5 Things I regret packing my freshmen year of College

I’m one of the lucky members of the Class of 2020. We graduated during the start of the pandemic and spent our freshmen year of college during its height. I was fortunate enough to be able to live on campus and get somewhat of a college experience out of my first year despite all this, and today I’ll be sharing five things I did not need to bring with me. I lived in a newly renovated dorm in the heart of downtown Madison, so some of these things may be specific to that.

1. A fan

This probably varies from person to person, but I did not need a fan whatsoever in my dorm. In fact, I sent it home pretty early in the semester when my mom came up to visit me so I could stop tripping over it. Because my dorm was newly renovated, we had in-unit AC that could make things very chilly. The fan never got used.

2. Extra sheets

This is another thing that sounds like a good idea, but in practice, isn’t very functional. Every time I cleaned my sheets, I’d just end up putting them right back onto my bed. I never used the backup set, and they just wasted space in my dresser. So if your reason for bringing extra sheets is “just in case”, just don’t.

3. A bathrobe

I don’t know. Maybe this was just me, but I was fine doing the towel walk from the bathroom to my dorm, and my bathrobe just wasted space.

4. My bullet journal

This is controversial, but I simply was not able to justify the amount of time bullet journaling took out of my life. In high school, it was great. I loved unwinding on the weekends by designing new spreads and everything. But I discovered I did better using an online planning system that took two seconds to fill out in college. It allowed more time for actually doing my work and for doing other things that got me out of my room and solitude. Maybe it was just a COVID thing, but I don’t see myself returning to bullet journaling during my undergrad.

5. Ramen noodles/ food I don’t like

I allowed my mother to send me to school with a lot of typical college dorm foods that I never touched because I…. don’t like them. And I tripped over them all year because I kept waiting for a time when I would be desperate enough to heat up the ramen or whatever it was. That time never came, and I wish I just hadn’t brought any of it in the first place.

I think the biggest thing I learned about packing for college last year is that less isn’t necessarily more– you absolutely need to come prepared with everything you need– but extraneous things that you won’t use or duplicates and backups of things you only need one of aren’t an economic use of space and money.

What was something you brought to school that you didn’t end up needing?

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