About a month and a half ago, I walked into my first college dorm room, took a look around, and thought, "How in the world am I possibly going to be able to fit everything I need into this tiny room?"
Once the moment of panic passed, we started to move things into place. Out came the 500 collapsible storage units made for everything from shoes to shampoo, which quickly filled up every possible corner of the 10' by 15' space. Unpacking bags of clothes and boxes of bedding, lights, and wall decorations, it took us nearly five hours before we were satisfied with our new home. Somehow we managed to fit two beds, two desks, two chairs, two dressers, a TV, a microwave, a refrigerator, and an area rug into our tiny space. Not to mention the school supplies, a closet stuffed with clothes and overflowing with shoes, plenty of food, towels, blankets, pillows, mugs, utensils, toilet paper, and a thousand other "necessities."
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It's a really tough life, living in this minuscule little space. Between the electricity, plumbing, cable, and AC, we have it rough. I mean, we barely have space to breathe. So of course it's a top priority that we find ways to turn our tiny dorm space into a Pinterest-worthy, homey, little abode.
Seriously? What are we doing?
Just days ago, Hurricane Matthew, a deadly destructive Category 4 storm, tore its way through Haiti. Already an impoverished country where many of the buildings have next to no durable infrastructure, the aftermath of this hurricane is absolutely devastating. People who were living in shacks and already ravaged by poverty now have nothing. They have lost the meager houses and belongings they had to begin with, and now have no place to live at all and no possessions to call their own. Their towns and communities are destroyed, completely gone. Most of us can't even begin to imagine the devastation these people are facing. What used to be their neighborhoods are now a mess of flooded wreckage, and the death toll continues to rise. The UN is calling this the worst humanitarian crisis for the country since the earthquake of 2010, meaning it has only been six years since they had to rebuild and now they are facing the same destruction of their entire lives yet again.
How dare I complain about the size of my dorm room?
The sheer wealth of us “broke” American college students is so obviously present in our tiny dorm rooms that we should be ashamed. We have so. much. stuff. And no, I don't think that it is wrong to have a TV or a refrigerator or a closet full of clothes. What I think is wrong is that we have the audacity to mourn over our poor living spaces, when in actuality, our dorm rooms are some of the nicest places to live in the world.
So how can you make your dorm room look bigger? If you really want to make your room seem like a dream home, take some time to think about how unbelievably blessed we are as college students in America. How blessed we are to be able to strive for a higher education and to do it in the comforts of what is, by a global standard, luxury. How blessed we are to live in safe, durable buildings with a solid foundation and walls. How blessed we are to have running water and electricity. How blessed we are to have so much.
How can you make your dorm room look bigger? It's easy. We just need a change in perspective.
