It’s that time of year again – the summer weather will soon start to wind down, classes are in full swing, and football season is right around the corner. So with everything going so right, what could feel wrong? An incomplete room, of course!
Whether you live on campus or throughout the streets of North and South Oakland, your room is all about who you are. It defines your sense of style and what you what to convey to others about yourself. And on top of all of that, you somehow have to find a way to fit all of your most prized possessions in one space. So, in honor of successfully completing my third room here at Pitt, I want to share some tips and wisdom that I have gained along the way for any of you who still have pictures cluttering your desk instead of your walls or clothes hung over the end of your bed because there is no more room in that tiny, tiny closet.
1. Stay organized. Wherever you live, odds are that your room is already small without any of the furniture in it, so the combination of over-sized furniture, clothes, decorations, and school supplies will do nothing but create more clutter. Buy decorative boxes or crates that can fit under your bed or desk so that everything has a place, but is also easily accessible to you. Dedicate a shelf on the hutch to store your textbooks. Not only will they look more professional lined up instead of in a pile on the floor, it will prompt you to actually look through your textbooks more often if they are out in the open where you see them everyday. The last tip to staying organized is buying a desk calendar. They are big so you can write all over them and keep all your schoolwork, extracurricular, and social activities in order.
2. Make a collage. Not only are collages so simple and actually fun to make, but they add a decorative element to your room that is meaningful to you. Make a collage of quotes that inspire you or from pictures of you and your best friends. When you have to share a dorm room as a freshman, your personality can get lost in it all, but a collage can explain your interests, hobbies, and all of your favorite things. Katie Shockey, a junior, cannot get enough of collages, “Whenever I’m decorating my room, whether it be at home or here at Pitt, if I feel like I need one more thing to make my room pop, I just put together a quick collage. Sometimes, it’s made of pictures of my friends and I or sometimes it’s just a bunch of pictures that I think look so cool together. But you can seriously never go wrong with a collage”.
3. Collaborate. Odds are that you and your roommate have different styles. Don’t forfeit who you are and just go with one style; there is always a fun and interesting way that you can combine your styles together to decorate the room. Find colors that match together in an odd way and go from there. Your more traditional style can definitely match your roommate’s hippie-chic style. Sometimes, matching completely throughout the whole room looks like too much. Find one thing you both have in common and decorate from there! Eva Fitch, junior, recalls her freshman year dorm room style, “My roommate and I were best friends from the start but didn’t have the same style. We didn’t want to lose who we both were so we put together things that were unique to us but had similar colors or shapes so our room was still personalized to us individually, but we also look united”.
4. Don’t over-decorate. Of course, we all always want to up put as many things as we can, but sometimes it’s just way too much. Not every space on the wall needs to be filled. Before you permanently hang things up, make sure your room doesn’t look too busy. If you have a bright comforter and pillows, keep everything else neutral or one solid color. Or, pick a neutral comforter and add pops of a solid color in spaces so that they draw someone’s attention.
Of course there are a million other things you can do to make your dorm room feel special and unique to you and your style, but these four guidelines will definitely help you get there!