Shopping for cool dorm room gadgets is one of the best parts of back-to-school planning. These dorm room essentials make life easier and the room more homey. They also pack in clever features and sleek designs that’ll be sure to make you royalty amongst your hall mates.
From getting your day off to a good start right through to making light work of your midnight snack, here’s our guide to the best dorm room essentials for your back-to-school shopping cart.
The 5 Best Dorm Room Essentials for College Students
1. A Coffee Maker for Energized & Focused Study
Coffee is campus lifeblood. When you’re pulling an all-nighter before a deadline, or waking up for an 8 a.m. lecture, a quick shot of caffeine makes all the difference.
Most coffee makers require you to make more than one cup at a time. But a single-serve coffee maker like the Black + Decker Single-Serve Coffeemaker stops precious coffee going to waste. Just brew a 16-ounce cup with a few presses of a button for a quick jolt of energy.
Another great thing about this coffee maker is that it comes with a stainless-steel insulated mug. Use it to brew your coffee and bring it with you to class when you need to take your caffeine out of the dorm room.
2. A Toaster Oven for Making & Baking Delicious Snacks
Picture this: You’re craving a grilled cheese sandwich or chocolate chip cookies but all the nearby stores are closed. This is where a toaster oven comes in handy. A toaster oven is a lifesaver when you need to cook yourself a quick and easy, yet substantial snack.
Long a staple of the dormitory, toaster ovens come in different sizes with various features. For instance, the Black + Decker 4-Slice Toaster Oven fits four slices of bread or a 9-inch pizza into the tray.
On the other hand, the Hamilton Beach ensemble™ 6 Slice Toaster Oven shares the same features as the Black + Decker but can fit in more bread slices and a 12-inch pizza.
For the ultimate dorm dining experience, check out the stainless steel Oster® Compact Countertop Oven With Air Fryer. This toaster oven is four appliances in one. You can toast, air fry, broil, and warm your favorite food using this oven. Its turbo convection technology also cooks your food evenly on all sides.
3. A Microwave for Warming Up Your Lunch & Dinner in Seconds
When you’re living that leftover life, a microwave is a must. This small dorm room essential provides you with an easy way to reheat last night’s pizza or takeout in minutes.
Something as simple as the Kenmore Countertop Microwave Oven should help get your meals ready in as fast as 30 seconds. It runs on 900W of power, so you can be sure to cook big and small food evenly inside its 0.9 cubic feet capacity. With six auto cook functions to choose from, you can warm up your pizza, soup, or pasta the right way.
4. A Blender for Maintaining Your Healthy Lifestyle
College athletes know the value of a robust diet of nutrient-rich foods. And many times they consume these important nutrients when they’re out and about. Plus, they rarely have time to cook so they often end up blending their way to healthy eating. Personal blenders are a great way for making your morning smoothie quickly and easily. They are portable and compact, so you can store them with no problem in your dorm room.
One of the best of its kind is the NutriBullet Pro 900. Its 900W motor allows you to not only blend fruits and vegetables into a smoothie, but also soup, salsa, and dips to your desired consistency. It’s also powerful enough to crush ice so that you can make slushies and cold drinks, too.
The Oster® Blend Active Portable Blender is a more affordable alternative to the NutriBullet Pro 900. It’s slightly less powerful, but its selling point is you can charge the blender using a USB adapter and bring it with you, so you can make your smoothies on the go.
5. Mini Fridge & Freezer for Storing Your Food & Keeping Drinks Chilled
Rounding out the list of dorm room essentials is the mini fridge. It makes sense to have one, especially if you want to keep your food and drinks cold for days or store leftovers to heat up and eat tomorrow.
The Midea 1.6 Cu. Ct. Compact Refrigerator lets you set your preferences to keep your food evenly chilled. Thanks to its freezer storage safe, you can also create freezer meals to store for weeks and heat up at any time.
If you’re after a funky and ultra-compact unit, the Cooluli Classic 10 Liter Mini Fridge may be right up your alley. You can fit the equivalent of 10 12-ounce cans inside the fridge and its retro design makes it a great conversation piece. This thermoelectric mini fridge also works as a warmer as high as 149 degrees F if you want to keep your food hot, too.
