Several dorm room questions

Colleges and Universities A-Z Northwestern University
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<p>A few questions:</p>

<p>I'm in Elder and the web site indicates there are desk lamps. Are they adequate or do you recommend I bring my own?</p>

<p>Is some sort of nightstand recommended or is there no room for that?</p>

<p>Has anyone ever used a rolling footlocker and stored it under a bed (with risers)?</p>

<p>Do you recommend hanging sweater and/or shoe racks for the closet?
Someone said there is storage over the closets and room door. Is it small?</p>

<p>What sorts of practical things to you recommend to make the room more comfortable but functional in terms of storage?</p>

<p>Are there blinds or shades on the windows?</p>

<p>Carpet on the floor? Is it old and disgusting or ok?</p>

<p>Is it permissible to nail anything to the dorm walls?</p>

<p>Thanks for whatever helpful hints you can provide.</p>

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<p>i didnt live in elder but from my (probably not so good) memory...</p>

<p>The desk lamp is built into the desk, you have a desk and a shelf above, and the lamps in the bottom of the shelf. Take that as you will, but i think having an extra lamp in general may be useful.</p>

<p>A night stand may be a bit much, since chances are your bed will be up against the desk or the dresser, where you can put whatever you need up on those surfaces.</p>

<p>Asking if <em>anyone</em> has used a footlocker is kind of general, but it depends on how large the footlocker is. You are not allowed to loft beds at any dorm in NU (unless rules changed w/o me knowing)</p>

<p>Do you really need to have sweater/shoe racks? If you have enough hangers you can just hang the sweaters in the closet and put your shoes on the floor if you don't have too many. Its just that closet space is valuable, and you don't have much. You do have storage over the closets. Though i haven't looked too closely, i think theres four 15x15 cabinet doors above the door/closet, but i have no idea how deep</p>

<p>i'm not sure what this question is asking, but i suppose putting stuff in stacking boxes is kind of nice? I had a hot water boiler. Elder doesnt have AC, so a fan is probably beneficial. Speakers are nice to have so you don't need to listen to tinny music.</p>

<p>I think that elder has curtains. AFAIK slivka is the only dorm with blinds</p>

<p>I honestly can't tell you if theres carpet. I'm leaning towards yes, if not, then you have a wood floor. In terms of disgustingness, it depends on who lived in the room previously. If you're really concerned, go ahead and pick up an area rug for the room.</p>

<p>You can't nail stuff to dorm walls, but thumbtacks leave a small enough mark that a CA that's not looking specifically for them won't see it. Command hooks are popular for hanging stuff.</p>

<p>Hope that helps</p>

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<p>I am pretty sure Elder is carpeted. The carpets are always more or less clean, they do a pretty good job over the summer getting the rooms ready.</p>

<p>For hanging stuff on walls, I recommend heavy-duty double-sided tape from CVS (works wonders, but can be hard to get off) or that blue sticky tac that teachers always use in HS. Nailing seems a bit excessive.</p>

<p>And stacking cubes are very helpful for storage.</p>

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<p>Has your CA emailed you yet? THey should have by now and they are good people to ask for this type of stuff</p>

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<p>Good idea. I'll email my CA.</p>

<p>One more question - what do you mean when you say "stacking cubes?" Like those colorful grated types of square boxes? Or are they more like shelves?</p>

<p>Thanks for all of the replies. Much appreciated.</p>

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<p>The ones I used were like, grated panels that you could clip together and make any kind of cubey shape you wanted. Like this:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Esal/ikea4sale/images/stacking_cubes.jpg%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sal/ikea4sale/images/stacking_cubes.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>for hanging up posters, why do we need sticky tack and stuff like that? can't we just use regular scotch tape, or are we not allowed?</p>

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<p>Oh you can, I just meant as an alternative to nailing things. And sometimes scotch tape is no match for the weird cement-y walls, so double-sided super tape or sticky tack is more effective. Sticky tack is also the easiest to remove- both scotch and double-sided tape will stay on your posters and leave the potential for ripping and whatnot.</p>

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<p>be careful using TOO strong of tapes though--i agree w/ dfleish--use sticky tack. A lot of tapes will remove paint and/or plaster from the walls, especially after they've been there all year long, which puts you at risk for being charged for damages to your room when your CA & housing go through it.</p>

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<p>dfleish, those cubes are sweet. It looks from the link that they came from Ikea, but I couldn't find them on their web site. Do you have any other information so I could get some like that? They are just what I'm looking for.</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

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<p>also, for putting up hooks, those 3M ones work really well, and usually (if you follow the directions for removal) don't take any paint off the walls.</p>

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<p>3M hooks are AMAZING. obsessed.</p>

<p>i had to pay a fine because i used heavy duty poster tape that took the paint off the walls. i used scotch tape for my lighter posters and that was fine. so just use tacky stuff i guess.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
dfleish, those cubes are sweet. It looks from the link that they came from Ikea, but I couldn't find them on their web site. Do you have any other information so I could get some like that? They are just what I'm looking for.

[/quote]

I got them from Bed, Bath & Beyond.</p>

<p>Edit: Found it-
<a href="http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=13652600%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=13652600&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>How about candles? I'm sure they can't be burned, but I have a few I'd like to bring anyway. Allowed or not?</p>

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<p>by the way, defleish, thanks for the BB&B link. Much appreciated.</p>

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<p>@newtonu i would think that you could if they're not going to be burned, but i suggest you post in the "any questions" forum, since it's being responded on by one of the CAs</p>

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<p>You can have candles, but they should be unused. Chances are CAs won't be picky enough to actually look to see if the wick is unused, but there are occasional random fire marshall inspections conducted (where they'll enter your room and look around), and some of thm are picky enough to notice that kind of thing. If you have candles, I'd STRONGLY suggest not burning them in the buildings (god forbid a sprinkler would go off--those things will ruin EVERYTHING), and definitely keep them put away (i.e. in drawers or boxes or something covered).</p>

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<p>can we have electronic instant water heating pots? (that sounded more concise in my head)</p>

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<p>Evanston doesn't like having any sort of heating appliances in residence halls. As for what Northwestern usually says, it's usually okay to have them, but not use them. What I'd say is don't use anything that has a risk of smoking or heating up the room---in other words, just go out to the kitchen to use whatever it is you have; that's what I always do. Better safe than sorry.</p>

<p>Keep things covered when not in use. Fire inspectors won't touch your stuff--they do surface searches. If you have anything like that, your best bet would be to keep it in your closet/under your bed with a towel covering it, or inside a non-clear bag.</p>

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<p>i kept my electric kettle under my bed. i also put my halogen lamp in a drawer when they were doing searches. one of my friends had a microwave in her room and just kept a towel over it.</p>