10 Things Your College House Absolutely NEEDS

No one wants the latter, so have these things ready to go before you toast your first beer to the (insert house name here):

10. A Good Relationship With Cops/Locals

This is 150% the most important thing on this list because it can make your year a living hell if not established properly. With every college town comes neighbors who perform the seemingly impossible task of trying to raise a family in the midst of a college neighborhood racked with fraternity satellite houses and obliterated students stumbling up and down their streets at all hours of the night. These locals always look out their front window, have carefully bordered fences around their entire property, and maintain beautifully manicured gardens we didn’t even know could exist in such a drunken wasteland.

If you’re in Greek life, these neighbors stereotype the living shit out of you before speaking one word to you. They’ve dealt with countless party houses before you, and will probably despise you no matter how polite and charming you are during your first encounter. If you’re a GDI, the odds lean a tad more in your favor, because they assume you won’t be having 100 people tailgating next door to their children's Saturday playdate. It still might happen, but a label goes a long way.

Knock on their door on the first day. Go with all of your roommates, so they're familiar with each of your faces. Give them your contact info and tell them to call if they have any problems whatsoever. You’re basically saying, “Don’t call the cops,” but you’re really saying that you’re willing to cooperate to keep everyone happy.

This initiative ensures that you trust them not to get you in trouble with the police. A good relationship with the locals means a good relationship with the cops, and a good relationship with the cops is no relationship with the cops.

9. Good Cable

The best things to have in your house are the things you use when you’re sober, because then, you actually give a shit about everything. Sometimes you come home from class and just wanna watch TV before hitting the library to bullshit that 5-pager you’ve been staving off for a month. If you try skating by on a dinky $5-a-month cable service with five channels, half of which are in Spanish, it’s gonna be a long year. Kleenex’s stock will skyrocket thanks to your boredom.

Hound your roommates to pitch in some extra cash for an aggressive cable upgrade. Nothing says high society more than DVR and Skinemax.

8. A Decent Speaker System

It seems pretty basic, but this household tool won’t appear essential until you have a bunch of people over and there’s nothing to do except awkwardly gather around your TV while sipping beer. You’ll have your sick cable service to enjoy during downtime, but loud music performs the most vital function that a TV never can: it gets everyone moving. A beat floating through the air drastically changes the entire social dynamic. It gets people out of their seats, talking to each other, laughing more, and, most importantly, drinking faster.

Your guests can’t play flip cup and watch Breaking Bad at the same time. TV requires focus whereas music needs no mental exertion at all. Its presence alone does everything for you. A simple iHome should do the trick. Just don’t use something only ants can hear.

7. Febreze

Again, you only care about things when you’re sober. After a few beers, you don’t care if the kitchen stinks of crusty mildew or the living room reeks like the inside of a Budweiser factory. But for the next morning, when you have difficulty breathing and have to walk around the house with your nose under your shirt, you’ll need some heavy artillery to get rid of that lingering abominable funk. Most of us hate cleaning and we definitely don’t own a Swiffer, so luckily this heavy artillery costs only around $10 a bottle and will have the house smelling like clean laundry in no time. Spray it on your cat if you have to. Don’t be afraid to go on a rampage with this nectar of the gods.

6. The Best Toilet Paper Money Can Buy

Alcohol, cafeteria food, coffee: The basic college diet will perform stunning pyrotechnics on your digestive system. Research will one day prove that bros visit the porcelain throne three to four times more during their college years than any other stage in life.

Despite the lack of conclusive scientific evidence, we’d rather not have a roll of sand paper next to the John, undoubtedly causing agonizing pain to the pudding pincher every time duty calls. That delicate area requires an unorthodox amount of care during these unhealthy years, so paying top dollar for a soft brand of TP can possibly be the best investment for your house. If your roommate underestimates this obviously severe problem by buying a generic brand, he must be shunned indefinitely.

5. A Multi-Purpose Table

I’m sure you don’t envision you and your roommates having Family Pasta Night every Friday and Saturday. In all honesty, you’ll most likely never eat on it and instead just pile textbooks, clothes, and other meaningless shit until you forget it’s a table at all.

But the table will ultimately do two memorable things during its lifetime: Uphold drinking games, and break some random kid who's screaming “Kobe!” and trying to slam dunk a pong ball into a Solo cup with 200 pounds of force. Make sure to have a table that’s solid enough to support flip cup, 'Ruit, and any other athletic events, barring acts of God and drunken douchenuggets. Typically the longer and wider the better, but wider is more important. It’s not fun throwing a pong toward a cup a mile away.

 

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4. Keurig Home Brewing System

Possibly the most glorious thing to happen to coffee since coffee mugs. My apologies to all the people out there who drink tea and listen to vinyl Bob Dylan records. I’d just rather drink something that tastes good. Even if we get 18 hours of sleep, there is no avoiding waking up groggy as hell. Nothing gets your eyes wide open than the smell and taste of a fresh hot cup of coffee.

These personal machines are fast and efficient but only brew single cups of coffee at a time, so pace yourselves lest you want to endure the bowel pain mentioned in #7. Also make sure to be equipped with plenty of cream and sugar packets because no one likes black coffee. People only drink it so they can condescendingly brag about how they drink it.

3. Keg

Do I really need to explain this? Moving on.

2. Trust

There’s a reason you chose this particular collection of goons to shack up with for the next nine months. You’ll publicly say you picked them because each one is a good wingman and can probably drink Ireland under the table, but you really lived with them because you trust that they won’t royally fuck you over in any way, shape, or form. Trust prevents the passive-aggressive relationships, violent snaps on each other, and general stinginess that we have to look forward to when we get married. Let’s keep all that as far away as possible for now.

1. Private Quarters

College houses definitely promote the “one for all” mentality. Any beer, clothes, or food is fair game when you have six cavemen crammed into one small building. This ugly truth means we need a little place where we can stash our most valuable possessions, stomp our cane on the ground, and scream, “You shall not pass!”

You’re golden if you have your own room. If you don’t, then improvisation is required. Sometimes you have to tell the confidante that sleeps one foot away from you to get the hell out because you need to do homework. It’s a lie, of course, but you gotta do what you gotta do.