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Shopping
By Kimberly Tran
Second year student Kimberly gives some excellent insights and
tips on buying furnishings and other items needed for college.
Her tips are useful for both parents and new college freshman as
well as experienced students.
Summer is barely over and I have already received several catalogs
from stores advertising dorm room furnishings. I have to admit, they
do a pretty good job with the advertisements. Full of bedding
options, colored lamps, storage containers and household gadgets, I
am tempted to skip the dorms and move into a new apartment just so I
can completely re-decorate. But alas, I had to restrain myself
before my first year of college; shopping for dorm life was just too
expensive! However, now that I am about to enter my second year, I
actually get to move into an apartment and have acquired some tips
saving money while going crazy with interior design.
Before my first year of dorming, I realized a great tip when I went
back-to-school shopping. The minute high school ended, I went
looking for new furniture and supplies for my new life scene. But
after looking at the prices, I felt a bit sick thinking about how
much I had to pay on top of tuition and registration fees.
Nevertheless, I managed to find some great deals for my room.
I bought a comforter set for my dorm bed at Target half-way through
summer. It was a great color and I was pleased with the price. It
came with a comforter, sham and bedsheet. One week before I moved
onto campus, I went back to Target for some quick purchases. I just
wandered into the bedding section when I saw a full bed set complete
with comforter, sham, bedsheets, pillow cases and bedskirt for half
the price of my first comforter set. I was appalled! Not only were
the beddings on sale, other appliances like desk lamps, white boards
and hampers were all on clearance. I go to a quarter system
university so my classes started much later at the end of September.
I then figured that because most colleges were already starting
classes, stores like Target clearly decided to put their college
items on sale. That’s when the real shopping began.
Like the cheap and bill-ridden student I was, I returned all my
previous purchases for the exact same things at half price. Now you
may think that the variety of choices was also cut in half but
that’s not quite true. I managed to find all of the supplies I
wanted for my new room throughout different stores like Target,
WalMart, Costco and Ikea. They all had, what I now term,
“the-end-of-back-to-school-shopping shopping sale.”
Now that I have a bigger space to re-decorate, I have yet another
reason to go shopping for all those fun appliances that just seems
entirely necessary when a person moves out. And I will definitely do
my shopping minutes before my move-in date. Because now I can do
things on my own timing and I can always shop for items throughout
the year. Those back-to-school days are just ploys that will shrink
in prices when summer is over and everyone is, well, back in school.
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