First, a shopping mystery for the comments section. I feel silly asking about things like this, but then I ask anyway and nine times out of ten someone is like “Oh, I’ll bet I know what that is! Here’s a link!” Elizabeth lost her favorite eye pencil. She doesn’t know the brand, and neither of us think we bought it: we think either she got it several years ago as a gift or else it was in my make-up box (which she has thoroughly pillaged) from one of the few subscription/advent boxes I tried before realizing I don’t wear make-up. It was a black eye pencil with glitter—not shimmer, GLITTER, so that there would be several little flashing pieces of glitter along her eyelid. She said it had a gold cap. I’d love to find out what it was and replace it for her.
Second: we have dropped off the three college kids, and now it is just me and Paul and William in the house. I know from experience that the sudden painful jabs will stop in a week or two, but right now I am still catching myself off-guard with thoughts such as “Isn’t it about time for Henry to be getting home?” and “Oh, we need more _____ at the grocery store, oh wait no we don’t.” I was thinking how much stranger this would be if William were NOT still at home. Just…me and Paul and the cats? Already?
Drop-offs went well. Henry was very nervous (pretending not to be) in the car on the way, and nervous when I dropped him off with his stuff—but by the time I’d taken the car to the distant parking lot as instructed and made my way back to his dorm (HALF AN HOUR’S WALK, THEY SAID THERE WOULD BE A SHUTTLE BUT I DID NOT SEE ANY SIGN OF ONE), he was cheery, and already getting along well with one of his roommates (he’s in a triple). Henry’s goal is to meet as many people as possible the first few weeks while everyone is new. He emailed us a little list of the people he’d met and liked so far, including someone who “may be my lifelong best friend, not that I’m making plans or anything.”
The twins are both in unfurnished apartments, and I am trying to leave this to them to figure out. My own impulse is to panic. “There is NOTHING IN THIS KITCHEN!!!” “But anything they buy, we have to figure out what to do with at the end of the year!!” “What if they buy something and then forget it’s theirs and a roommate takes it??” etc. All will be well. Items purchased for college apartments join the College Apartment Furnishings Cloud: maybe the saucepan is lost, but a couch is found; or both saucepan and couch are lost, along with the tower fan, but all go on to find another college student who needs them. Each semester of parents/students contributes to the Cloud; each semester benefits in their turn. When William’s college didn’t resume after spring break in 2020, workers packed up all the kids’ stuff for them and put it in storage; we ended up with two very expensive bath towels that did not belong to William. He contacted both of his roommates offering to mail the towels, but neither roommate claimed them. I’ve wondered if someone else’s parent was wringing their hands over those towels, as I was over the tower fan Rob lost along the way, along with some cookware and dishes.
When Elizabeth was moving in, we walked past a dumpster that had a little assortment of things clearly set to the side in case anyone wanted to claim them: a coffee table, an ottoman, a computer chair. Elizabeth took the ottoman. We saw other people take the chair and the table. By the time we left, there was a laundry hamper and a dining room chair. This is the College Apartment Furnishings Cloud at its most active and observable, but I like to imagine that that’s the gist of what’s happening all the time, less visibly: perhaps Rob’s tower fan was accidentally brought home by one of his roommates, who passed it down to his younger sister who is just now starting her sophomore year; maybe his dishes were left behind in a cabinet, and a college employee cleared them out and put them in the pile of used-but-still-good things the college resells at the start of each year, and another student bought the little deer bowls, and she graduated several years ago but still has them in her kitchen cabinets now.
fortunately I bought myself a set of the same bowls at the time (for $8, not for the $30-plus-shipping they are charging now)
I do not know which eyeliner it may be but your description was intriguing so I spent a few minutes on Google and wonder if it is this one?: https://rudecosmetics.com/products/gimme-shimmer-liner?variant=45810384830679
It’s a liquid eyeliner so not sure if it fits the bill, but does have a gold cap :-).
Henry sounds like he has a wonderful approach to settling in at college! My freshman is a bit more hesitant to put himself out there but has introduced himself to a few people and I’m starting to feel my all-the-time-panic-and-concern subside a bit. I love the idea of a College Apartment Furnishings Cloud and whoever nabbed those deer plates was indeed a lucky duck.
I am also now very intrigued by the eyeshadow question and this is definitely not it, but might be a nice alternative?
https://colourpop.com/products/emo-inside-jelly-much-shadow-n?variant=40313206341714
Also, it has literally been 30 years since I was in college, and I still remember the skillet I lost somewhere in the Cloud.
Yesterday was my 15th college drop-off and it was my hardest one. There’s no reason for it to be hard because it’s not a first, nor a last. We, too, have a child still at home (for one more year), so it’s not an empty-nest situation either. Daunting to think about just my spouse and the cats (especially because we don’t have cats) and I don’t know what I will do with myself next year, but that is still a whole year away. For whatever reason, I’m just sadder than I’ve ever been about having a child go off to school and I think I’ll just let myself wallow for a while.
I’ve been following your college drop off stories because this Friday I’ll be dropping my only child off at college. It is just the two of us, so it really will be just me and the three cats. He is going to the same college I went to and is even the same dorm I once lived in. I know he will be ok, but it is going to be tough having him an hour and a half away. I’m sure I’ll adjust, but it is going to be a rough few weeks!
When my middle son was in college, he lived in one house with three other men. When he moved out, he left behind the dishes I’d sent with him, among other things. Then he moved to another house. Two of the roommates there had lived there the previous year, a couple others had moved out before that. When my son and the last roommate were moving out, that house was packed with stuff the other roommates had left behind. We had to rent a good sized Uhaul to take it all to the dump. I’ve never seen anything like that, and think it might be a male thing. My daughter came home with her stuff.
We’ve just come back from dropping off one kid and the other is home. I am trying to imagine what it would be like to have a 75% drop in kids at home all at once.
I live in a college town and can confirm that the College Apartment Furnishings Cloud is very real. Sometimes townies get in on the action too. It’s basically an ongoing random, in-person Buy Nothing group.
I am also in a college town and can confirm The Cloud. Just assume anything in a college apartment or dorm room can and will be forgotten or passed around until it is literal dust. Don’t worry, it gets used up. There’s a spectrum from nice comfy chair brought from home for the first year all the way down to shredded lumpy chair left on the curb in the rain outside a beat up house where 5 guys lived.
When moving out of my grad school apartment, I dragged my (Goodwill-acquired) couch out to the curb only to observe my downstairs neighbor dragging it back inside 45 minutes later. If I had known, I could have saved us both some trouble!
Allston Christmas is Boston’s nickname for September 1st, the annual moving day when thousands of students move into and out of apartments, leaving behind usable furniture and household items on the streets for anyone to collect. This tradition turns the neighborhoods of Allston and Brighton into a “free shopping” event
It sounds like the Sephora collection, they used to have gold caps and they have a black eyeliner with glitter right now.
They do not currently have eyeshadow sticks with glitter, but I know they made some. I still have them with gold caps. They do currently have them with shimmer and those are nice.
My contribution to the college apartment furnishings cloud was very satisfying. Matt and I, freshly married and not as poor as college students, but not far off, sold a loveseat on Craigslist because we were about to move. It was like a barely mint green color, just a tiny bit green, but not obnoxiously so. We put it up for $100 or so and sold it for $50 or so to a nice college girl who negotiated us down because she was going to college and obviously. We carried it outside and she opened up the little trailer she had and said with satisfaction “I THOUGHT IT WAS THE SAME!” and she had the exact matching couch in there that she had bought from someone else. It has been twenty plus years since then and I am still pleased at her bargain hunting and ending up with a perfectly matched living room set.
That sounds very satisfying indeed! I’d love to contribute to such a happenstance of furniture-matching.
I thought about you today sitting in my office as parents walked their children through the building helping them find their classrooms for the first day of classes tomorrow. No info on whether the children found that necessary or not.
I am still not over the fact that HENRY is in COLLEGE!
The university where I recently attended has a great system for managing the Apartment Furnishings Cloud. At the end of every year, they turn a big room on campus into a drop-off center, and they’ll take donations of anything people might need for dorms/apartments. Then in the fall they have a big yard sale for incoming students moving in. It’s great. (It worked especially well for me this year, since I was moving and purged a bunch of stuff in the process, and they were the ONLY place that would take electric kitchen appliances. Most thrift stores in the area wouldn’t take them.)
My godson just moved into his dorm and next year it’ll be my oldest son. So, lots of care packages in my future. Swistle, if you feel so inclined, could you write a post about effective (cost and supplies) for college care packages? I think you are a care package master and I should raid your post files for ideas – but I don’t recall tips on making shipping as low cost as possible?
Shipping feels to me as if it’s just gone berserk, and the new USPS “cubic” rates are baffling to me. It’s now something where I need to breathe carefully and think things such as “If someone offered me $23 to take this 400 miles, would I do it? No.” Or I will think, “I am mailing four packages, and it is going to cost $100 for just the shipping fees. That is just what it costs, and I DO want to do this, so that is a price I am going to pay.” Or I will think, “If $25 were a prescription co-pay, I would hardly even blink.”
In general, I use flat-rate packaging from USPS, but for the most part I am mailing heavyish things hundreds of miles; if I mail things much closer, like just one state over, it can be cheaper to mail priority but not flat-rate, or even USPS ground shipping.
I can’t seem to figure out how to use UPS. I tried it once, after comparing prices, and then the UPS store tacked on another THIRTY DOLLARS in fees, on top of the actual shipping cost, for two packages. That gives me a “never again” feeling—but commenters have said their rule of thumb is that if it can’t go in the biggest USPS flat-rate box, UPS is a better deal, and I do keep that in mind.
I will add that Someone I Know uses pirateship.com and has been very happy with it. I tried to use it and got kind of overwhelmed, but may be motivated to try again.
Another vote for PirateShip. I find it easier to use than the USPS website. It generally has much better prices for shipping too.
Thirding the pirate ship!
It’s been great. It shows ALL the rates. Pick one. Print label. Drop at the appropriate location.
I had a resurgance of my ‘maybe i’ll try makeup’ phase during covid and was going to suggest pixi’s black caviar eye liner but i realized pixi is not shy about putting their logo on every surface of their cosmetics and their branding color palette screams PIXI!!! so it’s probably not that.
I gave my brother my old bartop table for his college apartment back in the day. It was 90s hunter green and had a tile surface with a design in the middle; it reminded me of the (also) 90s decor at Chili’s. It had barstools but only little ones? Not little as in short but smaller than the average barstool. I loved that set & had it in my first apartment. He left it to the wolves in Shady Side, Pittsburgh.
I’m still bitter, but thinking that maybe his ex girlfriend absconded with it in the night makes me feel a little better.
I love that your kids figure out how to furnish their unfurnished apartments and set up their dorm rooms on their own. My first apartment that was unfurnished (this was post college) remained pretty sparse for the year I lived there, but it was FINE and we were inventive with our furnishings. One thing I was bummed about when I moved out that I had to leave behind a new vacuum cleaner, one of the few things I’d purchased. I’d like to hope someone picked it up from near the dumpster and gave it a nice new home.
Oh, I know what you mean about losing something and then thinking “but we are in the age where you can find anything on the internet” and we are but NOT QUITE EVERYTHING. Sometimes I try to be happy that there is still an ephemeral quality to some things, but mostly it just pisses me off that I can’t find the right eyeliner.
I brought my daughter to her new apartment and came home to a completely empty house (husband in New Mexico) and it sucked.
I love your Apartment Furnishings Cloud. When my son was in college playing baseball, we’d go to their collective baseball team storage locker and everybody would just have to scratch their head and pick out one Keurig from the eight that were there. I also love Henry and I hope that is a lifelong best friend. My daughter picked hers on the first day of JK and they are still going strong.
Henry is so smart to maximize meeting folks during the ‘we’re all new here’ stage. Best wishes to all.
I love visualizing the College Apartment Furnishings Cloud! Something about it made me tear up, but it truly doesn’t take much these days :) My daughter was in the dorms last year and both contributed to and benefited from the Cloud. She is living in a sorority house this year but has already signed her lease to live with friends in an unfurnished house for next year (sidenote – is every university this crazy with housing timelines or just hers?) and I am already thinking of how she will acquire all that she needs for that. I need to just trust in the Cloud :)