The home is where the heart is, and it goes without saying that students want to return to a welcoming place after classes and work.
But the small size of dorm rooms, regulations for decorating and sharing with a roommate sometimes make it more appealing to avoid your room altogether. There are a few strategies, however, that can make dorm living more ideal.
According to Allison Martin, sophomore in architecture, the most difficult problem to overcome is the size of your room.
"If I could add something, it would probably be more space to hang out, because if friends come over and we want to watch TV there's not really any space to sit down," Martin said.
Though friends may have to deal with the close quarters to some extent, there are some ways to maximize the space in your room. Betsy Stark, co-owner of home-goods store Moxii, said the management of space is one of the things she emphasizes to customers asking for help.
"We encourage them to think about space in the room," Stark said. "We offer the desk hutches. We also have over-the-bed shelving, which offers vertical space and enables them to put things on the shelving."
Martin also said making space was one of her first considerations.
"I think what was most important was making it efficient and trying to store everything, so we stored a lot of stuff vertically and under our beds. We just have a lot of contraptions to keep things in."
Once there is enough room for all of your things, however, students have to get creative about how to decorate their walls considering the strict regulations enforced by the University.
Many things can become the focal point for decorating a room, and all that needs to be done is to find something around which to build a theme.
"I think a lot of times girls and guys are not necessarily 100 percent sure what they want when they come in," said Hamilton Manifold, employee at Moxii and daughter of co-owner Melissa Manifold. "So an easy way to start is to just have them look around the store and look for an inspiration piece that goes with what they want."
Whether it be a curtain, quilt or anything else, students can build a design theme out of anything they like, and Stark said there are many ways to decorate the walls as well.
"There are ways to use removable tapes to display light items like pictures on the wall," Stark said. "You can do posters and you can do prints from Hobby Lobby that aren't really heavy with no framing. I think that works beautifully."
A roommate may be able to help decorate and may have decorating ideas you hadn't considered.
"In the fall my roommate and I talked about what we were going to bring so it coordinated a little more," Martin said. "Our room was arranged so we both used both sides of the room; like our desks were both one side and our dressers were kind of both on one side, so we talked a lot more about it and coordinated a lot more."
Stark said there were many ways roommates can coordinate their decorations, including by style, color even by sharing accessories to tie together two totally different styles.
However, Stark also said just because two roommates are working together for a common goal doesn't mean one person has to abandon his or her own preferences entirely.
"If one girl loves hot pink and another girl does not, that doesn't mean she has to compromise," Stark said. "That's part of living with a roommate--and that's not unique to the dorm--that's a part of all roommate living situations."
The most important part of living in the dorm is to appreciate the experience and think about it positively.
"I think part of living in the dorm is that you're going to be cramped, and that's part of the charm," Stark said. "You treat it like a studio apartment."
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