You move in once, you move out once, and in between, your stuff has to survive four breaks. Most freshmen assume each break works like the others. They don’t. Here’s what actually happens during each break and how to plan ahead so you don’t lose half your wardrobe in May.
Thanksgiving break
The shortest break of the year. Most schools stay open — you don’t move out, you just leave for 4–7 days.
What to do:
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- Take home dirty laundry, the prescriptions you’ll need, and a couple of warm-weather essentials.
- Empty your fridge of anything perishable — even a closed milk carton smells terrible by Sunday.
- Take out trash and recycling. A dorm room sealed for a week with old trash develops a smell.
- Lock everything — most schools have a small spike in dorm theft over Thanksgiving when buildings are mostly empty.
- Unplug power strips and small appliances.
Winter break
The big one. 3–6 weeks. Most schools require you to fully leave the building — some lock dorms entirely with no access, some require move-out for international students. Read your housing email carefully.
What to do:
- Take home everything you’ll need for 3+ weeks. Laptop, all chargers, important documents, prescriptions for the duration plus a buffer, all your laundry. Bulky bedding and winter coats compress to about a third of their size in vacuum bags, which is the difference between one suitcase and two.
- Empty AND clean your fridge. Some schools shut off power to dorm fridges over break. A carton of orange juice in a powered-off fridge for four weeks is a hazmat situation.
- Take down anything valuable — jewelry, expensive electronics, irreplaceable photos. Dorms are not Fort Knox and break is the highest-risk window.
- Take down anything that can spoil from heat or cold. Winter dorms run cold (sometimes freezing if heat’s reduced) — liquid skincare, candles, anything water-based can ruin.
- Unplug everything. Even fridges — mainly to prevent fire risk if the building has electrical issues you don’t know about.
- Take out all trash. A bag of trash sealed in a dorm for a month is genuinely traumatic to come back to.
Spring break
Like Thanksgiving but a week. Most students go home, on a trip, or stay on campus. Schools generally stay open. Same rules as Thanksgiving but with one addition: plan for who has access to your room if you’ll be away for 7+ days. Tell your roommate when you’re leaving and returning, and lock everything.
Summer break
The biggest logistical challenge. You have to clear out your entire room. There are essentially three ways to handle this:
What to pack it in
The move-out that goes badly is nearly always the one where somebody starts looking for boxes on the last day. Three things cover almost every version of it:
- Extra-large zip bags with handles. The cheap woven kind, the ones everyone calls IKEA bags. They swallow bedding, coats and soft goods, cost a few dollars each, and fold flat until May.
- Vacuum bags for anything soft you are storing rather than carrying. Bedding and winter clothes lose most of their volume.
- Latching bins for anything that must not get crushed, and a marker so you can label them. Clear ones save you opening four boxes to find your desk lamp.
We keep the specific ones we would buy on our break storage list. Buy them in March, not the week of move-out, when the campus bookstore knows exactly how stuck you are.
Option 1: Take everything home
Practical only if you live within driving distance and your family has a car big enough. The cost is a roundtrip and a couple of hours of packing.
Option 2: Use a storage service
Several companies compete for this — Collegeboxes, Storage Scholars, Storage Squad and Dorm Room Movers are the ones you are most likely to see advertising on campus in April. They pick up your stuff in May, store it for the summer, and deliver to your fall room. Reasonable if you’re from far away or going abroad. Get quotes early — prices spike as move-out approaches.
Two of those are DormScouter partners, so read this bit with that in mind. Dorm Room Movers serves 219 of the campuses we cover, across 34 states. Storage Scholars covers 200+ schools and knocks $25 off if you go through our link. Your campus may be served by one, both or neither, and the prices differ enough that a quote from each is worth ten minutes. Compare them against the companies above rather than taking ours as the answer.
What to know:
- Read the insurance terms. Most policies cap individual item value (often at $100–200 per item).
- Photograph everything before pickup so you can prove what was sent.
- Don’t store anything irreplaceable — not photos, not heirlooms, not your laptop.
Option 3: Ship to wherever you’re going
If you’re doing a summer internship in another city, USPS Media Mail and FedEx Ground are both cheap for books, clothes, and basic stuff. UPS has student discounts at most campuses.
What you can almost never store on-campus
Most schools don’t allow students to store anything in dorms over the summer. A few exceptions:
- Your same room may be available to you for next year (rare).
- Some schools offer paid limited storage in basements or attics — usually a few cubic feet for a fee.
- If you’re working an on-campus summer job, some schools let you keep your stuff in temporary summer housing.
Don’t assume any of this applies to you — check with housing before May.
The break checklist (every break)
- Empty fridge and trash.
- Take home laptop, chargers, prescriptions, important documents, and any laundry.
- Take down or hide valuables.
- Unplug everything except whatever your school says to leave on.
- Lock the door (and the window if it’s ground floor).
- Tell your roommate when you’re leaving and returning.
Five minutes of break-prep saves an entire afternoon of cleanup when you come back.
Some links here are partner links, including the shop list and the storage service named above. DormScouter may earn a commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you; see our disclosure. Nothing on this page was chosen because of that.
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