I lived in a dorm room for the first two years of college, and I had way too many things to actually fit inside said dorm room, but I was too stubborn to leave anything at home. So most of my childhood bedroom and all of my Pinterest DIY’s came with me. This led to an enormous organizational issue that I’m sure my freshman roommate judged me for, and even though we had to share a room, she was kind enough to pretend that I was not actually a borderline hoarder. All I had to contain my possessions was a desk with three drawers, a dresser also with three drawers, and a wardrobe with two shelves and a small hanging rack.
One evening, I had gone to my grandpa’s house for dinner and we had the following conversation about my predicament:
Grumpy: What do you have to do tonight?
Erika: Well, I gotta go do some homework tonight and clean my room a little bit more. It’s kind of a mess.
G: It’s not very big, don’t take too long.
E: No it shouldn’t, but I have to find places to put things. Because I don’t have a lot of places to put things.
G: Maybe you need some shelves.
E: Well I don’t know where I would put them. I can’t drill into the wall or anything.
G: I can.
E: No, you can’t.
G: Sure I can.
E: But I’d have to pay for that at the end of the year.
G: No, you won’t. Just tell them, “It was here when I come here.” Just tell them you don’t know where it came from.
Flash forward a few days later, and my grandpa arrives at my dorm to measure the wardrobe because he’s going to build me another shelf. He pulls out his measuring tape, takes a few notes, and then is gone almost as soon as he gets there.
A couple more days go by, and he calls me to tell me he’s finished my shelf and he’ll be stopping by to install it. The shelf fits perfectly, but the studs won’t fit into the pre-made holes inside the wardrobe, so my grandpa decides that he’ll just make them bigger. By drilling more holes into the sides of the wardrobe. With the electric drill he just happens to have in his truck. However, the cheap siding on the wardrobe splits immediately and chips off on the inside, exposing the inside of the wood. Undeterred, my grandpa continues drilling until the studs fit snugly inside, my new shelf perched safely inside my wardrobe. He steps back and admires his handiwork.
I, however, see a bill in my future for damages to my dorm room.
Later, I was very grateful for the new shelf, and I just painted over the damage with my art supplies and hoped that my RA would never find out.
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