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Hi everyone. I hope that you're well. My name is Christian and welcome to my channel, Backpacking Bananas. If you don't already know, a couple of weeks ago, I moved to Australia. I am here on my second working holiday visa, having done my first working holiday visa over 10 years ago. So, I'm really, really excited to be back. And in the coming weeks, I'm going to be searching for a job. I'm going to be searching for somewhere to live. But at the moment, I've just been settling in, sorting all the admin tasks that I needed to. and I've been doing a little bit of shopping to help me get settled in. So, of course, the place I had to go to in Australia was Kmart. Kmart, I think, is
my favorite store here, which I am so sad that we don't have in the UK. I think the closest thing that we have in the UK is perhaps Primark, especially because Primark has the home section now, but it doesn't compare to Kmart. It's the kind of shop that just absolutely thrills me to be inside. And so in this video, I'm going to take you through a Kmart haul. Now, I didn't make all of these purchases in one shopping trip, but I'm going to show you everything that I've bought there in the last couple of weeks. Starting off with the essential things that I think are helping me with my storage and organization from the get-go since arriving in Australia. Then, we'll move
on to some non-essential items that I've bought there because I am just a sucker for all things in there, and I get sucked into things that I definitely don't need, but I'm very excited about. And then at the end, I'll also talk you through some things that I've actually got my eye on that maybe I'll purchase in the future, but I haven't purchased yet. You can deinfluence me if you want, but like I said, I'm a sucker for a Kmart purchase. So, obviously, when I first arrived in Australia, I had two big suitcases worth of clothes, and I'm very lucky that I'm staying with my sister and her family at the moment, so I've been able to unpack into this room, but at some point, I'll be moving into
my own space. And so I wanted to buy a few kind of like storage and organization pieces which were just going to help me keep some things together and organized whilst I'm here, but would also make it easier for me to move somewhere else and kind of use those same storage solutions, if that makes sense. So I'm very lucky that my sister already had a bunch of free hanging up space and hangers, so I was able to hang a lot of my top. And then she also had this square block unit here for me to fold a lot of my clothes. However, since I just came from Pakistan, I had quite a lot of like miscellaneous hiking bits which I know I'm not going to be using too much in Perth. And so, I bought this cube. It's a really lovely boulay material. And
they had these cubes in a bunch of different materials as well. And to be honest, they're just super versatile. My boyfriend has a bunch of these. So, when he came to stay, he literally just bought his boxes of things so that he could stick them in the same unit. I definitely feel like I'll buy at least one more of these. The next thing that was quite pressing to organize was my underwear. So, like my pants, my socks, and my bras. Now, when I came up, they had this linen look section where they have lots of different storage items with lots of different dimensions. So, what I ended up going with were these linen look open storage boxes, narrow I think the name is. And so, they look
like this on the outside. And I'm currently keeping my socks in there. They're just open. They're quite, as you can see, squidgy. I've got my pants almost overflowing in this one, but it's quite a perfect fit really. And these slot perfectly into the chest of drawers that are beside the bed here. And they were so good that I even bought another two of them for my bras as well. So, I'm really happy with those because what I'm also thinking is that when I move out of here, even if I just have open shelves, they can just go on the shelf like that. It keeps all of my underwear together and just makes me feel like a more put together human. Because of course, the fun thing about being on a working
holiday and not just traveling around Australia is that you can actually feel like you can unpack a bit and organize and have a bit of a system, which pleases me a lot. Also, in that linen look range, I got a chest of drawers. Now, they're not super sturdy, but they're sturdy enough. And I've decided that these chest of drawers is basically going to be my backpack spilled out. So, all of my electronics to be honest. In here, I'm keeping things like my wires, my power banks. I've got some GoPro accessories. In the top here, I have a charger for the car. I have my label maker. Oh, I bought a little pen cup as well, which actually will probably be living on the top with all of the pens,
but I haven't currently done that yet, so it's just living inside. And having my things in here is just a much nicer solution for living than keeping all of it in its backpack, you know. And also, I'm just a big fan of the linen look range in general because it's fairly stylish. It's unoffensive and it will just go with everything in your bedroom, no matter what your bedroom looks like. So, big fan of this. And then I've got one storage thing for the bathroom. Luckily, there's a few little baskets in the bathroom where I can put most of my things. However, there's just a few things that I like to have handy on my sink top every single day, but obviously it's messy when it's just out there on
the sink top. So, I found this little guy, which I thought was super cute. There's two smaller drawers on top, which is where I keep my contact lenses. I wear daily contact lenses, so I like to have them somewhere super handy every day, separating right and left because I have a different prescription in each eye. So, I keep my right contact lenses in there and my left contact lenses in there. And then in this bottom one, I've just filmed it with creams and serums that I use basically on a daily basis. My retinol, my face moisturizer, my eye cream. I do have a few more creams and serums that I don't use on a daily
basis, so I keep them underneath the sink. But like I said, I like to have the things that I use everyday accessible on the countertop. So, I thought this was a really neat way of storing those things. I like the way that it has the wood on the top and on the sides, but then they've got the white drawers. And because it's flat like this on top, I normally just keep my toothbrush, my toothpaste, and my deodorant on the top there. And the final piece of essential storage that I got, I'm not sure if this was like the perfect item for me to get, but I thought it was pretty good. I got this box here, which has lots of colorful boxes on the inside. And I thought that this would be really good storage for things like my receipts
and my important documents, which I don't want to lose because when I'm traveling, that's another thing that's normally scrumpled up within my backpack. But since I'm living here now, I feel like that paperwork needed a more permanent home. Again, something that I could easily transport to a new home when I move out of this room. And I also got a little box of clips. So, what I've been doing is all my receipts from the same month I will clip together and I will put into these boxes like that. I feel like if I start my time here in Australia organized, I'm hoping it will continue to go on that way. Okay. And finally, this is not storage, but it was kind of essential. I got a belt. It's a
brown leather look belt with a gold hardware. If you've been watching the channel recently, you may know that I've been on a summer glow up. I've lost over a stone. And that means that my jeans don't fit me anymore. They kind of fall down. So, I needed a belt. Really proud of that. Actually, I haven't actually worn this belt yet, but I will show you what that looks like on. Now, moving on to the non-essential items that I just couldn't resist. So, Kmart has the most beautiful range of pillows and cushion covers. I really just wanted to buy so many, but I was like, "No, don't. Christian, refrain. Wait until like you've actually got a slightly more permanent place than where you are right
now." But what I did buy was something that I wanted to buy the last time I was in Perth, but they were out of stock in Kmart. But I saw them just 20 bucks. It is a very large soft fluffy cushion with these sort of armrests. And you might be thinking, Christian, why the hell did you get that? So my sister has this. It's only $20. And it is perfect for setting up somewhere which might be a bed where you just want to sit upright and have an armrest. I'll tell you what it actually got me thinking. When we stay at my boyfriend's house, we tend to watch the TV on his computer screen on the other side of the room from the bed and I'm just always really uncomfortable just kind of like lying like this. And
so I actually thought it would be great to bring to here to basically turn the bed situation into a sofa watching situation. That was actually my main thinking when buying this. So, when I saw that it was in stock again, I was like, "Yes, I have to get it." But currently, it's just living on my bed. It's very soft. It's very nice. Something that I've been wanting to get more into is crocheting. I love doing little arts and craftsy activities. I actually crocheted my nephew's baby blanket, but very, very badly. It was a very easy first project to get into, but I want to get better at crocheting. And I saw that Kmart had this DIY mini crochet kit. They actually had loads of little characters that you could crochet. And so I decided to go
with the octopus. I thought, "Ooh, that's a really good practice project for me." And to go along with that, just because this is a hobby that I'm kind of wanting to commit to, I also got a crochet hook set. It's got nine crochet hooks, all varying in size. This was only about $7 or something. By the way, I'm going to put the prices of all of these things on the screen. And so, of course, along with that, I also bought some yarn. These balls of yarn were only $2.50 each. So cheap. And so then I thought, well, now I've got all of these things making a mess in the house. I need a good storage solution for all of these things. Again, somewhere semi-permanent that can be neat here,
but also easily move to a new location when I do that. And then I saw this portable storage organizer, and I thought that's perfect. That can fit my crochet hooks, that can fit my yarn. And to be honest, it can probably fit anything crafty that I want in there. So this is my new little craft box. And in the same crafty section in Kmart, I also saw, now this is really random, a shell rug latch hook kit. You can make your own rug. So, it comes with this canvas. It also comes with yarn and a latch hook. As you can see, I haven't opened it and I haven't fully looked at the instructions, but I thought, what a cute little project. So, I can then keep this rug maybe in my bathroom. Maybe I can
give it to my three-year-old niece who would probably enjoy it as well. But yeah, I just thought what a fun little crafty activity. Okay, the last two items I have to show you were arguably kind of unnecessary, but I just thought that they were such good value, I couldn't say no. So, the first one is a shoe travel organizer. Now, I had this one in mind because the last time I was over here and I was going between where I was staying and where my boyfriend was staying, I would always bring at least two pairs of shoes and I would be using like a big supermarket bag to transport all of my things. And I always just hated how my shoes were in amongst all of my clothes. So, I thought that this
was a nice solution. open and then a pair of shoes fits in each side. You can close it up and I can keep them separate from the rest of my clothes. That's lovely. And then the final thing is a jewelry transporter. So, in a similar fashion to the shoe thing, again, when I'm just going on short trips either to my boyfriend's house or maybe we go on a weekend away and I want to bring some jewelry and I actually want to store it nicely as opposed to just stuffed up in my toiletries bag like usual. I thought I would give myself this luxury. I particularly liked that it had particular ring holders um because if you don't know I for the past few years I have been collecting rings from Pakistan. Let me show you my small
collection. This box is not from Kmart though. I did want to find something like this in Kmart but they did not have exactly what I was looking. So that's everything that I bought from Kmart. But there are a few things that I've got my eye on. They've got yoga mats and workout equipment. I'm sure I'll probably get a yoga mat at some point cuz it's always handy to have one of those. They had a privacy pop-up tent on sale for $8, which I thought was very good. If I go camping on the future, I feel like that's going to be really handy. Similarly, they actually just had loads of camping stuff, which I was so tempted by, but I was like, "No, Christian, hold off. Wait until you're actually going on a camping trip before
you start splurging on things that you don't need." I'm very interested by this square cushion recliner. They are amazing for going to the beach with. I know my sister has a couple of them, so I feel like this is something that I could definitely be buying in the near future. And similarly, when beach season comes around, I think these coolers are going to come in very handy. I'm sure I'm going to need one, especially the ones that are on wheels. That is so good. And as a travel vlogger, obviously, I was super interested in the travel section, the packing cube section. They've got loads of different ones. They've got these kind of like hardy clear ones. I don't know what I would use that for, but I feel like I
want to come up with a recent because it's cool and I've never seen that before. But I'm going to try and be a good girl with my finances and not buy all of these things right now if I don't know exactly what I'm going to use them for. But I'm really happy with everything that I have bought so far, especially all of those storage items. I feel like they were so necessary and I hope that they will be good when I move to new residences over the next year to wherever that may be. So anyway, I really hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thank you so much for watching. If you are just arriving in Australia on a working holiday visa, get yourself to Kmart cuz it's the best place ever. I've
got loads more content to come for you of things that I'm doing in these first few weeks in Australia to settle in like finding a job, finding somewhere else to live. So, if you haven't already, do make sure that you are subscribed so that you don't miss any of those updates and I will see you guys in the next video. Bye-bye.
