<p>Is there usually plenty of space in the trunk room of each house? Daughter is moving out late because of an Amherst class, so I hope there's still room. Also, I thought I read somewhere that everything stored has to be in tubs. What about larger items, like a dish chair? Thanks!</p>
<p>Depends on the house. My house has AMPLE space, but some have issues. So, I’d have her ask the HP or something.</p>
<p>Also, everything technically has to be stored in tubs or boxes, but my house does not follow these rules and has never had issues</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of a dish chair. What is it? </p>
<p>People keep bikes–clearly not in tubs–in the trunk rooms of both of the houses I’ve lived in and no one seems to care. Make sure that everything has a labeled trunk room sticker on it, though. Your daughter can usually get those from her HR, HP, or HCA. </p>
<p>The Green Street houses seem to have plenty of trunk room space, and so does Cutter-Ziskind. I can’t really speak to any of the other places, but I bet she’ll have no problem finding space.</p>
<p>It’s also called a moon chair or disk chair. It’s just a fold up chair with a rounded seat, It’s not tub sized. She lives in Comstock. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Thanks!</p>
<p>Everything does have to be stored in tubs (it makes things less chaotic) though adherence might be a little ad hoc. They say that they come through and throw things away over the summer that aren’t in the tubs, but I don’t know if they’ve ever actually done that to anyone. The rule when I was there was that you needed tubs with labels but everyone could store one rug and one lamp as well, those did not need to be in a tub, just labeled. I had a butterfly chair that didn’t fit in the tub, I think I just folded it up and taped it to my lamp and that went fine. </p>
<p>When they started the “everything in tubs or boxes with labesl” rule, I think I was a sophomore and it seemed to make sense. Some people were storing their stuff in garbage bags that ripped easily, or leaving things like mirrors just sitting out where they would break and you’d have pieces of glass to contend with. </p>
<p>Whether she’ll have space really depends. She may have some space, but she may not be able to put her things together if she waits. My advice, as soon as the trunk room is open she should take all the tubs she has, label them, and stack them together down there to hold space (somewhere accessible hopefully). THen she can fetch them out and fill them when she’s ready to leave. Or she can just pack everything except the non-essentials and send it down to the trunk room when everyone else does.</p>
<p>If your daughter initially uses tubs to hold space, she should be careful not to pack towards the back as other people will put all their stuff in front of them and then she’ll have to move it all to retrieve them.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. She said she was going to check out the trunk room as soon as she could. </p>
<p>One more quick question - has anyone used Safari Transit from the airport to Smith?</p>
<p>I’ve never even heard of them. In fact, I don’t know anyone who has…</p>
<p>Every year it seems like there’s a new group trying to organize a shuttle business for the colleges and take a bit of Pioneer Valley Transporter’s pie (well-deserved I think. The prices they charge for wont of a little competition are pretty outrageous). </p>
<p>Probably no one is any worse than any other. Just observe common sense rules, schedule a shuttle well in advance of when you need to be at the airport, confirm ahead of time and the morning of, get things in writing.</p>
<p>Well, T-Valley Cab is pretty awful–my cab driver was falling asleep at the wheel–but I think all of the others are at least decent.</p>
<p>I spent over an hour reorganizing a trunk room because the default mode seemed to have been: walk in as far as you can, dump stuff higgly piggly in a random direction. You had big things on top of small things, heavy stuff on top of light stuff. By the time I finished, there was a walkable “aisle” from front to rear and there was coherence to the stacks. What was the worst were the large garbage bags full of random junk, said bags not being tied off or anything. And things like loose printer cartridges. And why would someone stack a heavy box on <em>top</em> of a printer. And why was that pole lamp situated <em>thus</em>.</p>
<p>I hope there’s some nice dad there who organizes the Comstock room! That’s why I wanted my husband to go, but now he can’t.</p>
<p>I’m searching the internet now for airport transportation. Valley Transporter has been good for D, but with the timing of my flight, I may be just missing one, and hate to wait almost another hour, especially late at night. My daughter used Seemo once and said it seemed a bit seedy. I’m looking for a taxi company for the trip back to the airport. When we visited the first time, we had a somewhat shady character, and really smelly, rickety, old van. I can’t find old e-mails naming the companies. I appreciate any advice that anyone can give!</p>
<p>There’s a taxi stand at the airport, so when you arrive you just go there and they’ll get a cab for you. And it’s nice because you can pay at the stand with a credit card for a fixed rate before you get in the cab, or at least know how much it will cost you in cash before you start out. It’s a little more expensive with just one person, though with two people it’s actually less expensive than taking the transporter.</p>
<p>Thanks. I think I’ll do that.</p>