Dorm Room Essentials

[trust]

So for you who are in college what are some dorm essentials that might not be obvious? I leave for school in 43 days and am trying to get everything I need into list form.

Also as far as clothes how much did people find was good? I'm really worried about not having enough/too much. I only live 3 hours away so it's not a big deal since either I can go home, my mom can come up, or she can mail me something. Where I'm going to school is more formal than most (ie. all orientation events are coat & tie required) but it's just tradition, so you may not be able to help with that sort of thing but what about socks and underwear? One lady whos son went to Hampden-Sydney said 14 pairs of underwear but Collegeboard's list said 25...so, which is it?

Thanks!~

[Sidoh]

I had an assload of cloths.  I had enough to last me at least a month without re-wearing anything but jeans.  That's because I hated doing laundry since it was on the other side of the dormitory, though. :(

As far as essentials go, make sure you bring a nice set of headphones.  At least for me, having any sort of sound is really distracting when I'm doing homework.  I had a lot of homework, so I spent many nights cooped up in my room (they had study rooms, but unfortunately, I didn't discover them until late second semester).  Having a set of comfortable headphones helped immensely.

I'm a pretty irritable person, so this piece of advice may be irrelevant, but I'll offer it anyway.  If you pick up on any little habits that your roommate has that annoy you even slightly, make sure that you talk to them about it as soon as you can.  I really liked my roommate and he was a great guy and all, but he sniffed his nose so much!  Like constantly.  That's the main reason I had to have headphones.  After talking to him about it, it was much better, but unfortunately, I waited until I was really grouchy to say something and I was pretty rude about it.  I'm sure this is all stuff that you have or will be told, but seriously make sure that you create a set of "ground rules" early on (like don't use the overhead light when someone is asleep, use headphones while watching TV if you're the only one watching it, etc).  It makes a big difference.

[CrAz3D]

Alarm clock, phone charger, 10 underwear, 20 socks, shoes (tennis, dress, hiking), condoms, playboys, internet, laptop, beer, jack daniels, shot glasses, whiskey glasses, ice.
...I think thats about it

[rabbit]

A lot of ramen noodles.  It'll save a LOT of cash.  I didn't live in the dorms cause I was close enough to commute and I'm not fond of community living.  I did notice that a lot of people had "no sex on the couch" signs on the walls of the common areas of the rooms, though.

[edit]
All that alcohol stuff isn't needed ALL the time.

[CrAz3D]

A lot of ramen noodles.  It'll save a LOT of cash.  I didn't live in the dorms cause I was close enough to commute and I'm not fond of community living.  I did notice that a lot of people had "no sex on the couch" signs on the walls of the common areas of the rooms, though.

[edit]
All that alcohol stuff isn't needed ALL the time.

Here you HAVE to buy the meal plan if you're in the dorms.  You may as well eat there then.

But yeah, munchy snacks are always good...speaking of, I'm hungry.

booze, yeah, not always needed, but for the weekends ;)


Lol @ couch signs

[rabbit]

Most meal plans are limited to campus food facilities, which, by my own experience, suck.

[CrAz3D]

We have ONE cafeteria and a couple of vendors.  The vendors only take cash (you can use your ID as a debit card for a few places around the university).
It's so lame.  Stupid Aramark food

[trust]

We have decent food (I've eaten there 3 times.) but it'll definitely get old fast. We have a little pub below there (with a bar for 21 year olds, yeah it's kind of weird...a bar, you can have rifles, they're building a skeet shooting range, but whatever...) where you can order burgers and stuff pretty cheap, but I'll probably eat a lot of raman. Living in the dorms and an unlimited are required though, so I'll probably use it for breakfast a lot since my first classes are right next to the buildings where the cafeteria is.


My roommate is OK, I mean I like him well enough but I can already tell there's some things about him I'm going to dislike. Hopefully it works out though.

Alarm clock, phone charger, 10 underwear, 20 socks, shoes (tennis, dress, hiking), condoms, playboys, internet, laptop, beer, jack daniels, shot glasses, whiskey glasses, ice.
...I think thats about it

Drinking is big here, especially bourbon whiskey (very southern school) and stuff. I plan to take a decent amount of alcohol, maybe some wine in case we have ladies over socially. I'm going to get a flask too. I just want to have a good selection so I can make whatever I want to make like gin&tonic, bloodies, whatever.

[CrAz3D]

You can have guns on campus?

Damn, I hate my school...we're even an ag school(or used to be) and cant

[trust]

You can have guns on campus?

Damn, I hate my school...we're even an ag school(or used to be) and cant

only rifles or shotguns and they have to be in the gun locker unless you're going hunting or to the range or whatever.

[iago]

10 underwear, 20 socks, ...

Do you actually count your individual socks? I generally count them in pairs, "10 pairs of socks" :P

[CrAz3D]

10 underwear, 20 socks, ...

Do you actually count your individual socks? I generally count them in pairs, "10 pairs of socks" :P

I guess I mean pair

[trust]

I don't really wear socks that often, since I usually wear boat shoes. 20 sounds like a good number though, I'll probably do 20/15 or so?

[zorm]

I know I never really wore socks, I could easily go two weeks without doing laundry but I might end up having to rewear a pair or two of socks in that period. Thats not really as bad as it sounds because normally my sock/shoe wearing was limited to just the time it took for class or whatever. So I definitely wouldn't stress over it, you'll figure out a system that you like and adapt to it.

I also took more or less all the clothes I owned, note that I lacked any real 'dress' up type clothes though. I managed to fill two decent size bags with all my clothes and that served me fine for my year in the dorms. In fact it was probably an excessive number of clothes to be completely honest.

Food and stuff I wouldn't really worry about, you definitely can't keep a years supply in your room so you may as well not stress over what you end up with to start with. You'll definitely want more/something different later on.

[Kaleeko]

Haha.. I never really put a whole lot of thought into how much of all this I'm gonna need to take.. I figure I'll stuff it all into a suitcase or two and see how I do? Cross my fingers, perhaps? :)