Disclaimer: this is not a post about how to clean your dorm but rather why cleaning is important.
At last, you have left home and are ready embark on this new journey college is! Now, you have a shared 10×10 bedroom with someone who is presumably a stranger at the moment of your arrival in UW. Now there won’t be anybody to order you to clean your room or do the dishes or any kind of menial cleaning job. Congrats! You have become a college student with all of the benefits of one. Nevertheless, let us flash-forward to after making friends and having had gatherings with snacks, pizzas, and what could be considered as suspicious liquids. Now your room is a mess and probably exudes a foul smell comparable only to the trash can outside of your dorm building.
You are left with two options:
- Ignore the smell and continue living in a stinky tiny room, it is a gross college dorm anyway
- Enlist your roommate for this new odyssey called dorm cleaning
In the case you have trouble deciding which option is the best, we have made a list that compares the benefits of either option:
Benefits of a clean dorm Benefits of a dirty dorm
| Better sleep | Natural decomposition smell (if that is something you enjoy, that is) |
| Better smell | Possible use as a Bio project |
| Possibly a better social life | More time to procrastinate |
| Less allergens | |
| Better quality of study |
After seeing this, we must conclude that the benefits of having a clean room outweigh the benefits of a dirty one. Our tip is to simply have a clean room where people might want to spend some time visiting you.
Cleaning is not as hard as it may seem, you just have to take some time, around 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the frequency of your cleaning and how thorough you want to clean. Get a rag to dust and a vacuum cleaner for the floor. All of these are usually available at the end of your hallway where the trash bin is.
If you choose to ignore the grime and the smell, then we may reassure you by telling you that you aren’t the only college student who does that. However, the benefits and satisfaction of having a livable place should be taken into account before deciding to become a college hermit.
List based on: