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Your first semester of college was a whirlwind with new classes, new friends, and new places. The days whipped by and the excitement of it all carried you all the way to finals. But now it’s the beginning of the spring semester, and some of the charm and excitement of college life as worn off.
As you return from winter break to your small, cramped dorm room, you need a new fresh start this semester to help you resettle. Here’s some dorm room diy projects that are easy to do, easy on the budget, and helpful in bringing some excitement and variety into your second semester.
Florescent lighting is the standard in college dorm rooms, but while it provides excellent amounts of light, it feels clinical and unfriendly. To give your dorm room a more homey and welcoming feel, you need to add some ambient and directional lighting. There are many ways to change up the lighting. With Christmas ending, borrow some white, twinkle lights from home and drape them around the tops of the room, a book shelve, or a bunk bed ladder. While candles are usually forbidden from dorm rooms, you can still create luminaries with electric tea lights. Empty vases, glass containers, or even wax paper bags can add soft, inviting light to your dorm room.
After just one semester of college, you’ve probably already accumulated a lot more stuff than you originally came with. Unfortunately, in a small space like a dorm room, this extra stuff quickly becomes clutter. Clutter is one of the downfalls of dorm rooms, making them feel even smaller, dirty, and uninviting. To get your semester off to the right start, work with your roommate to remove the clutter from your room. Begin by purging your room of all the unnecessary items: pizza boxes, random papers, half used bottles of lotion all need to go. After you have downsized, pick a few decorative items to display and store the rest. You can rotate those decorations next month for a change of scene. With a cleaner, more streamlined space, you’ll be more apt to do your homework and friends will be more comfortable stopping by.
Along with gaining more clutter in your room, one semester of college and all its busyness can leave you pretty disorganized. Get off to a good start by finding a proper home for all of your belongings. Don’t just shove your stuff in a box though, as you reorganize there are a few tricks you can do to store those items in a decorative and creative way. As you think about storage items, think tall and shallow containers. These take up less floor space and make it easier to find items. If you can turn your bookshelf on its side or stack them to clear more floor space, go for it. You’d be surprised by how much it can open up your room. Collect all your pens and pencils and store them in the same spot to make them easy to find. For a more decorative flair, drill some holes in the top of a wood block, decorate it with paint or nails, and use it to store your pens and pencils. Turn cardboard into faux books that can hold trinkets and knick knacks and place it next to your books.
Most dorm rooms are painted the most neutral boring colors possible, so this semester, spice them up. Adding large coverings that are bright and interesting can open up your room, make it feel lighter, and energize the space. While dorm rooms won’t allow you to paint them or put holes in the walls, there are many ways to dress up those walls. Hang your pictures on the walls using some sticky tack and then use some tape to create decorative frames for each picture. Your pictures will have the polished look of a framed work at a fraction of the cost.
Vinyl wall decals are also a great choice for dorm rooms. You can get customized images of any size that are easy to apply and easy to remove. Find an image your roommate and you can agree on and apply it to the most visible wall for some added interest in your room. These tips are a great place to start. Try a few of these ideas and before you know it, your dorm room will stop feeling like a small box, and instead it will become your safe-haven and home-away-from-home.
