Monday mornings for most of us come with a suffocating amount of work after a big weekend in which we neglected to unzip our backpacks or log in to our Crimson emails. For those us of who live in dorms, Monday mornings stand for an even greater tragedy – watching our sweet, dedicated and hardworking staff members rehabilitate a dorm that seems to have suffered through a disaster.
Where I live, Julia Tutwiler Hall, this disaster is made up of 900 young women discovering the responsibility of living without parents for the first time. When we aren’t held responsible for the messes we leave behind, our living space quickly becomes tarnished by trash, food and germs. The staff receives a well-deserved break from cleaning up our messes each weekend, but how do we repay them come Monday morning? Although I cannot speak directly about all dorm conditions on campus, I think we can all agree that in order to live well, we must treat where we live with respect even when our parents aren’t here nagging us to do it.
The number of times I have heard my friends, my hallmates, the dorm staff and myself harp on the disgusting conditions of the Tutwiler stairs, elevator, hallways and bathrooms is unfathomable. Tutwiler is an infamously old building here on campus – if you haven’t lived through the grotesque experience, you have at least heard about it.
Do not confuse my point here. It’s not about what the University can do to improve dorm conditions but what we as students can change about our habits to ensure a high-quality living area. Whether the custodial workers are on duty or not, we need to clean up after ourselves. For example, when you miss the shot after you toss your paper towel toward the bathroom trash can and yell “KOBE,” pick up the wadded towel and throw it away. I know that it can be all too tempting to toss your trash in the general vicinity of the can and merely hope you make the shot, but if all 900 girls made the simple adjustment of making sure our trash ends up in the trash bin, just imagine the results we could see. We would no longer have to wake up in the mornings and cringe as we saw other people’s germ-ridden tissues across the tile floor.
If you are reading this and not living in a dorm, remember that this mentality of making minor adjustments in how you treat your living space can branch off into all aspects of living. Some of you may live with roommates and experience other sorts of problems with your living quality. Perhaps the dishes or trash continuously pile up over the course of the week and you and your roommates merely complain about the gross kitchen while no one cleans it up. That is, until one angry roommate has to cave in and do all of the chores because they cannot stand the smell or clutter any longer. Now there are not only poor cleanliness habits in the household, but also hostility between roommates as well.
This type of negative cycle is typical in college apartments, dorms and houses, but the stop to the cycle is simple. Every time you eat a meal and dirty a couple of dishes, rinse them off and put them in the dishwasher immediately. When you finish off the full trashcan, be the one to run it outside. Build a habitual cycle of responsibility and clean up after yourself. When you are feeling productive, make your roommate or housemate’s day by cleaning up your common living area. I guarantee this will encourage them to also form cleanly habits and even make them more willing to help you out when you don’t have time to do your dishes.
The Washington Post’s article titled “Be clear on cleanliness to avoid conflict with your roommate” offers some useful advice for those of us who hope to make a change in our houses and dorms. This is one of the helpful tips worth noting: “New or potential roommates should have a conversation up front to figure out which areas they expect will be clean.” Living with others is never easy, and we all have those weeks when we just can’t muster the energy to put away our laundry or vacuum our carpet, but in order to love how we live, we need to learn to give some love to where we live.
Anna Scott Lovejoy is a freshman majoring in general business and Spanish.
