Mississippi teacher Shelly Gates, 49, designed her daughter's dorm room at Mississippi State in 2020. After she posted photos of it, other moms started hiring her to design their college kids' dorms.

Gates tells PEOPLE she quit her job this year to run her business, Mary Margaret Designs, full-time “It’s so much more than coming up with a physical design for the room,” says Gates, adding that she ...

For campus-bound freshmen, organizing, furnishing, and decorating a dorm room is pretty much a crash course in small-space, ...