Every parent groans about it, every adult has most likely embraced it upon growing up, and I currently am at war with the stereotypical and classic, messy room. Picture this: a mixture of clean and dirty clothes over every surface and piece of furniture, an approximate total of seventy-two water bottles under the bed, a moderately overflowing trash bin, papers and books not on their shelves, headphones tangled underneath a pile of granola bar wrappers, mismatched shoes and socks scattered about, an odd odor, all a part of a seemingly unresolvable organized chaos. I lived in that stereotypical mess for far too many years as a teen, and have found some of those tendencies to have lingered on into my college dorm existence. No bueno. I apologize to my parents for consistently putting you through that for so long. However, I apologize to myself too, because while I very well may know where the majority of the things are within my own personal mess, too often the very thing I need, like my key card (to enter, you know, the building) goes missing and is lost in the void that I call a living space. Sure, I make the effort to clean and tidy up about once or twice a month. I make sure that my bed is neatly made, that my clothes are all in place, every book has found its shelf spot, I even go as far as putting citrus essential oils into a diffuser to make the room smell clean...yet every time the room winds up being trashed again in a matter of weeks, or sometimes days if I have exams to study for. The room and its cleanliness, along with many things in this life, is part of a cycle. Up and then down, clean and then dirty, and so on and so on. As the room gets messier and messier, I find myself getting lazier and lazier. Not only do I procrastinate on everything more often, but my literal mood and the way I feel gets “messier” too. It’s like seasonal depression, but instead of Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall, it’s organized or chaotic. My self-esteem and self-worth plummet as my pile of dirty laundry skyrockets. It's an inverse and honestly toxic relationship. If my room is at an all time low, so am I. I lack all motivation, and I myself feel like trash. It’s hard to look at yourself in the mirror and find yourself as beautiful when all of your surroundings are comprised of literal rubbish. However, then I take the full day to do my laundry, vacuum the carpet, sweep the floors and take out the trash, and suddenly I stop calling myself trash. Something about the lemony scent in the air and the folded cloths on my shelves makes me feel like a million bucks again. So to the fellow college students out there who have ominously impending finals approaching, or to anyone that this applies, try decluttering your living space, try freshening up, and maybe your mind and spirit will be refreshed as well. Where you sleep should be a sanctuary, it should be peaceful, or at the least, not stress you out. Don’t look at yourself and say, “you’re trash”, because you’re a child of God, you’re capable of keeping your room clean, and you’re not trash, you’re a treasure.