Moving into your dorm in college can be a rather stressful time. For many, it’s the first time you’re living on your own without family, and knowing what to bring and pack can be a confusing and complicated situation. As a freshman, here are my ten tips about dorm items to bring and not to bring in order to help make your transition a little easier.
This first list of items is what I recommend you bring to your dorm room. To start off with, multiple large power strips are necessary. In most cases, but depending on the dorm, your room will only have a select few outlets. Power stips will enable you to have the freedom to plug in as many electrical items that you could ever want while moving your outlets to ideal locations. To go along with a few power strips, a ten-foot phone charging cable is also a necessity. No matter where you are in the dorm room, a ten-foot charging cable will give you the freedom to access your phone charger without fear of ripping it out of the wall. If your bed is lofted or bunked, a ten-foot-long charging cable will enable you to charge your phone from that height.
Another item that I find extremely handy is a futon. Although futons are large and dorm rooms are small, owning a futon immediately upgrades your room from being just a living quarter into a place where multiple people can hang out. From my personal experience, nearly every room on our hall has a futon that gets used on the regular, and the kids that didn’t have a futon at first bought one within the first month. Futons are great if you want an additional place to study, hang out or even sleep.
Water bottles are a must in college, along with Brita filters. In college, you are constantly on the go and will not have time to buy water bottles, which can also be costly. Using reusable water bottles and Brita filters allows you to keep yourself hydrated at all times while doing so in an economically and environmentally friendly way. Only one Brita filter and two reusable water bottles are necessary.
While those were my five essential items that you should bring to college, here are five items that you should not bring to the dorm room for various reasons. The first one, for instance, is large storage containers. Although large storage containers might seem like a good idea, in reality, they actually occupy a lot of space in the dorm room that you can’t really afford to give up. The same goes for dorm room decorations. Dorm room decorations such as pictures, vases, signs and more can make the dorm room more homey and cute, but it’s important that you have a balance, as too many items can lead the dorm room to feel way overcrowded.
Another few things you should not bring to your dorm room are an excessive amount of shoes, clothes and accessories. When I first moved into college, I brought nearly all my clothes and shoes only to realize I wear the same two or three pairs of shoes and the same items of clothing. This was also the case with bags, belts, jewelry and other accessories. I only used about a third of them, and the other two-thirds ended up just taking space. My suggestion is that you pay attention to the clothes that you are wearing currently, and only bring the shoes, clothes and accessories that you use most often.
Even though there is no actual guide on what to bring to your dorm room in college, I hope that these tips can at least make your move a bit easier and more efficient. During your first month of living in the dorm, you will quickly be able to figure out what you need, what you use and what you really didn’t need to bring. Everything usually tends to work out in the end.