So You're Studying Abroad — What Happens to Your Dorm Room?
Somewhere between booking your flight to Florence and figuring out how to say “where’s the bathroom” in Italian, there’s a logistics problem nobody really warns you about: what happens to everything in your dorm room while you’re gone? If you’re a Gonzaga student heading off on Gonzaga-in-Florence — or really any study abroad program, for a semester or the full year — your stuff doesn’t get to come with you. And unlike normal summer break, this isn’t a two-and-a-half-month gap. It’s a real chunk of your life happening somewhere else, which means your storage plan needs to actually hold up while you’re not around to think about it.
We wrote a more general guide to moving out of your dorm if you want the packing-day mechanics. This one’s specifically for the study abroad version of that problem, because it’s genuinely a different situation.
It's Not Summer Break, Even Though It Feels Similar
Fall semester abroad usually means you’re packing up in August and not touching your stuff again until January. Spring semester means December through May — which, if you’ve lived through a real winter, is exactly the stretch you don’t want your boxes sitting somewhere cold and damp. Full-year students are looking at nine-plus months where your entire dorm room’s worth of belongings just needs to disappear responsibly until you’re back.
The timing matters because you can’t treat this like a normal move-out. You’re not coming back to check on things in a few weeks, you’re not going to remember exactly where you put your winter coat, and you definitely don’t want to be handling a storage bill from an apartment in Florence with spotty wifi and a six-hour time difference.
What Actually Needs to Go Into Storage
You’re not moving out permanently, so the goal isn’t to purge your whole life — it’s to separate what’s coming with you, what can go home with your parents, and what just needs a safe place to sit for a semester. That last category is usually bigger than people expect:
- Seasonal clothing you won’t need on your trip — if you’re leaving in August, your winter coat doesn’t need to fly to Florence with you
- Textbooks and school supplies you’re not bringing
- Bedding, a mini fridge, or other dorm gear you’ll want back the moment you return
- Electronics or gaming setups that aren’t making the trip
- Anything sentimental you’d rather not gamble on shipping overseas or shoving in a friend’s closet
If you’re not sure how much space that adds up to, our guide to storage unit sizes breaks down what actually fits where — most students studying abroad end up fine with a 5×5, especially if a roommate who’s also traveling wants to split a slightly bigger unit and the cost two ways instead of paying for two separate small ones.
Why an Uninsulated Garage or a Friend's Basement Isn't the Move
Winter is no joke, and “I’ll just leave it at a friend’s place” has a way of turning into boxes sitting in a garage through a hard freeze, or worse, in the trunk of a car parked outside for four months. Cardboard boxes and cold, damp storage do not get along — you come back from Florence to find your textbooks warped and your bedding smelling like a basement. Keeping things indoors, out of the weather, for a semester or a full year is worth the peace of mind, especially for anything you’d actually be annoyed to replace.
Set It Up Before You Leave, Then Forget About It
The whole point of doing this right is that you shouldn’t have to think about your storage unit while you’re abroad. That means handling it before you leave, not scrambling the night before your flight:
- Reserve your unit and get your move-in done a few days before you fly out, not the morning of
- Set up autopay so a bill in USD isn’t something you’re dealing with from another country
- Go month-to-month instead of committing to a set term — a semester abroad might run 15 weeks or 20 depending on your program, and you shouldn’t have to guess exactly
- Loop in whoever’s picking you up from the airport when you get back, so retrieving your stuff isn’t its own logistics project on top of jet lag
Whichever storage facility ends up being the right fit, that’s the checklist worth running: month-to-month terms so you’re not locked into paying for a semester that runs shorter or longer than planned, online bill pay so it doesn’t matter what continent you’re on, and a location close enough to campus that move-in and move-out both happen fast before your flight.
Check our frequently asked questions if you’ve got specifics to sort out before you go — otherwise, get it set up, take the picture for your parents so they stop worrying, and go enjoy Florence.
