How to Dress Your Dorm Desk

Hey everyone!

An important aspect to every dorm room, without a doubt, is your study space. It's where you are going to write papers (hopefully not all night), do homework, read, make projects, Facebook stalk old high school friends, and procrastinate for hours on Pinterest. Or paint your nails if you are like me. It's a place that also can serve as your eating station as well.

So, clearly, it's a space that needs to be versatile and organized. First, let's take a look back at my first two dorm rooms.

My freshman year, my desk served my main computer space, my study area, and my nightstand. So, as you can see, I have my yellow lamp, three dottie pencil cups, and my printer. I dressed this space mostly to serve as my study center. The key to it being a successful place to study, was keeping the accessories and stuff around it to a minimum. My ribbon board held important pieces of paper (like the code for my universal remote for my TV haha), which was also a great utility piece above my desk. By not covering the entire desk surface, it allowed me to spread out my important papers and assignments as I worked, a must especially for big projects and papers. The lamp is something that also helped me a lot. It not only gave me good light to read, but if I were stuck working as my roommate went to be, I could work in our bedroom without disrupting her.



This is my desk at the beginning of my sophomore year. As you can probably instantly tell, this desk has a lot in common with the desk above: like the memo board, the lamp, my laptop, and printer. But some new additions included the crate (which held my textbooks, such a good idea when you are short on space!), my sorority pin box, earring holder, and some fall smelling lotion. This desk space was definitely a busy one. Since my sophomore dorm was not suite style, this was home to everything!

Later in the year, I moved my above bed shelf over it...(sorry for the super blurry picture and the massive amounts of stuff on my desk)

So see how I placed this shelf over it? I actually liked this set up better mostly because it felt more built in, plus having my DVDs, lotion, and books in those bins above my desk made it more organized and easier to get to. As you can see from this picture, the dorm room desk has to serve not only as a study space, but it also serves at my eating space (Girl Scout cookies, Pringles, and Dr. Pepper) and I have my nailpolish there too.
 

Some desk ideas:

-A cup/mug/holder for your pens and pencils.
-Easy access to your laptop and printer
-Lamp (I prefer the yellow drum shade lamp over the red desk lamp)
-Memo board/bulletin board
-A houseplant, fake flowers (on my printer above is my fake orchid and to the left of my laptop is flowers I got for Valentine's Day)

Inside your desk, try to organize them in ways that make sense. For instance, for the longest time I stored my food and snacks in my desk. However, that doesn't really make sense. So I moved them out and place my textbooks in the drawers, and moved my snacks into one of the red crates. In the middle desk drawer, I always put EVERYTHING I own in there. So think about investing in one of those little jewery comparment/holder things.

Find a system that works for you, if you really like doing your makeup at your desk, have a mirror on hand, or a drawer dedicated to some of your makeup. If you are like me and paint your nails or eat at your desk, put food or nail polish in a drawer too.

Some people prefer studying on their beds, so then change accordingly.

Just remember to have fun and to try out new accessories. I love having my desk space me a clean, organized, and fun area because studying isn't always that fun.

What are your desk must haves?