<p>My son is a freshman, and I am thinking about the best way to get him and his stuff home. He goes to college about an 8 hour drive away (and it's a hard 8 hours - city traffic, etc.) and a short and usually cheap SW Air flight. I had always assumed we would drive up to get him, but he was planning to store his refrig and TV anyway. He could get a slightly larger storage box and put things like his bedding, towel rack, etc. Then presumable he could bring everything home on the airplane - and with SW you can check 2 bags for free.</p>
<p>I like being able to see him on campus each semester so I might want to fly up, too. If I drive alone I know we could bring everything home in the car (so no storage needed), but it might be hard to fit everything back in the car in the fall if 4 of us go up which would likely be the plan. </p>
<p>Anyway, what do you do to get your kids at the end of the semester?</p>
<p>I like your plan of a storage box, burry! We have done it both ways (although it wasn’t a storage box; my kids were allowed to store stuff in their future dorms), and I think that the storage idea was much better as they didn’t dump all of their stuff at home once they got here.
Another thing we did was to visit them earlier in the spring and take home their winter coat and other winter stuff, in case this applies.
I don’t know if boys do this (my boys were the ones who did the storage and flew home), but girls take forever to say goodbye to all of their friends - I didn’t budget time for this - it must have added at least three hours to our departure when I did drive.</p>
<p>We use the Southwest system. Why bother bringing home bedding and stuff that you’ll then have to drive back down again next year? Compared to the cost of driving, hotel rooms, and the like, summer storage is a great deal. (Our D’s dorm room insurance policy covers stuff in summer storage as long as it is conditioned space.) A more expensive service she didn’t use (but I wish she would have) would have provided the boxes, picked up the stuff from her dorm room and delivered it back to her new dorm room at the start of next fall.</p>
<p>D travels home by Amtrak–there’s a stop both in her college city and home town, so it’s hard to resist. But that means she only wants to take a smallish suitcase with her. The UPS store on her campus offers a summer storage deal–they supply the boxes, store your belongings for a flat fee, and deliver them back to the new dorm in the fall. Last spring she packed up all her winter clothing, bedding, etc. for storage with UPS, and packed an additional box of summer clothing which she had UPS ship home–it arrived just a couple of days after she did. The suitcase she took on the train contained a few changes of clothes and other necessities. This was a very hassle-free process and she will do it again this spring. So unless the cost is an obstacle, I’d definitely recommend some kind of storage option–also avoids the problem of having where to stash all the kid’s stuff all summer.</p>
<p>Our son went in with a few friends to rent a storage locker close to campus. The kids crammed it with stuff to the roof! Because it was more do-it-yourself, it costs considerably less then the UPS option, above, though several students at DS’s school did go that route. If you take the storage unit options,: I suggest that he put bedding and other “soft” goods in plastic bins or sealed garbage bags and that you stress that it should be CLEAN when it goes in there. Soiled linens could get pretty ripe over the summer. :)</p>
<p>We have had our kids handle it. S has put things in plastic garbage bags & stored them in a friend’s garage. D has a lot more stuff & has stored it in S’s lodging. We think the leases will work out so D can more things from her current place to her new place, but otherwise she & her room mate will have to figure things out.</p>
<p>We’ve done it both ways. Last summer was absolutely the best—DD1 stored nearly all of her stuff in a small storage room, and even tho DD2 was going to be on campus for the summer (for work), she still had to move dorms…she stored her “school stuff” in the same storage room. They took care of schlepping the stuff from one place to another and we were happily waiting to give them big hugs when we saw them!</p>
<p>This summer DD1 graduates, so we will be going up for graduation and probably will bring all of her stuff home. Since we’ll be there, we’ll be involved in the dorm move too, I guess, for younger D. DD1 will be heading off to grad school…hmm, maybe if I can convince her to store the stuff she knows she will be taking with her to whichever school she decides on…maybe we can do the storage room thing again. It certainly was much better for Mother-Daughter relations to have us be in separate states when the moves occurred!!!</p>
<p>Note on the storage pods. D had a couple of friends have stuff damaged in the pods. They don’t always handle them gently. We will be using a storage unit for D this summer. She has too much to bring home this year and we would have to rent a uHaul. Barely could fit everything in and on our full-sized SUV for move in. Unfortunately she has acquired more stuff during the school year.</p>
<p>My son is 8 hrs away also and an easy SW flight home.</p>
<p>He uses public storage and shares the unit and cost with others in the same situation. Brings very little home for the summer. (And can ship a box- UPS).</p>
<p>When SWA finishes its purchase of Airtran, we will be a “simple SW flight away”. Don’t know if that will happen while he is still in college, though.</p>
<p>This semester DS has his car, and he will be living in the same house next year as this year (so it seems currently) so he’ll pack what he wants to bring home and drive. I kinda enjoyed the drives to/from school with him. Last bit of alone time with him and with DH too.</p>
<p>DS didn’t take his car to school until senior year. I, too, enjoyed those drives to and from school.
Sigh.
Now that he is all grown up and has a Real Job, that is a nostalgic memory.
Sigh again.</p>
<p>Store the stuff in your kiddo’s college town. If you bring it home, it will sit in YOUR living room and will annoy you all summer. You’ll basically move it out of his room and into your house, and then back to his college. Don’t bother. One of the perks of having my kid across the country was that we NEVER saw her college “stuff” in the summer. She rented a storage unit with friends for the one summer she came home…and the other two summers she just stayed in her off campus house. </p>
<p>Have your kid store the college goods and bring one or two suitcases home free on his SW flight.</p>
<p>I think it’s much easier to rent a storage locker than bring it home over the summer. It does just junk up your house. </p>
<p>The only thing I will add is that they need to wash their stuff before they put it in storage. Everyone is busy at the end of the year and it’s very tempting not to wash your winter stuff and bedding. You do not want to pick up stinky unwashed stuff that will not store very well over the summer.</p>
<p>We’ll drive down on move out day. S will load his car & we’ll load ours, about the same way we moved him in. I’ll take empty boxes and some totes along. It was strategically packed earlier, so doubt it’ll fit when we’re in a hurry.</p>
<p>S will have finals right up through the morning they leave. Their dorms close at 5:00 pm that day for the summer.</p>
<p>It’s only a 3 hour drive for us and we have a huge storage room at home.</p>
<p>D2 stores things at school over summer AND mails boxes home using UPS AND brings a couple of suitcases home. “Do you really need 23 t-shirts while at home?” I ask. Answer: “Absolutely!”</p>
<p>I like the idea of storage because the totes in the garage and my daughter’s room all summer do drive me crazy. My daughter is only 90 minutes away so one weekend either I will go down and bring empty totes, or if she has a friend going to visit I will send them with her/him. So ideally when I come to get her all we have to do is put the filled totes in the car and go. Of course it never exactly works like that. One year she had to be out of the dorms 2 hours BEFORE her last final, so we came in 2 cars the weekend before and took most of her stuff, we left her a car, and came home. Then she packed the car up before her final and checked out and then drove home after the final.</p>
But not this. At the beginning of sophomore year, geek_son left well over half of his frosh-year stuff sitting right where he’d left it at the end of frosh year – taking up the better part of the room I’d just cleared in my efforts at streamlining the house. I tripped over all kinds of college crap for months until I made time to hit that room again.</p>
<p>I’m still driving him home, but I think we’ll make a first pass through his stuff together before it goes in the car this summer! :D</p>
<p>And at the end of senior year, it’s ideal if your D can be engaged so the future SIL can pick her up and drive her to where she’s living next. ;)</p>
Pity party over here; all are welcome.)</p>