When our D studied abroad we kept everything stored in her room while she was away. Except for her bedding and a few storage boxes, all her other stuff was stuff she kept in her room at home anyway. We moved her back in when she returned to the states for her senior year.
@toomanyteens Yes! Luckily, in both my kidâs dorms a fridge was already provided so we didnât have to worry about that!
At some schools students can stay on campus over the summer to be a freshman orientation leader. At least at my Dâs school the leaders stay in a dorm (not necessarily their own) during the summer, so that takes care of where to keep their stuff. My co workers daughter was a freshman orientation leader at her school for two summers and she just moved her stuff from her school year dorm/residence to where she was staying for the program and that took care of where to keep her stuff over the summer. On another noteâŠmore use for the twin XL sheets! See if your kids wants to be a leader at their schoolâs orientation or summer programs because that takes care of where to keep their stuff and you donât have to move anything home!
Going back to studying abroad and where to store stuffâŠkeep in mind if you store stuff the whole year in a storage unit instead of just the summer it is more expensive. Plus, not all schools let you store stuff during the year. We just kept all of Dâs stuff in her room at home during the school year she was abroad. She wasnât there, so it wasnât really in her way. Plus, some of the stuff in her dorm was stuff she wanted to take abroad with herâŠ
My DD and her roommate would love to have some of the furniture thatâs already in their next year apartment- the cute decor helped sell them on the place when they toured- but the landlord wonât pass on their contact info to the current tenants 
My daughter went and politely knocked on the door of the place they were renting. They had prepared a nice note wothntheot contact info to leave just in case the occupants werenât home. They already knew the current occupants were moving out, and word was they were graduating seniors. The current occupants welcomed themâŠand they agreed on a price.
In DDs case, it was a House, and everything needed to be moved into the garage so that the owner could clean, clean carpets and paint (which I think was required between tenants by CA law). No problemâŠDD and roommates went and moved the stuff. It was way easier than getting it from someplace else.
My son was moving into an apartment he was sharing with two others who already lived there. When the third moved out, she was delighted to leave the furniture.
Not sure what you would do if it was an apartment that needed to be emptiedâŠbut reallyâŠthat might be easier to arrange and cheaper than having to buy the furnishings.
Yes, as others said, in addition to the storage facilities, there are often some friend who is staying on campus or in town over the summer who can help, or the aforementioned arrangements with the landlords of the off campus student housing (if the student is using that). Its easy peasy. Donât let the distance be a deterrent.
Also, every college has some form of student buy/sell platform. Handy for sourcing everything- bikes / fans / room fridges / books / etc etc. Even graduation gowns!
Almost everybody brings way more stuff than they need or want. Between the buy/sell platform, local shops & Amazon, students anywhere can get anything they need within a couple of days.
Our collegekids (nearest = 1000 miles / farthest = 4000 miles) brought clothes, essential toiletries, electronics (phone/laptop + the all important powerstrip) plus one comfort thing that âfeels like homeâ. They got notebooks etc both at the campus bookstore & online. We arranged for bedding, toiletries and skinny hangers (worth it btw) to be delivered onsite. Anything else was added as needed.
@natty1988, how did you get all of your kidâs things home? It was not possible for us to bring home ddâs things before her study abroad semester - she had things like a mattress topper, pillows, backrest thing, comforter, blanket, etc. She couldnât exactly fly home with those things or ship them. Thatâs why I said it is something you need to consider if your kid is going to study abroad. My D was living in on campus housing so it wasnât like she had a rented apt at school where she could leave her stuff while she was gone.
I got my son to college with 4 checked bags on Southwest. His guitar was his carry on and my stuff was in my carry on. One of his checked bags was carry on size.
His room mate is local so we chipped in for the purchase of the fridge and microwave.
Lots of schools offer rentals for stuff like fridge and microwaves, and there are printers on many dorm floors and TVs everywhere. Itâs almost always best to hold off on buying things like that until you get to campus and see what you can get locally. (And everything can be delivered.)
Our D graduated from college last year and she traveled by air over 4,800 miles each way. One of her criteria for her college search was that the colleges she applied to had to be a reasonable driving distance to an airport with commercial airline service. She didnât have a car, either the entire time she attended collge, so when we werenât there, she either rode Uber or Lyft or with friends when she traveled locally.
As others have suggested, we made our own shopping list and picked up the items we pre-ordered at a Bed, Bath, and Beyond nearest to our Dâs campus. We wound up buying table lamps, a small shelf unit that doubled as a night stand, and modular storage units for her at a nearby Target store. When she graduated, her college had a program where students could leave behind such items in dorm common areas and a charity would pick them up.
For smaller items she didnât want to bring home after graduation, we donated them to the local Goodwill. She acquired lots of books and those that she didnât want to keep and couldnât resell we donated to a local public library in the community near the campus.
My wife and I accompanied our D to her college when she started her Freshman year and when she flew home after graduation. She lived on campus all 4 years and her college had an arrangement with a local warehouse company which allowed students to contract for Summer storage of their belongings that she didnât need to bring home for Summer breaks, so she didnât need to rent a storage unit of her own.
We did rent large SUVs at the airport when we took our D to college and when she graduated. We were able to fit 6 checked bags plus carry-ons into the rental vehicles, but it was a tight fit. The cost of upgrading from a full size rental car to a large SUV wasnât that much, but I have elite status with a car rental company.
Our D always had arrangements with her roommates to rent microwave ovens and micro-fridges so we never had to purchase those.
We were very fortunate because our D was quite frugal and even in the upper class suites at the college, there really wasnât that much space to store a lot of stuff.
For those flying to and from college, you should be cognizant of the various airline checked bag fees and overweight charges. We were fortunate when we flew home together after graduation because my wife and I got a free elite frequent flyer upgrade to First Class on the first segment of our flight home. It was a relatively short flight, but it allowed my wife and I three free checked bags each weighing up to 70 pounds each for the entire journey (our connecting flight was in Economy for the three of us).
Even if youâre not an elite frequent flyer, some airline affinity credit cards allow one or two free checked bags for the primary cardholder and those accompanying the primary cardholder on the same reservation.
Iâve had two attend college about 1800 miles away. My tips:
- Very helpful if you can use Southwest as your airline. My kids always traveled with two 61 linear inch wheeled duffle bags to shuttle stuff back and forth. And a luggage scale in order to hit 49.8 pounds on the nose! No change fees and reasonable fares. Anyone who visited the kid at campus also brought/took duffles.
- Flying is not bad if home and campus are close to a major airport and you can get direct flights. Connecting flights makes it more complicated and expensive. Having a long drive to the airport on either end also more expensive and complicated. And wintry weather also makes it worse. So a Dallas kid going to Penn is pretty simple. A Montana kid going to Dartmouth is much tougher.
- For me, anything under 2,000 miles was a do-able and fun road trip. So for first apartment move in and last apartment move out at graduation was a drive in the kid's school car (if any) or one way rental in a Ryder truck or minivan (cheap as compared to plane flights and shipping). If you have to do a few long drives over the course of four years, it isn't a big deal and a moving vehicle just simplifies things greatly.
- Destination type schools have lots of summer storage options. Best option is often stashing stuff at some other kid's student apartment.
@northwesty this made me chuckle.
We call Philly the âblack holeâ of airports. PlusâŠthey get plenty of winter in PhillyâŠso air Travel is impacted.
DartmouthâŠeasy peasy. They run buses to Boston every day. Of course, the winter in Montana is iffy!
Our Dâs college was in Virginia so she definitely had to utilize connecting flights and plan for flight delays and wintry weather. By the time she graduated, she had flown through all of Unitedâs domestic hub airports and is now a very experienced airline passenger. We avoided routings which required more than one connection.
Fortunately, I earn a lot of frequent flyer miles so almost all of her flights were booked using award tickets, which have much lower change fees than most paid tickets.
Regardless of the season, we planned for her to arrive the day before dorms opened and had her stay in a nearby hotel. Only once in 4 years was her flight cancelled due to weather, but fortunately that happened before she departed from home, her flight was rescheduled for the next day, and on that trip, she actually arrived the day dorms opened.
When flying home from college, she had to depart on the red eye first flight of the day very early in the morning in order to make her connecting flight home. I booked a hotel room for her at the airport for the nights before her departure. She took the free hotel shuttle to the airport terminal, which we felt was safer and more convenient than trying to get an Uber, Lyft, or taxi ride to the airport before 5:00 AM.
Can kids under 21 rent a hotel room alone? For some reason, I thought you had to be 21.
Depends on the hotel. Weâve had luck with D19 booking a hotel in NYC. They just required the same credit card be used at reservation and check-in. My guess is that they may be more restrictive if thereâs a stocked minibar in the room, but maybe Iâm oversimplifying it.
Each individual hotel (most are owned by franchisees) posts their policies, including minimum age to check-in, for their specific location on their website. Some do require guests to be 21, but some allow guests as young as 18 to check in. All of the hotels I booked for our D were in accordance with their published age policies. When she turned 21, that did expand the number of available hotels to book for her.
I did give our D an additional credit card on my account that she could use when traveling and away at college on the condition that she not abuse it, and she used it responsibly.
Another option is to book a hotel room in your name and list your child as an additional guest. I did this when booking award stays for our D and the hotels allowed her to check-in and out on her own (although I never stayed at the property).
Our cross country college kid navigates the airline travel business way better than we parents do. She knows how to advocate for herself. She has had flight reroutings, overnights in airports (both Chicago airports), lost luggage, goofed up seat assignments. The airlines have tried to reschedule her on flights where she would miss her connectionsâŠor not get to the destination in time for whatever she was heading to. Letâs just say, she learned how to diplomatically deal with these issues and never missed anything.
The overnights at Ohare and Midway were a PITA, but somehow she got refunds for the Southwest overnight when they couldnât get her out in time and she had to book on Delta.
She has traveled around the worldâŠliterally, and I think she learned her resourceful travel skills by traveling to collegeâŠand back. A long distance.
Agree with the above posterâŠwe always booked a day before the dorms opened, and at the end of the termâŠafter the last final was scheduled. A happy thing for us was that her school actually opened for long distance travelers only the day before dorms really opened. No dining hall, but rooms were open. And she could request to stay an additional night at the before any vacation began too. That was needed sometimes.
Donât let distance and travel deter your kidâŠunless the kid really canât or doesnât want to ever deal with potential issues. They are all resolvable.
Correct, lots of hotels wonât allow under 21 in room alone. DD18 had to sofa surf Ohare one night because of this. The MAJOR hotels very close to the airport (Hilton, Marriott, etc.) did NOT have the age 21 rule, but all were completely booked (last min rez in major city.) All the more budget and boutique hotels a bit further out wouldnât allow her to checkin on her own due to the min age restriction. Found a website, Sleeping in Airports.com, that shows where all the sleepable sofas are in various airports. She found one to stretch out (under a beam of light!) and did fine from 11pm to 6am until the rescheduled flight. Wasnât even snow cancellation, think just a very windy night.