Ah, Sunday - the day most of my roommates and I have standing dates with homework and migrate to Clemons Library or Lambeth Commons by noon. But every two weeks, Sunday becomes not only a work day but also the day in which we clean our apartment.
Not until we had two full-sized bathrooms and a kitchen of our own did we come to realize we were living the high life last year. We never had to clean our own bathrooms - they were cleaned at least five days a week. And, although we used to be able to recite verbatim the Stall Street Journal, we now find it a novelty when they change them on Grounds. Because we simply put our dishes on the tray return and left our crumbs at the dinner table, we never fully understood the amount of cleaning that went on behind the scenes at the dining hall either.
So when we coordinated who was going to bring what this summer, reality sunk in for the first time. We would have to buy cleaning products - and we would actually have to use them.
I may be what some people considered spoiled. Although I helped clean on a rare occasion at home, my mom did it for me for the most part, and my dad was my own personal bus boy. But a few days after Move-In Day - when the whole apartment got together to figure out food sharing, general rules and a cleaning rotation - I admitted my prior lack of domestic responsibility. I was reassured, however, that all of my roommates did not have much cleaning experience either.
I found it ironic that we were able to ace complicated subjects such as calculus and physics, yet we lacked a general life skill. But as accomplished second-year students taking on more rigorous course loads, we had confidence in our abilities. Thus, on the second Sunday of the school year, my roommate and I decided to give cleaning our apartment the good old college try.
We decided to conquer the bathroom first. We collected all of our cleaning products our mothers had stocked us with and began sorting products. We had sprays for our mirror, liquids for the toilet bowl, more sprays for the shower, general bathroom cleaning products, Clorox wipes and a Swiffer. Our hallway looked like the cleaning product aisle at Target.
"What do we do with this?" My roommate asked as she held up the toilet bowl cleaner.
With seemingly a long day ahead of us, we decided we should choose one product for each thing we had to clean - the sink, the mirror, the shower, the toilet and the floor.
"So what product do you think we should use to clean the sink?" I asked.
My roommate took a cursory glance to see if any of the products had a picture of a sink on it. I felt like I was back in first grade, matching words to pictures. But I guess you have to take baby steps before you can run. I located a product with a shower, sink and toilet on it, and we figured that would be a safe bet for our entire bathroom.
"So do we just start spraying everything and then wipe it all down?" I asked.
My roommate didn't have a better suggestion, and so we went to town. About a million paper towels later, we found ourselves admiring a spotless, shining bathroom that would have made our mothers proud.
After our successful bathroom-cleaning venture, we decided to pull a Monica Geller and continue killing 99.9 percent of germs in our apartment.
We decided our kitchen needed some attention because though we do our dishes on a daily basis - quite a feat for six college kids - we rarely wipe down our two feet of Brady Bunch green counter space.
So we put our new favorite cleaning products to good use and even wiped down our kitchen table. In fact, we were on such a cleaning high, hopefully not from all the fumes we were inhaling, that we decided to be ambitious and reorganize our makeshift pantry and kitchen cabinets.
Finally, we were so proud of our accomplishment that we decided to take pictures of our immaculate apartment. We made a good faith effort to keep our apartment as neat as it was that night, but life usually gets in the way and clutter builds up. Because I have cultivated my cleaning skills, though, I have also developed a new method of procrastination that makes my roommates and me happy. Now, we live in a clean apartment that would please any type-A person.
Katie's column runs biweekly Fridays. She can be reached at k.urban@cavalierdaily.com.
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