Let’s admit it: college life becomes more difficult if you live in a cramped dorm room. Especially if comes on top of bank-breaking tuition fees, terror professors, and ridiculously expensive textbooks. If you find yourself in this kind of situation right now, then you’ve found your saving grace. This article is meant to help college kids like you to make dorm life more manageable and enjoyable.
Tips on Making the Most of Your Cramped Dorm Room:
- Organize, organize, organize!
Your dorm room has limited space, and it’s not good for your roommate nor your peace of mind to leave stuff laying around haphazardly. Therefore, the golden rule for cramped dorm rooms is to keep it organized as much and as often as you can. Essentially, you just have to keep things in their proper place and keep clutter at a minimum.
A surefire way to keep your dorm room organized is to sort out your closet. If you have a small dorm room, your closet is probably the biggest storage space you have right now. Therefore, keeping this haven in order is necessary to have more storage for things other than clothes. Furthermore, it also makes picking out an outfit much easier (and won’t make you late for class)!
On the other hand, if you have extra storage space, say, underneath your bed, you can use it for things that you need quick access to like books, readings, school supplies, and even snacks. The key is to sort them out according to category, so that you will have an easier time finding stuff around your room.
- Use wall space
If your dorm manager allows it, you can borrow a good framing hammer and install a few shelves or racks. Using wall space is one of the best ways to minimize clutter as well as expand your storage options when it is limited, as in this situation.
Since storage space is a limited commodity, you’re going to have to get creative. Shelves and racks are the best options for extra storage on the wall, but if you can’t drill into the wall, you can use adhesive hooks instead. These extra shelves can help you sort out books, trinkets, toiletries, and others stuff you that you don’t have extra space for.
- Get rid of things you don’t need
I feel that this is a given, but some college kids still bring a lot of unnecessary stuff that only cramp up their dorm room. Most frequently, it’s something brought over to college as an attempt to maintain the comfort of home even while away in a foreign city or town. But often times, it’s not going to help you out nor make your dorm room more comfortable to live in.
Thus, one of my top recommendations to keep your dorm room manageable is to get rid of the things you don’t need. Do you really need that oversized bean bag chair? Or that NutriBlender you don’t even use? If you don’t desperately need it, take it back home to free up some space.
Same goes with your closet. If you have a lot of clothes but too little space, you’ll be having a hard time keeping track of what to wear. For this situation, we’ll apply the “dispose or donate.”
- Buy things that will help you get organized
Under this, we include organization tools such as shoe organizers, stackable plastic boxes, make up organizers, jewelry organizers, and extra plastic single drawers that you can store under the bed. These can be found at your local home depot store and are luckily not too expensive.
With these tools, not only will you de-clutter your dorm room, but you’ll find that having extra storage is satisfying as well.
- Invest in mini kitchen gadgets
College kids are known for their creativity in stretching their allowance. Thus, ramen and cold pizza are common things that can be found in their diet. However, having this type of constant meal intake isn’t good for your health nor for your stress levels. But how can you eat hot, healthy meals while saving money?
Mini kitchen gadgets are available for that purpose, including breakfast makers, hot plates, rice cookers, slow cookers, or mini-microwaves. You can invest in one or two of these gadgets (just make sure they have space in your room), and make your own cheap but healthy meals. Remember, that ramen isn’t going to feed your brain too well!
Conclusion
Dorm rooms are the worst. If you’re having the same plight as I did back in college, and are currently living in a box, you’re probably going to find it less enjoyable to stay in the dorm. That is why I created this bunch of tips for you to be able to live more comfortably in your own dorm room. Follow one or two of them and see if you can make the most out of your college dorm life.
I hope you liked this article. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment and share this post with your friends, too. Thanks for reading!
Author Bio:
|