This post is all about college dorm closet essentials every college freshman needs!
Find the best dorm closet essentials for your dorm room!
These dorm closet essentials help you maximize your dorm closet space.
Dorm Closet Essentials
First off, dorm closets are very small. Honestly, I don’t even think calling it a closet is fair.
But when you’re a college freshman, sometimes you have no choice but to make do with these small dorm room closets and find clever ways to organize them.
Now, one clever way is to use space-saving closet items to help you maximize the space.
Here are some space-saving closet items that are perfect dorm closet essentials.
Use these essentials to help you get the most out of your dorm room closet.
The Best Dorm Closet Essentials
- Hanging closet shelves
- Shoe organizers
- Magic hangers
- Non-slip hangers
- Pants hangers
- Over the door full-length mirrors
- Foldable bags
- Storage boxes
- Hanging jewelry holders
- Closet air fresheners
Dorm Closet Essential 1: Hanging closet shelves
These hanging closet shelves are a game-changer. Whoever, designed this, deserves some serious brownie points!
This is the easiest way to add shelves to your dorm room closet. I used my hanging closet shelf mainly to plan my outfits for the school week, and it held up very well.
However, I must admit, this isn’t something you can overload with clothes, since it bends in the middle when it’s overloaded.
Therefore, if you use this item in your dorm room closet, only add a few staple clothing pieces.
Overall, it worked out great for my use.
So if you’re looking for a place to store your school outfits for the week, this hanging closet shelf is a great solution.
Dorm Closet Essential 2: Shoe organizer
This door shoe organizer should simply be called an organizer because I have seen people use this in so many ways.
Some of my college friends used this to store their jewelry, pens, pencils, highlighters, socks, hair products, and even cup noodles.
Yes, cup noodles!
All, in all, you can use this to store whatever you want – not just shoes.
Dorm Closet Essential 3: Magic hangers
These cascading hangers are magical – they take the space of one hanger but allow you to hang five pieces of clothing.
It took me a while to buy these because I honestly thought they were just another gimmicky product.
But after seeing a few of my college friends using them, I craved in and bought a set for my closet, and I was actually impressed by the amount of extra space I had in my closet after using these.
All in all, if you can only afford to buy a handful of items for your dorm room closet, I highly recommend these cascading hangers and a few non-slip hangers.
These hangers are great for small closets.
Dorm Closet Essential 4: Non-slip hangers
These non-slip velvet hangers will keep you sane!
I know this may sound crazy, but honestly, plastic hangers make keeping your closet organized a chore.
If you ever had to search at the bottom of your closet for clothes you hanged, you know the struggle.
Now while, this might be tolerable in a bigger closet, in a small closet it can get overcrowded really quickly.
Thankfully, the design of these non-slip hangers saves you space and keeps your clothes hanged, so you can easily and quickly find what you’re looking for.
Dorm Closet Essential 5: Pants hangers
A set of pants hangers save you a lot of space in your closet.
It’s definitely a dorm closet essential, especially when you consider a high percentage of college students mostly wear jeans and a t-shirt for class.
These served me well. I got one pack and even shared that pack with a friend of mine since I didn’t have a lot of jeans and pants in my closet.
So if you have a lot of jeans, pants, and leggings get these pants hangers – they will really help you organize your dorm room closet.
Dorm Closet Essential 6: Over the door full-length mirror
An over-the-door full-length mirror is really nice to have in your dorm room.
I purchased a small one, and it fitted perfectly over my closet door.
Before you purchase one, make sure you measure the space because you can easily purchase one that doesn’t fit.
Dorm Closet Essential 7: Foldable storage bag
These foldable storage bags are a dorm closer essential. These a perfect for fitting extra towels and bedding. Plus, you can easily place them at the bottom of your closet or under your bed.
This three-piece set, foldable storage bags, are perfect for storing things like jeans and shirts. I two pieces from this set fitted perfectly in my closet and placed the other one under my bed.
Overall, these storage bags really helped me organize my closet.
Dorm Closet Essential 8: Storage boxes
A few of my bougie college friends used storage boxes to store their clothes. They added them on top of their closets.
Overall, they looked great, but these are not as affordable as the storage bags.
However, they looked amazing on the top of their closets.
So a storage box is multipurpose – it can easily help keep your dorm room organize and double as a dorm room decoration piece.
Dorm Closet Essential 9: Hanging jewelry holder
Carrie Bradshaw from Sex in The City once said I like my money where I can see it – hanging in my closet.
Well, this hanger jewelry organizer will safely display all your glam in one place where you can see it – no going through jewelry boxes or bags searching for your glam statement piece.
This hanger jewelry holder looks amazing. My jewelry holder, don’t look as stylish as this one.
All in all, jewelry holders make accessing your jewelry easy.
Plus, it’s a great way to display all your jewelry in one place.
Dorm Closet Essential 10: Closet air freshener
Scented candles are not allowed in dorm rooms, so you have to get creative with the alternatives.
Using a closet air freshener is one alternative.
These keep your closet smelling great. I always had a few of these on hand. When I got tired of a particular scent, I tried another one.
All, in all, this, is a nice to have item – it’s definitely not a must-have college dorm room essential.
However, during my time in college, I found the smallest thing sometimes made the best and biggest impact.
So if you’re big on fresh scents, get some closet air fresheners – they will keep your closet smelling great.
Overall, these are all the dorm closet essentials you can use to maximize space in your dorm room closet.
If you could only get a few items, I highly recommend the non-slip velvet hangers, cascading hangers, foldable storage bags, a set of pants hangers, and the door shoe organizer.
These are game-changers!