Cheap dorm decor
Budget Dorm Room Furnishing & Other Back to School Tips
The start of the semester is coming up quickly and college students and their parents are surely cringing at the prospective costs. Squandering college savings by dressing a dorm room to the nines and loading up on fancy school supplies is certainly easy enough. Sticking to a budget is definitely harder, but these cheap dorm decor resources can take the sting out of many necessary expenses.
Photo by Target
With a little help from About.com's Guide to Interior Decorating, making this bare-bones, utilitarian space inviting and conducive to studying (partying?) should be a no-brainer. This cheap dorm decor resource provides links to stories about inexpensive products, budget-friendly decor ideas, and DIY projects. Still more resources show up in OnlineDegree.net's list of blog posts on cheap dorm decor as well as on our very own blog post on cheap decorating ideas.
Environmentally-conscious students can head to Treehugger for advice on using free and repurposed supplies to paint and decorate a dorm room for less. Tips for the frugal eco-friendly set include paper window treatments or lampshades, homemade decorative pillows, and furniture finds at resale shops, Craigslist, or maybe even curbside.
The cheapest source for furniture are hand-me-downs, but eBay might also be worth checking out. A DIY Life story keeps both kinds of green in mind with resource-saving ideas for spiffing up a dorm room: string a wire along a wall and paint a bunch of clothespins that can hold artwork or homework, for example, or hang a curtain on an expandable rod to add color and texture to a room while carving out some private space.
Brick-and-mortar stores can also be helpful when trying to furnish a dorm room for cheap. Decorative touches like low-priced plants, lamps, wall hangings, and other small items abound at Ikea. The leftover bin at a flooring company is the place to look for a cheap rug and the shelves at budget retailers like Walmart and Target hold piles of low-cost bedding and towels.
We've written a previous post about an innovative service called Dorm-in-a-Box that claims to deliver such necessities straight to a dorm room. For additional tips on starting off the school year in a budget-conscious way, also read our post on How to Live on $10 a Day and download some of the apps listed in Discount Apps for College Students.
And while we're at it, let's not forget another major college expense: textbooks. The campus bookstore may be the last place to look for good buys. Convenient, perhaps, but campus stores typically charge full price on new textbooks and may carry a very limited selection of used texts. Budget-savvy students are increasingly turning to cheap textbook sites instead. Figure on savings of at least 40%. And don't forget to check out electronic textbooks for e-readers, an increasingly popular format.
Of course, no dorm room is complete without an assortment of electronic gadgets. Student.com provides tips on buying a computer (along with using a credit card wisely) and below you'll find links to our buying guides for budget products relevant for students.
Related Cheapism buying guides: fans, space heaters, mini fridges, microwave ovens, laptops, netbooks, PCs, wireless routers, universal chargers, e-readers, rolling backpacks, headphones, mp3 players, iPod speakers.
