04/08/2017
HOW TO CLEAN YOUR ROOM IN 10 MINUTES
1. Prioritize.
Take a step back and reaaaaally look at your room. What is the biggest offender? Shoe piles? No visible floor space? Crusty old dishes? Crusty old dishes and half-empty glasses of curdled milk under the bed that are creating a sour odor? Crusty UNDERWEAR? Try to see your room for the first time, treating a shared room as if it were completely yours. What’s most immediately shocking? What’s the first thing that might snag someone’s gaze? (Hint: it’s the underwear.) Time spent: 10 seconds.
2. Get rid of the major offender(s).
Refer to the Priority Messes identified in step one and TAKE CARE OF THEM. If it’s clothes and shoes all over the floor, run and get the laundry basket, pile everything into it (shoes at the bottom), and set it against a wall. Oh, ha ha, you were just about to do a load of laundry! Alternately, you can grab a garbage bag, stuff everything into that, and throw it in your closet. It’s just a bag of stuff you’re donating and, no, they cannot look through it. Time spent: two minutes.
If it’s books and papers, fly around your room, picking up every single book and sheet of paper, regardless of what they are, and put them all in two tidy piles on your desk or on the floor by your bed, with the smartest/trendiest books and magazines on display. The Hunger Games and On the Road can go on top of the latest issue of Highlights (still a really good magazine). Look how much you read! You’re so cultured! Time spent: one minute.
3. Hide anything super-personal.
We all have crap we don’t want other people to see, especially the first time they come over. Scan the room for potentially embarrassing items, such as dental headgear, wart-removing cream, the Justin Bieber singing toothbrush (gag gift, right?!), prescription bottles, the notebook in which you’ve practiced writing your crush’s name linked with yours, Vagisil, Monostat, foot fungus spray, the neti pot, Preparation H, used Q-tips, and anything aiding digestion. None of these things are shameful, OBVS, but they’re not exactly things you need your new friends to be intimately acquainted with. Time spent: 30 seconds.
4. Open all the windows.
Seriously, even if it’s freezing. Air the cave out! Now spray one (ONLY ONE) sq**rt of your perfume right in front of your door, close to the ceiling, and fan it around with your hands. Perfect! Now anyone walking in will have a first impression of a good-smelling room. And your crush will get a waft of your scent, which is always good. Time spent: 30 seconds.
5. Quickly make the bed.
The bed is the biggest thing in your room; making it will give the impression that the room is a lot more tidy. Don’t spend too long on this, just pull the sheets up and drag the coverlet over the top. Tip: if you want it to look like you definitely did not just make the bed, lie down and then get up again to leave an I’ve-been-sitting-on-this-bed body imprint. Place the one item you were obviously just engaged with (e.g., laptop, book of poetry, collage) on your now-neatened bed next to your pillows. You were totally just lying here a minute ago, doing something awesome! You are always doing cool s**t. Time spent: one minute.
6. Get rid of anything perishable that has already perished.
Grab all crusty dishes/water glasses/Tupperware from old lunches and run them to the kitchen sink. Then take the overflowing trash out. Remember: there’s a HUGE difference between “messy” and “gross.” Clutter = messy. Anything that mice and roaches might like to make a nest in = gross. Time spent: three minutes.
7. Put a clean gym sock on each of your hands.
Get one wet. Now you have a scrubber and a duster. Use the wet one on anything sticky, like rings from juice glasses. Run the dry one over all surfaces at eye level and anything truly, horribly dusty. Time spent: two minutes.
