When we’re making preparations for our college lives, most students get really excited at the prospect of having a whole new room to do with whatever they please, or at least their half of a room. The dorm room furnishing frenzy begins at stores like Bed Bath and Beyond, Target, and other chain retailers that stock up on décor and seating that doubles as storage, and then you need essentials like towels and some basic cook wear – things that will be all yours for you mini life while you’re away.

Of some of the staples, people often try to coordinate with a roommate so that someone is bringing a television and the other will bring a mini fridge. If you’re unable to score one of the mini fridges with the microwave attachment, you have strategically place the microwave out of sight of your Resident Assistant.

When I announced that I would be attending a university and needed the proper furnishings for my room, family members began a mad dash to help get everything I would, or could, ever need for my mini life away from home. One of the nicest gifts I received was a mini fridge from my aunt and uncle. I was ecstatic, I’ve wanted a mini fridge in my room since middle school, and now that I wasn’t going to have access to a normal fridge, I was about to get my hands on one I could keep right next to my bed.
Fast forward three years, and here is my mini fridge, serving not only as an ice box to keep leftovers and refreshments cold, but also doubling as a shelf, a bedside table, and an extension of my desk over the years.

Now as a senior, I am just around two months away from graduation and starting out in the real world. Finally, after 16 years in school. But just the other day, I went over to my fridge to get a soda. I got the soda, sit down, and then I realized, “hey this soda isn’t cold at all.” I went back over to the fridge, pulled the door open, and sure enough the fridge was just barely cooler than room temperature. I was mad. I pulled the fridge out and tinkered around and couldn’t figure out why it had just suddenly stopped working.

There were leftovers from Mi Pueb in there that I wanted, and I wasn’t sure how long it had been warm in the fridge. I was heartbroken. In a mad dash, I began checking through all of my food products making a pile of safe things and a pile of bad thing, and then I began to cart all of them to a friend’s fridge, luckily there was enough space for me to keep all of my condiments and some of the other things that I wanted to hold on to. That should be great, right? Wrong. This is a first world problem because now any time that I want anything at all, I don’t even have it in my room to eat. Instead, I have walk upstairs, hope that someone is there, or that the door is unlocked, and pray that they didn’t help themselves to my goodies. I couldn’t even really get mad if they did, I am, after all, occupying their fridge with ketchup and other miscellaneous food items. But still, my mini fridge is out of commission and my food is in an inconvenient location making this problem a first world problem.