Dear Snarky,
I’m in a difficult situation and I really need some advice. My daughter is headed to an in-state university (not a bougie college) next month. She has a roommate that she sort of knows through cheerleading competitions. A couple of days ago I got a phone call from her new roommate’s mother asking me to agree to splitting the cost of a dorm room makeover and move in service.
Apparently, there are companies who do everything from buying the bed linens, to hanging custom curtains, replacing the dorm bed mattresses with top-of-the-line organic mattresses, bringing in rugs, better furniture etc. So basically, all you have to do is bring your clothes and then a decorator/organizer will customize the closet. The price for all this as you can imagine is quite high and not something I want or have budgeted to pay for.
The mom, after sharing the price, then told me that she would be willing to pay for all of it if I didn’t want to split the cost because it was so important for her daughter to have a beautiful dorm room.
My daughter is begging me to just let her roommate’s mom pay for it because she’s afraid if I say no to splitting the cost and no to the mom paying for it that her roommate will request a change with university housing and she’ll be stuck living with someone she doesn’t know.
All of this sounds crazy to me but I don’t want to upset my daughter who is telling me I can’t say no.
Signed, In Distress
Dear In Distress,
Yikes. The only answer I have is you have to say NO to both offers. First and foremost, it’s outrageous to spend a huge sum of money decorating a dorm room. It’s also dumb. Let’s get real in less than 48 hours after the dorm room has been made TikTok and Instagram perfect it will probably be a hot mess with clothes and wet towels on the floor.
That’s not to say that the dorm room shouldn’t be cute but you don’t have to drop a boat load of money to make that happen.
Secondly, you can’t let the roommate’s mom pay for the decorator. If you do this the balance of power in the roommate dynamic is F’d up. The roommate might think your daughter “owes her” and for the entire year will hold this over your child’s head. As in, “You know my mom paid for everything so the least you can do is – fill in the blank.”
The roommate could also share with other people that her mom had to pay for everything because your family is “cheap,” “poor” – basically just pick an unflattering adjective.
I would tell the mom you’re up for say matching bed linens but not a whole room makeover. (As a sidebar I don’t think you can remove furniture from a dorm room. Even if it’s returned when you move out. Both of my kid’s colleges had strict rules about that.) When this doesn’t appease the roommate’s mother you just have to let the situation play out. If the roommate decides to ditch your daughter it might be for the best in the long run.
The girl and her mom sound incredibly high maintenance and a roommate your daughter doesn’t know might turn out to be a much better fit with a whole lot less drama. Because I bet this current roommate is going to bring the drama with a capital D the entire school year.
***
Looking to escape the drama and relax with a fabulous summer read? Well, look no further than the my latest book KILLER DANCE MOM! Click on this Amazon link to take a lookie loo www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4FZTK5B. But if your thumb is weary of clicking here’s a teaser of the fun that awaits you.
Wynn Butler is a newbie dance mom and honestly, she hasn’t exactly been receiving rave reviews for her skills. Blinging out costumes and being your child’s glam squad aren’t exactly her strong suits. But at her daughter’s first national competition Wynn is ready to prove herself.
What she hadn’t planned for is being forced to share a hotel room with her least favorite person in the whole world – Jacardia Monroe, a mom who’s had two tours of duty at a spray tan detox clinic.
As Wynn attempts to survive the roommate from hell and cheer on her daughter, she stumbles onto a murder. Stuffed in a dance bag backstage is Kingston Reeves, a renowned competition judge. Sitting right next to that dance bag is Jacardia.
When both women became “persons of interest” in the case, Wynn decides it’s time to do some serious snooping to see who at the competition had a motive to kill the dance judge. Rallying her best friends to help her, she discovers a wide swath of suspects from the Instagram/influencer mom who brings a professional camera crew to follow her at competitions, to a crazed former ballerina turned combative dance mom and then there’s the glitter gang . . . a cadre of mothers who are addicted to rhinestoning costumes and perhaps even murder.
As Wynn gets closer to finding out who the killer is she might be one step-ball-change away from death.
Snarky in the Suburbs 