By Jennie Conners
Contributing Writer
For the next nine months, many freshmen will be experiencing a change in living environments.
Students will leave the comforts of home and family to move into a college dormitory room shared with another human being - possibly a stranger.
Their privacy will not be so private.
The basic dorm room is about 13 feet long, 13 feet wide and contains the bare essentials: twin beds with two drawers built in, two chests of drawers, two closets and two desks.
Students must find ways to best use their allotted space and make the room seem like home.
"A good idea is to expand the room with smaller things," John Tatum, executive team leader at Target said. "There is a lot of neat looking stuff that caters right to students."
To avoid spending lots of money, many students can look for items like lamps, end tables, dishes, ironing boards and pots and pans in the attic of a family member or close friend.
"My daughter and her roommate looked through our attic and found a couch and coffee table that we were glad to see leave the house," Jan Davis, second grade teacher and mother of a college student said. "She even sneaked into her brother's room and stole a chair."
Students with a limited budget might shop in second hand or thrift stores for dorm room items. Stores like the Goodwill at 574 South Highland and Disabled American Veterans at Summer and Highland offer a large selection of appliances, pictures frames, books, glassware and dishes.
Many magazines, like Small Room Decorating and Better Homes and Gardens Quick and Easy Decorating, give helpful hints on how to transform a dilapidated piece of furniture into a colorful and trendy piece.
For example, students can cover an old footstool found in the attic with a piece of material found on a remnant table of a fabric store. Soup cans or rectangular gourmet coffee cans can be covered with wrapping paper and rickrack and used to hold items like note pads, pencils, make-up and jewelry.
Some students, like U of M sophomore Mary Katherine Johnson, prefer to shop in stores like Target and Wal-Mart for storage items.
"I went to Target and bought things like plastic shelves and crates that can be stacked on top of one another to store clothes, books and CDs," said Johnson. "I was able to arrange my room exactly the way I wanted it."
Johnson recommends bringing or purchasing a mini-refrigerator for the room.
"If you don't have a refrigerator, you have to go out to eat out all the time," she said.
To personalize a room, students should remember to bring treasured items from home.
"I wanted to make my dorm room look like my bedroom at home," Johnson said. "I brought posters and Christmas lights to hang on the walls, framed pictures of friends, a fish in a fish bowl and a Venus flytrap."
The Target store located at Spottswood and Colonial, near The U of M, has a back-to-college section.
"Our store tries to cater to apartment and dorm students," said Brad McPherson, executive team leader at Target. "We carry futons, beanbag chairs, bulletin boards and all kinds of cool stuff and everything is in one spot."
At Target, students can purchase many things "in a box," said McPherson. There is party-in-a-box, glassware-in-a-box, dinnerware-in-a-box, tailgate-in-a-box and so on.
"We try to be trendy and right now Todd Oldom (the MTV spokesperson for Target) is it," McPherson said. "This year the 'in' colors are darker and cater right to students."
