<p>paying3tuitions, that is just so sweet!!</p>
<p>Of course if he’d laundered that quilt bi-weekly for those intervening years, he wouldn’t have had to waste his money on dry cleaning…BUT I DIDN"T SAY THAT!! Besides the finances are in his favor – 3 years of quarters vs. one dry-clean bill. He was smart.</p>
<p>When I was in college, there were 2 coed wings on each dorm with one bathroom, so one wing was the men’s bathroom and the other the women’s. The sides switched at the semester break. At move in second semester, I walked into the now-women’s room to find one of the stalls open with my hallmate’s dad sitting on the toilet, reading the newspaper! I beat a strategic retreat and didn’t return until he’d left! (Never told the hallmate…)</p>
<p>parental help unpacking: we decided it was a physical necessity because the room was so small and the boxes/suitcases the 2 boys had brought took up the few square feet of empty space! First order of business was to clear the room!</p>
<p>I asked first, but my job was to put clothing into the dresser and the closet. Just getting the box that had various size 12 sport shoes out of there helped! Theoretically, DS was going to rearrange it to his liking, but I don’t think that ever happened. The boys were also unpacking and arranging stuff. While the students were waiting in line to pick up text books, the mom’s quickly made up the beds. (one more pile of stuff out of the way)</p>
<p>BUT: I was quite surprised when the other mom noticed that some of her son’s long sleeved shirts were wrinkled and offered to iron them before she left!</p>
<p>Sorry, but sudsie now takes top prize. Lord, is that dangerous, changing sexes midterm. Thank God my son, Mr. Oblivious, doesn’t go to that school!</p>
<p>Of all the great stories on here, payingthreetuitions’ quilt one touches my heart most. Sniff. Sniff. PTT did what I have done over the years when I KNOW I am going to embarrass one of my three…I am upfront about it and then go right ahead and do it if I feel the need. We can all have a laugh at my expense then, not the kids. My kids’ friends have always liked me and thought I was the fun, quirky mom. They came to expect an occasional faux pas. I’m worth it.</p>
<p>I would normally not do this, but we took showers in our D’s suite after we brought her stuff in & helped her unpack, and yes she did want help with the unpacking. </p>
<p>The reason was Irene had blown through our area, & we had not had electricity for 3 days and since we are on a well & septic, no water. We had been taking sponge baths with a pail of water in the bathub (we do fill several large pails when a hurricane is coming, and we had been driving to a neighboring electricity-on town to refill them for flushing). So it was “in the plan” that Mom & Dad were going to get real showers in the dorm before leaving for home (where it turned out to be 2 more days till lights on). </p>
<p>However, I think when one of the suitemate’s families showed up they were a little startled by the sound of the shower running! But they understood when we explained, they were from the neighboring state & they knew about the outages in ours. </p>
<p>On the parental sleepovers – with our oldest, she invited me to come to her first sports competition, and I slept on the floor of her room. Could not have afforded to stay there if I had not. That was when we had more kids at home & a much lower income.</p>
<p>I have got the topper to all of your bathroom-cleanng stories. </p>
<p>I went to the dentist a couple of weks ago for checkup & teeth cleaning. And while I was sitting there helpless, she told me how SHE had cleaned her son’s room this summer when he was about to start a grad program somewhere prestigious, and that SHE had climbed up on a chair and cleaned the dust off the fire sprinkler (not to mention all the other stuff she scrubbed, like the baseboards and entire window frames inside & out, not just the sills). </p>
<p>Well, I know my teeth are clean!</p>
<p>On move-in day, we helped our S rearrange the room’s furniture, and had things pretty well set up. S had his stuff on his desk, and on the shelves - photographs, toiletries, and other personal items. The door was open, and another mom (not someone we knew) entered to see how we had set up the room to get ideas. She quickly made herself at home, and invited in her H, who spent his time so closely inspecting my S’s belongings that I thought we’d have to take an inventory once he left - clearly the kind of person who goes through the medicine cabinets in other people’s houses.</p>
<p>P3T, I’m not sure I would have trusted a homemade quilt to the tender mercies of a campus or public laundrymat (and I make quilted stuff!). Your S probably wanted to treat your gift with special care.</p>
<p>mafool, S2 wears a size 15 shoe. Multiply that by 2 pr. of sneakers, dress shoes, casual shoes, slides… His snowboots are the stuff of legend. My size 11 sneakers fit inside them. </p>
<p>Sudsie – :eek:</p>
<p>At D2’s orientation they talked about the loft bed policies for about 15 minutes. It just droned on and on to the point that my mind was far away. I snapped back when he ended with “Any questions about lofting beds?” I mom’s hand waved from the middle of the room. “Are we allowed to loft beds?”</p>
<p>Don’t call me crazy but I steam-cleaned my DS’s single room three times- the solution turned BLACK - and sanitized the walls, door knobs, and all the furniture more than once. This was done while DS was at orientation. </p>
<p>It took three full crazy days to clean and furnish his room, but DS could barely help out because his days were packed with orientation activities. I could NEVER understand why the school has ‘move-in’ days while all it would let the kids do is to attend out-of-dorm activities 
</p>
<p>DS said I was overdoing it but I saw with my own eyes how stinking dirty the room was, and I am glad I gave it a good clean.</p>
<p>When I was in college was back in the mid '70’s one dorm lived in was coed by room and there were two bathrooms on each floor. We just used the one closest to our rooms. No one seemed to mind the sexes mingling.</p>
<p>Interesting to read all of these. I’m an international student and left my parents 12000 miles away. Moving in was much easier since we come with 2 suitcases but it’s always interesting to see the domestic students move in. Never thought about these things though. Very interesting read.</p>
<p>BTW, my professor recently sent his daughter away to school, and he didn’t even go to drop her off. She drove herself and moved in herself. I was very impressed.</p>
<p>Love this thread. Drop-off was interesting for us, in that DS attends a school where you drive in, a student comes to your car and leads your freshman away to get his id and key, you pull the car in front of the dorm building, a swarm of kids come unload the car for you while you sit in the car, and then you go park. What you do next is up to you. DS had made it quite clear that he did not want any help setting up his room, so we headed to some parents’ activities and eventually meandered over to his room. Everything was unpacked, the bed was made and the empty suitcases were sitting in the hall ready for us to take home. His water pitcher was even filled. We sat on his bed for a while as he fiddled with his computer. Met the roommate for a few minutes. That was pretty much it. We all headed to the bookstore for a t-shirt and then out to lunch. Dropped him back at the dorm. Later, picked him up for dinner and a final goodbye.</p>
<p>Anyway, no faux pas but still heartwrenching yet thrilling at the same time for all of us.</p>
<p>mn… did you like it? just wondering. Have had 2 leave, each year different for sure.</p>
<p>"Don’t call me crazy but I steam-cleaned my DS’s single room three times- the solution turned BLACK - and sanitized the walls, door knobs, and all the furniture more than once. This was done while DS was at orientation. "</p>
<p>I’ll call you crazy. That seems over the top. Since when do walls need to be “sanitized”? Multiple times?</p>
<p>I have to admit, I actually went out and replaced the toilet seat in the suite bath. That thing was disgusting, and was so paint blistered the girls would have surely gotten splinters. So we made a trip to Walmart and bought a new identical one and replaced it when no one else was around. My D was very appreciative. Can you picture me trying to discreetly walk down to the dorm dumpsters with an old toilet seat “hidden” in a plastic bag? I was praying no one would be around when I tossed it in! Yes, I should have made kiddo do it, but it was my last “mom” duty. We couldn’t visit for parents weekend and will probably never visit campus again it’s on the other side of the country and money is tight.</p>
<p>mommidwest,
Did you ask the college to replace the seat first? Both of my Ds have had to request repair/replacement of items in their dorm rooms (windows and shower fixtures). Information on how to do this is provided to the students.</p>
<p>Actually no, we probably should have. We wanted to just get it done before we left town, but the girls were going to ask them to fix the leaking toilet and address the live cockroaches we saw in the rooms when we got there to move in. It was a very old dorm and the conditions were surprising.</p>