On the sacred hall of Balz-Dobie 4L, room 431 is hailed for being the cleanest. As one of two inhabitants of 431, I am not bragging. This is simply the truth.
I thank the God of the universe that my roommate is just as much of a neat-freak as I am. I knew it was fate that my roommate and I were placed together when I came into the room one day to find her, Lysol wipes in hand, scrubbing the window sill. She looked back at me and declared, “Flu season is coming!”
A typical Friday night in 431 looks like this — one roommate takes the small dust-buster and the other takes the full vacuum. We clear out as much furniture as we can into the hallway for maximum floor space and let the vacuums roar. Other rooms play Fetty Wap or Ariana Grande to get pumped up for their Friday night adventures. We jam to the rhythm of Dirt Devil. With satisfaction, we watch as the crumbs that had built up throughout the week get sucked into the swirling barrel of the vacuum. The next step is Lysol — or Clorox, depending on the mood. Every surface gets wiped down twice. Once for the dust, second for the germs. If we are really turned up, we will sort out dirty clothes into darks and whites and make an expedition down to the laundry room. The night finishes by organizing our desks and making our beds. No matter what endeavors follow, the best part of my weekend is always the cleaning.
If my mother were to read this, she would laugh. I have not always been so anal about cleaning. My bedroom at home and my dorm room at school seem to be occupied by completely different people. My mother — the queen of all neat freaks — would relentlessly harp on me for the clothes on the floor. My cheesy father would constantly joke about “Tornado Alley” ripping through my bedroom each day.
Something about moving to college, however, seemed to unleash my genetic disposition for cleanliness. Maybe because one of the chief adults in my life is such a clean person, I have subliminally associated neatness with adulthood. Coming into college, freshly 18 — an official adult — I felt very little like an adult. I am reminded of how un-adult I am every time I get on the wrong bus and end up at Barracks Road Shopping Center instead of the hospital or accidentally microwave tinfoil. However, cleanliness is one aspect of adulthood I can really grasp. I instantly feel 10 years more mature each time I do a load of laundry.
Straightening up my room has validated a small portion of my adulthood, and through that I have found a sort of solace in it. Perhaps it is because cleaning is such a tactile way to feel you have made the world a little shinier. Since I was a young girl, I have had idealistic dreams of freeing the world from evil and darkness however that may happen. As the future approaches, this vision seems simultaneously more attainable and elusive. Redeeming the earth from all of its vileness is no easy task — how can one measure how they have progressed in their mission to save the world?
Maybe this is a stretch, but scrubbing down a dirty toilet may be one small step to rescuing the world. With each stroke of the brush, the toilet bowl turns from a smelly, disgusting cesspool to a white and sparkly throne. The progress is so visible. The confidence gained from turning something vile into something fine makes me think that perhaps changing the world is not so difficult after all. Though the road ahead can seem insurmountable, with one step at a time, we can slowly make this earth spotless.
So maybe having a dusting rager in my room on a Friday night is not revolutionizing the world, but I would like to think that one day my small squirts of disinfectant spray in my corner of the universe can lead to a world that is a little shinier than when I came in.
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