As a college freshman, you will be brand new to the whole dorm experience, so it may take a little while until you learn how to make things a little more comfortable for yourself. The truth is that the dorm room is not a room at the Four Seasons. Not only will you have bare walls, but you will also have a communal shower. Of course, these are amenities, but they are also the bare minimum. Sure, you may be sheltered, and you will have a lot of friends around, but you will also need a number of other items to make life more convenient and fun and comfortable. Music, cleanliness, and the ability to make a hot meal – all of these things can be accomplished with a few essentials. Here are five dorm room essentials for a freshman.
1. Bluetooth Stereo
One thing that you may want to purchase before you move into the dorm is a Bluetooth speaker. With a Bluetooth speaker, you don’t have to plug it in anywhere or worry about wires running all of the places. This can make it really easy to play music from your computer or phone without tripping over wires, or your roommate.
2. Filing Cabinet
Over the course of your collegiate career, you will build up a lot of papers. Even during a busy finals week, you could have more paperwork than you ever imagined. This is why having a filing cabinet is so important. You can organize files according to your class. You can also keep other files in the cabinet as well, like car payment reports, student loan receipts and more. If you lose any of these papers, it won’t be good – and you don’t want them to pile up in your dorm room either.
3. Shoe Rack
A college campus can be dirty and a dorm room floor can start to look a little worse for wear after a while. Most dorm rooms are laid with industrial carpet, which is sturdy but can stain easily and look quite dirty. To avoid this, you want to get a shoe rack and create a “no shoes” policy. When you go this route, you can keep things just a little nicer.
4. Hot Plate
Let’s say that you are up late studying and you want a hot meal. You have two options. One option is to order in and pay a fortune for delivery or you can walk to a restaurant, which can be a serious pain. With a hot plate, you can heat up some water and make noodles. You could also make other food if it isn’t too messy. You might have to think about how you will refrigerate perishables if you want to cook fresh produce, but a hot plate will give you a lot of cheap and convenient snacking options.
5. Shower Sandals
Indeed, it doesn’t matter if you are taking a USC online course or another type of college program, you are going to be faced with some dirty dorm showers. Considering this, you will need to wear some sandals when you head to the shower to avoid fungus. In the end, there is nothing more uncomfortable and unpleasant as foot fungus.