21 Most Forgotten Items for College

By Braden Becknell

The decision on what makes the cut and what doesn’t is a daunting task. Packing for college, one of the most important times in your life when you first leave home, is very stressful and hard to manage. Forgetting something at home may mean not having it in college until you go back to visit, but over packing is a nightmare when it comes to organization and keeping everything clean.

1. Business Professional Clothes

It may not seem necessary or even reasonable to pack professional clothes or business suits, but you never know when you may need one. Although you may not want to attend any career fairs, some organizations request business professional clothing worn during interviews.

2. Agenda/Planner

In high school, planners aren’t really necessary because everything is planned out far in advance with reminders from each organization. However, in college, some organizations don’t have meetings every week and some have hangouts on different nights or weekends which make it hard to keep up with.

3. Extra Phone Charger

This is self-explanatory as it is easy to lose a phone charger or any charger for that matter. It is also very easy for phone chargers to break or just short out.

4. String Lights

Christmas style lights add much needed light to previously dim college dorms. It is very hard to find string lights at any time other than around the holiday season. Yet, they add style and decoration to a dull room.

5. Beach Towel

I don’t understand why, but I’ve met at least a dozen people that forgot a beach towel and only brought bath towels. It is easy to just use the same towel for both, but with as long as it takes to do laundry, you are more likely to run out of clean towels faster.

6. Wristlet

A night on the town is much harder when you try to carry a purse along with you. A purse is also easier to leave behind when in a rush or just having too much fun to notice. Wristlets provide the perfect place to carry cash, debit/credit cards, and a driver’s license. All things necessary for a night on the town.

7. Can Opener

Even if you don’t have a pantry or a decent sized kitchen, a can opener is still necessary. It helps you open up any can ranging from soup to vegetables to fruit.

8. Formal Clothing

Sororities, fraternities, and other clubs on campus will have date nights and other formal events when it will be necessary to dress up. On a college student’s budget and salary, it is hard to buy more formal clothing for one or two events.

9. Scissors

Scissors seem rather basic and a fundamental part of an elementary kids school supply list, but they come in handy on everyday items. Whether you realize it or not, scissors are an everyday item.

10. TV Remote

For those people who have TVs already, leaving the remote behind is very easy to do. Unless you bring the TV already in a box, make sure to grab all the extra remotes/chargers.

11. Swimsuit

I know when I started packing for college, swimming and swim suits were not on mind. I was focusing on making sure I had sheets, a comforter, my school books, and other things that I completely forgot about swimming while I was in college. The first week I was at Texas A&M University I went swimming, but luckily I had enough money to go buy a clearance swimsuit before that night.

12. Trashcan

Rather self-explanatory, but it was not on the top of packing lists from very many retail stores or Pinterest lists. Several of my friends had to make an extra trip to the store while moving in to go buy a trash can. It’s something you can buy while moving in, but it’s much harder to go to the busy stores to search for one item when you could’ve bought it a while back and brought it with you.

13. Toothbrush

Even when packing to go camping or just travel for a while, a toothbrush is easily the most forgotten item. After using it in the morning, people are usually just too busy and in a rush to remember to go back and grab it. Packing it the night before is also a bad idea, because you’ll need it in the morning.

14. Pain Killer

Advil/Tylenol/Ibuprofen are all great painkillers that most college students will need within the first month or two. It’s much simpler to buy a few common medicine/pain killers and keep them in a box for whenever you may need them. This is especially true for cold/cough medicine and other items to help make you feel better when you may not feel good enough to go buy them.

15. Batteries

Calculator, clock, watch, remote, and other casual items all need batteries and probably come with batteries. However after frequent to constant use, the batteries die. This may not seem like a big deal, but if you’ve been studying for a long time for a test and your calculators batteries die last minute, going to the store will be the last thing on your mind.

16. Air Freshener

Dorm rooms usually stink. It doesn’t matter what you do to fix it, but they will probably continue to smell. There’s no way to avoid the smell in the bathroom or the bedroom, but air fresheners make it a little more bearable.

17. Flash Drive

Having a laptop/desktop in college is almost a necessity, but even more so is having a flash drive. Last minute reports and papers can be easily transported with a flash drive and you don’t have to worry about the universities spotty wifi.

18. Umbrella

Especially in College Station, it rains often especially during the first few months of class. However, you never know when the rain may happen. In the middle of class it could start pouring down rain and not let up until an hour or two later, but you might have a class immediately after.

19. Laundry Hamper

Just having a drawstring laundry bag will not work very well, unless you are a very organized strong person. The bags weigh a lot more than you’d expect and make it harder to carry. Also, if you have a laundry hamper that stands up, putting away dirty clothes is easy as you just throw them in.

20. Extra Set of Sheets

Also, back to the laundry aspect, if the wait to do laundry is long, you can clean your bed by putting your dirty sheets in the laundry hamper, washing your comforter (or have an extra one), and put the extra set of sheets on the bed.

21. Luggage

Out of town trips with organizations and friends come up quite often. Having your own luggage makes these trips easier and quicker as you don’t have to worry about how to take your clothes or what to use as luggage.

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