Courtesy of Dartmouth Flickr

So you have arrived, my eager ’16 friends. You have filled your parents’ car to capacity and you are all ready to move in. You have your I.D. card (get that first!) and room key, swipe into your dorm and unlock the door to the space that you will transform into your home — barring any first-year hiccups — for the next nine months. I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of tips about organizational plasticware, buying a memory foam mattress pad and getting a futon, so I’ll try to hit some points that may not have been so intuitive. Here are some move-in tips that hopefully will ease your moving process.

• As soon as you get in your room, open all the windows, prop the door open, set up a fan if you have one. With all the in-and-out and up-and-down the stairs, it’s about to get real hot up in here —especially if you have multiple people moving into the same room at once. Maybe put on some music while you’re at it.

• Save any major furniture rearrangements (i.e. bunking beds, deciding inner/outer room situations) for when all roommates have arrived. Sure, you may have discussed your options on your roomie facebook thread, but play it safe. Make sure you aren’t getting off on the wrong foot with a roommate by having your roommate introduction go something like this “Hi, I’m Maggie! By the way, you have the top bunk.” Communicate with your roommates about the sleeping situation, preferably face-to-face, after everyone has physically seen the room.

• On that note, decide early on if you and your roommates will be rotating beds throughout the year, making sure that no one gets stuck with a top or bottom bunk all year.

• The beds rise! Some people notice this immediately, but others don’t until they walk into someone else’s dorm room and see a bed way up in the air. They go high enough that the desk can fit under the bed with about two inches of clearance; any higher and you need risers. Utilize this under-the-bed storage; you’d be surprised at just how much you can fit under there.

• Save your cardboard boxes. Rather than throwing them out, break them down and store them under your bed so you won’t be scrambling with the rest of campus to obtain boxes at the end of Spring term.
• Go to the Sustainable Moving Sale! They have tons of working mini-fridges, fans, school supplies, posters, and other great stuff for a lot cheaper than what you would pay for an item otherwise. Located on Massachusetts Row behind Robinson Hall and McNutt Hall from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. today.

• One last tip: the I.D. scanners on the dorms are really strong. (You’re wondering why I’m telling you this — read on!) You can put your I.D. in your pocket and just get within a few inches of the scanner, and the door should unlock, without you ever having to fumble over yourself and that huge box you are carrying to get your I.D. out of your pocket.

Good luck! Hopefully your room will never look like mine did last week…