He really didn’t want much help. Like his bed isn’t made - I got the mattress allergy bag en casement thing on, the mattress topper on and a fitted sheet - everything else is thrown on top. He had to build his desk (just screw in the legs - it’s from IKEA because the provided desk was too small) and snap together some bins for the closet. During that time I got his nice shirts hung up and T-shirts put away and shoes put in the over door shoe holder thing. But pants and shorts are still in a bag. I put towels and extra toiletries away, but he didn’t let us stay long enough to put the command hooks up to find a spot to hang his towels or set up his desk, fan, light etc. He hustled us out of his dorm so I never saw the common room lounge. He also wanted us gone before the roommate got back from his run, so we never met him. It felt very fast.
When we moved S22 in it was later in the morning then we went for a late lunch together. After that the school had a parent and student ice cream social that was basically designed as a time to officially say good bye and get the parents off campus. But at that school (WPI) it is small and all freshmen move in on the same day. At Clemson for S25 students move in across four days, so there is no activity for parents and they seem to want parents out - I assume because there are so many more families coming they need to make room. So it was kind of a very unfulfilling non-closure of a goodbye. I think because S25 had more exposure to campus (junior year first visit, admitted student day in April, early pre-orientation last month) he was also feeling more comfortable and ready to just get started.
D25 got her clothes into 1 zippered bag and has 2 sets of clothes still on hangers covered with a regular sized garbage bag. I am then using the other bags for each of the rooms- theres 1 filled with bathroom items, 1 with living room stuff, 1 with desk/decor, and 1 filled with bedding.
The trailer has arrived and we will start to fill tonight. She is excited so that makes me happy. She confided to me that S23 has been giving her tips for welcome week and he told her to “act like mom.” It was heartwarming to know that as much as I annoy them for being so friendly with strangers, maybe they see some benefit to it.
Daughter had to move in early for band…it was her plus 2 other girls. The dorm had no idea they were coming. They had to go to a different spot on campus to create a code to unlock their doors and no one had told us this. Then it took 30 minutes for the code to work.
There was no place to park; all of us parents ended up driving up on the sidewalk between buildings to get as close as possible to drop things off.
When we finally got in the room, we had 20 minutes before she/we had to leave. I had enough time to hang up a towel for her, find the trash bin, and get her mattress topper unboxed. Her stuff is all over everywhere. The furniture is in all the wrong places… the desk is under the non lofted bed, making it unusable.
The worst part is that it did not need to be limited to 2 hours. It would have made no difference to the dorm people if we had 5 hours. But it would have made a lot of difference to her and to us.
Then I did the ugly cry as I hugged her goodbye.
I’m thankful she decided not to go farther away from home. The move in experience was so bad though that it made me question the entire choice of college.
How awful. Seriously, seriously awful. Really sorry that this was the experience for you and your daughter. Hope she can get all of her stuff sorted out in her room soon.
Hi all you organized people! If you made a first aid kit for your kid to take, can you give me the logistics? Like, did you put tylenol, ibuprofen, and other OTC meds in a pill box and label? Use film containers (as if they exist anymore)? Buy some sort of small bottles? I think I’m going to augment one from amazon, but am trying to visualize max impact in a small space. Thanks in advance!
Hugs to all of you in the midst of drop offs; I get teary thinking about it and we still have a month.
I got a plastic bin the size of a shoebox. It has: tylenol, Advil, tylenol cold and flu, band aids, neosporin, cortisone cream, thermometer, Benadryl, cough drops, tweezers, finger and toe nail clippers (didn’t know where else to put those).
Thank you. Yes it was terrible and stressful and borderline traumatic. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but that was a total cluster. She didn’t even spend last night in the room— will finally get back to her room late tonight. Everything is scattered all over the suite so she has some work cut out for her. Thankfully organization is one of her strengths and she is very capable.
I got a large bottle of Tylenol, one of Advil, alcohol wipes, various sized bandaids and a thermometer. Target was selling cool container so u put them in that.
I hope her day today and set up tonight and the next few days goes better for her. That sounds really really stressful. We thought for about five minutes we had broken S25s bed while lifting it (we had, in fact, bent the hooks of the frame - it took pliers, a wrench, a lot of hammering and just a lot of brute force to fix it). Those five minutes alone were not good. The look on the kids face was like O Fudge (not fudge). I’ve just gotten here and it’s already a disaster and I broke something…. Tempers were already getting frayed and people were getting snippy and we probably got the whole thing fixed in less than 10 minutes. I can’t imagine a whole afternoon of chaos. Hopefully this is something she can laugh at and have a “Wait until you hear MY move in story…” to bond with people over the next few months. If she can get past this and laugh at it then it becomes a funny to look back on thing in a “and what ELSE can go wrong” kind of way. I’ll be crossing fingers for her that things smooth out soon.
I bought the “build your own first aid kit’ from Target and filled it with mostly travel sized containers. I’m not trying to supply him a year’s worth of anything - just enough to get him to the point he can get himself to a store.
I have two college move ins this week - it’s a little crazy! D25 went to boarding school not too far from her college (Penn), so we put her stuff in storage for the summer and I just drove cross country 26 hours with D24’s stuff as she’s transferring from a West coast school - swapped it out for the stored stuff so I can move in D25 for Penn pre-orientation tomorrow and then will reload the car with D24’s stuff on Sunday to take up to Cornell move in on Monday. They are flying in tonight and tomorrow because I didn’t have room in the car for them! After Cornell I’ll come back down to Philadelphia for the main orientation and then S27 flies in and I go to drop him off at boarding school. It’s a lot of dorm moving! At least I’m leaving the car in NY and will then get a rental and fly home, I’m tired of driving already!
For your child’s medical kit, I would advise that all pills stay in original packaging vs repacking in other containers to avoid any mix ups or misunderstandings.
Plastic shoebox, mentioned above is a great way to have it all in one place and when your child calls and they are sick - you can say “remember the bright blue box under your bed - it is all there”
While you are putting together first aid, sewing, toolkits for your new college kids, something we included was “beverage protectors”. The brand we ordered was My Cup Condom because I thought the kids would get a kick out of it, but there are many options. It’s basically a disposable cover to prevent contamination of one’s beverage. I told my D to share and I’d restock. Thankfully I never heard of any issues but better safe than sorry.
If your kid has (like mine) several prescription medications they need to take, it’s worth buying a pill sorter, and sorting out those medications into it with them. (We got a two-week sorter, IMO a much better idea than a one-week one.)
This means that if your kid isn’t sure if they missed a dose and so isn’t sure whether they need to catch up or not—a problem with any new schedule, and even more so in the new environment of a dorm and all—they can see at a glance whether they did or not, and act accordingly.
My daughter got an amazing first aid kid as a graduation gift, and I supplemented it with some stuff, but should have included Afrin and any kind of 12-hour pseudoephedrine that you can only get from behind the pharmacy counter - she really needed it in her first fall semester and she was too sick to walk to CVS to get it.
Ikea style bags made the flight just fine! No issues at all - they still look perfect. I did have S25 double layer them just in case, but it really wouldn’t have been necessary this time.
He ended up getting everything in two Ikea style blue bags, plus a carry on suitcase and backpack.
But today we have orders to pick up at Target, Walmart and an Amazon pickup point.
