<p>I dunno, I think rugs cost a good deal more than that. It depends on the size. If you want 8 x 10, they’re close to $100 at Target. </p>
<p>D’s college has a deal with Habitat for Humanity. You can order a carpet from them, and it will be in the room when you arrive. They are solid colors, low pile shag, and bound on the edges. They’re a bit pricey (9 x 12 is $120) but they are good quality and the profits go to Habitat, and not having to bring the rug with you is a bonus if you’re traveling a long way (as we are).</p>
<p>^That’s a terrific idea…I’d go for it if my kid really wanted a big rug but, alas, she does not. D’s two roomies this year want them all to chip in on a big rug. D doesn’t want to own one as she says it will just be filthy by December (the little stick vacs do not do well on anything thick) and she likes small rugs that she can take outside and shake occassionally. She’s planning on bringing other necessities to share and hoping the one closest to school who is pushing for the big rug will just buy it to eliminate the storage/cargo problem.</p>
<p>What is it about boys and new towels every day?! My D, the clean freak, uses two bath towels and three hand towels a week. My S, the grubby one, uses a completely new set every day…sometimes two if he has a practice! I always accuse him of just being too lazy to hang them up but he says they don’t “dry right” once they’ve been used…arggh! Even making him do his own laundry hasn’t made him get over it!</p>
My kids both were/are afflicted with this while at home. It seems it’s too much trouble to hang up the wet towel, and the linen closet is on the way to the bathroom…</p>
<p>However, at college S only took one towel with him. I hope he’s washing it once a week… not my problem though. :)</p>
<p>My S took two towels to college and a small drying rack. I am sure he’s not washing them often. That was two years ago. As notrichenough says, ‘not my problem.’</p>
<p>I’ve always used a clean towel everyday…so do my parents…and everyone else I know. </p>
<p>I’ve never used the same towel twice without it being washed first unless I’m swimming and getting out of the water repeatedly throughout the day. In fact, that never even occurred to because that’s just how my family works. </p>
<p>Sorry. -shrug- But I prefer more towels. That’s how I’ve always lived.</p>
<p>I hope somebody at Rixs’ house really enjoys doing laundry! Maybe doing laundry by inserting money in a slot will convince any of you doubters that you don’t need a different towel every day. No offense, but I think it’s a ridiculous example of over-consumption. It takes a bunch of water and a lot of electricity to dry your average American fluffy towel. And you really are clean when you use a towel, so all you have to do is make sure it dries properly.</p>
<p>I think it cost under $100 for my son’s dorm-room outfitting. I bought bedding: a down comforter at a great outlet store for $20, mattress pad at Target for about $10, sheets on sale - 2 sets - for about $20 total, and I made him a duvet cover out of some sheets we had on hand. I think he took towels from home. He got a desk lamp for under $10, a laundry bag for $5, a Brita pitcher for $15 and some flip flops so he would fit in in California for about $12. A friend I met on CC gave us a bunch of hangers on move-in day. The most expensive thing was a big duffel bag that was the maximum size one could check on an airplane - and that’s been used a lot. His room came with a fridge. All he really needed was a laptop and a comfortable bed, so he was happy!</p>
<p>Rix: I’ll tell you what else I tell my towel-user. Theoretically when you get OUT of the shower you are clean. You just need to get the water off your CLEAN skin.</p>
<p>I only own 3 towels and do laundry once every 10 days to 2 weeks. I use each towel a minimum of 3 times. It’s a waste of time/energy to toss one in the wash after each use. But, to each their own</p>
<p>But I’m going to go out on a limb and theorize that when you get to school and discover that your seven large fluffy towels take up half of your drawer space, and you have a pile of wet towels lying around your room all week, and it’s costing you $5/week to clean them, and it adds an extra load to the laundry every week… you will have a revelation.</p>
<p>All kidding aside, I would actually recommend you try it for a week or two while you are still at home. Just hang the towel up properly so it will dry (spread it out, don’t fold it or bunch it up). You may find you don’t mind using the same towel for a few days or a week, and you will have saved yourself a bunch of money and hassle during the year.</p>
<p>^Where to hang it though? I don’t really have any spaces dedicated to towel drying. I’d have to put it on the dining room table… (And I’m not joking either. My bathroom has no towel rack.)</p>
<p>And I’ll be using a clothes hamper at college. </p>
<p>But seriously? I don’t always just use towels for drying off after the shower. There’s also spills and other accidents, as well as…err…womanly problems…that I sometimes find the need for towels for. </p>
<p>Even if I can cut back on changing-after-shower-drying use, I still might need a couple extra towels and wash cloths.</p>
<p>We use our towels multiple times before they’re washed, hang them on a rod to dry in between. Whatever other people do is their business… but I would find it much ickier to have a week’s worth of damp towels in a hamper. ewww. But then I find damp anything left in a hamper to be pretty disgusting.</p>
<p>^Exactly. All families are different. My parents are clean-freaks. The house has to be spotless. Any dirty (used) clothes/towels go in the hamper in the utility room. End of discussion in my family. </p>
<p>In fact, before this thread…I never thought people would use the same towel over and over and over. Just because I’ve never seen it before. Everybody I know has a bathroom closet/cabinet full of clean towels and washcloths for everyone to pick from and then toss in the hamper when they’re finished. </p>
<p>I don’t think I’ve seen anybody with only a few towels to use over and over. I’ve also never seen distinct towels for each family member. My parents and I share all the same towels. Same for all my friends’ families. </p>
<p>Maybe it’s just the area I live in…I dunno…</p>
<p>Rixs - I am sending 5 towels and 10 washcloths with my D to college. We each reuse our own towels a couple of times before washing but we live in the desert where simply hanging a towel on a towel bar at any time of year guarantees that it is dry in no time - so it still smells clean, no time for mildew to even think about getting a toe hold. Even so, a shower for a girl with long hair is a two towel operation and my daughters shower morning and night (which they learned during a recent choir trip is not the norm for everyone else). Since D’s school is also in the desert, all those towels will be dry before they go in the hamper - so they won’t smell anymore than the other laudry and I’m thinking once a week for laundry. So enjoy a fluffy clean towel in whatever fashion makes sense to you and your situation!</p>
<p>I only shower/bathe twice if I’ve done something that’s gotten me really dirty during the day, liked played sports all afternoon or something. </p>
<p>Yeah, I use two towels at home when I shower–one for body, one for hair, because I can’t dry my entire body and hair off at once and my mom gets mad if I drip water all over the floor. =P But I’m only using one for college.</p>
<p>Yeah, I don’t live in a dry area like that. The humidity where I live is ridiculous. You’d never dry a thick towel that fast at my house.</p>
<p>basajaun, applicannot is in a unique situation for CC. Her family is very low income, she’s pretty much self-supporting. (I’ve seen her story on other threads).
<p>After 3 years worth of “shake-down,” in terms of simplifying the stuff packed off to college, I’d say the following are really nice to have, if you can afford them:</p>
<p>1) Memory foam mattress pad (maybe even for boys)–probably a new purchase, for most. Well worth it in most colleges. Should last for several years, 4+ if you are lucky.
2) Mattress cover
3) Sheets that fit twin XL–you may already have some, maybe not. One set is sufficient, two sets are good, we’ve usually packed four sets (for a girl)
4) Blanket–take one from home
5) Towels–how many? Nope, not going there
6) Desk lamp–can be bought inexpensively, or take one you already own, if the school does not provide them
7) Printer–really convenient when a hard-copy of a paper has to be submitted at 8 am and the paper has just been finished at 6:30 am. This was our major purchase.
8) Small refrigerator–rent or buy. You can purchase a larger one than the dorms usually rent, for about $60-$100. These will usually have better freezer compartments. Whether it’s worth it depends on the cost and availability of food items in the residence halls (especially at odd hours, if your son is working at odd hours)
9) First aid kit–or just a box of bandages
10) Flashlight (just in case)
11) Power strip to add outlets</p>
<p>(I know this is redundant with other lists, but thought I’d post just the items that seemed most useful for our student.)</p>
<p>We bought a bedspread at a January white sale, halfway through the year.</p>
<p>Additional items that got a lot of use: Two small tables, about 14 inches high, with square tops, maybe 15 inches by 15 inches. Can house the printer (keeping desk space free) or stacks of items, or serve as snack tables, etc. Available cheaply at most discount stores or IKEA.</p>
<p>The calculator from high school will usually be fine for college, if your son has one of his own. You might want to allow some money for software purchases in addition to books, depending on major.</p>
<p>We don’t reuse towels but only because we live near the water and it is very humid; a towel would never dry (although we prefer thin towels). Then again, we also don’t shower every day - every other day is the norm for my family. I learned that wasn’t “ordinary” in summer camp. I’m just bringing two towels with me to school… towels take up a lot of space, and I have a feeling I’m not going to enjoy doing laundry (though laundry at Stanford is “free”).</p>
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<p>Haha, by CC standards, probably. I had two pairs of jeans, two pairs of shorts, 3-4 shirts, and a hoodie. I also had only two bras. Trust me, all of the above are very old. For school I’m aiming for 2-3 pairs of jeans, 2 pairs of shorts, a couple of dresses/skirts, 5-7 shirts, and a couple of hoodies/cardigans. That’s not really the expensive stuff. I had to buy flip flops, shoes, sneakers, underclothing, a bathing suit… that’s the stuff that adds up to $1000 very quickly. $50 each for a bra blows through $1000 very easily, as women on here would know!</p>
<p>^That’s about how my clothing is. We aren’t low income, but my dad didn’t believe that we needed more than one pair of jeans when we were growing up, and he doesn’t give my mom any money for anything so she couldn’t buy anything for us. My grandma has always bought all my clothes and still does, so maybe once a year or once every other year she gets me $100 worth of clothes, which doesn’t translate into much, especially not when you need bras-- I get those every other year because they cost a fortune and can take up almost my entire clothing budget. I think before school my grandma spent closer to $300 because she realized how many essential items I was missing. I only just recently threw out my middle school wardrobe because I was still wearing a lot of it, and I am a college senior.</p>
<p>Then, all my bedding and my pillows are 20 years old and shredded. I still sleep with the disney comforter I picked out when I moved out of my baby crib. I was actually allergic to my pillows before I went to school, any time I slept on them I’d wake up congested. So I had to get all new bedding. We have four towels for my family of four, so I wasn’t allowed to bring those with me. Even though I am not allowed to have ANY of my belongings outside of my bedroom at home, nothing of mine is allowed to leave my room as per my mom’s rules, I’ve never had any kind of storage items. No bookshelf, no dresser, nowhere to put my shoes. I don’t even have a desk. When I went away to school and had to share a room with someone I couldn’t very well resort to my normal routine of different sorted piles on the floor for lack of anything else to do, so I was able to get all sorts of things I didn’t have before. I also didn’t have any of my own school supplies or anything like that, because I shared with my dad. Then I brought a lot of things I wouldn’t have had anyway, like cooking supplies and I think I brought two place settings worth of dishes. My parents didn’t have any to give me so I had to buy that, too.</p>
<p>Though honestly, if you put the big ticket items aside, I think I spent the most money overall on OTC medication. I brought a small pharmacy with me in a plastic tote and it was brilliant. I was sick the whole year and I never once had to go out for any meds.</p>
This was our major purchase.