Close Quarters

How do you fit two (or three) lives into one (pretty darn small) room?

By Maggie Paine

"Decorating, we know, is an intensely personal thing. Each and every one of us has very different desires when it comes to our surroundings." So says Martha Stewart, who shares her home-decorating ideas with 2.3 million Martha Stewart Living subscribers every month. But what happens when two or more individuals have to share the same surroundings in a single room measuring 200 square feet, more or less? That's the challenge facing 4,400 undergraduates each fall when they move into any of the university's 21 dormitories and begin transforming an anonymous space into a campus home.

All dorm rooms are created more or less equal and endowed by the Department of Housing with certain features and furnishings. Among these are plain walls, a bare floor, a window or two, fluorescent ceiling lights, and a bed, desk, chair and closet for each occupant. But students soon put a personal stamp on their rooms. Some are arranged for comfort, some for efficiency, and some have no discernible arrangement at all. Occasionally two roommates will create a schizophrenic space, as if the two halves of the room existed in separate universes.

In the early days of the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, there were no dorms, and students were responsible for finding their own lodgings near the campus, usually boarding with a local family. Smith Hall, built in 1908 as a women's dorm, provided the first on-campus student housing. Fairchild Hall, a residence for men, opened eight years later. The students were treated much like lodgers in a strict rooming house. Each dorm had a house mother, who made sure that residents kept their rooms neat and followed an extensive list of house rules.

Students had little scope for their decorating talents, as they were not permitted to nail, screw, pin or paste anything to the walls. Until the late 1940s, they were not even allowed to have radios without written approval from the dean of men or the dean of women. Each occupant of a room was allowed only 135 watts of electricity, which probably wasn't a hardship, since they couldn't use electrical appliances in their rooms anyway.

The rules are considerably more relaxed today, and students can set up their rooms just about any way they want. Furnishings typically include odd bits of furniture from the attic or garage at home, plastic milk crates propping up temporary shelves, and electronic gear--lots of electronic gear. Every room now has at least one telephone, and almost every desk has a computer. Stereo equipment and big-screen televisions often dominate a room, and many students have their own refrigerators and microwave ovens.

Dorm residents have devised some imaginative room arrangements to create space for all of those gadgets. Lofts are popular, raising beds five feet off the floor, with study or sitting areas tucked underneath. Some students turn their closets into entertainment centers and store their clothes in boxes under their beds or even on the floor.

Traditionally, a dorm room has just been a place for students to sleep and study. But now they can entertain their friends there, heat up a pizza in the microwave, and spend the evening surfing the Web, playing video games or watching a movie. The dorm room has become a living room as well as a bedroom, making decorating even more of a challenge.