College: How To Make Space

When I asked for emails about college questions, I got a lot of questions in the "my room is tiny how do I fit everything?" category. I seriously feel your pain. Because the South Bend weather can change so quickly, I feel like I need to be ready for at least three out of the four seasons at any moment. An example of that: first semester my freshman year, I would go to my 8:30am class in jeans and a North Face, my 12:15 in the jeans and a t-shirt, and my 3pm in the t-shirt and shorts. My roommates and I were PROS at fitting everything into our room. Here's my advice for fitting all of your awesome clothes into your tiny room.

Major props if you can get your dorm to look like this (via Pinterest)

1) Cascading hangers are lifesavers

This is not an exaggeration. Cascading hangers have little hooks on them so that you can layer the hangers. This means that a closet of average depth can fit about 3 hangers in one space! I'm so happy to have found these. I hang pretty much all of my shirts...and I brought pretty much all of my shirts to college first semester...so these were hugely helpful. 

2) The space underneath your bed isn't just for monsters

Notre Dame had an unexpectedly large number of freshmen accept their spot at the university last fall, which meant that there was a minor shortage of housing. Some dorms (like mine) ended up having their study rooms converted into actual residential rooms. The regular rooms have tons of built in space for storage, but the study rooms had nothing. Guess which type I got? Without any built in shelves, the space under my bed became invaluable. I used clear boxes under my bed to store workout clothes, socks, and all the other random stuff that didn't deserve my precious closet space. I can't find the ones that I have online, but this one is super cute.

3) FOLD

I'm super organized, but I can sometimes be guilty of just tossing things into drawers if I don't think I have time to fold them. Seriously, take the time to fold. First of all, it prevents your clothes from being wrinkled (not attractive or classy), and it also saves soooo much space. Take a look at this video for some direction. 

4) Use everything

Windowsills, tops of cabinets, any nook or cranny can be used to store things. Planning is good, but rooms are often misinterpreted in promotional pictures. Be prepared with some items, but more importantly be prepared to look at everything in your room as something you can use for it's original use, but also as something else (does that make sense? I hope so...) For example, my closet had clothes in it and a TV on top of it so that we didn't have to use a TV stand and could therefore fit some shelves on the ground. We also stuck command hooks (the best!) everywhere so that we could hang up purses, scarves, etc. 

Also...

For packing suitcases (my specialty), roll the shirts. This is a backpacking trick. It saves a lot of room, and if you're careful the shirts won't get creased!

For purchasing storage items and other dorm essentials, I would definitely recommend a trip to Bed Bath & Beyond. They have this cool system which is similar to a bridal registry. You sign up, then go around the store scanning things that you want. You leave with a list of all the items that you scanned, and then you can pick them up at a BB&B near your school! This saves so much energy because you won't have to try to ship or fly with anything extra. 

DON'T buy these storage cubes. For some reason when I was at BB&B they were marketing them like crazy and they looked like a good idea...they suck.  My roommate and I both had them and they fell and dumped our clothes everywhere about 9 times. They're also pretty hard to rebuild (we made our friend who's an engineering major do it).

The aftermath of a fallen cube...don't let this be you!