May 30, 2025
Start Your New Journey Smoothly — Life Hacks for Students
Hejsan!
This is Clara and I am a first-year student in computational social science (aka CSS).
In my previous blot post (click the link here to check out the post), I briefly addressed some administrative procedures that one need to go through before/ after arriving in Sweden. Today we are going to delve more into daily aspects of living in Linköping and Norrköping! On top of that, I’ll share some life hacks I know and hopefully you’ll find them useful 🌟
Furniture
Let’s start with accommodation. Some of the student accommodation is already furnished, which means that the property comes with some basic pieces of furniture such as a bookshelf and a bed. However, if you opted for or ended up in an unfurnished room, you’ll need to find all the furniture you need on your own. You can either order it online and have the company deliver it to your place, OR, buy secondhand furniture!
Sweden is really renowned for its sustainability and active secondhand markets. As a student, I know that most of the time we do not get an indefinite amount of money to spend on decorating our room, and secondhand furniture really helps to keep the cost low! There are quite a few secondhand stores in both Linköping and Norrköping. Besides these stores, you might consider checking out Facebook marketplace or the student group chats, where many students posted the items they want to sell at quite good prices 🤓
Grocery Shopping
As we all know, we need to do grocery shopping at some point. There are several grocery brands in Sweden and the rule of thumb is that the bigger the store (physical space), the cheaper the goods usually are. To save money, you definitely need some planning when it comes to grocery shopping!
Many of the stores have the information on the week’s deal available on their website. I highly recommend checking it out in advance and planning your shopping list around it. In addition, another thing to keep in mind is that the prices of food can fluctuate considerably in different seasons, and the food that is in season is usually cheaper.
Becoming a member of the supermarket brand that you visit most often is also recommended as you can get some extra coupons (Note that most of the time you need a personal number to become a member).
Clothes
Swedish winter can be really really tough especially for those who’s not experienced with colder climate like I was. I grew up in pretty much the opposite type of climate (hot and humid most of the time), and I was very bad at dressing up against Swedish winter 😇 I realized later that I could actually have avoided those freezing moments by buying clothes in Sweden instead of in Taiwan.
If you do not have any winter clothes that you think will withstand Swedish winter, don’t worry as you can always find something in the secondhand stores here! Save your luggage space for something else!
These are some tips that I find very helpful and I hope you haven’t been overwhelmed by the amount of new information. Living abroad means that one has to take on more responsibility in taking care of themselves and I have also experienced that. It was not easy in the beginning but as long as you keep on going, I believe everything will be okay at the end 😃
If you’ve got any other life hacks that you’d like to share, leave a comment down below! Of course, questions are welcome too!
Finally, I wish you all a lovely and fruitful summer 🍧
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