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t’s three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon and you just got out of Chem Lab.  As you make your way back to your dorm room, the first thing on your mind is to make a cup of tea and pop in a movie.  When you arrive at the residence hall and open the door to your room, you trip over the extension cord that’s providing you with the electricity to power those tiny Christmas lights.  This then leads you to stumble into your mini-fridge, bump your desk and knock down your bulletin board before you finally land face first in a pile of your roommates’ (and apparently her boyfriend’s…so, he wears briefs, eh?) dirty laundry.  Recovering from this Mousetrap game gone awry, you realize that there is no way you are going to be able to relax in this space! 

College life brings on a host of new experiences: new friends, new classes, and of course, a new living space.  Yes, the college dorm room, a luxury that only the luckiest of college students have had the joy of experiencing.  A 10x10 room with barely enough space for one person to live in, much less two and no private bathroom.  Well, there’s not much that can be done about the size of your room or its proximity to a bathroom, but there are a few things you can do to help make your dorm room your new home away from home. 

            When it comes to decorating your dorm room, there’s more to it than tacking up a Playboy or Johnny Depp poster, but since there’s not a lot of floor space to work with, the vertical space in your room is best place to implement a little style.  Unfortunately, you generally can’t paint or stick nails in the walls of your room, but with a little creativity and some sticky tack, you just may be able to cover up some of that eggshell white.

            Posters are definitely an easy and cost efficient way of adding a little personality to your room, but they’re not the only things you can put on your wall.  For example, if you have a calendar from a previous year and it has cool artwork, you can use some of those pictures and arrange them on your wall in an interesting configuration.  You could also make a collage with all sorts of things from magazine cutouts to concert tickets to postcards or pictures of your own.  Sticky tack is a college student’s best friend, aside from maybe coffee. 

            This one may seem like a no-brainer, but one of the most prominent things in a dorm room is your bed, so why not buy a bedspread with a cool pattern on it instead of just a solid color?  There are tons of places you can buy comforters and bedspreads for a decent price like Target or T.J. Maxx.  Oh, and the cheesy plastic blinds that come with the room are not attractive; there’s no arguing with that.

            So while you’re at Target, pick up a curtain to hang in your window.  You can buy a tension rod or two for almost nothing and then you’ll have an easy way to hang a curtain and cover up those blinds.  And you don’t have to use a curtain if you don’t want to.

            You could also hang scarves, tapestries, or even a bed sheet for a more personal touch.  Another thing to consider is color coordinating your bedspread and curtain as well as any artwork you might display so that your space looks a little more unified.  Every college student needs a bulletin board to keep track of their schedule, to-do lists, and other notes.  In addition to buying a standard wooden framed bulletin board, another option to consider would be buying one foot squares of corkboard and either painting them or covering them with fabric for a more unique look.

            Finally, one of the most important ways that you can make your dorm room a little more inviting is to keep it tidy.  Storage is a major issue in such a small space, so buying bins that you can tuck under your bed (if you’re lucky enough to have the bottom bunk) as well as drawers or cubes that double as an extra surface will definitely help keep clutter to a minimum.

            Plus, your roommate will love you for it.  And don’t forget about photo boxes for storing smaller items like stationery, CDs, or unsightly electrical cords or chargers that you don’t use everyday.  You can also stack them so they’ll take up less space.  Another great solution is to buy a rack or organizer that will hang from your closet door, so you can store things like shoes, shampoo bottles, or makeup and then close the door when you’re not using it. 

              Share some of these tips with your roommate and you’ll have a swanky new place to cohabitate, hopefully, sans dirty underwear.  (And remember, you can always fill in the nail holes with toothpaste at the end of the semester!)