We flew so S2 arrived with 2 large duffel bags and a carry-on. His room is super tiny. It has excellent storage but no room on the floor for anything extra. I have no idea where some of these kids think they are going to put their big bins, furniture, storage drawers, etc. The beds are already bunked with no space to unbunk them so there’s no lofting the beds to create underbed storage.
I have a friend who drives an Escalade and is also getting a u-haul trailer. S1 was limited to what would fit in an Outback first year. I think he took less with him the second year.
S2 has acquired more kitchen equipment than we have…and he took it all to college. OTOH, we packed four adults and two kids’ worth of college stuff in a minivan back and forth to Boston many times. I did it in 2012 with just S2, me and a Thule on top of an Outback. Unfortunately, the campus didn’t have free summer storage, but at a certain point we just got a small cube for the summer. It was $89/mo, which was less than the cost of renting the minivan, and it was a LOT easier. Felt dumb for not doing the obvious much earlier. The service that picked up from the dorm room was much, much more expensive.
S1 had free summer storage at his school. I had the same thing in college. Made life a lot easier.
Husband has “re” packed not only the carry ons but the two big checked suitcases. We are chalking it up to his coping mechanism in processing son moving cross country…
Or him just being a big pain in our #%%%%!!!
Cali son had packed shorts, Ts and flip flops…then I reminded him he will be living on east coast…learning curve
@Massmomm I am impressed your son does laundry every week. It sometimes seems like my sons do it once a month! Once a week is astounding to me!
I would just like to give a shout-out to the parent who recommended the Samsonite tote-a-ton duffle bags 4 years ago. Those worked great and hardly took up any room to store!
However I have to admit that in boarding school my D only changed sheets when it was time to switch to flannel sheets and then, in the spring, back to plain cotton. She has promised to try to do better in college.
LOL all three kids say the thing they miss the most about “mom” is that I do laundry. Doing laundry is the ONLY household task I enjoy doing…so I happily wash, wash, wash and dry, dry, dry. Although all 3 have called me at one point or another and asked me how I get the clothes so clean. The washers at my first son’s college were so filthy, and he did do laundry regularly, when he came home even his clean clothes turned the washer water dirty gray and the first thing I would do is empty is suitcase and wash and dry all his “clean clothes” again. Yuck…reminds me of when I was very young and had to use laundromats and how nothing really ever got clean.
We took my daughter to college for her first year in our RV (29’ long), all 7 of us, plus 2 dogs and a cat. I thought she had a lot of stuff - until we met her roommate, an only child. She literally brought an entire year’s worth of bottled water and it was Poland Spring, not some unique brand that is impossible to get in upstate NY! She also had a refrigerator and a TV, neither of which my D brought.
My son went to school his first year with 6 black t-shirts, 2 pairs of black pants, a half dozen pairs of socks and underwear, sneakers, hiking boots and a tuxedo with the shirt and bowtie, plus 2 sets of sheets, a towel and a blanket, a sleeping bag (for guests), one hoodie and a pair of gloves. D, who was in her final semester, gave him her towels and sheets when she left and took him to the thrift shop for a winter coat.
He actually used it, too. He was elected to student government and went to the president’s gala! It was the tux my H wore when we married and he’s the only one of the 4 boys who has the build for it, so it’s his.
My S did not want to pack his tux (I bought in senior year of HS after renting twice in junior year) when he headed to freshman year of college. Yep, got that call about a month in, asking me to FedEx it…
It was a good investment…he said he used about a dozen times in college.
Our S asked us to mail the blazer and dress slacks he graduated from HS in during his freshman year, so he could wear it to the many career fairs the engineering dept hosted. It fit nicely in a medium flat rate box, with the shirt and tie.
