Packing for college is expensive as hell, there’s no getting around it. Luckily these college essentials are all under $10 which means your wallet can forgive you.
Carolyn from Diary of a Tall Girl wrote a similar post way back when and I thought it was such a cool idea that I had to challenge myself to do the same. I mean, under ten bucks seems incredibly reasonable and these odds and ends are definitely affordable essentials. I was very careful not to make this the same as my 12 Things You’ll Forget to Pack for College because that list is definitely more obscure. These are also things you’d probably forget to pack for college, but they’re definitely essentials.
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1. Wallflower Plug-in from Bath & Body Works – Scent – $6.50 – Plug – $9.50
Your room will smell wonderful with this, and you can easily swap out scents for the season. While the plug and scent combined is more than $10, the separate items aren’t, that counts, right? Your room can smell like fresh cotton in the spring and sugar cookies in the winter. Your dorm will never smell like rancid laundry and sweat with this, yay!
2. Disinfecting Wipes – $2.99
These are amazing for dorm room cleaning. You can clean so many surfaces with this and, trust me, dorms can get sort of grimy. These make cleaning easy and very manageable.
3. Desk drawer organizer – $9.99
This is going to help keep your paperclips, staples and all sorts of odds and ends organized. This is one of those things you need for college but will probably (definitely) forget about.
4. Sticky Notes – $6
Get the giant cube or even get a sticky note dispenser for your desk because these things are your new best friend. They’re perfect for leaving reminders for yourself, writing to-do lists, marking off important pages and all sorts of things.
5. Pretty lanyard – $10
Your ID and keys have to go somewhere, right? My lanyard is black with white polka dots (which is almost my signature at this point) and I got it for $5 from Five Below. You don’t need a fancy one here, you can find a pretty lanyard for under $10 easily.
6. A Shower Caddy – $8
Make sure you have one that you can clean (read: plastic). It doesn’t need to be beautiful or designer because truthfully you’ll probably toss it at the end of the year in favor of one that doesn’t potentially have mold growing in it. Make sure it can fit your essentials like shampoo, conditioner, face wash, body wash and razors.
7. Turbie Twists – $6
I know there are a lot of names for these, but these are basically those little wrap towels that you can easily put your hair in post-shower so it’s out of the way and contained. These are a lifesaver and ever since I’ve discovered them, they’ve never let me down.
8. Toothbrush cap – $3.99
Do you really want your toothbrush bristles that go inside of your mouth being exposed to the college air? Probably not. Always leave some sort of travel cap or case on your toothbrush. I recommend Steripods because they sterilize your toothbrush while on it. Yay!
9. A few cards – $ varies
Bring a few thank you cards, a few birthday cards and maybe even a few blank ones. You never know when you might almost miss a birthday or have to send a thank you. Plus, this is an excuse for you to buy those super cute ones from Target!
10. Gum – $1.50
I’m addicted to gum and mints, but that’s beside the point. You’re always going to want fresh breath and thus gum is perfect to leave in your desk and in your backpack. Keep it fresh, folks.
What are some of your favorite college essentials under $10?
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I can tell you that most of this stuff isn’t essential. I used to live in the dorm. It’s all up to what is allowed in your dorms. We couldn’t have the little wall flowers at mine. You don’t need a few cards, unless you are looking to write thank you notes to your dorm mothers so they aren’t all that essential. And you don’t really need a pretty lanyard just a regular one would work honestly.
I didn’t know that some dorms didn’t allow wall flowers, so it’s good to check in advance but I’m sure most dorms are fine with it. I think having a few birthday and thank you cards handy is nice for job interviews, RAs, friends, professors and so on. Obviously a regular lanyard would work, but there’s nothing wrong with a little extra pizzazz ;). I’m going to have to disagree on that note–I do think disinfecting wipes, a shower caddy and these other items mentioned are quite essential to living in a dorm. Germs suck and a lot of these items are handy for being clean and organized plus they’re so affordable that it would be wise to have them.
I think these things are absolutely essential! Obviously we all like different stuff, but these are wonderful ideas! I actually was required to write thank you notes for my major after I sat in on classrooms, so those were essential. Also, my roommate was disgusting freshman year, so scent stuff like wallflowers (or non-plugin air fresheners) were absolutely essential to my mental health!
Great post!
Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed the post. Wallflowers are so great, I loved being able to make my room smell like dessert when it smelled a bit like dirty laundry or burnt food that my housemates cooked! haha