How To Declutter Your Student Accommodation

Many of us have been faced with having to declutter our student accommodation. After the madness of Fresher’s week and the first few lectures and seminars, you’ve settled into a routine of – hopefully – sleeping the appropriate number of hours. You eat – hopefully – well enough to stay focused for the entire day. You’ve discovered the library, made friends, met your tutors and know what you’ll be studying for the next three to four years.

But something is fundamentally wrong with your student life: you’ve cluttered your room.

We’ve put together a helpful list of steps anybody can take to declutter your student studio, whether you live in halls, a studio or a town house.

Bin rubbish

By rubbish we don’t just mean the old sandwich wrapper under your desk, we also mean stuff students inevitably collect during a night out. Unless you’re going to use the traffic cone to decorate your hall, or stick endless night club wristbands to your wall, getting rid of what is, fundamentally, rubbish will clear the way for fresh open-thinking space for more important work.

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Digitise your desk

Your documents can easily swamp your desk. The solution? Scan them onto your computer and recycle the paper! Your desk will be free of paper and your sleek laptop will sit proudly, full of your most important papers. If you chose this option, you have to back up your documents onto either an external hard drive or in cloud-based storage.

Build a bookcase out of boxes

You’ve moved into your student room, the boxes you used to carry your life’s work are strewn across your accommodation in a haphazard manner and you’ve settled into a strange routine of living on top of your moving equipment.

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Put those boxes to use! Instead of just letting them build up in a pile in the corner of your room, why not make a quick and easy bookcase? Joseph Beeby is DIY Guru and Handyman Operations Manager at Handy.com, he explains how:

‘Strong empty storage boxes can be painted or covered with decorative paper, then simply clip them together with office binder clips. You can use as many or as few boxes as you like depending on how big you want it. For a more abstract bookcase, you can use boxes in a variety of sizes and piece them together.’

Hang instead of fold your clothes

This tip comes from Yvonne Manomano, Operational Cleaning Manager at Handy:

‘It may not be an obvious one but clothes can take up a lot of space, especially the thicker items we wear during winter. Don’t put your jumpers in drawers, buy a cheap hanging canvas unit and organise them on here. That way you can colour co-ordinate them and see your options easily. Do the same with belts. Hanging them up instead of folding them will not only look better, it will free up valuable space.’

Put what you don’t need into storage

Put what you haven’t used in ages or what you wont use into storage. There are many options including Store Any Box who will keep your belongings safe for as little as 78p per week in CCTV monitored warehouses dotted around London.

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Be ruthless!

We spoke to Ingrid Jansen from Organise Your House who gave us some great tips on saving space in your student accommodation by identifying what you don’t need:

‘- Start with your clothes. Is there anything out of season that can go home? Think about summer dresses, flip flops and summer coats. You don’t need them for the next 5 months so take them out!

– How many sets of bedding and towels did you bring. Two of each should be plenty. One duvet set on the bed, one as extra. One towel to use, one in the cupboard.

– Did you bring any kitchen equipment you haven’t used at all? We all have our favourite pots and pans so keep those and clear out the rest.

– Are there any study books cluttering up your desk that you don’t need until later in the year that can be stored at home?’

We don’t want you to bin all your belongings, but with some clever space management you will create a less cluttered space to study in.

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Have we missed anything? Share your decluttering tips in the comment section below…