The big chill has set in, and thankfully, your winter exams are over. Your next feat before heading home for the holidays is cleaning out your dorm room for winter break.
Your home away from home has become a nook for studying and a place for binge-watching Netflix, and now you must face and clean the chaos before you leave.
Stage One: Optimistic Dread
Feeling heroically fierce like a warrior from the movie Braveheart, you give your best war cry and start flinging things in the trash bag. Coffee cups, be gone with thy brown ringed stains! You hesitate before flinging the entire trash bag over the small, but overflowing, dorm trash bin, flipping it upside down.
Then, something sticky falls from the bag. You have zero clue about what it is. You gape in terror and step back. The mess is more than you thought you could handle, and you’ve overestimated the strength of your dorm cleaning tactics.
Stage Three: Exhausted Hopelessness
You collapse in the only clear spot in your room’s labyrinth of paths. Have the piles of paper and clothes grown somehow? Minutes pass. Hours pass. Has winter break come and gone?
You think of regrets. You wonder why, why didn’t you just do the last three weeks of laundry? Why do you have to do it all at the last minute?
Then you remember: You weren’t procrastinating, you were studying hard for exams.
You perk up, and motivation fills you. If you can conquer winter finals, you can conquer this chaos! Rawr! Once more into the breach!
Stage Four: Frantic Action
You spy clean surfaces from where you successfully removed coffee cups and papers, and regain hope. You take the giant black trash bag out, and pull out more trash bags — your poor laundry bag would break from the weight. There is no time to sort, so you fling all the dark clothes you can spot into the bag.
You grab your laundry detergent and quarters, moving from level to level until you finally find a free washer. Fortunately, you look before you wash and pull out someone’s old lipstick. After wiping the inside down, you stuff as many clothes as you can into it. You return to stuff more dark clothes in a bag and a few light clothes into another bag. The reds and remaining whites will have to go home with you. Sorry, Mom — not sorry.
Whew, that was exhausting! You realize your floor spot sanctuary has grown, which is semi-motivating. So, you put on Netflix, and two hours later, you wonder if this was a positive or negative thing. In your brain fog of binge-watching, you’ve forgotten your clothes, but the floor has clearer surface area. What is this sorcery?
You vow to do better as you start the next load of laundry. Rather than fold your clothes, you roll them and push them hastily into your drawers. Others, you stuff in your luggage.
Between episodes, you shelve books and toss out old assignments you won’t need. Somehow, all that remains is dust and clutter on top of the furniture. Your next-door dorm neighbor pops her head in to say goodbye, and her eyes widen. She’s shocked that she can see the floor. More motivation!
You find stray boxes and pack random things to take home you realize you never needed in the first place. In your last leg of cleaning, you find a moldy plate, and your world collapses. As you go to collect your final load of laundry, you wipe a tear away as you cast the plate into the trash.
Stage Five: The Bittersweet Goodbye
Dragging the bag of clean clothes into the room, you stand flabbergasted in the hallway and look for the weird name tags on your door. Yep, this is your dorm room.
And — it’s CLEAN.
What in the world possessed you? Is there a cleaning ghost with a duster who haunts the dorm? Did time pass and someone else move in? This is your clean room. You slowly and carefully pack your remaining clothes, afraid you’ll upset some strange balance that has allowed for this anomaly in your room.
Wheeling your luggage out, you take one final, appreciative glance, flick the lights and lock the door.
Until next semester, dorm room. xoxo
