Not being a helicopter mom is sometimes
hard for me. I do my best to stay quiet and do things in the background so that I am
ready when asked for help. Before my oldest left for college I did lots of
research, what should she bring, what shouldn’t she, what might she need, what
would be helpful, etc. In today’s day and age I would have thought that I could
find the exact size of her room, her closet, was there carpet, and so on, but
not so! What I did find however were lots of lists of what to bring. Rather
than recreate those lists, my advice below is about things we might not have
considered for found extremely helpful.
Before you go:
- Can the beds to moved to any height or do you need to buy risers?
- How big is the closet? Does it have a door (so you can hang a shoe rack, hooks, etc)?
- Is the room carpeted or not?
- University rules of what you can and can not bring. For instance, can you have a router in your room or not? Can you bring extension cords or only power strips?
- Shop all summer long, don't wait for back to school sales. It helps to spread the cost out and you can find better deals.
- Go to garage sales! We found a refrigerator for $10, a barely used microwave for $10 and a Keurig for $20, in addition to countless other small things like over the door hangers and storage bins.
- Go thru your closets at home for items that you child could use. No need to buy new, you'll be spending enough on many other items and tuition.
What to bring:
- Door stop, great for move in but also great for students to keep their door open and meet new people.
- A Brita water pitcher is nice if they have a fridge. That way they don’t have to walk down the hall to get water (depending on their room type).
- Plastic bins with drawers. We packed and organized them ahead. One was for first aide/medicine, cleaning. One for random stuff, one for food. These fit great under the bed.
- Depending on their closet… we took a bar that you hang on the top bar to add a 2nd. See pic. This was extremely nice!
- Over the door storage mirror. It locks too which is nice. Dani locks her money and meds in there. And she uses the storage for her makeup and hair stuff. They have a much nicer one, but it is expensive.
- Trash can and bags – medium sized is best. The small ones are just too small and they don’t have room for a regular kitchen sized trash can.
- Alarm clock, even though my daughter uses her phone for her alarm, it’s nice to be able easily see the time.
- Router, if allowed. Then is put their printer, fire stick, music, etc on their private network rather than the schools. I highly recommend the Apple Airport Express $99. The range is great for a dorm room and it comes with a port for Airplay, hook up a speaker and you can play anything from your phone wirelessly.
- A fan – My daughters dorm does not have AC but even if they do, its nice to have the air circulating. If there is no AC a window fan is best.
- Good mattress pad. I ordered a 3 inch one off of Amazon. Got it much cheaper than other places. I didn't really want to spend the money on an expensive pad, but honestly, a good night's sleep is priceless.
- Shower caddy – My daughter took 2 types, hard plastic and a soft sided one. She prefers the hard plastic one. Walmart sold them for $1 at back to school time. Can’t beat that price!
- Snack food and drinks.
- Bulletin board and white board.
- Light that clips onto the bed, nice to have separate lighting than the overhead light for studying and not disturbing sleeping roommates.
- LOTS of 3M command strips and hooks! You can hang just about anything.
- Washi tape for decorating you can find it on Amazon or any craft store.
- Curtain for the closet – if there isn’t a door. If there is a door, be sure to bring over the door hooks and shoe storage.
- Power strips. We were not allowed extension cords. Between my daughter and her roommate they used 5 power strips. Not so much because they needed that many outlets, but because they needed to reach far corners of their room.
- Over the door hooks – they can be used over the door or on the bed rails.
- You can always bring more than you need and take it home or return it to the store if its not needed. Trying to run out to the nearest store on move in day is difficult.
Tips for Packing and Move in Day:
- Bring tools! The beds are often hard to get apart and your child WILL want to rearrange.
- Everything that goes in the closet should be on hangers. Use trash bags, poke a hole in the middle of the bottom of the bag, the hanger tops go thru the hole and then tie the bottom so clothes don’t hang out. This saved a TON of time.
- We kept a huge pile of my daughter’s stuff in the basement. A couple of days before we left, we organized to make it easier for move in. For instance, all bed stuff in one box, all desk stuff in one box. It makes sense of course, but if daughter had done it all alone it would have been a mess! Move in takes longer than you think unless your child wants you to dump and run. Thank goodness mine did not.
- Have the roommates discuss the think about furniture arrangement before unpacking. Have them go look at other rooms for ideas. Raise the beds to utilize under the bed storage, see pic, you can’t really see the storage, but Dani has multiple bins and such under her bed. Her dresser if even under there.
- Divided the work ahead. My daughter made her bed, my other daughter organized the desk, my husband unpacked the closet, I set up their IT stuff. That made move in go faster and we didn’t feel so in the way.
- We all wrote letters to my daughter and left them on her bed before we tucked out. I felt it made leaving less sad because I have already made some closer for myself in writing the letter. And for my daughter she could still feel connected after we left.
