When Katherine Smith, a freshman speech-language pathology/audiology major, and Brianna DeBruyne, a freshman English major, found out they were going to be living together this year, they wasted no time getting down to decorating details.

Their room on the first floor of Douglas C wing came with all the basic commodities – two beds, two chairs, a small fridge and a fantastic view of people’s feet – but the girls thought it needed something more.

Spanning the entire back wall of their Douglas abode is a massive shelving unit that houses everything from board games to a bustling fish tank.

“My sister stayed in Douglas for two years,” Smith said. “She did all the measurements for her own room. I just [inherited] the unit when I moved in.”

The girls installed four shelving units in their room, adding much-needed storage to the room.

“They really help out,” DeBruyne said. “I’ve seen other peoples’ rooms and [the shelves] really keep things from looking cluttered. There is just so much wasted space on this wall without the shelves.”

“We have been told that they really make our room look bigger,” Smith said.

As functional as they are, the shelves posed a problem on move-in day. Because of their size, the shelves had to be carried in piece-by-piece and assembled inside. Unfortunately the “custom” shelves didn’t account for the new Ethernet boxes installed this year in Douglas.

“We had a problem because my sister’s room didn’t have the [Ethernet boxes] in her room so my dad had to cut some of the shelves in the room,” Smith said.

The roommates also ran into a problem when they realized their television didn’t fit onto one of the shelves as originally planned. Ever the problem-solvers, they solved their dilemma by building another, smaller shelf in the corner for the television to sit.

Faced with a huge empty hole in the center of their shelves, they had to find something to put there. They decided to open their hearts to some aquatic friends and adopted 10 little fish of the Tetra and Molly varieties.

“All of them have names except for the little red one,” DeBruyne said. “We have a black one named Oprah and a blue one named Smurf. [The little red one] is the brightest and coolest looking … So I just need to think of something really cool [to name him].”

So far, their storage solution has been a huge hit with some of their floormates.

“A girl on our floor asked for the measurements the other day and kind of copied our idea,” DeBruyne said.

The roommates also professed to having a lot strangers pop their heads in the door and ask about their creative storage system.

“It gives me a lot of ideas for later; not just for in the dorms but for in apartments as well,” DeBruyne said.