As a college freshman, I've had to adjust to living in a tiny room with another person without many of the amenities available in my home. That being said, I think that life in a dorm is a fun learning experience. However, there are certain items that can help make life a tad bit easier for a girl living in the dorms.
1. Tide To-Go Pen
Because yes, you will spill a drink all over your brand new white shirt right before you're about to go out for the night.
2. Blister Band-Aids
Believe me, you'll find these useful. I got a terrible blister on my heel after attempting to break in a new pair of tennis shoes, and these Band-Aids helped so much. Plus, when you have a blister and still want to wear your new heels, these Band-Aids come in clutch.
3. Safety Pins
Why do zippers have to break? Why? I really wish I knew, but luckily, safety pins are a pretty awesome temporary fix for when you are putting on your favorite pair of jeans and the zipper decides to malfunction.
4. A Bar of Chocolate
You know you're going to want that chocolate to cure your mood when your professor assigns that research paper that you've been dreading. Have some chocolate handy. Just do it.
5. A Multivitamin
This sounds weird, I know, but I noticed a huge difference in how I felt when I bought a multivitamin and kept it in my dorm to take everyday. We all know that college students don't get the best nutrition from dining hall food anyway.
6. A Power Strip
Having a power strip in your dorm will be a life-saver, because with laptops, straighteners, lamps, phones and every other electronic device that teenagers own, extra outlets are necessary to keep everything up and running.
7. Ice Trays
I don't know about you, but I can't stand lukewarm water, and the mini fridges provided by colleges are too small to stuff pitchers in to. So, I definitely recommend buying some ice trays so you can have ice to pop in your cup before you take that Lily Pulitzer Tumbler to class with you.
8. A Fan
About halfway through October when some days were still awkwardly hot in Charleston, the air conditioning in my dorm stopped working, and our room was a slightly uncomfortable 84 degrees for a couple of weeks. Walking into our room felt like entering the tropics, and if it weren't for the extra fan my roommate had, I probably would have found somewhere else to sleep.
9. A Brita
No kidding, I use my Brita water filter every single day in college. It is the most underrated useful item in my dorm room, because I don't have to worry about buying bottled water and I don't have to worry about the specks that come out of the tap in my bathroom sink.
10. A Drying Rack
I have a lot of dresses and tank tops. I mean, a lot. They're a staple of my wardrobe because it's so dang hot in Charleston most of the year, and they're an easy and fashionable choice. That being said, most of my dresses and shirts have to be air-dried, and at the beginning of the year, I turned my dorm room into what looked like a tacky thrift shop by hanging most of my clothes in random places so that they would dry. Buy a drying rack. You will not regret it.
