Calculators. Pencils. Binders.

When your kids were younger, back to school shopping was pretty straightforward. Now with your child heading to college, you need to start thinking out of the box – out of the Yaffa box, that is.

Without compromising style and personality, decorating a dorm room has to follow these simple rules:
1. Must stick to a student’s budget.
2. Must save as much space as possible (we all remember how small those sardine cans, uh I mean, dorm rooms were).
3. Must be able to move out at a semester or school year’s notice.

When I was in college, I had the good fortune of spending my summers as a bookkeeper in the same craft store I had worked in since high school. With an endless stock of gift items, frames, craft supplies and patio furniture, I had a number of items to pull from.

My inspiration came from a set of patio lights in shiny, pastel-colored boxes like pink, orange, green and blue that I used to decorate the length of my dorm room. Find your inspiration!
Using the colors of the patio lights as my foundation, I selected a set of candle holders covered in a shiny woven fuschia, pink and lilac fabric. My bath/hand towels too echoed the color trend, in bright blue, lavender, yellow and orange.

Bring your most cherished objects and incorporate them into a theme. One of my roommates was an avid music lover, who kept her acoustic guitar by her bed. For me, it meant bringing my sewing machine and my love of fashion design. I had little ceramic mannequin picture holders on a shelf and a calendar on my wall displayed vintage fashion design sketches.

College is a time when your child will make the transition from a teenager to a young adult. It’s important to keep sight of what will always be there – friends and family. You can never have enough decorative picture frames (again, within the boundaries of the color scheme or style) to display photos of siblings, parents, relatives and best friends.

When it comes to saving space, the following items are tested and true: yaffa boxes for under the bed, bed risers, hanging racks, extension cord holders, thumb tack, double-sided tape, foldable canvas chairs and loft beds.

And if it’s your child’s first year away from home – might as well throw in a box of tissues! But just in case.
-S. Gonzalez

*Photos courtesy of burlingtonfreepress.com and spokesmanreview.com