College Candy

Ah, spring. The bees are buzzing. The birds are singing. The flowers are blooming. It’s gorgeous outside, all sun and bright colors and cool green grass. All you really want to do is take your textbooks outside and do your work on the green. Mostly because your room is a complete and utter mess.

Spring cleaning is that thing you hear about that usually applies to houses, right? Wrong. Spring cleaning can apply to apartments and dorms, too. The smaller a space is, the more cluttered it gets and the more quickly it happens. Before you know it, you have to shovel a path from the door to your bed – and you do NOT have the time to clean it up.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t need an hour or two to clean your room; just 15 minutes will do. Muchly inspired by Fly Lady’s 15 Minute de-cluttering guide, here’s how to get your dorm or even your bedroom clean (or at least, cleaner) in just a quarter of an hour.

Make up your bed. It’s the biggest part of your room, probably. It’s your focal point, definitely. It only takes a few minutes to straighten out your sheets and put the pillow where it belongs. If there’s stuff on your bed, dump it onto the floor. Yeah, you heard me. Dump it. Making your bed is kind of an instant gratification thing; in about one minute, you can see a major difference in your room.

Grab the dirty clothes. Bet you a bunch of the stuff on your bed and what is now on the floor was dirty laundry, wasn’t it? Grab your hamper and put the dirty clothes where they belong. Do not do the sniff test. If it was on the floor, you probably need to wash it again, anyway.

Toss out the trash. Those flashcards for the test you had last week, that empty pizza box, that pen you know is out of ink but you hope will magically start working again…they’re all trash. Toss ‘em. My favorite method of dealing with trash, the 27 item toss, comes straight from Fly Lady; grab a garbage bag, grab 27 seven items that you know fully well are trash, close the bag, and dump ‘em. I like to time myself and out do former records.

Put miscellaneous stuff in a basket. It can be any container you want, really, but you have to keep it in view so that you can deal with it later, when you DO have the time. Anything you haven’t thrown out or put away yet, throw it into something; a wicker garbage can, a Tupperware container, even your bookbag. It has to be something you need to use soon, however, or else the stuff’ll just sit there. Knowing you need whatever is holding your random crap will inspire you to sort it later.

Wiping, sweeping, and mopping. This part is the easiest part. Once all of your stuff is relatively taken care of, grab a broom and sweep the floor. Vacuum if you think it’ll save you time and you know there’s nothing on your floor that’ll cause a nasty calamity. If you care to, mop, but don’t just wave the mop over parts of the floor. Really actually mop. Finally, grab some paper towels or disinfectant wipes and wipe down surfaces like your desk, the TV, the TV stand, and so forth.

If your room wasn’t that bad to begin with, you’re probably done. If it’s a bit of a mess, you may need another 15 minute spree to take care of it. If you would make a pig uncomfortable, do this in installments instead; 15 minutes for your desk on Monday, 15 minutes for laundry on Tuesday, and so forth and so on. Your room will be clean before you know it, and you’ll be free to go outside and enjoy the weather – and it’ll be because you want to!