Save your money--it's yours!

As college students, we are poor. We go for things that are free. We don’t have money to waste or to spend as we please.

You’d think that universities would be the last people to rip us off, but anyone can see that isn’t true based solely on the cost of tuition. But they rip our money out of our hands in another way: laundry.

Now, laundry is something that we all have to do, and it costs us money. At Purdue, it costs $1.25 per load to wash (unless you have Boiler Express, and then it’s $1.00, but those aren’t available in every dorm) and $0.50 per load to dry.
For starters, that $0.25 per load adds up. I tend to do 3 loads per week: one lights, one darks, one sheets and towels. That’s $0.75 per week that I have to pay extra because my dorm doesn’t take Boiler Express. Let’s just assume that I’m doing laundry once a week except for the summer (12 weeks). That’s 40 weeks per year.
That’s an extra $30 per year that I’m paying because I wasn’t fortunate enough to get into a dorm that has Boiler Express for laundry.

But it gets worse.

Not all your clothes need to be dried in the dryer. This is somehow not communicated to people. The only things that should go in the dryer are your sheets and towels. That’s one load of laundry to dry per week for me. If I were to dry all my clothes every week, that’d be $1.50 just in drying, which adds up to $60 per year in drying clothes. Instead, I only pay $0.50 per week, making my yearly total $20.

Instead of using the dryer, hand up wet clothes on plastic hangers in the warmest part of your dorm or get a drying rack. Clothes only take about a day to dry.

So, if you’re fortunate enough to have that $0.25 discount each load and you’re smart about drying your clothes, you can save around $70 a year. That’s $70 you can spend on pizza, video games, movies, and whatever else you want.

**Simple Activities that Change**

If you are just beginning freshmen year, you will encounter simple daily activities that are vastly different than back home. It exposes students to a variety of different elements such as living in a small dorm room, community bathrooms and showers, and doing your own laundry. When you come down here you have to adapt to your new surroundings. These activities will obviously still have the same outcome just different ways of getting them accomplished.

My first example that changes greatly would be living in a small dorm room. At first, I did not think everything I brought would fit in these tiny rooms. You have to just bring down the necessities that you truly need and leave the rest back at home. You have to be organized and make sure you put everything back where you got it. Make sure you pick up all your trash and messes because your room will just fill up with clutter if not. Then you will never be able to locate anything in times of need and will be out of luck.

Another huge adjustment for me was the community bathrooms and showers. I never would have thought that I would be sharing the same bathroom with 54 other girls that are on my floor. One minute I have my own bathroom and the next anyone can use it. My advice to you would be to wear flip flops or shoes. You never know what is creeping around there that you might come in contact with, especially in the shower. I happened to be lucky and be on one of the floors where the bathrooms are usually neat and tidy. If everyone cleans up after themselves if they make a mess, it makes a worlds difference. You have to be considerate of the others that are around you and make sure you treat it as you would want them to treat it.

A third issue would be the simple task of doing your own laundry. In my first and second week of school, I have never seen so many people confused on how to start their own laundry. You just have to make sure you separate your clothes into darks and whites, put detergent into the machine, put it on the right settings, and hit start. I didn’t think it took a brain surgeon to figure it out but they were so many people down in the laundry room making it seem like some complex ordeal. A helpful tip is to make sure you save up your quarters! Do your laundry during the weekdays because on the weekends it is packed. I learned from personal experience when I did it on Sunday night I had my clothes washed and then no dryers were available so I had to wait 10 minutes. You do not want to wait down in that hot, steamy room for a dryer. I think it is good way to build some responsibilities up and not just depend on your mother to do your own laundry.