Do Dorm Rooms Really Smell? As a senior in high school I'm sure your last thought was: will my dorm room smell? Think about it though...take how old your dorm building is and multiply it by 2. For example, if your dorm is 50 years old and is a standard 2-student room, that means 100 different people have lived in what will be YOUR room. That's a lotof different body odors! For the skeptic out there who says, "Yeah, but hotels don't usually smell, and they have had thousands of guests," That is true, but hotel stays are usually so short no one has the chance to funktify it yet. Plus, hotel rooms are usually cleaned by professional cleaning staff every day while you are staying there, and deep cleaned between guests. That is why the musty smell of dirty laundry and your roommate not showering never really sets in at most hotels. These odors do, however, hit DORM rooms! The good news is that before your college move-in day, your university will do a heck of a job trying to make your room feel new. but how well they clean it depends on how nice your school is. If your school has cutbacks due to the economy, you should enter move-in day with a rag and Lysol...or bleach if you can handle it. Good Idea: Every now and then DormCo has a good idea (this is one of those times). Besides going the clean-freak route by bleaching your dorm room and making your entire dorm floor smell like a crime scene cleanup, we suggest a more subtle option. It's entirely possible that your room only needs a hint of something good-smelling to mask the musk of the previous dorm dweller. Make your semester smell better by adding Dorm Scents. You can go the liquid route by spraying our wonderful scents. Depending on your room you can keep a Dorm Scent out on your desk or on your closet shelf. The nice thing about these scents is that they aren't the type that will overpower and give you a headache. Instead, they provide a realistic cover-up to any odors that might be offensive. Another avenue you can go with is preventing more smells from occurring in the first place. One of the worst offenders for bad dorm smells comes from dirty laundry. You can combat this by using a fully enclosed laundry storage solution, whether that is a laundry bid with a lid, a laundry bag with a zipper, or even a basic drawstring laundry tote that you can keep cinched closed until laundry day. That way, all the smelly laundry scents won't be able to escape your dorm room like some sort of dirty laundry potpourri. Damp, mildew-y towels can also make your dorm room smell musty. That is why our dorm experts recommend choosing antimicrobial towels or quick drying towels to cut back on the chance of foul odor-causing bacteria or fungus moving in to your dorm room like an unwelcome third roommate. There is a third source of bad dorm smells that you can easily control: your shoes. Whether it's diet or genetics, some people just have stinky feet, and that smell can easily sink into your shoes, making each shoe its own bonafide stink bomb. While there are products designed to de-odorize your shoes, this is a one-time fix and your shoes will just get smelly again. Unless you want your dorm room to smell like a gross locker room, containing your shoes in a zippered shoe organizer is a good idea. Tucked in a shoe bag underneath your dorm bed, even college athletes can prevent that gross foot smell that just takes over some college dorm rooms! IMPORTANT NOTE: You'll notice DormCo does not sell candles nor did we discuss candles. The reason is that university campus rules prohibit the use of candles. If you bring a candle it will be thrown out by residence life anyway. Some schools may even fine you after your first warning! Happy dorm smelling!