Our third child came home the other day with his clothes, towels, bedding, a humidifier, computer screen, backpack, and that’s about it. He took minimal items and told him to give away or toss all of the random junk that he won’t need next year. If toiletries were at least half full, bring them home, but otherwise throw away. I was happy to see a full bottle of Dawn, which I will use. It was a very low effort move out.
I am ashamed. Mine is in school only 75 minutes drive away. A bicycle. A papasan chair. An IKEA SOFA, for God’s sake! A dorm fridge, a special infuser teapot that she and her suite mate practically had a court battle over who would get custody this summer… The downstairs is filled with stuff. And I don’t care. She will go off to study language again somewhere this summer, and she’ll go back to school in the fall. Just glad she’s home safe and happy, for a bit.
My D is an over packer and truly made her suite like a home. It was important to her so we went with it even though she literally took her whole wardrobe.
As far as meds, my D and her roommate went through almost the whole stock in their first semester due to illness. Like a previous poster said, no one feels like walking to the pharmacy sick and the prices of those meds on campus are insane!
I sent my daughter with about a dozen AA batteries. Nothing - and I mean nothing - she owns takes batteries. I think it was my coping mechanism for her moving away, to make sure she had everything she could ever need.
That was on me. I think most of the stuff she accumulated was clothing, in the hopes of never doing laundry.
Next year, much less even though she’s moving into a bigger on campus apartment.
Our S brought home lots of tshirts as he got a lot of free ones from his rock climbing and other campus activities. He got lots of free meals attending these events as well.
D acquired a lot as S found it helpful to dump/gift her things he no longer wanted but though she might be able to use. The more she moved, the more she shed or gave away.
They did not bring home more than they could fit in their carryon & backpack each summer. I’m honestly not sure what they did with their belongings when they had no place to live in LA as they never shared that info with me. I believe S stored his with a friend in a frat house and they did rent a storage place for a month or two one summer or more.
My daughter just graduated last week. We live overseas so never witnessed a pack out which was a move to a storage unit with the help of nearby relatives for the past three years. We helped with the move out last week, it took a rental van to move her and her boyfriend (no furniture). Not a horrible accumulation actually, but moving her out, I realized one thing important, I had really failed to teach her how to clean. YUCK!
We have a mountain of “stuff” in our guest room. Guess we are not having any guests this summer. LOL.
S18 packed himself up which was great. However, he only brought home half of his hangers and seems to be missing the spare set of sheets. First aid kit disappeared and he brought home 2 shirts belonging to his roommate (who is about 6 inches taller). Boys!!
Just talked to son and asked what he was doing with his stuff this summer. He told me he got a storage unit. Yay! They can be trained.
H and I just brought D home last night. This is our 5th kid and she has been the most organized, which I really appreciate. Everything clean, neatly packed and ready to stuff in the back of our Honda Pilot. With 3 of us in the vehicle, it was completely full. Took just a few minutes to load up and check out of the dorm. D was bringing home a lot of artwork, some of which is 3/D, delicate. Early in our 2hr drive home, H braked rather hard, which caused one piece to break. D cried, was upset with her dad (unreasonably, imo, but I think she was stressed/recovering from finals). Then, near the end of the trip, a deer ran in front of us and H had to slam on the brakes and swerve to avoid it–which he did by inches. Fortunately no one was behind us because we could’ve been rear-ended. Anyway, the same piece that was slightly broken earlier went flying and was smashed to bits! D was not so upset that time–grateful that we avoided an accident. When we got home about 11pm, all D’s stuff --except her clothes–was dumped in our front room–where it will sit until August. Then D had the nerve to start complaining about how messy our house is…fortunately she is leaving for study abroad in 6 days!
Thank goodness for your H’s quick reflexes! It’s so scary when a deer jumps in front of your car. Sorry about the artwork- I’m sure your D was upset because she knows how much time went into the creation and saw how quickly it was ruined. The stress of coming down after finals happens at our house, too. Hopefully your D will be able to relax and enjoy her brief time with you before leaving again.
Yes, glad you’re home safely! And my D slept for pretty much a whole day one her first day back!
“Then D had the nerve to start complaining about how messy our house is…” Ha, it kills me when they say stuff like that, and then proceed to never help out at all. Yesterday, I asked D to pitch in around the house - empty the dishwasher, put away stuff, etc. We’ll see what happens.
S1 had not even begun to organize his belongings when we arrived to pick him up after freshman year. It took FOREVER to load him up and assist in the required cleaning. Grrrrrr. We bought him a car before he headed back for Soph year. Senior year he lived in a townhouse with 3 other students. After graduation, they all bolted and S1 got stuck tossing out the items left behind and cleaning carpets etc. It took him almost 2 days. He kept the entire deposit for himself and to this day is a minimalist and keeps a very tidy apartment.
S2 never once brought home his bedding, towels or personal grooming items.
Freshman year I found the same thing, my daughter hadn’t started packing up her room, she had been busy studying for finals and writing papers. We worked together very hard to get it all packed up in a few hours.
Junior year, my daughter shared a dorm apartment with 5 other girls. She was the last one moving out (I guess she had the last final - as move out was always 24 hours after your last final). They left so much stuff behind (including a fridge and freezer filled with food.) The RA was extremely nice, she brought us huge heavy duty garbage bags and we all worked stuffing in everything. Yes, it was a sin to throw out their kitchen stuff which they left behind, but I wasn’t taking it back home with me. Besides texting her former suitemates to tell them “nice job cleaning out your stuff”, my daughter never spoke to any of them again (they were horrible suitemates all year long.) They were in such a hurry to get out, they even left a few valuables behind (which the RA found while doing the room clearance check and kept for them to claim).
My spouse and I are largely responsible for the huge quantity of stuff our kid took to school. It was our fault, not his. The weekend after he was admitted to college (early decision), my spouse and I started a list, which we added to during all the months until drop-off. It was like nesting; we wanted to take care of him by making sure he would never lack for anything he might ever think about. And my spouse spent months on the Internet researching the very best backpack, sleeping bag (for the camping trip), lamps, etc., etc. We ended up with an impressive multi-page, categorized masterpiece of a packing list. Amazingly, it all fit into his room, no problem.
When we were cleaning out the guest bedroom in our house recently, we found something even funnier than our college packing list: our babysitting notebook from when he was a toddler. We would give it to the grandparents and babysitters. It is pretty hilarious. It has a table of contents and an incredible amount of detail on anything that could conceivably have come up as an issue. We even included diagrams for how to cut hot dogs and grapes to avoid choking risk.
Yep, our kid is sane, frugal, and well-adjusted. We, his parents, however, are nuts.
@TheGreyKing – two awesome bookend anecdotes. Love it!!
Somewhere I have a 5 page tome I wrote for my mother when she cared for my kids while I was on a fairly long business trip. Detailed schedules and meal suggestions for sure – but no table of contents or diagrams. You win!! 
LOL - Try to make sure your kid is not the last kiddo to leave the college suite (or apartment), especially senior year.
^Good advice that I’ll pass on to my daughter next year!
Wow, I’m so thankful my dad bought D a car. Saved us 1,000 miles of driving, plus food and hotel expense. And moving her out!
It seems like your daughter and mine are very similar. First year she wanted to bring “” her stuff "… Like All her stuff!.. Lol. She needed her books for some reason and like every stitch of clothing she owned plus going to goodwill or the like to create other outfits… Plus her plants… Needed her plants like she couldn’t buy plants anywhere on campus… Haha… The second year she downsized but still a lot of stuff.
Stupidly we “made” our son take too many clothes and stuff that he never even opened. It was still in a box in the closet. He left it there all year. Second year was slightly better but we got a smaller suv so we really had to downsize what we could take and get home. Luckily my mother is just 45 minutes away so we stored stuff like boxes of his kitchen stuff and a futon there from his apartment… He would be fine with half the stuff he had.
A couple of weeks ago we moved D2 out of her college campus apartment she shared with 3 other girls for two straight years (they didn’t move out in the summers so 2 straight years of accumulating things). We were moving our D from that apt into another apt across town for grad school.
D had done a pretty good job of packing but I helped some the night before graduation. The apt was a MESS and her other three roommates who also needed to move out the next 36 hours had hardly packed a thing. I think they just figured their parents would do it when they came - WHAT?!
Here D and I were packing long and hard and filling our cars to the brim to move the next day. The three other roommates who NEEDED to pack? One was hanging out at her boyfriends house. One decided to just focus on the laundry she hadn’t done for 3 weeks. One was sitting on the couch binging Jane The Virgin. I was shaking my head.
Their parents were none to happy when the final day came and they had to pack, load cars and clean the apt all in a matter of hours.