The Tools of a Clean Room

One of the biggest problems with moving into a dorm room (aside from getting along with a psycho roommate) is keeping it clean. Most people are used to having a mom pick up after them. The thing is that unless you are a really strange person with a very strange family, your Mother is not going to follow you to college. Part of cutting the cord is learning to pick up after yourself. You do not want to be that person on the floor who has the really smelly or dirty room. There are several areas that one must remember to clean. They are dusting, vacuuming, laundry, and taking out the trash.

First on the list is vacuuming. This is very important because if one does not vaccum their room then it will probably start to smell bad (by probably I mean that is will for sure smell bad, and you don't want to be that person). I personally think that one should vacuum at least once a month, and if you have a roommate then your room can be vacuumed twice a month since I assume that they will be cleaning it as well. I personally feel that a persons room should be vacuumed at least once a week, especially for people who have allergies. There are many options when it comes to vacuums. Many dorms have vacuums that the floor shares and can be found in a closet somewhere in the building. However, if this is not something that sounds like a good idea to you, then you could always get a small vacuum for your room. There are shark vacs out there which are not as expensive as some of the heavy duty vacuums out there. Shark vac makes cordless stick vacuums which are nice because they are not very bulky, and so they are easily put into a closet for storage. Shark also has hand helds vacuums which are more compact, although they are better for small messes than for vacuuming large areas. Pictured on the above right is a cordless sweeper shark vac that costs $59.99. Other cordless sweepers are pictured on the site and go as low as $29.99. Beneath that is a picture of a cordless hand held shark vac. This shark vac costs $39.99. This is the only cordless handheld currently featured on the sharkvac website.

Another important thing to make sure you are doing for upkeep of your dorm room is to dust. I suggest dusting at least once a week. I prefer the disposable dusters such as swiffer. I like these because they seem to trap most of the dust and, of course, you can throw them out. For the most part these are not expensive. There are also dust cloths which work just as well. I suggest getting a starter pack and then deciding what brand is best for you. If someone has allergies then it is very important for them to have a clean place to breath, so you might have to dust the room more than normal.

As for the laundry, I suggest doing it once to twice a week. Also, keep your laundry in your closet, because it does smell. The last big category for cleaning, in my opinion, is the trash. Take this out as needed. If it smells get it out of the room fast. I suggest alternating with your roommate.

However, no matter how well you clean, it will not mean much if your roommate does not pick up after themselves. One thing that I have found to be very effective is to put up a calender and write down what days you did what. This way even if your roommate does not clean, then at least you have proof and can tell them that they need to start pulling their weight.

One of the other lesser known categories of clean is being organized. You cannot have a really cluttered dorm room, because it is just not a good atmosphere to live in. A dorm room is your bedroom, dining room, living room, and kitchen. On top of all that its also a little bit bigger than the room you live in back home (wherever that is). It is very important for you to minimize the amount of filth and clutter. I suggest taking an hour out every week to make sure that it stays clean. If you are a slob then you should definitely keep your room clean just because of the fact that you dont want your roommate to hate you because you can not manage to keep your space clean.

Of course if cleaning is not something that you intend on doing then I suggest getting some serious air fresheners.

Why You HAVE to Have a Fouton

Having a futon is very important when living in a dorm room. The main reason behind this is that it functions as a couch as well as a bed for guests or for you whenever you do not think it wise to sleep in your loft bed, bunk bed or regular bed. The fact is that you have different options for seating in a dorm room. One could use several tailgating seats, and while this is cheap, I feel it is a bad idea because they are not very comfortable and sometimes one might want to lie down and watch TV or if one does not feel well then they can also lie down. Also, when one has friends who visit from out of town or down the hall who want to spend the night, well that's just not feasible with several tailgating chairs. Another option is to get a couch which is a bad idea, because unless you plan to throw the couch out at the end of the school year, it will be very upsetting if you get stains on it, which you will (unless you put plastic over it but I really don't think that you want to be compared to somebody's grandmother). Also a couch is heavy and you want to think about moving your stuff in and out of your dorm room. Futons are easily put together and are typically cheap. Plus you can pick them up and vacuum under them, which I'm sure is the top priority in any college students life.

I know firsthand that a lot of guys do not want to get futons because they do not think that their fella freinds will sit next to each other on a futon. This is stupid. Even if you have a larger than normal amount of guy friends, they will make due. Here is an idea, get some of your female friends to come over and use them as chikee buffers so that there is no accidental male leg touching male leg contact. The guy thing is problematic also because of the futon becoming a bed and most guys do not want to sleep in the same bed as another guy. This I cannot help you with, you just have to tell them to stop being big babies.

A typical futon will seat two or three people and will fold out into a queen, full or twin sized bed. In a college dorm room, it will most likely be a full sized bed. There are many different types of futons out there in a range of prices. If in a college dorm room, however, I would keep the price as low as possible seeing as how you will probably be moving around a lot over the following years and might not always have the space necessary for a futon.

Futons are also very helpful because they make a room appear more homey and fit perfeclty underneath a loft bed. It is highly suggestible to buy your futon from the same place that you buy your loft bed. This is becasue then it is more likely that the futon will be a perfect fit for the space underneath the loft bed.

Both of the items found on this page are located on the target website target.com. (from top to bottom) The first item is the Portland convertible sofas and it costs $529.99. This sofa comes in Dark Chocalate, Sage, and Black Microfiber. It is very nice because it is a sleeper sofa, however one then runs into the sofa problems. Then next item is the Mali Flex Futon in blue and White. This futon costs $188.99 and folds into a twin sized bed. I like this futon because it comes in a wide array of colors. This makes it very easy to coordinate to whatever color scheme that you are going for in your room. The last item on this page is the Convertible sofa bed in camel microfiber. This costs $429.99 and once again is a sleeper sofa.

There are futons out there that are much cheaper than the ones listed on this page and many universities have companies that sell loft beds

What It Takes To Be a Good Roommate

When it comes to going random for roommates, it's all about the luck of the draw. I personally was very lucky in the fact that I got a very considerate roommate. While it has only been around two months since we both moved into the same shoebox of a dorm room, we have not run into any really serious problems. There are some various steps that one can take in order to ensure that the roommate relationship runs smoothly.

1. Pick up after yourself. This means that you should always, always, always clean any dishes, put away any clothes, pick up any books in the room, and wipe up any spills or stains. You have to be considerate, it is not just your room.

2. Be mindful of your turn to clean. When it is your turn to take out the trash you need to do it asap. If you and your roommate have problems remembering whose turn it is to take the trash out, you should pin a calender up and mark the days that each of you took it out. Same thing for any other room chores.

3. Be quiet. There's nothing worse than a roommate who doesn't care about whether someone is trying to get some rest. Turn the TV down, and do NOT talk on your cell phone when they are trying to sleep, that is considered very bad room manors.

4. Do not be critical. NO ONE wants to live with someone who is going to look down there noses at someone else. Whatever moral stances you hold do not give you the ability to tell anyone else what to do. You are not your roommates parent and as long as they are not using illegal substances in the room, then you have no right to tell them to or not to do something.

5. Do not expect your roommate to hang out with you The fact is that you and your roommate were brought together by chance and while you should be congenial to one another, you do not have to spend a lot of time together. In the rare instance when you have chosen your roommate, you probably dont want to be around them the whole time. You need to make seperate friends because you will eventually need to vent about your roomie. When this happens you really don't want it to get back to them, especially if you are rooming with your hometown friend.

6. Keep your dirty clothes in your closet. Lets face it kids, dirty clothes smell bad. If you keep your dirty clothes in a bag in the middle of the floor then your room is going to smell bad too. This is just not fair to your roommate who has to live with the smell that they didn't make. Keep your smelly clothes where they aren't going to ruin your roommates day.

7. Know the difference between a rude roommate and an unaware roommate. Do not take everything that your roommate does as a personal attack. A roommate could just not be aware that they are doing something that you are not used to.

8. Share the TV just because you may have brought it does not mean that it is only yours. Two people live in the room and use that TV. If you and your roommate both have shows on at the same time then I suggest creating a schedule where you switch off every other week. This way it evens things out a little bit and you each understand the others struggle a little. If you watch a popular TV show then I suggest getting some people together and watching in someone else's room or in one of the lobbies with a TV.

9. Put a copy of your schedule up. This ensures several things, for starters that if your roomie has a fella in the room that you don't walk in on the middle of something that you don't want to see. Another reason why this is preferable is that if one of your friends asks where you are then your roommate can tell them (unless they are psycho and vindictive).

10. Do not eat all of your roomie's food. If you agreed to split it down the middle then thats great, but actually split it. Do not ever eat the last of anything that your roomie specifically bought for himself or herself. You also do not want to hog the fridge.


~Golden Roommate rule~

treat your roomie as you would like to be treated

TV Troubles

Every now and then I will be trying to sleep but my roommate has the TV on so loud that I just cannot do it. Eventually I ask her to turn down the volume, which she does, but not enough. Then ten minutes go by and I have to ask her to turn it down AGAIN. After much thought and consideration, I have come up with a simple solution to this problem; a universal remote. Depending on what your situation is and what kind of roommate you have, you may be able to talk it out. This means having a sit-down type of thing where you say "this really bothers me, can you try to not do this, I would really appreciate this, etc." However, if a month goes by and your roomie has made no obvious attempts to change his or her behavior, then I would suggest jumping to plan B, buying a universal remote. Now this can be very tricky, because if your roommate finds out that you have a second "master" remote, they will most likely be very offended and upset. As a rule, the smaller the universal remote that you get is, the better it is, because it is less noticeable and easier to hide. Some excuses you could use if your roommate finds your remote is to say that it is for your alarm clock, or any other appliances in the room (just so you know though, this will probably not work. You could also get really angry and completely freak out on your roomie, and start accusing them of going through your stuff and stealing things from your dirty laundry. You could also say that the remote has sentimental value.

The number one way to avoid confrontation over having a universal remote is to not get caught with it. One way to accomplish this is to never raise your roommate's suspicions in the first place. This means that you do not change the channels and tell your roomie that the TV is haunted. This approach really only works if the TV is old as dirt, or your roommate is really stupid. The only time that you should really use the remote is to lower the volume. Now before you start to just lower and raise the volume whenever you get the urge, there are some things you need to notice about your TV. The most important thing to notice is whether or not the volume bar pops up on the screen when you adjust the volume. If it does not pop up, then go crazy and raise or lower that bad boy all you want. If the volume bar does pop up, then you have to be a little sneakier. In my opinion, the best way to deal with this little speed bump is to ask your roommate to lower the volume and when the bar is on screen, just keep it going down. Your roommate will think that the remote is just sensitive. Another method is misdirection, for example you could look out the window and start screaming "OH MY GOD, THAT MAN HAS A GUN!!!" However, I wouldn't scream that too loud, and after your roomie has been frantically looking out the window I might say something like "no, no, what i said was 'Oh my god that man has a pack of gum', not a gun."

Of course there is another problem that springs to mind when talking about sharing a TV. That is a roomie who does not share well with others. If the object they are having problems sharing is the TV, then the universal remote comes in handy here, too. This course of action is not highly effective, but it is fun. What you can do is hide the remote for the TV in your roommates stuff, and when your roomie is not in the room, you could then use the universal remote. The reason why it is necessary to hide it in your roomies stuff is that then, even if they accuse you of hiding it, they will eventually find it in their stuff thus looking like an a-hole. The problem with this plan is that your roomie could always just get up and change the channel by hand. However, you can always use the remote when your roomie is in the room, but not looking at what you are doing. All you have to do is change one channel and then tell your roomie that they are probably sitting on the remote. Then you get to watch them frantically search for the remote for a few minutes.

Even though this has a potential to be a good plan, you should always, always, always try to talk it out first. This can save a lot of time spent in retaliation and escalation. You don't want to wake up one morning without an eyebrow wishing that you had talked about the TV thing.