bring a lot of water with you, as well as snacks, or at least plan to stop somewhere to eat and relax. Driving around is tiring enough without being hungry and dehydrated too. Trust me, you'll really need to be able to concentrate, and no one's concentration is improved by being thirsty and irritable.
• Do not try to see too many places in one day. I found that I could comfortably see about three houses per day with about a hour's break in between each viewing. Any more than that and I had a substantially higher risk of murdering anything I laid eyes upon. Basically, know your limits.
• Try not to rely just on your GPS or smart phone to guide you to wherever you need to be, because if technology is going to fuck up, it'll fuck up at the most inappropriate time (such as when you're stuck at an intersection with no clue what lane you're supposed to be in while the entire population of Brisbane is stuck behind you, honking their horns). I made sure to print out maps of the routes I needed to take to get from house to house, and it saved my ass more than a few times. Sometimes there really is no substitute for having everything on paper.
• Make time to have a little fun. Sure, you're house hunting, but there's still time to do something enjoyable. The highlight of my house hunting experience was finding a playground near a river and just chilling out with my future house mates. It transformed a pretty shitty day into one that was still pretty awful, because fuck house hunting, but at least I didn't end up trying to drive my car into the side of a building.

Thank you playground, for once again preventing me from committing mass homicide.

Now here's probably one of the hardest parts about finding your own place... waiting to know if you've been rejected or not. And to be brutally honest, if you have no prior history of renting, it's likely that even if you do everything right, you will probably not get accepted for a lot of places. Personally, I was turned down for about fifteen places before I finally got my hands on somewhere to live. Even then, I jumped the gun, because by that stage, I was getting pretty desperate. Wait it out if you can, because one of the biggest risks of taking whatever offer you're given is getting swindled. There are a lot of crooked real estate agents out there who will pounce on unsuspecting students and their equally clueless parents. If you have any doubts about the place or your potential landlord, avoid taking it if you can. Waiting is well worth avoiding a lot of fuckery and financial bullshit later on.

That concludes the first installment of my guide to being a first year university student! Hopefully you learned something from my mistakes, and if not, had a good laugh at how hopeless I am. Stay tuned for my latest post in a week's time, where I write a love letter to Kmart's home maker brand for helping me furnish my kitchen on a shockingly small budget.

Penniless and poverty-stricken,

The Socially Awkward First Year.

Introducing... A Socially Awkward First Year

The natural habitat of a socially awkward first year - hiding behind a glass of cheap wine.

I'm going to be honest. If this was a first meeting in person, I probably would have already dropped something by now. My hands would be shaking a lot (unless, prior to our introduction, I'd had a drink or ten, which does wonders for the nerves) and although I could probably make eye contract, there is no way I would be able to sound even half-way intelligent. We'd chat, both looking for a natural conclusion to the conversation, fail to find it, and then I'd make some awkward excuse as to why I should leave... only to end up walking in the same direction as you. After fumbling a few more goodbyes, I would then go home and wonder why on earth I can't just say "hello" and have a brief chat like a normal person.

Welcome to the life of me, Phoebe Montgomery, socially inept student extraordinaire. Currently, I am studying a Bachelor of Journalism and Law at UQ... and hating at least half of it, which half, you'd have to guess (I'll give you a hint, it's not the one where I get to run around interviewing people). I moved out of home about three months ago, and consequentially, learned a lot of important lessons regarding how not to completely fuck up moving out... by completely fucking up moving out. If you'd like to read a delightful account of said fucking-up, visit my other blog here and you'll get all the gory details. If you're disgusted by the way I'm shamelessly whoring out my other blog, or are frightfully lazy, I'll summarize the experience for you:

I wrote off my car, ended up moving into a place I can barely afford and still don't know how to correctly stack a dishwasher.

Judging from that statement alone, you may be wondering why I consider myself to be an authority on surviving your first year. After all, I've already admitted to making a few mistakes. Surely you should be taking advice from the perfect student; a super-organised, flawless gem of academia that cooks like Gordon Ramsey and can hold their liquor better than the entirety of Russia! Or at least someone who knew what they were doing from the beginning!

To this, I say, "What better way to learn than from looking at someone else's mistakes?"

I'll admit it, I am not a naturally practical person. Although I've been looking after myself since age 15, I still have a lot to learn about being a fully functioning, independent adult. I am also regrettably not the world's best student. However, there is one thing I am very good at, and that is learning from mistakes. So, in this blog, I am going to go through all the mistakes I've made and dish out the relevant advice so you can avoid doing the same. I'll cover everything from making sure you remember to buy cutlery for your first night in your new digs to how to have the occasional night out without blowing your weekly grocery money. Hopefully, you'll learn something, because trust me, making this many mistakes is a time-consuming and costly process.

So welcome to Socially Awkward First Year, the blog that gives practical advice from a non-practical point of view! Official posts begin next week on Thursday, with a rough guide on the many evils of house hunting, built up from my own anecdotes and the experiences of my close student community (read: my neighbors). Until then, I... um. Well. I've got this thing to go to, so... I'll just... Goodbye then! Oh, wait, we're going the same way? Haaaaa, great. Well. Um. Lovely.

OH GOD JUST WALK AWAY SO I CAN STOP TALKING