The kids are off to college, but not without one last (emotional) trip to the Container Store

July 26, 2024

The shopping bags are hanging near the entrance, the slogan printed on them like a welcome sign to rushing parents. CONTAIN YOURSELF, the bags command as ponytailed 18-year-olds bounce through aisles of laundry baskets and jewelry trees and $7.99 trash cans.

CONTAIN YOURSELF, the bags say, it’s just college.

She’ll miss home cooking. She’ll text.

CONTAIN YOURSELF, she needs more under-the-bed boxes, okay?

CONTAIN YOURSELF, there are four more hours until her new life is in your rearview mirror.

A mom hovers near a shelf of grass-colored pencil organizers.

“Those are hideous!” her daughter Lexi barks, Chuck Taylors marching past in declaration.

“She wants no clutter,” Zulma Maciel says. “No clutter at all.”

So on to the aisle of the Container Store with the boxes that nestle like little Russian dolls, because none of this could fit in the suitcases they flew from Gilroy, Calif., to Lexi’s cement-block dorm.

Shower caddy, check. Skirt hangers, check. And then the question heard all around the store: “What else, what else, what else?” The last few hours of nearby American University’s move-in weekend are passing by. The threesomes of Mom, Dad and Freshman are in an anxious tizzy of last-minute errands, the final step of the drop-off ritual.

What else? Hooks for above the bed.

What else? Reminding her she can call anytime.

Moms block aisleways as they scroll through their hastily made iPhone lists. It seems like just yesterday that back-to-school was all No. 2 pencils and highlighters that would dry out when the caps got lost. Sure, you can get the 64-count Crayolas. Zulma is remembering her daughter’s “Dora the Explorer” backpack, and how when Lexi walked away into her first day of kindergarten, her hair looked just like Dora’s from behind.

Now the aisles are all shoe racks and bulletin boards and shower totes and last chances to be the voice of wisdom.

"Are you sure you don't want a laundry bag?" Liz Evans asks her daughter Sophie. "It takes up less space on the floor and ..."

“There’s nowhere to hang it,” Sophie replies, turning to go look for the third time at the hampers made of wicker, plastic, metal, mesh and cotton, none of which seem just right. And that’s the problem with being the first kid to go to college; you don’t exactly know what you need or how it will work, and neither does your mom. Like that semester with the calculus homework on repeat.

"I'm in two mom groups on Facebook, and this stuff is all over," Liza Hogan says. "Collapsible luggage, so much minutiae ... you don't want to carry 17 bags in, so you have to think about that. We know someone whose son is going to Belmont, and she said they have this whole welcome wagon where 20 people descend on the car and take your stuff up."

She holds up sticky strips and reusable mounting putty. “Which is better?” she asks the clerk, and the answer is to get both, which, of course, she was going to do.

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CONTAIN YOURSELF but not your wallet, because you’ve already paid for the textbooks and the “Sports Center Fee” and bottled water for the drive, so what’s another $3.79 when, oh yes, there’s also that $14,000 loan? The orientation tour failed to mention that dorm shopping is a $43.1 billion industry of credit cards funding nesting daughters.

“This one is so cute, so so cute,” Shoshy Levine is saying to her mom, Barbara, pointing at a doorstop that looks like a little man pushing on the door. “But, not worth $20, I know.”

Barbara smiles and picks up a $4.99 doorstop. The allowance, the baby-sitting jobs, the asking of, “Do you want it enough to spend your own money on it?” Maybe she should remind her daughter of those money lessons and the — ah, there are the bed risers.

“I don’t know,” Shoshy says, “I saw some on the Internet I can plug stuff into.”

“You’ll have to explain to me how that works.”

“They have plugs. In the risers.”

“But then, don’t you just have to plug the bed riser in?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“What else?” Barbara asks.

She knows to wear shoes in the dorm shower. To tell your roommate where you’re going. Don’t set your drink down at parties, make a budget, floss, be a good person!

“All the sudden it’s hitting us, have we really told her everything we wanted to teach her?” Marcelle Pearson says. “It’s kind of hard as they get older; you don’t want to push it down their throats, but you try at every opportunity to pass on good values.”

The Pearsons are from St. Louis, where their daughter Paige was the model big sister and the volleyball star and the proud owner of the “best bed in the house.” And now, here she was, examining the aisle of plastic makeup trays. The makeup she could wear for going out to those parties she told her mom about this morning. Where freshmen line up at a pickup location and frat guys come and drive them to parties. Sometimes they don’t know which frat they’re being taken to. “It’s fine,” someone told her daughter. “Drop a pin on your phone map and you’ll know where you are.”

It’s fine, they said.

It’s fine, Pearson tells herself. This is why she had all those talks in the car on the way to volleyball and doctors’ appointments, when she held her daughters captive, when she could turn a news story or a bit of gossip or a funny billboard into a parable with a, “Well, you know.”

They head to the counter. Mattress pad, check. Makeup tray, check.

A few hours left. What else, what else, what else.

Frat parties. There’s an Ulta Beauty store in Silver Spring. One more captive car ride.

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