College Survival Guide, Surviving the Dorms! Pt. 2 - Laundry

I just wanted to do a quick post about doing laundry in the dorms. I know you are probably thinking that this is really simple and, why would you do a post on that Kim?

But! There are probably a couple things you haven't thought about with this simple task.

1. Pick a set time each week. You want to have a regular time or "laundry day." This will help keep your schedule balanced and running out of clean clothes. Also, try to find a time that is somewhat unique to you. Try to avoid times where everyone is doing laundry.

2. Use as study time or relax time. If you are sitting in the laundry room you can spend the time reading or doing homework in the time you have waiting for the washer and dryer. It is a good time to be alone with your thoughts or have quiet time believe it or not.

3. Collect spare quarters. These can be used as your laundry fund, because most colleges have paid laundry rooms. I know it sucks, laundry isn't free anymore.

4. Separate your clothes. There are so many ways to separate your laundry and it all depends on each person's individual preference, but here are the basics in four loads: whites/lights, darks, delicates and towels/jeans/bedding.

5. Choose the right settings. Check the tags on your clothes and find out whether they need cold water, hot, low temp drying, etc. Here's a few tips for water temp: hot for whites, linens and towels, cold for anything you don’t want to shrink or fade (including any whites that fall into this category), warm for everything else.

6. Fold Immediately!!! When taking your clothes out of the dryer don't just toss them into your hamper and deal with them later. Fold your clothes as you are taking them out and put them away as soon as you get back to your room. This helps avoid wrinkling and looking like you just rolled out of bed 24/7.

7. However, if you do have wrinkles, invest in a small iron and ironing board.

8. Don't forget your supplies! You will need: detergent, dryer sheets and optional are fabric softener, bleach or color bleach like Clorox 2, and Woolite.

Hope these few simple tips helped!

9. Laundry baskets. Sturdy plastic laundry baskets are fine but, if you are tight on space, try to go with a collapsible basket.

10. Keep everything together. Keep all your supplies together so when you go to do laundry you are not digging around searching for what you did with everything.

P.s. When you go to do laundry, check the soap dispensers because sometimes people will leave soap in them which is a score, or bleach, then you know which washing machine to use for your white clothes!

Big hugs <3 Kimmie

College Survival Guide - Organized and Prioratized

Unlike high school, in college you are responsible for everything! There are no teachers to baby you and your parents aren't going to be there to look over your shoulder asking if you got your homework done. So, how do you accomplish everything, you ask?

The answer is, ORGANIZATION!!! Organizing not only helps to keep your things together and where they should be, but also helps keep your life in order and can help you not be quite so overwhelmed. So where do you start? Like a lot of things you can dive into a Google search and spend some time clicking through the thousands of search results. However, since I have done that whole song and dance and plenty of research I will just give you the summary, k?

When it comes to getting organized there are so many ways you can do it that it gets so confusing you want to just turn off your brain. So to make it easy I've broken it down into a couple key points:

1. Write everything down! Calendars are your friend (haha)When you are in college and working or anything really it is important to schedule things out. It really helps put your days into perspective and helps you to manage your time much better. The best way to schedule is by starting with your concrete blocks, the things that you do regularly (ex. classes, church, your work schedule, etc.) This way you have the major blocks carved out and you know where you have open time. Now when you are going in to schedule fun time or anything else you can have everything laid out in time blocks. Here is a picture of my scheduling, it is a screenshot of my iCal during finals week:

I'm not telling you to go this extreme but I'm just trying to show you how scheduling can help. This may look like a disorganized crazy blob but it really helped me with studying by knowing exactly what I needed to be doing and when.

2. Color code and label. When it comes to putting school stuff in my schedule I usually do a basic color code with yellow, green and pink highlighters (kind of like a stop light system). Green is for simple homework due dates, a "work on paper" session, basically simple stuff that your whole schedule doesn't have to stop for. Yellow is for papers and quizzes because you have to slow down for them but you don't completely stop. Finally, red is for exams! This is just a basic system and you can find what works best for you but the important thing is to use it! It helps so much so find what works best.

3. Prioritize: The Three File system. This system was introduced to me last semester by a councilor at Concordia and now, I swear by it! It is a lot simpler than other systems with a whole bunch of steps and processes and labeling. In this system there are only two labels: FIRE and To Do, and you only need three things: a large In-Box, and a tray for fire and to do.

4. Backwards Planning. Backwards planning sounds like a strange being however, it is really simple and useful. Take your syllabus (I can't stress how important it is to read your syllabus thoroughly! It has pretty much everything you need to know) and write down all your due dates in your calendar/schedule. I know you are probably thinking "that is the most basic thing ever and just regular scheduling" but, here is where the backwards part comes in: Say you have a project due on a friday, backwards planning is setting a your own personal due date for that project on say that Tuesday. Make sense? By doing this you are forcing yourself to get your work done in a timely way so that you don't fall behind.

5. A place for everything, and everything in its place. Nothing ruins your organization more than loose papers and crud all over your work space, your room and in your backpack. The goal of this process is to find where everything belongs and create a place where you know where everything is and it is neat and clean. For example, you could have a binder for each class with a new tab for homework, notes, handouts, etc. OR you could have one big binder with the same tabs and just something to separate each class OR you could have just a spiral notebook for each. The possibilities are endless but the goal is to find a system that works for you.

For more helpfulness click here: Click Me!

New Series on Lost in Wonderland!

Hi interwebbies! So I'm super excited to be starting writing series on my blog. I figured since this was a blog about my life through college then I might as well write about how to survive it!

In my "College Survival Guide" series I will be writing about tips, tricks and everything from the big stuff like study habits and classes all the way down to doing laundry in the dorms. I haven't decided on a schedule for the postings of these. Do you guys have any suggestions? Once a week, twice a week, and what days? Or even if you just have any suggestions for writing series, let me know in the comments if you read this please. I would honestly love to hear from you guys out there!

So I am in the process of writing the first few posts in the series. The first post will be just an overview of the major tips to survive college, and from there I will be going more and more in depth. If you have anything you would like me to write about please let me know that too. - Super excited for this and I hope you guys are too!

Sending big hugs from my computer screen to yours!

Day 17-20

So I've been behind on blogging so I am gonna do something special! What's that, you ask? 

A MASS BLOG POST!!!! Ha ha ha!

So this week was a crazy week full of editing. Quite literally that's it! I downloaded VideoPad (and spent about an hour an a half trying to figure it out and work it.) And I discovered how tedious video editing was!!!  I felt so bad because I spent several hours editing and trying to figure out how I wanted the video put together and such that I still only have like two minutes of mess! Nothing is cohesive just yet :( 

I seriously don't know how these video gurus do it!!! They must be ninjas or something because I have this cool image in my head and no idea how to edit into reality! Any video editors out there have suggestions??? HELP!

Feeling Alone and Useless :(

Well this is kind of a two part post. First: Alone. Recently I've just been feeling really alone and like a lot of people I thought were my really good friends have been drifting away and like I don't belong around them any more. I feel like whenever I am around this group they are just thinking in their heads "what are you doing here? You don't belong here." And it just really sucks and makes me feel empty inside because its like I don't belong anywhere again. I'm just on the outside while they are this close knit group. My head just keeps saying "they don't need or want you any more." 

I just feel like I don't know where I belong any more...

Second half: Useless. Gah I can't even describe how useless I have been feeling lately. A very good friend of mine has a mentally abusive and extremely controlling boyfriend who pushed her to cutting again  AND who recently snapped and hurt her physically. I was so scared for her and so relieved when she said she told him she never wanted to talk to him again. But.........

Then she started being really depressed saying that she missed him and just wanted to make things right. She spent 4 hours sitting in her car outside her house trying to talk to him. And you know what that bastard did?! He hid behind the cars in the driveway watching as her sister, my boyfriend and myself held onto her while she cried her eyes out in the middle of the street.

She is such a wonderful person who has had a horrible past. She has been surrounded by nothing but controlling guys all her life. She admitted she was addicted to this guy but didn't want to go back to being treated that way. Again that same group was doing everything we could to keep her happy and help her through because we knew it was going to be hard. 

Then another example of his "affection" she had a really bad hypo-glycemic attack and got really sick and he said "well tell her if she needs me I'll be asleep." WTF!!!!!! I'm sorry but if you claim to love someone and they are sick I wouldn't care if they were asleep. I would have charged my but over there as fast as humanly possible just to be there and make sure they were ok.

Then, then the worst of all. SHE WENT BACK TO HIM!!! Oh yes. I call over to her house to see if I can go grab my stuff which I forgot after sleeping over at her house. Only to find out that she has been missing. Where is she? At his house. And her brother was begging her to come home and she doesn't come home till midnight.

AAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!! I felt so absolutely betrayed and I wanted to slap her and murder him! Plus that snide jackass called my boyfriend a compulsive liar just because he was telling her the truth about him. And then he told me and my bf in the snidest most irritating "punch me now" voice: "I told you she would listen to me." That SOB is destroying my best friend and I can't do anything to stop it! I would give anything just to smack some sense into her!

God Give Me Strength!!!!