Let spring break inspire some spring cleaning
It’s the middle of the second semester, and your once fresh and catalogue-worthy dorm room is now looking like any other teenage bedroom, except this time your clothes are in a ball at the foot of your bed, and if your mother saw how many plastic water bottles you’ve accumulated, she’d kill you.
What gives? When you’re taking 18 credits, on the club softball team and recovering from your third night of partying this week, a messy room is forgivable. While cleaning is literally a chore, it shouldn’t be all that hard to freshen up your space. Here are some tips and tricks on how to make your room look just as it did on move-in day:
1. Gather all of the syllabi, exams and class notes from last semester, and maybe even some papers from this semester. Now throw them in the recycling bin. While it’s easy to get attached to papers — you never know when you might need them, right? — 99.9 percent of the time you truly never look at them again, and they’re almost always still available on Sakai.
2. Are your books from last semester just chilling there? You’re a broke college student — sell them! Textbookrush.com gives great quotes for used textbooks. You easily can make at least $100 a semester selling your books from the last, and you will declutter your room at the same time.
3. Most of us overpack when heading to college for the first, second and maybe even third time. Schedule a time to really dig deep into your mess of a closet to take out some things you don’t need anymore. Instead of bringing a box of unwanted clothes to your parent’s house to only rot further, consider donating them to the Holy Shirt thrift store on College Avenue, where gently used clothing is accepted. The student-run thrift store also doubles as a food pantry, so donating the excess amount of soups and packaged snacks from Costco you never eat is a great option, as well.
4. Many college students often overlook the importance of actually dusting, sweeping and wiping down their dorm rooms. Since we’re all busy bees, consider making a plan with your roommate to split chores here and there. Since it is a small space, taking a few minutes out of your day to pick up some dust bunnies won’t be as time consuming as you’d think, and it will make you feel a lot better to come home to a clean room after a long day of studying.
5. Because we use them so much, our phone screens and laptop keyboards are filthy, but we often don’t even realize. After almost two semesters of writing papers and dropping your phone on frat house floors, these gadgets could definitely use a wipe down.
If you’re not too busy packing, spring cleaning before leaving for the break is ideal. You will be happy when you come back to a clean and tidy dorm room. Although a bit of a pain, cleaning can be therapeutic and a messy room will be one less thing you will have to stress about. Even if you are the total opposite of a neat freak, maybe one round of spring cleaning could get you in the mood to be neat all the time.
