It’s that time of year again. We pack up our nice, cozy rooms at home and trade them for cramped, musty, outdated and overpriced dorm rooms. Nothing makes your stomach drop in quite the way that just staring at all your unpacked boxes sitting on your squeaky XL twin bed does. You sit on the floor and stare for a while, just wondering where in the world you’re going to cram everything while you mop off the sweat from hauling your futon that won’t even fit through the door up 12 flights of stairs. This can be an especially confusing time your freshman year. But have no fear because I’m here to help. While I can’t say I am especially good at not over-packing, I am like halfway decent at figuring out how to cram everything I’ve packed into a room the size of my closet back home. Here are a few tips and tricks I’ve learned along the long and bumpy road that is learning to live in a residence hall…halfway comfortably.

1. Roommate Selection

Perhaps the most important part of organizing your perfect college dorm room. I know what you’re thinking, what does your roommate have to do with making your space more manageable? The answer would be everything.

Step 1: Find a roommate who doesn’t totally suck. If you like the room clean, find another OCD person to share your 15x15 quarters with all year. Do you enjoy living in filth? Do yourself and some poor obsessive cleaner out there a favor and find someone who’s just as messy as you.

Step 2: Find a roommate who is never home. Maybe they have family close by they like to visit a lot, maybe they have a significant other they spend a lot of time with, or maybe they work nights or really long hours. Being in the room the most gives you automatic rights to set it up however you want; it’s just like an unspoken college rule.

Now, let’s look at some real tips and tricks to manage your space in college, which is probably the real reason your reading this article because we all know that if you’re stuck with a crappy roommate now, it’s pretty much too late to do anything about it now.

2. Lofting

Lofting your bed is one of the easiest ways to save room in college. It gives you tons of space to shove pretty much everything under your bed and can make the room seem way more spacious and open. Lofting your bed does have its downsides, like if you’re a chronic night time pee-er. Or if you’re just lazy, which, let’s face it, is more of us than we’d like to admit. While having to high jump every time you want in or out of bed can suck a little, the space it has to offer is totally worth it. Some beds even loft halfway so the climb isn’t so high, but you can still fit mini-fridges, book cases and laundry baskets under them.

3. Getting crafty in your closet

There are a few ways to get crafty with organizing your clothes that can save you some major footage. Closet organizers are an awesome way to gain some extra space. Use them to store your big, bulky items like sweatshirts and sweaters. Use soda can tabs to add a row to your closet by looping one hole around the hook of one hanger and the other hole around second hangers hook so you can fit two pieces in the same space of one hanger.

I learned this one from one of my sisters, who probably has the coolest room on any college campus ever: Use zip ties to attach a shower rod to the bottom of your bunk to create a second mini closet in your room for short-seamed items like T-shirts and skirts. You can conceal it by adding curtains on magnetic curtain rods to the side of your bed.

You can fold your tee shirts like this to nix having to dig through your drawer to find the right shirt. This creates more space and exposes the print on the front of your shirt so you can see it and grab it right off the bat instead of having to dig.

There are thousands of little tricks you can use to save space and seem more organized. Invest in a scarf hanger and one of these cool things for your jewelry.

If you don’t have a closet door because dorm room builders are geniuses and often leave them off, use a tension shower rod and a drape length curtain to make a pseudo-door.

4. Laundry baskets are awesome

Give laundry baskets some credit and stop using them only for laundry because they have about a million uses. Use one to keep your shoes in one place instead of having a cluttered closet floor. You can keep one in the trunk of your car so that when you go grocery shopping, you can pile all your bags into it to make one easy trip carrying them across campus from the parking lot all the way to your dorm. They, of course, are also great to actually use for laundry.

There are a million different ways to organize your dorm room to make it more spacious and livable for the next year. Freshmen, don’t worry. I know it seems tiny and cramped now, but you’ll find your own ways to organize and decorate that make your new space feel more like a home. Moving away can be weird and scary, but once you make your room your own, it makes a world of a difference.

Good luck! Class dismissed.