Her Campus Logo Her Campus Logo
Style > Decor

Ways To Organize Your Dorm Room for Maximum Potential

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at FSU chapter.

If you’ve heard from anyone about dorms, you probably know that it’s not exactly the most spacious and comfortable setting. But don’t worry, I’m here to show you how you can organize it to the maximum potential while considering aesthetics!

Moving into dorms and the whole process of adjusting to college can be exhausting. But if you end up creating an aesthetically nice and organized space for yourself, it can make your experience much better. In this article, I’ve narrowed it down to three ways in which you can make sure your dorm room reaches its maximum potential. 

Consider furniture placement

First of all, the placement of furniture is super important. Arranging the place and direction of your furniture correctly can prevent a cramped and chaotic space and lead to an open and flowing room! In order to achieve that open space, I’d recommend having your bed in a corner of the room against the wall. If both of the beds in the room are horizontal and in the middle of the room, the room will look and feel cluttered due to the lack of space in between. Try to maximize the space between the two beds so that you can achieve that sense of openness in the room. 

I think a good setup for smaller rooms is one bed backed against a wall horizontally and the other bed backed against the wall vertically. If the room is wide enough, another good setup is both beds backed against a corner vertically (and this way you don’t have to make eye contact with the roommate that you just met, wink wink). 

The desks are also typically pressed against a wall, right next to your bed, so that there’s a clear distinction between you and your roommate’s side of the room. Overall, achieving an open space through furniture placement can help create an organized room. 

Get extra storage

Dorm rooms are small, which means that you might not be able to fit everything in the small storage space given to you in the closet, the vanity and the drawers under the bed. I recommend getting small storage boxes to keep things like skincare and makeup together and a plastic drawer tower or something similar for extra clothes. There’s usually a good amount of space under the bed where you can put extra storage furniture like a drawer chest. You can also buy a small shoe rack for your closet so you don’t stack shoes up on each other. This will avoid clutter and help you keep a more organized room. 

If you’re like me and have a lot of stationery such as books, notebooks and pens, I’d recommend buying a magazine file and pen holders for your desk so everything can stay together and your desk doesn’t end up being cluttered and prevent you from working on it. 

Lastly, if you’re planning on having a lot of snacks or food in your room, getting a mini shelf supreme to put over your mini fridge can be super helpful for your kitchen materials and food to stay together. I tried stacking up everything on top of my fridge… Trust me when I say that it doesn’t work.

Don’t go overboard on decorations

This might be a personal preference but I think less is better for a small space. So I’d recommend not going overboard on decor! I know looking at all those decorations in Target or Home Goods can be very tempting but having too much in your not super spacious room might cause the space to feel unorganized and tiring. There will be too much to look at and it’ll also be really hard to clean and organize your room. 

For example, covering your entire bed in pillows and blankets can be really hard for when you want to make your bed or when you’re actually going to sleep and want to lift your comforter and slip under it with ease. So I’d suggest having a maximum of three to four decorative pillows and two extra blankets. Also making sure what you want to cover up your wall with (such as a collage, wall art or lights) looks cohesive and orderly can help achieve that clean and organized look.

That’s all everyone! Keep in mind that the cleaner and more spacious your room looks, the more comfortable and motivated you will feel for everyday tasks. It will also make your room so much easier to live in. Following the tips I mentioned will hopefully help you achieve that organized space. I hope this was helpful. See you guys in the next one! 

Want to see more HCFSU? Be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram, TwitterTikTokYouTube and Pinterest!

Hi! I'm Deniz. I'm an international student from Turkey, and a junior at FSU, majoring in advertising and minoring in criminology! I'm currently an editor at Her Campus at FSU and a writer for Spoon University. I love creating and sharing things and enjoy music, art, and writing :)