I’m not a neat freak. I think it might make my life significantly better, but I’m just not. On the other hand, I’ve never found a two-week-old pizza box under my bed or anything. I’m what you might call “manageably messy”: my desk chair is often piled high with outfit rejects, my bathroom counter is cluttered, and I often find myself doing two to three loads of laundry in one day. I highly exaggerated my neatness on the dorm roommate survey. If you’re anything like me, this is the most realistic process with which to clean your room. Warning: Results may vary.
1. Decide that your room has become too cluttered when you struggle to form a clear path from your bed to the closet. Today is the day; you will clean your room.
2. Turn on music in an effort to make the process more enjoyable.
3. Forget to clean your room and wait a few more days.
4. Realize that there’s no clean underwear in your drawer and that there’s a small collection of plastic cups on your nightstand. Become disgusted enough to actually begin tidying up this time.
5. Hang up clothes in your closet. Run out of hanger space. Fold up clothes and put them wherever you can find space (the closet shelf is a personal favorite of mine).
6. Prioritize your laundry by the clothes your wear the most often. Leave dry-clean-only clothes in the bottom of your hamper until your next visit home. Wonder why you even own such finicky clothing as a college student.
7. Overdo it on the bathroom cleaning, leaving everything smelling strongly of Lysol for the next week or so.
8. Keep a laundry basket of neatly folded clothes in your room without ever actually putting them into the correct drawers. You’re just going to wear them anyway.
9. Spend an enormous amount of time wrestling with the contour sheet while making your bed. Employing an assistant is probably your best bet in this situation.
10. Vacuum as quickly as possible. The noise is annoying. (Side note: Am I the only one who doesn’t trust vacuums?)
11. Decide to keep your room more consistently tidy so that this process doesn’t take an entire day.
12. Take a nap. You deserve it!
13. Repeat.
