Transcript of Podcast #6: Buying the Essentials
In Attendance: Aimee Jiang (she/her), Blanca Romero Milà (she/her)
Aimee: Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of the GIC podcast. My name is Aimee Jiang and I will be your host today. I am joined by Blanca and we will be talking about buying the essentials. So what are those big things that you should get as soon as possible and where can you find them? So we’re excited to have you join us today. I’m gonna pass it off to Blanca to have her introduce herself.
Blanca: So hello, I’m Blanca Romero. I’m a first year Ph.D. student in the Biomedical Engineering Department and I’m from Spain. So I got to Irvine like around like a year and a half ago. As like my favorite things to do here in Irvine is probably like I like going to the ARC, to the gym and playing pickleball with friends and I really enjoy going to the beach here that is really nearby.
Aimee: Nice. We will have a podcast probably specifically on beaches because we have so many of them in the area and they have such different culture depending on which areas you go to. I am with you. I love going to the beach and living so close to the water here. And so thank you. First question that we’ll go over is what are the essential elements of furniture that you will need during the first couple of weeks that you’re here.
Blanca: So it is important to know that if you’re gonna live in like an on campus apartment, these apartments usually come unfurnished except for like the kitchen and the bathroom (Note: apartments will have basics like toilets, stove tops, sinks, and refrigerators. Generally that is all they will offer).So you really need like furniture when you first come here, but this can be like a lot of money, especially this first month. So my advice is that you like buy the essentials and then you slowly buy other like cool and nice things like with time. So the essentials are gonna need the first days, the first weeks are first a bed. You need to sleep on a comfy bed. And then if you need to do some work or some homework from home, you will need a desk and a nice chair or like a comfortable chair. Then you will also need probably like dining table and chairs so that like you can eat. And then like the basic like pots and pans and cups, silverware to make sure you can make your own food. And finally, probably like get a toaster, get a microwave. To make sure you can like properly eat. Like I think those would be the essentials.
Aimee: Yeah, and many off campus apartments are also unfurnished. There are some that are furnished, but the ones that are furnished are significantly more expensive and they usually come with very, very basic things like a bed and a desk, maybe a dresser. Dresser is something you can definitely wait on. You can leave your clothes in the suitcase for a while and get, get through it.I have mine in baskets still because dressers can be expensive. So I definitely think those kind of key things. I think one of the things that I first get when I moved to California, this is different in some other states too. So if you’re coming from out of state, this might be different for you. But apartments here generally don’t have lights in the bedroom. I don’t know if that’s the same with some of the on campus, but every off campus apartment I’ve been in. They’ve had like the lights in the kitchen, the lights in the bathroom. Sometimes a light in a closet if you have like a walk in closet. But they don’t have lights like in your bedroom, in your living room. So I usually try and get at least one lamp, even if I have to move it to different rooms for a while. Just so that you have light when it gets dark outside.
Blanca: Yeah, I agree. Right now my on campus apartment does have lights, but my old off-campus apartment didn’t have light. So it was really dark.
Aimee: Yeah, and I think that was really shocking to me when I moved down to California for the first time being originally from Washington for some reason apartments there all had you know like ceiling lights or ceiling fans and some of the apartments here don’t. So that’s something that you should definitely look into when you first get here if your apartment doesn’t have light. There’s nothing worse than trying to use your flashlight on your phone while you’re trying to go around, your bedroom in the middle of the night. So you talked about the expense of furniture. Is there a specific way or place that you would recommend getting second hand furniture, things that are used lightly, but that would definitely be more cost effective.
Blanca: Yeah, so there’s different options to get used furniture. So the first step is if you know because sometimes you rent a place that has already been used and they put you in contact with the person that is already living there. So you’ll be over if you’re able to get in contact with that person, you try to you can ask for the person that’s moving out from your, future room if they have furniture. Cause sometimes they’re moving like far away and it’s like uncomfortable for them to move with the furniture so they’re going to sell you the furniture for cheap so you’re going to get to a bedroom that’s like already set up and even sometimes I’ve heard of people that they just like gave away the furniture because they just don’t want it and they wanna like throw it away so they just give it to you. So that’s nice. Also, something really common in Irvine that surprised me very, very much is that you can walk around and you can see like really nice furniture next to the trash. I was like, why does people do that? People just moves in and out all the time and big furniture is really hard to move around. So there’s gonna be people that are just gonna leave. Like maybe a bed, a desk, chairs even like microwave, toaster next to the trash. At first I was like I didn’t want to get any of that but honestly just if you see it is in good condition. Just go for it, get it. It’s for you. People just leave it there so that others can use it. Also if you are, if you already know the lab or the research group you are going to, feel free to ask them if they know of someone selling furniture. Like don’t feel shy about it. They probably know people that it’s like, oh, I’m graduating or moving from, moving out and they’re like selling furniture. And the last option is just to look at like online. Second hand like sellers. So there’s like different UCI Facebook pages. So if you go on UCI and search for like UCI for sale, for sale, or sell your furniture UCI or UCI second hand, like there’s different web Facebook pages where you can, buy furniture and for, cheap and there’s also like this CraigList page where you can also get like second hand furniture.
Aimee: Yeah, and some of those pages it’s even free. Cause like you said, people move out. They sometimes just leave it by the dumpster and a lot of times when they leave it by the trash is because they’ve tried to sell it or they’ve tried to give it away and so many other people already have stuff, new students maybe aren’t here yet. And so they just leave it in hopes that somebody will be able to use it. This happens in a lot of off campus apartments too. I have We got like an outdoor shelving unit for flowers that was just sitting in our trash room. It was like pretty new condition. So things that I generally maybe wouldn’t buy because we move a lot and I don’t really use it as often. We have gotten because of just being able to get things in those kind of spaces too. So, it is very weird. You’ll see full on really nice dressers and beds outside by the dumpster but just wipe it down and it’s good to go. So, I definitely recommend taking a little walk around the apartment complex when you first move in. And see, what’s out there. Lots of, lots of good options for that. So for some people though, second hand furniture, especially with certain pieces of furniture, might not be comfortable. I know I see mattresses a lot on Facebook or Craigslist or some of the off campus apartments have their own like, kind of space for people to sell or trade furniture. For me, I wouldn’t be comfortable buying a mattress. I don’t know if that just makes it feel weird. Hotel beds make me feel weird. So I think some people would just prefer to be able to pick something like that out themselves. So if there are pieces of furniture that I’m just looking for a more like cheap option, but not secondhand what options, for places would you recommend?
Blanca: Yeah, so same as you like I wanted my mattress and I wanted like some small things that were just like my like couch which probably like my small couch for like new and for me. So I looked at different options and I found that the cheapest ones are one going to IKEA, we all know. IKEA is great. There’s one really close by in Costa Mesa. It’s like 15 min away. And you can also get a furniture from Walmart, which is like a big grocery store that they have like everything you would need. They also have furniture and it’s like pretty reasonable price. And of course, Amazon, you can find expensive and cheap, but if you take your time, you will probably find cheap options too.
Aimee: Yeah, sometimes I find some stuff at Target. I know the Target by campus is kind of small, so it doesn’t usually have as much stuff. But if you branch out to maybe one of the further away from campus Targets. Sometimes they have some good deals. I buy a lot of my lamps from them. The, for some reason, sometimes lamps seem to be cheaper there, especially like small desk ones. Then IKEA. So I definitely recommend checking out different stores pricing. And for all 4 of the ones we talked about, you can look online so you can kind of get an idea ahead of time before you get here. How much you should maybe be budgeting for those really specific things that you know that you want to get. Obviously that’s much harder with the second hand used furniture because the things that are posted right now when you’re listening to this are probably going to be gone by the time you get here. But for IKEA, Walmart, Amazon, Target, those places. Things might go on sale or might no longer be on sale but for the most part the pricing should be pretty similar so you can usually get a good idea. All 4 of those places tend to have sales in August and September as well because they know that’s when people are going to have sales in August and September as well because they know that that’s when people are going away to college and people are moving into their towns. So you can generally find some good deals on towels, sheets, blankets, and things, desks sometimes organizers for your desk kind of whatever things, might be necessary. So always look out for those good deals. I know as well some students will wait on some of the furniture that may be less necessary. I think a couch is pretty necessary, but you know that might be something we don’t have the budget for and so if you don’t have the budget for a couch but you really want one. You could always wait until the holiday season. In the U.S. and November we celebrate Thanksgiving and then the next is Christmas (she meant holiday) that’s really popular and celebrated is going to be Christmas and in between that time. Pretty much everything goes on sale and so there’d be a lot of bigger sales happening during that time. So if you can wait on some of the things like appliances especially. Those things can go pretty cheap later on. So yeah, I think those are definitely some really good places. One thing that I always check out in IKEA and I recommend you go really early in the day is they have what’s called an As Is section. And sometimes it’s returned furniture that customers have bought and generally put together and then said, that doesn’t really fit here very well. So they return it. Or sometimes it’s the things that are on display. And they’re putting a new display unit and so they’re moving that into this section. So it’s by the cash registers, at the Costa Mesa one. And, we check it out all the time just to see if there’s something in there that we would want. We’ve gotten desks and kitchen tables. I’ve seen dressers in there. Sometimes the chairs don’t always match, but if you’re not really particular or you only need one and you just need a small table, you can usually find tables there. And I’ve seen big couches and all sorts of stuff. In that space for a discounted price because it’s been slightly used, whether as a showroom or like I said as a return from a customer. And so that’s always a good place to check out as well. We have talked about this a little bit in some of our other podcasts, but, for like, should I rent a car if I don’t have a car and I’m trying to get bigger pieces of furniture like a mattress and that you can’t really carry around town. It would be hard to get around. How do I get that big furniture for my apartment if I don’t have a car?
Blanca: Yeah, so that was a big question. Me and my house mate had when we first come here came here. We were like, okay, we’re gonna get furniture, but how are we gonna get this furniture home? So something we did, we used, IKEA has a delivery option and the good thing is that so we came from Spain so we ordered it from like in where we were in Spain and then we made sure it was gonna be there like the second day we were in the U.S. so that we didn’t have to wait because sometimes a delivery takes like up to a week. So we wanted to make sure we would have the furniture like the first, second, third day. It is true that these delivery can be expensive. I don’t quite I don’t remember exactly but it’s like around $50 so that can be a lot. So make sure you get as much furniture as you need and you can do like a conjoined like delivery with your friends. So if everyone wants to like get something from IKEA and you live close by just like do one order and then you just like split the delivery fees. Walmart also has this option. They have delivery options. Also, like it might be a little bit cheaper than the IKEA one, but just like you’ve used it like a big order that you can like split the fees. And also another option that I have not done, but I know friends that did it is to rent a U-haul. So U-haul is like a company that has like vans and like big trucks and small trucks. So you can rent one of those for a day and you can like drive to IKEA and get all the furniture or drive to like the different like places where you’re getting like second hand. So arrange all the second hand furniture pickups that same day and like do like a trip around Orange just picking up second hand furniture.
Aimee: Yeah, and I recommend if you do the U-haul, do it as a group as well because you can save the cost. Cause I think there’s a couple other companies as well that do similar like moving van rentals but U-haul,l I think usually does a charge just like a daily charge and then after you go over a certain amount of miles. So you don’t wanna do like really long trips with it, but if you are all, you know, you and your roommate or, maybe some other people you know that are coming in or that you meet when you first get here or want to do a big pickup together. I think that that’s always a good idea. And then another, we talked about target does delivery as well, but we also talked about Amazon and one of the nice things with Amazon is that there is an if it’s something that can be sent to an Amazon locker pickup space. There’s one really close to campus. If it’s a really big piece of furniture again, you’d have to like carry it from the Amazon locker to the apartment. But if you have something, or someone that can help you do that, and you can always deliver it to the locker and you could deliver again like you said when you’re not here yet you could deliver it and then pick it up once you arrive. And so sometimes that can be a really good option. Especially if you don’t want to like, oh, what if I’m delayed? What if my flight’s cancelled? I know that’s been a problem, lately for some people it’s like flights getting canceled. So If you wanna buy, I would say smaller stuff like blankets and pillows and pillowcases. You can get those on Amazon and they can hold them at the locker for a certain amount of time for you. And so that can make things easier.
Blanca: Yeah. Yeah, you can also get if you use the UCI email you can get the UCI prime membership for like half the price. And these Amazon lockers are everywhere on campus. So next to like most, on campus like apartment complexes, there’s like Amazon lockers so that’s very easy.
Aimee: Yeah, and I think sometimes when the lockers don’t fit it, you can send it to the hub. There’s also like a bigger store, in what we call UTC and I’ve sent really big pieces of furniture like computer monitors. I’ve had those sent there so that they’re not like sitting at my front door or just waiting for someone to steal them. And then I’ve just gone and picked him up. So the lockers and the hub are definitely super helpful. And that prime discount as a student is really great. So I highly recommend you look into that. So there’s other kinds of second hand items that, people may want to buy, especially for those that aren’t going to need to have a car or you know as a new student a textbooks are really expensive so where are some places that you can go for second hand items like bikes. Maybe some electronics like computer monitors. I see those pretty frequently on some of these websites. Dual screens is such a nice thing when you’re in grad school and then books and so textbooks and things. So where would you recommend that people look for those?
Blanca: So again, my first recommendation probably would be to go like to, Facebook, all the Facebook pages. They have like everything there. Like I’ve seen like keywords and that you said like all these monitors.Everyone has like at least 2 monitors. So when they leave, there’s like a lot of monitors on these web pages. There’s also a lot of like thrift stores like around here, like, Costa Mesa, Santa Ana, which are like really close, but are towns like cities and close by to Irvine. Also something that surprised me very much because I like books a lot like reading books and also textbooks. And if you walk around like campus, not campus itself, but like campus on campus apartments. There’s like these small wooden houses that look like big bird houses and they’re full of books. So you can just like open that little house and get the book you like and if you have a book just put a book back if you don’t have one that’s fine and then when you finish reading you put it back and then you have books and I’ve seen even textbook there so that is really nice. And also here on campus, Almost everyone has a bike. It is really nice to. It’s a big campus. And it’s really nice to like have a bike to like get to work or anything. So apart from like all the other secondhand options, there’s like a lot of bike options like on Facebook for example, there’s this like UCI I know like recycle bike there where like it’s like in the beginning of the year and there’s like this huge like bike there and if you don’t have a bike you can get a bike for like really cheap and if you have a bike or you bought like a really cheap bike that it’s like not in perfect conditions, you can go there and then like fix anything that needs to be fixed. So that is really nice.
Aimee: Yeah, and I seen at that ReCycle bike fair, which usually happens like kind of early on in the school year. I’ve seen them help you register your bike too. So you definitely want to register your bike on campus that way if something happens and they could talk about bike safety, they can talk about making sure you lock up your bike properly. But if something happens in your bike is stolen, if it’s registered, it’s much easier for a campus and Irvine police to be able to look for your bike or if they find a bike that looks like it had been stolen to know who who this bike belongs to. So I always recommend checking out the ReCycle bike fair because I think there there are helpful things that you learn while you’re there. And I definitely think that’s one of my favorite activities to see at the beginning of the year. I bike around Irvine a lot. We have a lot of support for getting your bike fixed throughout the year too from the bike shop on campus. And the fact that there’s a bike shop on campus means that people do bike a lot around here. It’s a great way to get to the local grocery stores, especially if you aren’t sure if you want a car or that you’re gonna need a car to be able to bike around and get out a little bit is always really nice. It’s a bit of a bike and it doesn’t always have bike lanes, but I’ve even bikeed down to the beach. The I’ve even bikeed down to the beach, the Corona Del Mar beach. And so they’re definitely options for you to be able to get out. And then maybe take the bus back. You can clip your bike on the bus and on the front of the bus. And so highly recommend that. And then for people who are living off campus again, see if your apartment complex has a community space for these second hand items. I’ve seen a lot of monitors. Things like blenders and toasters and things on on those sites especially throughout the summer and into the early parts of fall because people again are moving in and out as they finish up their time here in Irvine. So there is always something for sale or up for free or at the dumpsters throughout the year. So this isn’t like a Oh, if I’m late, I’m not gonna get something. There’s always things that are getting posted as people maybe buy new things or maybe you’ve got somebody graduating in December that’s going to be moving out. So there are people that move throughout the year around Irvine. So you’ll definitely find things. Ramses and I talked about this a little bit in our off-campus housing podcast. But scams are something that I always like to highlight and I know you and I have talked a little bit about so is it usual to find scams in some of these spaces where someone’s trying to take advantage of you?
Blanca: Yeah, so unfortunately it is. And you said the most scams I’ve seen is when I was looking for off campus, housing. That’s when I like everything was a scam. At some point you didn’t know what it wasn’t like everything was. But sometimes, these, this like second hand like sellers are also scams so yeah, you, you gotta be careful. UCI International Center has like a scam alert, section. So you’ve used this Google like you see international center scam alert, you will find it. And there are like you can read like about like what’s a scam, how to identify and, what different types of scam is there and what to do with like if you identify a scam so yeah that is just because I was not used to like like finding like scams. I didn’t even know what an actual scam was. I thought it was just like a something that like big companies did or like things like that but no there’s like yeah
Aimee: Yeah, I’ve definitely seen it. I would say if the price seems too good to be true. I mean sometimes you’ll see like free TVs and stuff too and sometimes it really is like someone’s just leaving and they don’t wanna take their big TV along with them, especially if they’re moving out of the state or out of the country. But I would say if it’s got a price that seems abnormal and not good enough. If they ask for you to give money ahead of time, if there’s no pictures and they refuse to have pictures. Or if they wanna meet at a really weird time of day or area, I would just. stay away from those kind of things. I think one of the big things that I always recommend is meeting in the middle of the day if you’re picking up an item from someone pick up on campus and like a really busy area of campus or if they want to meet with you off campus trying to meet and like a parking lot or buy a grocery store or something that has a lot of people going in and out and always in the daylight. I’ve even seen some people talk about that they say, yeah, I would love to swap this item or buy this item from you, but I am only willing to meet you in the police stations parking lot. And that might seem like, oh, that seems like it’s crazy. But we’re better and safer to meet someone that you’ve met online to buy something. Then somewhere where you have the support of the police. So I’ve seen that on some of the, there’s a couple of different web pages that UCI has about scans and I’ve seen some people recommend that on some of those pages. A safe place somewhere, you know, in near a police station just to make sure that you. That you are taking care of your safety first. I would say around campus, especially on some of the UCI pages on Facebook, you’re probably less likely to run into those things. But unfortunately it does happen. So you just always want to be careful. Ask lots of questions. Have somebody with you don’t go to these things alone That kind of thing. Yeah.
Blanca: Exactly. Yeah, I was gonna say try to go with someone like them don’t go alone.
Aimee: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, thank you. I think this was a really helpful conversation. I think we always want to have those essentials with us as soon as possible, but it’s already an expense moving to Irvine and starting graduate school. So where to find some good deals is always a really helpful thing. Is there any last thing that you want to add?
Blanca: I don’t know. I think my advice would be to like slowly get what you need and make your place feel like home as much as possible.
Aimee: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you definitely wanna feel at home, but take your time. I see a lot of students over extend their budgets early on because they’re like, I need a couch in and end table and a picture and it’s like. You need a desk and a bed. And some hangers maybe for your closet and that’s probably good enough for a bit. So, so yeah, definitely I agree. Your advice is great. Start small and build on that over your time. And at some point you’ll be like, wow, I have a lot more things than I probably really need when you’re getting ready to graduate and it’s been a few years and you’re like, okay, I added too many things to my apartment. But just take your time to get there for sure. But yeah, thank you for joining us. We hope that this was helpful. Keep an eye out for more conversations coming soon about, purchasing cars, used and new cars, differences between that, how to settle in to your time at UCI. I look forward to having you join us on other podcasts in the future.