Dorm Shopping

In the last few weeks, I've been shopping around quite a bit for my dorm room, with heavy guidance from a friend of mind who, despite being of the opposite gender, appears to be a much better shopper than me.
I was originally going to buy this at the linens site associated with my school (and many others), but after I ordered it, I did a quick google search and found many complaints about its quality.  So, I canceled the order and decided to go searching for my own things, hopefully matching and/or beating the price of the full pack. Here are my picks:

First, a trip to Five and Below revealed these goodies.  Actually, the storage ottoman and the laundry bag were gifts from a birthday party.  They match each other nicely, and since the jewelry organizer and the bath set were both nicely priced compared to other places ($5 each), it was a good deal. 

Total so far: $10

If you'd excuse my foot in this picture, I got some nice towels from TJ Max for about $21 total.  There are 2 face washcloths, a hand towel (pink), and a bath towel.  The tags say DKNY, so I'm assuming they're of good quality (or at least hopefully better than generic brand towels).

Total thus far: $31

Upon a trip to Target, I realized that a) dorm stuff is actually pretty cheap at Target and b) it's pretty nice stuff.  So I bought an organizer lamp for $15 (I could have sworn it was 13 the other day I visited), a shower mesh caddy for another $8, and the comforter sheets (which I liked the design of, thus the higher price) for about $50.  However, since I used a $10 off coupon, the total came down to about $63 instead. 

Total thus far: $94

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The PUR 5 Liter Water Pitcher

I didn't think of buying a water pitcher for college in all honesty, that was said friend's idea.  My family owns a Brita Water pitcher which works quite nicely at home, and upon searching for one of those on Amazon, I realized that they were upwards of at least twenty dollars, which was a little more than I wanted to pay for a single/double person pitcher.  So I found that this water pitcher, of the PUR brand, is thankfully only $9.97 and significantly cheaper than any Brita product, even at Costco or other places.

Total thus far: $104 (approx)

And among other uninteresting things such as power strips, a pillow, hangers, a gel infused memory foam topper (well actually, that's mildly interesting, but I still have yet to use it so more on it later), and a hamper, my spending total comes out to about $180, $20 shy of the $200 Campus Pack price with other items like the pitcher that aren't included in the Pack, but rather useful for dorm life.  All in all, not bad shopping.