Furniture Fiascos

A dorm room comes with standard furniture: beds, desks, dresser, chairs, maybe a few extra pieces. The key to maximizing the space in your room is arrangement. Some schools are kind enough to leave a booklet of ideas. We weren't so lucky, so we got creative. This involved a lot of heavy lifting, a lot of cursing, and eventually a working room. A few pointers: be sure to have plenty of pins for the furniture before stacking, have a plan before executing, and most importantly...watch the fingers! Once you get everything situated, remember to use it with some intelligence. We had several incidents with the chairs in particular. UF has 2 types of desk chairs: those that can lean back (which we had freshman year) and those that can't lean. More than once, we would be leaning back, but thought we weren't. You can see where this is going...to the floor. One time in particular, a friend was kneeling on the chair with her knees going thru the back and she leaned too far. We had to pry her from the chair before she could get up. As an added note, it was not fun going from those chairs to the ones that don't lean, for the next year. :) Another key piece of advice: tables are not for sitting. Late one night, our RA was sitting on the table with her feet on the chair, sticking thru the back. The chair tips, she falls to the floor with her feet caught, there's a trip to the ER, and she spends the next week or so on crutches with a bruised foot. Needless to say, no one sat on the table after that. Thanks and love! Happy New Year everyone!