College has redefined everything I thought about hygiene.
At first, I thought sharing a bathroom with five other girls was going to be a nightmare due to how many generations of may flies that could experience the circle of life while a girl gets ready. I know first hand. I’m guilty of even my speediest showers being at least 20 minutes. Going from my house where I had to fight only my mother for the shower, dorm living seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. However, much to my surprise, the only issues we’ve ran into time wise is the elegant “I’m about to pee my pants, HURRY YOUR ASS” dance performed while someone had the shower occupied.
If I had to choose between being in a room with Freddy Kruger and being in a room with our toilet, I would actually have to pause and give great consideration to both possibilities. On a usual given day, our toilet would appear to be made of speckled marble. It’s not. I’ll let you pause to gag now. I have no clue how our toilet gets so ridiculously gross, especially in places where you wouldn’t normally have to worry about getting dirty. Have you ever seen the back part of the toilet that sits on the floor have debris on it? Me either, until this year. I’m still flabbergasted as to how that happened—twice. Most guys’ toilets would put ours to shame. Heck, most port-o-potties would put ours to shame.
It’s pretty shocking how much hair six girls can leave in a bathroom. I’ve been the brave soul who decided to take one for the team and try to tame what we dubbed, “The Hair Monster”. Initially, this endeavor would be made easily known by the loud heaving noises. After living in a dorm for two months now, I have a complete tolerance for hair. This unsettling discovery was made when I was eating dinner with my mother (the infamous dinner of CHAMPIONS) and I found a small hair in my burger. My mother freaked. She was about ready to take my burger to the counter and demand a fresh, untainted one. I merely shrugged, plucked out the hair nonchalantly, and resumed eating. What has college done to me?! On the plus side, I can clean hair out of drain without even batting an eye.
Why does it get so bad? My roommates and I, granted, are not anal neat freaks. Sure, Marissa has her occasional cleaning spree when she makes our room shine brighter than Snow White ever could, but we still generally keep above liveable conditions. When we make messes, we clean them. Simple as that. Our suitemates, however, don’t always follow the same code and apparently, they have a much greater tolerance for filth than we do.
Our suitemates rarely take it upon themselves to clean the bathroom. Usually Marissa does it because otherwise it’ll reach a point that will send her into a germaphobic panic just by stepping foot near it. Madison and I will contribute to the cleaning effort as well, but effectively it’s just our room that cleans it. After noticing this, we decided to have an experiment. Since it’s always us that takes out that nearly overflowing trash, we wanted to see how bad the trash could get before our suitemates would take the trash out. Our results were appalling. The trash had piled a good half a foot above the can when we took it out.
So how do you talk to your suitemates about the messes they leave in the bathroom? Well, probably the best way would be face to face. However, our communication with our suitemates is just about is good as their cleaning habits. So for now, we’ll stick to post-it notes with smiley faces. Smiley faces make everything less offensive.
