5 Essential College-Living Hacks

School starts this month which means college campuses all over the country are busy with students moving in and out of their dorms, apartments, condos and houses. Wouldn’t it be nice to make your new pad the ‘place to be’ this semester. Whether your a college freshmen or about to graduate, a few simple ideas can turn your boring apartment into a ballin’ penthouse.

1. LIGHTING – The first thing people notice when they step into your place is the lighting. If your place is too bright, it shows all the imperfections, such as the stains on the carpet or the holes in the wall. If your place is too dark your friends might think you’re a vampire. So the key here is to go easy on the lights. However, don’t be afraid to add some ‘wow’ to your lighting. Over at ehow.com they give you step by step instructions for creating glow jars.

2. DESIGN – The design of your new crib needs to be tasteful and innovative. Throwing your couch and chairs against the walls and laying a rug down aint gonna cut it. Think “feng shui“. I found it easier to think “out-of-the-box” when organizing the furniture in my living room. Also, if your having a hard time planing this all in your head, take a look at DesignYourDorm.com where you can see your dorm room before you move in and organize it in a 3D environment.

3. ENTERTAINMENT – As a college student, entertaining guests is pretty easy as long as you supply free drinks and music. However, if you want to take things to new levels you should give them something to look at. A projector might be your best bet if you don’t have the cash for an HDTV. The BenQ Joybee GP1 is a great little projector with LCD projection meaning the bulb will last around 20,000 hours. Plus the thing only costs $499. Ideas include: Playing a movie on mute during a party, having movie night in your dorm room, and video games on the big screen!

4. MUSIC – It’s so important it gets its own section. People come to your place to hang out and have a good time, they don’t come to listen to crappy music. Make sure you make an awesome iTunes playlist or hire a DJ if you plan to have a large party. Craigslist is a great place to find DJ’s for your parties. Some DJ’s will even spin for free or cheap if you supply them with drinks and girls!

5. DRINKS – Last but not least we have drinks. I saved the best for last because as we all know, when the drinks run out so do the people. Best advice here is to plan ahead. If you want people out by 2:00am, make sure the drinks run out about that time. For example, if your guests are over 21 and you purchase a keg of beer there is a formula you can use to figure out how fast the keg will run out. There is officially 1,984 ounces in a Keg and the average person will drink two 12 ounce cups per hour. So if you have 100 guests (50 of which are drinking) the keg will run out in 99.2 minutes or about an hour and 39 minutes. [(Number of drinkers) x (24ounces)]/60min = Ounces per minute. To figure out how many people are coming, make a facebook event and always assume people will bring guests!

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