When my workload in college started getting heavier, the energy I had to stay neat and clean depleted more and more everyday. If this situation is sounding familiar to you, then here are my tips for how to stay neat and clean in college.
To stay neat and clean in college, you’ll want to stick to a cleaning schedule, remember to clean up after yourself right away instead of later on, wash your clothes and bedding every week, vacuum your carpet every month, throw refrigerated food away every 3-4 days, and clean the bathroom correctly.
Without these tips, staying neat and clean in college is going to feel unnecessarily hard.
1. Organize All Of Your Stationery, Toiletries, Clothes, Etc.
In order to stay neat in college, your belongings have to be neat and orderly to begin with. This can be a bit hard to do since a dorm room is small. You don’t have a lot of space to keep all of your things in the first place, which can make it easy to have a disorganized dorm. Remember to give your dorm room a quick cleaning before moving anything in. After the dorm is clean and everything is neatly put away, then you’re ready to hear how you can keep your room lookin as neat and clean as possible.
2. Create A Cleaning Schedule And Stick To It
Getting your dorm room fresh and clean on the first day can be tedious work, but it’s worth it to have a healthy living space. The hard part about having a healthy room, however, is the fact that you’ll have to periodically clean it in order to keep it that way. As classes get harder, homework gets longer, project due dates creep closer, etc. you’ll still have to find time to keep the room clean.
To make this task a little more manageable, you’ll need to put together a cleaning schedule and follow it as best as you can. Without this, it will be easy to lose track of the last time you wiped down the sink and vacuumed the floor. Then, your dorm will start to smell musty (if your dorm room already smells bad, here are 12 ways to get rid of the stink). As a general rule, tidy up your dorm room every two weeks to keep it in tip top shape.
3. Share The Cleaning Duties With Your Roommates And Suitemates
If the thought of having to clean the entire dorm room all by yourself every two weeks has you anxious, don’t be. You’re probably not the only one who lives in your room. If you are, then a single dorm is a smaller place to take care of anyway. If you have a roommate or more than one, then it’s everyone’s responsibility to keep the room a healthy place to live.
Remember how I told you to make a cleaning schedule? This is where it will especially come in handy. Gather everyone together and have a different person sign up every two weeks to tidy the place up. If you have suitemates whom you share a bathroom with, take turns cleaning the bathroom as well. Teamwork makes the dream work and with everyone’s help, college will be a little more doable.
4. Use A Clorox Wipe To Clean Up Small Spills
Even in our early adulthood, accidents happen. Your elbow accidentally knocks over a nearly finished cup of juice. You set down your can of soda on your desk only for it to tip over and spill onto the floor. It happens to all of us, but not all of us clean it up directly afterwards.
The smaller the spill, the more inclined we are to say “eh, I’ll get to it later”. Next thing we know, the local ants say “don’t worry, we’ll finish that for you” and invite themselves into your dorm. Your one clean space is now infested with ants because you didn’t clean up that tiny puddle of Mountain Dew earlier. Do both you and your roommate a favor, grab a few paper towels and a Clorox wipe to sop up the mess and disinfect the area afterwards. This is one of the many ways to ensure that your clean room stays clean.
5. Use An Eating Tray To Catch Crumbs
As far as I’ve seen when I was in college, not a lot of people use eating trays when they have breakfast, lunch or dinner in bed. I still can’t wrap my head around why though. It’s an easy way to ensure that crumbs don’t make a home for themselves on your bedsheets. I mean, can you imagine ants crawling on your bed to hunt down those crumbs? Ugh! The thought makes me shiver.
I’m sure you already know how trays work, but if you’re not interested in using one, let me remind you of their benefits. Having a relaxing breakfast in bed is made easy when you don’t have to worry about spilling crumbs, or even juice, on your bed sheets. Everything will be caught by the tray, which you can dust off in the trash can later. Doesn’t that sound nice?
6. Get Your Laundry Done Every Week Or Every Other Week
The various surfaces in your dorm room aren’t the only things that you’ll have to periodically clean. The clothes that pick up germs from outside are also dirty items that you’ll have to clean often. Laundry is something that can take up a good amount of time, which can be a nuisance for your busy college life. Having enough clean clothes to wear can become even more difficult during midterms and finals.
No matter how busy your schedule gets, you need to find time to wash your clothes every week or every other week. You don’t want to let a dirty clothes pile build up, because it can contribute to a dorm room’s stink.
7. Replace Your Bedding Every Week
While we’re on the topic of keeping fabric clean, let me remind you to keep your bedsheets from collecting too many germs as well. Unlike clothes that you wear once and then throw in the hamper, bed sheets need to be changed every week rather than every other week. This is because we spend so much time on it, day after day. Want to know what happens when we don’t wash or change our sheets that often? Find out by reading this article. If you don’t have time to keep up with that schedule, then buy enough sets of bed sheets to make sure that you can at least change them weekly.
8. Fold Your Clothes As Soon As They’re Clean
Doing laundry is a tedious task to begin with, and what makes it even more annoying is that after that last load is clean, you’re still not done. That big pile of clean clothes now needs to be folded and put away. At that moment, people tend to think “I just finished a big load of laundry, I’ll just put everything away later.” Even if the clothes lying around your dorm room are clean, the room still looks like a mess if they’re not neatly tucked in your drawers or hanging in your closet.
So how do you avoid having to fold dozens of shirts at one time after the laundry is done? The answer is that you should fold each load of laundry as soon as they pop out of the dryer instead of waiting for every load to finish before tackling the task. Getting this done in waves will be more manageable instead of doing it all at once.
9. Keep Dirty Clothes In The Hamper
One thing that’s worse than clean clothes being scattered around your dorm is dirty clothes lying around the room. I get it though, at the end of a long day when all you have the energy to do is change into your pajamas and go to bed, putting them in the hamper doesn’t even cross your mind. That’s not the issue. The issue is not choosing to put them in the hamper the morning after either. Do your best to always put your dirty clothes in your hamper because the sight of random clothes lying around is not appealing to anyone.
10. Vacuum Your Carpet Every Month
If you have a decorative carpet, or your dorm room comes with a carpet as flooring, you’ll want to periodically clean that part of your room as well. This is because they collect germs, fallen crumbs, whatever was stuck to the bottom of your shoe all day, etc. To make matters worse, they’re sneaky about it. They like to hide your mess within their fuzz, that way you don’t see it and don’t have the urge to clean it. Out of sight, out of mind.
Don’t let it stay out of your mind. Grab a vacuum and pick up any sort of mess that it’s hiding. Don’t worry about having to actually clean the carpet with baking soda or carpet cleaner unless it starts to stink. They typically only need cleaning once a year, and you won’t be in your room for longer than that.
11. Store Your Leftovers Correctly Or Throw It Away Every 4 Days
Let me start this out by saying that, if you keep leftover food in your mini fridge to eat later instead of buying new food, you’re smart. That resourcefulness is something you’ll want to hold on to for when you’re out of college and need to save more of your money. That being said, if you keep food in your fridge for longer than four days, you’re playing the leftover game wrong.
According to Mayo Clinic, food that’s been sitting in the fridge for longer than 4 days has the possibility to grow bacteria. Gross right? Dangerous too. To keep the leftover food safer, store it in the freezer instead. Frozen food still tastes good after being stored for 3-4 months, according to Mayo Clinic. So keep the food you plan to eat very soon in the fridge, and the rest in the freezer.
12. Throw Food Away In The Dorm Hall Trash Can, Not Your Dorm
When it comes to properly disposing of leftover food, make sure to throw it in the trash can located in your dorm hall. There’s usually a big one on every floor that everyone shares. Mine was by the stairwell, so if you don’t know where yours is, try looking there first. There are a couple reasons why you won’t want to throw that food out in the trash can located in your dorm room.
The first reason being that the food’s going to go bad, and what happens to bad food? It starts to stink. Do you like the smell of rotten leftovers in your room? I’m assuming you don’t, but if you do…none of my business. The second reason being that they could attract creepy crawlies to your dorm. The third reason being that the food could soil both the trash bag and the trash can, making the can smell like rotten food too. Then you’d have to clean the can. Save yourself the trouble and dispose of the food outside of the dorm.
13. Cover Your Food In The Microwave
When we heat up certain foods, they have the tendency to splatter all over the microwave, creating a gross mess that you have to clean up afterwards. This is annoying enough when you have your own microwave, but having this problem while using one that the whole dorm floor shares? Yeah, that’s even worse.
If you don’t wipe the mess up, you have bad manners. When you wipe the mess up, you may have several people waiting until you’re done cleaning to use it, which can make you feel a bit embarrassed. To avoid this issue completely, use a plate to cover anything you’re heating up. This will not only avoid a mess, but it will help trap both heat and moisture in your food, making the dish better. It’s a win win!
14. Clean The Bathroom Often And Correctly
Not every dorm room comes with its own bathroom, but when they do, it’s usually the residents of each dorm’s responsibility to clean it. The R.A’s perform room inspections to make sure that both your dorm and your bathroom are in acceptable condition, so don’t think that you can get away with not cleaning your private bathroom either. As I said beforehand, if you share your room and/or bathroom with other people, then you can all take turns cleaning it.
15. Take Care Of Your Personal Hygiene
And last, but far from the least, personal hygiene. Not only will you want to keep your dorm room neat and clean, but you’ll want to keep yourself neat and clean. As times get busy, especially if you’re a freshman who’s not used to the college workload, keeping up with the simplest things can feel like a chore. Just remember to save that last bit of energy during midterms and finals to brush your teeth and take a shower.
