4 Items to Leave at Home After Winter Break

By Kaitlin Hurtado on December 30, 2017

When you’re moving to a new living space, it’s easy to overestimate what you’ll need and overpack thinking you will need a lot more than you will actually use or have space for. As you get used to the space, it’s easier to see what belongings you actually use or function in your daily life or in your living space. Going home for winter break gives you the perfect opportunity to take what you don’t really need on a day-to-day basis and leave it at home until you have a use for it.

When you leave it back home, you get to skip out on stuffing your living space with things you don’t exactly need while you don’t need to pay for a separate storage unit to keep your belongings safe.

Before you go back to school for the new academic term, consider leaving the following items back home.

via Pixabay.com

Summer wardrobe 

As the weather has already transitioned into a colder winter, your wardrobe has likely followed. The days of wearing flips flops, shorts, and tank tops at any hour of the day have been gone and there’s no use in you wasting precious storage space to house clothes you aren’t making use of on a daily basis. Of course, it makes sense to keep a few “summer clothes” on hand in case the weather warms up for a day or a dress code for an event calls for the garments.

Temporarily leaving behind your summer wardrobe allows you space for your winter wardrobe, which tends to be bulkier as you get thicker and bulkier garments like coats and sweaters to keep you warmer in the chilly months.

Keeping your summer wardrobe back home allows you to have your clothes safe and makes it easier for you to wash them for free after keeping them stuffed in a closet for months. When it does warm up again, you can get your summer wardrobe back on a trip home for spring break to be properly prepared for the return of the warmer weather.

Electronics

Maybe your grades last term were not what you expecting. Looking back, you may start to think what could have gone wrong and you realize that you had too many distractions in your life, including the excessive amount of electronics you are constantly around.

You may realize that you have one too many electronics at your disposal, like multiple gaming consoles that allow you to rotate between games and never become bored (and also stray far away from your studies on a daily basis). You may want to consider ditching a gaming console or two when you come back to school.

Think of it as a means of motivation – you can work harder this term and can look forward to going back to your gaming consoles once you have the results you wanted.

Bedding 

After months of being in your living space, you may have realized the amount of bedding you have is excessive. You have one too many blankets or pillows, or too many comforters than your storage space can hold.

Instead of waking up every morning to most of your pillows, blankets, and/or stuffed animals on the floor due to you overstuffing your bed with the items. If you haven’t left for break yet, consider taking home your lighter comforters and blankets for break and leaving them behind at home. Keeping your heavier comforter(s) allows you to cut down on the total amount of bedding you have and still be properly prepared for the chillier nights of winter.

If you brought home bedding for winter break, you can take advantage of washing them for free at home and leave them for when you need them next time you go back home.

While your stuffed animals may seem very cute and cuddly, they might not be the most practical if they spend more time on the floor after kicking them off to sleep or if they just take up too much space in your living space. Consider leaving them back home after winter break to have a cleaner, simpler bed for the new year.

Kitchen items: cookware, dishware, etc. 

Looking back at how the past few months are, consider how you utilized your kitchen and the items in it. If you are living in the dorm and are limited to your building’s shared kitchen, you are already dealing with a very limited amount of storage and using it to store things you don’t need nor use is a large waste. Likewise, if you are lucky enough to have a private kitchen or share it with a few people, you will know how much you cook or don’t cook.

Instead of wasting space storing dishes and other cooking utensils that you don’t use, leave them back at home instead of leaving them to collect dust in your own living space. This will save you the trouble of selling them only to purchase them again once you decide to attempt cooking on a daily basis once again if they are only a trip back home away.

Consider cutting down on the number of kitchen appliances you have if you realize some can do the function of others, or if you don’t use one at all, to save some counter or storage space. You don’t really need a toaster when you already have a toaster oven, nor do you need a Keurig and a separate coffee pot. If you have multiple of each, consider talking to your housemates to share appliances so that you don’t have a crowded kitchen space.

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