Author: Linni Kral
It’s midnight and you’re on your seventh cup of coffee. The library is packed and you have three papers due and an exam to take, all within the next 12 hours. This is not the time to be worrying about summer storage.
Thankfully, students have a myriad of options for storing their belongings over the long break. Box It Up, founded by Oxy students, will drop off packing materials at your dorm as early as two weeks prior to finals, and new company Dorm2Dorm drops them off a week beforehand. Occidental has offered storage in the residence halls in the past but is not offering it this year due to renovations occurring in the halls. Any personal belongings left in rooms are donated to charity.
There are a few local businesses, such as Public Storage, U-Haul and Extra Space Storage that will store your belongings; groups can also rent Pods together. These options, however, require that you bring your boxes to the facility, an inconvenient option for many students without their own cars. This is where Box It Up and Dorm2Dorm come in; both companies will pick up boxes directly from your door and bring them back to you, wherever you are.
“A friend of the family was doing a similar business on the east coast,” said Dorm2Dorm co-founder Jonathan Hotchandani, “so we decided to try it on the west coast.
“We aren’t a monopoly,” Box It Up’s first customer and co-founder Will Hambly (senior) said in regards to students’ many options, “But I think we can provide a better service than anyone.” Apart from public storage, students may also be able to store their things at off-campus houses.
Dorm2Dorm is in its third year of business and its first year at Occidental. Hotchandani and his partner and former college roommate Matt Nelsen chose Oxy for the number of out-of-state students as well as the number of students who live on campus. Their company delivers boxes and packing materials to students who have purchased them through their website, www.dorm2dorm.com, picks the boxes up and stores them for a monthly fee over the summer. The company will bring the items to wherever a student is living in the fall. Additional charges may be applied for early retrieval of boxes or farther off-campus locations.
“They’re definitely competition, [though] I don’t think they’re going to get much traction,” Hambly said about Dorm2Dorm; “We know the campus well, we know the students well and we know what they want.” Box It Up, founded by Oxy alumnus Chris Smutny in 2004, delivers packing materials free of charge two weeks before finals. They then store the boxes at an off-campus location, such as Public Storage, for the summer at one flat rate. Students can place orders online at www.boxitupstorage.com.
“We’re more flexible,” Hambly said, “if you need stuff back early, we won’t charge you extra.” Box It Up also has no surcharge for boxes over their 70 lb. weight limit and no extra fees for off-campus delivery. Both Box It Up and Dorm2Dorm offer insurance options for boxes. With Box It Up, each box is automatically insured for free at $100 and prices for further arrangements can be negotiated in a more comprehensive agreement. “We’ve never had to invoke the insurance in the past,” Hambly said.
Dorm2Dorm insures every item up to $100 and students may buy extra insurance for $2 per hundred-for example, $10 would cover $500 worth of insurance. Both companies are also available for study abroad storage, a service that Residence Life has been working to coordinate on-campus. At an ASOC General Assembly meeting in February of this year, Residence Life and Housing Director Kecia Baker said that there is a storage system for students studying abroad. This policy allows for two boxes per student, but failure to label boxes has resulted in stolen items. Baker also said that students would ordinarily store their belongings in the rooms they are going to live in, but that this has not been happening.
Occidental students are working to resolve these issues. Sophomore Resident Advisors Jessica Lobl (Haines) and David Martinez (Pauley) are working on a committee to come up with new ideas for the storage system. Smutny and Hambly are also contributing to the student resolution of Occidental’s storage issues, and Hambly is looking to pass the business on to a younger classmate when he graduates this year.
Box It Up worked with the administration this year to become more official, purchasing insurance to come onto campus and advertise. They also worked with Housing and Student Life to comply with their rules.
“It was tough to get started this year,” Hambly said, “and it’s a stressful time with finals, but it’s worth it to me.” Hambly still participates in delivery and pick-up in addition to management, and hopes to find a replacement to do the same. Students interested in either service can find more information about pricing and sign-up on their respective websites.
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