10 dorm room extras

With college rapidly approaching, high school seniors are starting to get everything they need for their first year. If you don’t have an older sibling or by chance spend all your weekends in college dorm rooms, you might be struggling to figure out which additional items you may need. While you might be one of the few lucky students to be living in a normal sized room, most students will live in a small, cramped dorm room in dire need of more space. Here are a list of investments that could be a great addition to your dorm room and could help save space and money.

1. Netflix Subscription

While TVs are a great addition to a dorm room, they definitely can take up a lot of space. Instead of spending money on a TV, opt to splurge on Netflix. According to Best Buy, a small sized TV can range anywhere from $120 to $229. While Netflix may seem like a larger cost, a subscription is $8.99 and over 10 months it totals to about $90.00, which is less than some TV’s. Although a TV could be used over multiple years and you do have to pay monthly for Netflix, it will definitely save you space in a small dorm room.

2. Slingbox

If you’re someone who watches live shows on TV, the Slingbox is a great alternative to getting a TV. A Slingbox is a TV streaming device that allows you to connect to your TV at home from your laptop. You can watch live TV or watch any recorded shows directly from your home TV. While it may be expensive, pricing at around $120 on Amazon, a Slingbox is not essential and only needed if you wish to watch live/recorded shows without an actual TV. Slingbox does let you save space, with the box being located at your home TV and could be a great addition to a dorm room.

3. Storage Bins

To some, the closets in the dorm rooms are a sufficient amount of space, but to others they might not be big enough to fit half of a wardrobe. Or to the students with an excessive amount of clothes: your shoes. If you live in a dorm room where you have the ability to adjust the height of your bed, set it at the middle option. This height gives you the ability to store several storage bins underneath your bed for either clothes or other necessary items. These price around $20.00 at Target and can definitely help you save space.  

4. Air Mattress

Photo | Wikipedia

An air mattress is essential if you’re someone who’s expecting visitors. While there’s always an option to get a futon, pricing at around $150.00 at Target, this would require a bed to be at the highest elevation, taking up a major amount of space and losing a place for your storage bins. An air mattress, pricing anywhere from $20.00 and up at Target, gives you the ability to have storage bins, and helps save money, space, and could be used as a reason to kick-out visitors. When you want a visitor to leave, use the air mattress as a tool and deflate it as a clear signal that it’s time to go.

5. Keurig

Photo | Wikipedia

If you’re an avid coffee drinker and someone who’s always crunched for time, a keurig is for you. While coffee is most likely available at your campus dining hall, this one-cup coffee maker is extremely easy to use and allows for coffee at any time of the day, which is especially needed when the dining hall is closed and you’re trying to pull an all-nighter. These can cost around $100 at Target for the standard one cup maker, with coffee pods ranging anywhere above $2.49 depending on brand at Target. While this is expensive, it does eliminate the need leave the dorm room to go buy a cup of coffee.

6. Brita

Staying hydrated is crucial in college and most students don’t have a budget that allows for repeated bottled water purchase. While tap water is safe to drink, Brita is a water pitcher that purifies tap water, so it is a great addition to a dorm room. Brita reduces zinc, chlorine taste and odor, copper, mercury and cadmium which are all commonly found in tap water. In the middle of the night when you are thirsty and don’t want to leave your room to get water, Brita is the perfect option and even holds up to 10 cups of water. It prices at around $30.00 at Target and is a great way to drink clean water, while still helping the environment.

7. Shower flip flops

While flip flops may seem like an obvious shoe to bring to college with you, I recommend designating a pair for the shower. Who knows what funk people are bringing into the shower. Designating one pair for showering avoids carrying the gross, mysterious bacteria back into the dorm room. Instead of using a good pair of flips flops for the shower, stick to less expensive ones such as Target’s $4.00 pair or check out a local Old Navy for their usual 2 for $5 deal. These may need to be replaced if your dorm’s showers are especially unclean and a cheap pair allows you to do this without wasting money.

8. Shower Caddy

When you have to share a bathroom with around 20 other people, keeping shower supplies in the bathroom is not really an option. A shower caddy is the easiest way to carry shower items from the dorm room to the bathroom. Spending only $5.99 at Target makes your life much easier; now you can walk to the bathroom and focus on not dropping your towel instead of the numerous other items you would have been carrying too.

9. Mattress Protector/Pad

Photo | Wikipedia

Moving from a bed at home to a dorm room bed is a big adjustment, but with a foam mattress topper your comfy bed at home can come to college too. The dorm room bed will most likely be extremely uncomfortable and possibly dirty; considering that numerous other students have slept there before, you have no idea what’s gone on in that bed years prior. By spending just $14.99 at Target, your mattress cover can both protect you from the previous uses of the bed, while also bringing comfort to your sleep.

10. Safe

While you might trust your roommate with valuable items, most likely there will be various people coming in and out of the room on a daily basis. Although residence halls are secure with constant surveillance, it’s always better to be safe than sorry. Starting at $9.99 at Target, now you can have guests in the room and worry less if your wallet might be stolen.